Event
Global Discovery Series | Fashion and Self-Fashioning During the Harlem Renaissance
The Global Discovery Lecture Series lets you explore the world virtually, both far and near, with Penn faculty members and your fellow alumni community. Each live, interactive lecture features Penn professors sharing new and innovative research on a variety of topics. Participants will have the opportunity to ask in-depth questions and are sure to learn something new in each one hour session.
The 1920s Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, was driven by the belief that Black people must be the ones to represent Black people in literature, art, and politics. There was, however, no consensus about what these representations should look like or whether they should please White or Black audiences—and there was certainly no consensus about what it meant to be Black or to have Black style. Using fashion (an aesthetic, commodity, and practice) as a lens, this talk will present the lively debates about the relationship between race and representation in print and on film, with special attention to Philadelphia connections.
This talk coincides with commemorations of the 100-year anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance, including the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's 2025 Spring Gala and “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” exhibition, opening May 10th.
Featured Speaker
Zita Nunes, Associate Professor of English, teaches and conducts research in the areas of comparative African American/African Diaspora literature, literatures of the Americas, and literary theory. She is currently a Mellon Fellow at the Price Lab for Digital Humanities.
The author of Cannibal Democracy: Race and Representation in the Literature of the Americas (Minnesota UP, 2008), Professor Nunes is the PI on the first phase of a digital archive of the Black press in multiple languages, titled Digital Bilingual (Portuguese/English) Edition of Correio de Africa [Africa Mail] Newspaper (1921-24) with Scholarly Apparatus, which is made possible in part by a major three-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor. Professor Nunes is also completing a book manuscript titled, Racism in Translation: Multilingualism, Comparative Literature, the Harlem Renaissance.
Professor Nunes earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley.
This event is co-sponsored by Penn Arts & Sciences and Penn Spectrum Programs.