Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife

Simpson Center Annual Digital Humanities Lecture

In this talk, author and scholar Dr. Tonia Sutherland discusses themes of her 2023 book Resurrecting the Black Body, which examines the consequences of digitally raising the dead. Attending to the violent deaths of Black Americans—and the records that document them —from slavery through the present, Sutherland explores media evidence, digital acts of remembering, and the rights and desires of humans to be forgotten. From the popular image of Gordon (also known as “Whipped Peter”), photographs of the lynching of Jesse Washington, and the video of George Floyd’s M**der to DNA, holograms, and posthumous communication, Sutherland draws on critical archival, digital, and cultural studies to make legible Black bodies and lives forever captured in cycles of memorialization and commodification. If the Black digital afterlife is rooted in historical bigotry and inspires new forms of racialized aggression, Resurrecting the Black Body asks what other visions of life and remembrance are possible, illuminating the unique ways that Black cultures have fought against the silence and erasure of oblivion.

This is the first of two programs for Public Scholarship + Practice: Black Futures + Archives, a new series highlighting University of Washington-led research and practice at the intersections of visual art and culture.

Resurrecting the Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife is organized in collaboration with the Black Digital Studies in the Age of Techno-Fascism working group at the University of Washington.

Join us on Thursday, April 16th for the second program in the series, , organized in collaboration with The Black Embodiments Studio.

Bio

Dr. Tonia Sutherland is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty Development in the School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife (University of California Press, October 2023). In addition to being the Founder and Director of PENDULUM and The Black Memory Collective. She also serves as Co-Director of the Community Archives Lab at UCLA and Co-Founder and Co-Director of AfterLab at the University of Washington iSchool. Sutherland serves on the Advisory Board of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies at New York University and is a member of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2)’s Scholar Council. Sutherland is an internationally recognized expert in data futures (particularly data longevity and digital immortality), Black digital archives, and Black Memory Work. Her work critically examines the analog histories of modern information and communication technologies; addresses trends of racialized violence in 21st-century digital cultures; and interrogates issues of race, gender, and culture in archival and digital spaces. In her work, Sutherland focuses on various infrastructures–technological, social, human, cultural–addressing important concerns such as gaps and vagaries; issues of equity and inclusivity; and developing more liberatory praxes.

Accessibility

The Henry strives to be a welcoming and accessible space for all visitors. Assisted Listening Devices (ALDs) and. AI-generated live captioning will be available. For additional accessibility information, please visit henryart.org/visit/accessibility or contact Museum Services at 206.221.3850 or [email protected] with questions or needs.

Credits

Generously made possible by the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, and co-sponsored by the UW departments of American Ethnic Studies, Cinema & Media Studies, History, Geography, and Sociology, and by the UW Honors program.

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