2020 Sonja Haynes Stone Memorial Lecture featuring Deborah Willis
Join us for a discussion with artist, author, and educator Deborah Willis, who will deliver the 2020 Sonja Haynes Stone Memorial Lecture, “Reflections on the Power of a Single Image.” Her talk will be held via Zoom webinar on October 14, at 6:30 p.m. EDT. Advance registration is required.
Willis will explore how images of black social protests are fixed in our popular imagination through the photograph, using the visual archive of the ongoing struggle for human and civil rights to connect images of black activism from the 19th century to the 21st century.
Deborah Willis is professor and chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University where she teaches courses on photography, iconicity, and cultural histories visualizing the black body, women, and gender. She is also the director of the NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture. She received a MacArthur Fellowship; was a Richard D. Cohen Fellow in African and African American Art, Hutchins Center, Harvard University; and received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In addition to being one of the nation’s leading historians of African American photography and curator of African American culture, Willis is a professional art photographer.
The Sonja Haynes Stone Memorial Lecture is an annual program hosted each fall. Previous Stone lecturers have included Angela Davis, Edwidge Danticat, and Nnenna Freelon. Event is sponsored by the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black History and Culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.