Cover image: Artwork by Kara Walker in Porgy & Bess libretto by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin with 16 lithographs by Kara Walker.

Troubling Performance

This one-day symposium will consider representations of race in performance in connection to the work of visual artist Kara Walker, whose exhibition Back of Hand is on display at the Athenaeum through March 24. Taking Walker as a departure point, invited speakers will address themes related to rethinking Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, satire, stereotypes, gender, and identity.

The Keynote Speaker of the symposium is Kirsten Pai Buick, professor of art history at the University of New Mexico who is presently working on her second book, In Authenticity: ‘Kara Walker’ and the Eidetics of Racism. In addition, program speakers include — Cheryl Finley, Inaugural Director of the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective and Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Art & Visual Culture at Spelman College; Paul Pfeiffer, visual artist; and Isaiah Wooden, assistant professor of theater, Swarthmore.

Guests are welcome to register for the event in person or sign up for a livestream via Zoom or YouTube.

To kick off the symposium, the Athenaeum is also presenting a poetry reading by Dawn Lundy Martin this Friday at 6 pm, sponsored by The Georgia Review. No registration is required to attend this event.

Schedule of Symposium

9:00am — Light breakfast

9:20am — Opening remarks by Katie Geha, Director and Chief Curator of the Athenaeum

9:30am — Isaiah Wooden, “Troubling Representations, Holding Histories, and The Stage”

10:30am — Paul Pfeiffer, “Red, Green, Blue” 

11:30am — Cheryl Finley, “ Kara Walker: Art as Social Justice"

12:30 - 2:00 — Break for Lunch

2:30pm — Kirsten Pai Buick, “Selling the Substance to Support the Shadow: Kara Walker’s Images of Black Children”

4:00pm — Round Table led by Khalid Long, Assistant Professor Theater and Institute for African American Studies, UGA

5:00pm — Wine & cheese

This symposium is sponsored by the Association of Graduate Art Students (AGAS) at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, the UGA Art Library, the UGA Black Artists Alliance, the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the UGA Institute for African American Studies, the UGA Institute for Women's Studies, the Mod Squad, and the Willson Center for Humanities & Arts.

Images of Porgy & Bess libretto by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin with 16 lithographs by Kara Walker

Presenter Bios

Isaiah Matthew Wooden is a director-dramaturg, critic, and assistant professor of theater at Swarthmore. A scholar of twentieth- and twenty-first century African American art, drama, and performance, Wooden has contributed more than forty articles, essays, and reviews to scholarly and popular publications. He is currently at work on a monograph that explores the interplay of race and time in post-civil rights Black expressive culture.

Cheryl Finley is the Inaugural Director of the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective and Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Art & Visual Culture at Spelman College. She leads an innovative undergraduate program at the world’s largest historically Black college and university consortium in preparing the next generation of African American museum and visual arts professionals.

Paul Pfeiffer is a New York-based artist born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Working in video, photography, sculpture, and sound, Pfieffer recasts the visual language of pop spectacle to investigate how media images shape our perception of the world. He has had one-person exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2001); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2003); the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2005); MUSAC León, Spain (2008); and the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2009). He will present his recent video installation “RGB” at the Athenaeum in Fall 2023. 

Kirsten Pai Buick is a professor of art history at the University of New Mexico where she has taught since 2001. She has published extensively on African American art, including her book “Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject” (Duke Univ. Press, 2010). Her second book, “In Authenticity: ‘Kara Walker’ and the Eidetics of Racism”, is in progress. Her work has been included in anthologies such as “The Routledge Companion to African American Art History” edited by Eddie Chambers; and in “Race and Vision in the Nineteenth Century” edited by Shirley Samuels. Buick is a recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize for African American Art and was named Distinguished Scholar by the College Art Association for 2022.

Khalid Y. Long is a scholar, dramaturg, and director specializing in African American/Black diasporic theatre, performance, and literature through the lenses of Black feminist/womanist thought, queer studies, and performance studies. Accordingly, his work pays close attention to the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality within marginalized and oppressed communities. Long has published scholarly essays in The Black Theatre Review (tBTR), Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre and Performance, the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, and the Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance. His forthcoming scholarship includes essays in The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre (2^nd edition) edited by Harvey Young, Zora Neale Hurston in Context edited by Christopher Varlack, Theatre Design & Technology, Theater: Yale’s Journal of Criticism, Plays, Reportage, and the edited collection Critical Essays on the Politics of Oscar Hammerstein II, edited by Donald Gagnon. Long is also a regular contributor to Black Masks and Performance Response Journal 2.0.