Black Dolls Symposium

Join The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures for a research symposium on the historical significance of Black dolls in America, c. 1850-present, featuring 17 presenters from around the world. This symposium is part of programming for the exhibition , on view through March 3, 2025, and will feature a lecture by keynote speaker Dr. Tiya Miles (the keynote presentation requires separate registration).

Attendees will have the opportunity to purchase a lunch, provided by Thelma's Kitchen, at a later date.

Presenters

Deja Beamon (University of Missouri-Kansas City), “Black Girlhood: Intersections of Theory, Memory, and Material Culture”

Marlee Bunch (University of Illinois), “How Dolls Carry Forward Stories and Oral Histories”

Wanett Clyde (The New York City College of Technology, CUNY), “Size, Shape, Textile, Texture, Color, Condition: The Physicality of a Doll”

Destiny Crockett (Rutgers University-Camden), “’Grandma Ruby and Me’: Black Age and Archiving Girlishness”

Randall K. Johnson (University of Missouri-Kansas City), “Race, Dolls and The Law”

Loren Macon (University of Missouri-Columbia), “From Play to Perception: Exploring Race, Identity, and Beauty Standards through Bratz Dolls”

Karen McCarthy Woolf (Goldsmiths College, University of London), “Were s/he inclined to speak…”

Janine Napierkowski (Girl Scouts USA), Blake Changnon (The Changnon Family Museum of Toys and Collectibles), and Connie Porter (American Girl author), “Addy Walker: Why She Matters”

Emily L. Newman (East Texas A&M University), “’What’s Hair Got to Do with it:’ CROWNing Black Dolls”

Madelyn Shaw (Independent Scholar), “Bodies of Evidence: The Material Culture of Black Dolls”

Karina Simonson (Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies, Vilnius University), “Black Dolls in White Spaces: Navigating Cold War and Race in the Baltics”

Kipton D. Smilie (Missouri Western State University), “Black Dolls in American Public Schools: Implications of a History of Absence”

Rhoda Terry-Seidenberg (Bronx Community College), “Coconut and Bananas: Dolls from the Black Diaspora”

Sabrina Thomas (Duke University), “Zora’s Sara Lee: The First Anthropologically Correct Negro Doll”

Telia Mary U. Williams (Northern Illinois University), “Doll Story: A Fashionable Legal History of Resistance to, and Engagement with, Sumptuary Laws by Enslaved Persons in Antebellum and Postbellum America.”

When

February 6, 2025 | 10:30AM-3PM

February 7, 2025 | 9AM-4PM

Where

The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures

5235 Oak St, Kansas City, MO 64112

Sponsors

This program is supported by The City of Kansas City, Missouri Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund; the Hall Family Foundation; Rainy Day Books; Shutz Lecture Series; the UMKC Women’s Center, and a generous private donor.

Host or Publisher The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures