Marilyn S. Mobley, vice president for inclusion, diversity, and equal opportunity and professor of English, recently served as moderator of a panel discussion during the conference “Black Portraiture(s) III: Imaging the Black Body and Re-Staging Histories,” held in Florence, Italy, May 28-31.
The conference brought together more than 250 artists and scholars from across the world to discuss comparative perspectives on the historical and contemporary roles that visual art, film, literature and music play in constructing the image of the black body in western culture.
Organizers of the conference included Deborah Willis, chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging and MacArthur Fellow at New York University, and Henry Louis Gates, professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.