Curating Dreams: William J. Wilson's Vision of an Antebellum Black Museum

In this special lecture series Curating Dreams: William J. Wilson's Vision of an Antebellum Black Museum, Dr. Cocoa M. Williams will discuss The Afric-American Picture Gallery, a little known work by activist William J. Wilson published in 1859. The Afric-American Picture Gallery details through "ekphrasis" (a rhetorical device which provides a detailed description of art through another medium, such as poetry or prose), the paintings, sculptures, and drawings that are inside what he imagines will be America's first Black museum.

Drawing upon her research for her forthcoming book Museums of the Mind: The Ekphrastic Imagination in the African American Speculative Tradition, Dr. Williams will explore "ekphrasis" as a tool of the Black imagination to create out of words what is not always readily accessible and tangible in the "real" world. The lecture series will take place over three sessions:

• Lecture 1: Beyond Bondage: Art, Identity, and Resistance in Antebellum Black Visual Culture
• April 8th at 7-8:30pm
  
• Lecture 2: Framing Freedom: William J. Wilson's Afric-American Picture Gallery as Ekphrastic Meditation
• April 15th at 7-8:30pm
  
• Lecture 3: Black Speculative Imaginings and the Black Prophetic Tradition in William J. Wilson's Gallery
• April 22nd at 7-8:30pm

• Reception to follow.

Participants are expected to attend all three lectures. All sessions will take place in-person at the Maragaret Mitchell House.

This lecture series is supported by the Mellon-funded Digital in the Publishing in the Humanities initiative at Emory University and the Atlanta History Center.

About the Speaker

• Cocoa M. Williams received her PhD in African American Literary and Cultural Studies with a minor concentration in American Modernism and Black Diasporic Modernisms at Florida State University. Her research interests include African American women’s literature, Black modernity, modern African American art, Black digital humanities, museum studies, Black film studies, and folklore. Her forthcoming book project, Museums of the Mind: The Ekphrastic Imagination in the African American Speculative Tradition, explores the impact of museum culture on African American arts and letters. This project is being developed into a digital monograph through the Andrew Mellon-funded Digital Monograph Writers Workshop at Emory University.
  Dr. Williams is also working on a digital project on early African American engagements with museums in conjunction with the Project on the History of Black Writing (HBW) at the University of Kansas and AFRO-Publishing Without Walls. Cocoa Williams is the recipient of the J. Russell Reaver Award for Outstanding Dissertation in American Literature or Folklore, McKnight Dissertation Fellowship, P.E.O. Scholar Award, and the Ruth Yost Memorial Scholarship, among others. Dr. Williams is also a published poet. Her poetry has been published in Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Ninth Letter, College Language Association Journal and december magazine. Her forthcoming publications include book chapters on Toni Morrison’s last novel God Help the Child for the Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison and on primitivism in New Negro aesthetics for the MLA Options for Teaching the Harlem Renaissance.

Host or Publisher Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry