The Princeton & Slavery Project Symposium
Keynote by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison
November 17, 2017—November 18, 2017 ·
Humanities Council, McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton University Art Museum
The Princeton & Slavery Project, a scholarly investigation of Princeton University’s historical engagement with the institution of slavery, will launch its website after several years of support from the Humanities Council, and will host a scholarly symposium on November 17-18, 2017.
Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison will deliver the keynote address. Other featured speakers include Project Director Martha A. Sandweiss (Princeton University), Ruth Simmons (Brown University), Leslie Harris (Northwestern University), Eric Foner (Columbia University), and Danielle Allen (Harvard University).
Weekend events will also include McCarter Theatre’s world premiere of “The Princeton and Slavery Plays,” seven newly-commissioned short plays based on historical documents uncovered as a part of the research project. Playwrights include: Nathan Alan Davis, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Dipika Guha, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins ’06, Kwame Kwei-Armah, McCarter Artistic Director and Resident Playwright Emily Mann, and Regina Taylor.
In addition, the Princeton University Art Museum will host a public conversation with Titus Kaphar related to a new sculpture commissioned for the Project that explores the ways in which we create identity, racial structures, and economies in visual form. In the Museum’s galleries, artworks from Kaphar’s existing body of work will be featured in an exhibition that relates more broadly to representations of history in the United States, and in particular how African American identity is constructed and reinforced by their visual representation and/or absence in art.
