Commitment to Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, Inclusion, and Positive Change
Graduate Student Led DEAI Committee
Mission Statement
KU Art History graduate students working toward a people-centered academic environment that respects diversity of experience and challenges disciplinary norms through empathy and mutual understanding.
Vision Statement
The KU Art History DEAI Committee pledges to foster an environment of belonging and equity in the visual art and art history communities.
Structure
We are a student-led volunteer organization, and our meetings are open to all KU Art History graduate students.
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Lecture Series: Intersections of Identity: Expression, Exchange, and Hybridity
This series began in the 2020-21 academic year with the intention of demonstrating how art history's critical investigation of the past - and contemporary artists' grappling with challenges of the present - can help us to recognize, analyze, and combat racism and inequality, affirming our discipline's value in the ongoing struggle to create a more just and equitable society.
What constitutes identity, and how do people navigate, form, and reform their sense of self? And how can the study of art and its history help us to consider the diverse identities expressed by visual culture and its creators? This series seeks to amplify the voices of scholars and artists whose work explores individual and collective identities as those intersect with notions of the body, dis/ability, gender, heritage, and race.
The series is sponsored by the Franklin Murphy Lecture Fund of the Kress Foundation Department of Art History. It is presented in partnership with the Spencer Museum of Art, KU Department of Visual Art, Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence Public Library, Raven Bookstore, BLACK Lawrence, and other community partners.
2021-2022 Speakers
Rejecting the Feminist Label: Xiang Jing and the Construction of an Artist’s Identity
QUINCY NGAN: Assistant Professor, Pre-Modern to Contemporary Chinese Art, Yale University
Land and Sovereignty: The Foundation for Public Art and Studio Practice
HOCK E AYE VI EDGAR HEAP OF BIRDS: multi-disciplinary artist
Golem Girl: Being and Painting the Other
RIVA LEHRER: Chicago based artist, writer, and curator
Thinking Through Color: F. N. Souza's Black Paintings
ATREYEE GUPTA: Assistant Professor, Modern and Contemporary Art University of California Berkeley
Blue Like Me: The Art of Siona Benjamin
SIONA BENJAMIN: NYC based artist, speaker, and educator
Interdependent: Strategies of Friendship and Care in Asian American Art
LAURA KINA: Vincent de Paul Professor of Art, Media, & Design; Director of Critical Ethnic Studies DePaul University
2020-2021 Speakers
Unfinished (We Are What's Left Undone): Identity, Performative Racial Scripts & the Necessity of the Anti-Colonial Iconoclast
M. CARMEN LANE: Cleveland-based artist, writer, and director of the ATNSC: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership
Archive/Agency/Argument: Mobilizing the Knowledge of Colonial India's 'Native' Artists in 'Global' Art Histories
DIPTI KHERA: Associate Professor of Art History, NYU
The Fashion and Race Database: Providing a Pedagogical Platform Amidst Fashion’s Racial Reckoning
KIMBERLY M. JENKINS: Assistant Professor of Fashion Studies, Ryerson University, Toronto
Dalí's "Dream of Venus:" Sex, Surrealism, and Eugenics at the 1939 New York World's Fair
KERI WATSON: Associate Professor of Art History, University of Central Florida, and Director of the Florida Prison Education Project