Black Cartographies with Dr. Matthew F. Rarey

Everybody Means Everybody with Dr. Steven S. Nelson

Summary In our sixth episode, Dr. Steven Nelson reflects on a career spent widening the field of art history. Tracing his path from a background as a maker and graphic designer through his training and his work as an Africanist, Dr. Nelson describes how a commitment to difference, equity and social justice shaped his scholarship and his institutional leadership. The conversation moves across the circulation and reception of images, the question of "what the work does" rather than only what it is, and the politics of heritage in the present. Drawing on projects from From Cameroon to Paris to his study of the Underground Railroad, Dr. Nelson considers mentorship, writing and voice, the structural barriers that constrain who enters the discipline, and what it means to sustain social justice work as it comes under attack. Guests Dr. Steven Nelson [https://arthistory.ucla.edu/person/steven-nelson/] is Professor Emeritus of African and African American Art at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also served as Director of the African Studies Center. He was Dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. His publications span the arts, architecture, and urbanism of Africa and its diasporas, as well as queer studies. Shivani Kasumra [https://www.haa.pitt.edu/people/shivani-kasumra] is a Ph.D. Student in the Department of History of Art & Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh studying modernism in post-colonial South Asia. Host and Production Credits Co-Hosts: Sarah M. Estrela, Amelia Hansen Producer: Amelia Hansen Co-Editors: Amelia Hansen; Sarah M. Estrela Music: Jacob Napier Research Assistance and Show Notes: Allison Naydan Key Topics Discussed 00:02:50 – Dr. Nelson traces his path to art history through a course on Japanese medieval art at Yale, in which he read Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji, crediting Professors Carolyn Wheelwright and Anne Eden Gibson, before a seven-year career as a graphic designer and a return to graduate school. 00:04:57 – Dr. Nelson reflects on the shift from "difference" to "equity" to "social justice" as a reflection of where discourse stands at a given moment, naming Cornel West's early 1990s argument that racial inequality is not only a problem for people of color as intellectually formative. 00:11:45 – Dr. Nelson describes the tools he retained from art-historical training, Yve-Alain Bois's lesson about attending to the material of the work, and those he built from Black Studies and Chicano Studies, orienting everything around the question of what the artwork or building does. 00:17:51 – Dr. Nelson identifies the throughline across From Cameroon to Paris, the film Karmen Geï, and his Underground Railroad project: a preoccupation with how objects and images circulate, what happens to them when they do, and how manufactured heritage gets produced and deployed. 00:22:50 – Dr. Nelson argues that federal pressure on the Smithsonian is less about erasure than about making history not matter, citing Tad Stoermer's formulation. He also describes bringing Anna Deavere Smith's "Ghosts of Slavery" to the National Gallery as an example of the work that provokes such a response. 00:27:56 – Dr. Nelson makes the case for a capacious discipline: his governing principle that "everybody means everybody" means traditional and critical art histories must coexist in the same big tent, and that broadening who participates changes the intellectual work itself. 00:37:53 – Dr. Nelson reflects on how the discipline sometimes domesticates rather than absorbs critical challenges, and describes assigning Audre Lorde's "The Master's Tools Will Not Dismantle the Master's House" to a graduate seminar and provoking intense student resistance as a lesson in how an outside text exposes a field's limits. 00:43:18 – Dr. Nelson discusses pedagogy and voice: building student confidence through weekly writing and student-designed exams, and naming Toni Morrison, Norman Bryson, James Baldwin, and Mary Oliver as the writers he returns to when stuck. He describes a lesson from Art Journal editor Janet Kaplan ("Who do you want to talk to?") as foundational. 00:58:38 – Dr. Nelson addresses anachronism and presentism, drawing on historian Greg Dening's argument that the writing of history is always about the present, and cautions against applying twenty-first-century social justice models to the art of the past. 01:16:26 – Dr. Nelson and Dr. Estrela discuss structural barriers to participation in the discipline, such as childcare, first-generation status, and institutional prestige. Dr. Nelson describes concrete measures taken at CASVA including budgeting childcare into fellowships, allocating apartments by need rather than rank, and consistently prioritizing candidates from less-resourced institutions. Reading List Bibliographic entries below follow the notes-bibliography formatting conventions of the 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, ordered alphabetically by author surname. Works Cited in Conversation Bois, Yve-Alain. Painting as Model [https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262521802/painting-as-model/]. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. Gangitano, Lia, and Steven Nelson, editors. New Histories. Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1996. Lorde, Audre. "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House." In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, [https://archive.org/details/sisteroutsideres0000lord] 110–13. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1984. Nelson, Steven S. From Cameroon to Paris: Mousgoum Architecture In and Out of Africa. [https://books.google.com/books?id=k_063hRmJaAC&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q&f=false] Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Nelson, Steven S. "Karmen Geï: Sex, the State, and Censorship in Dakar." [https://www.jstor.org/stable/41330708] African Arts 44, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 74–81. Nelson, Steven S. and Huey Copeland, editors. Black Modernisms in the Transatlantic World. [https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300269772/black-modernisms-in-the-transatlantic-world/] Seminar Papers 4. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts/New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023. Panofsky, Erwin. Meaning in the Visual Arts: Papers in and on Art History. [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3634253.html] Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955. Ramaka, Joseph Gaï, dir. Karmen Geï. [https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/karmen-gei?frontend=kui] Senegal/France/Canada: Les Ateliers de l'Arche, 2001. 82 min. Shikibu, Murasaki. The Tale of Genji. Translated by Royall Tyler. New York: Penguin Books, 2002. Smith, Anna Deavere. "This Ghost of Slavery: A Solo Reading." [https://www.nga.gov/research/casva/mellon-lectures/2024.html] Lecture 2 of Chasing That Which Is Not Me/Chasing That Which Is Me. A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., May 5, 2024. Stoermer, Tad. A Resistance History of the United States [https://steerforth.com/product/a-resistance-history-of-the-united-states-9781586424367/]. Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2026. Suggested Further Reading Baxandall, Michael. Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures [https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300037630/patterns-of-intention/]. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Bryson, Norman. Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze. [https://www.bookrackjackson.com/product/208645/Vision-and-Painting-The-Logic-of-the-Gaze] New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. hooks, bell. Art on My Mind: Visual Politics [https://thenewpress.org/books/art-on-my-mind/]. New York: New Press, 1995. Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674673779] Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Powell, Richard J. Black Art: A Cultural History [https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/black-art-a-cultural-history-softcover-third]. 3rd edition. London: Thames & Hudson, 2021. West, Cornel. Race Matters [https://www.beacon.org/Race-Matters-25th-Anniversary-Edition-P1370.aspx]. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. Acknowledgments This podcast is made possible through the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation [https://www.mellon.org/], whose commitment to the humanities sustains the conditions under which scholarly conversations of this kind can be undertaken with care. We extend our deepest gratitude to the Mellon Foundation, to our guests for the generosity of their time and thinking, and to the institutional partners and communities whose collaboration anchors this work. Suggested Citation Estrela, Sarah M. and Amelia Hansen, co-hosts. "Everybody Means Everybody with Dr. Steven S. Nelson" Reparative Histories of Art and Architecture, episode 6, Recorded February 6, 2026, Released June 17, 2026. Transcript and Contact For inquiries, corrections, or accessibility requests, please contact reparative.haa@pitt.edu [reparative.haa@pitt.edu].

Black Cartographies with Dr. Matthew F. Rarey

Summary In our fifth episode, Dr. Matthew F. Rarey discusses his art-historical research on the Black Atlantic and examines the intricate nature of social justice in the field. Throughout the conversation, Dr. Rarey draws on his book Insignificant Things, which focuses on bolsas de mandinga — pouch-form amulets of transcultural origin in the South Atlantic. These spiritual objects were intended to bring peace to the mind and body of the wearer, offering cultural insight into the values and concerns of those who carried them. By centering these amulets, Dr. Rarey illuminates Black Atlantic art history while navigating archives that sought to erase Black life. We also take on questions of anachronism, the ethics of evidence, archives as instruments of domination, and the restitution of cultural objects. Guests Dr. Matthew F. Rarey [https://www.oberlin.edu/matthew-rarey], Associate Professor and Chair of Art History at Oberlin College, where he is Associate Professor of African and Black Atlantic Art. He is the author of Insignificant Things: Amulets and the Art of Survival in the Early Black Atlantic (Duke University Press, 2023), winner of the Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award and the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award. Monica Daniels [https://www.haa.pitt.edu/people/monica-daniels] is a Ph.D. Student in the Department of History of Art & Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh focusing on African and African diasporic arts, especially through the lens of Black feminisms. Host and Production Credits Co-Hosts: Sarah M. Estrela, Amelia Hansen Producer: Amelia Hansen Co-Editors: Amelia Hansen; Sarah M. Estrela Music: Jacob Napier Research Assistance and Show Notes: Allison Naydan Key Topics Discussed 00:02:37 – Dr. Rarey explains how his beginnings in archaeology led to art history and the question of how one reconstitutes a diaspora without an archive, crediting his professor Dana Rush [https://www.usias.fr/en/fellows/2014-fellows/dana-rush/]. 00:07:53 – Dr. Rarey discusses his view that social justice is both a problem and a possibility in art history, using his book to exemplify how it is applicable in the field. 00:17:35 – Dr. Rarey describes anachronism and presentism as conditions that must be ethically managed rather than eliminated, arguing that recognizing them provides a pathway for justice and advocacy. 00:29:06 – Dr. Rarey refutes the idea that art history needs new tools, claiming instead that existing techniques can be revisited without seeking a totalizing conclusion. 00:37:24 – Dr. Rarey discusses both the problems of relying on historical documents as evidentiary archives and the value they retain, noting that critical analysis of archives applies in any context. 00:46:26 – Dr. Rarey underscores the importance of developing relationships between institutions and communities. 00:55:50 – Dr. Rarey explains how he has disengaged from typical structures of research by treating his writing as the thinking in his work, rather than the reverse. 01:00:15 – Dr. Rarey reflects on the implications of using Indigenous maps in academic study. 01:03:50 – Using the film Dahomey [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31015216] (2024) as an example, Dr. Rarey addresses disciplinary discourse on the restitution and return of cultural objects. Reading List Bibliographic entries below follow the notes-bibliography formatting conventions of the 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, ordered alphabetically by author surname. Works Cited in Conversation Diop, Mati, dir. Dahomey [https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/15627469]. Les Films du Bal/Fanta Sy, 2024. Distributed by Les Films du Losange (France) and MUBI (North America and United Kingdom). Rarey, Matthew F. Insignificant Things: Amulets and the Art of Survival in the Early Black Atlantic. [https://www.dukeupress.edu/insignificant-things] Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023. Suggested Further Reading Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674076068]. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Hartman, Saidiya. "Venus in Two Acts." [https://watermark02.silverchair.com/2-sa26%20hartman%20(1-14).pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAA18wggNbBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggNMMIIDSAIBADCCA0EGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQM3AybEAPUpmhTFKhFAgEQgIIDEoShJyUMAldLRLuI-M6BWUqTTbBiWLxWywJZGaAGLO_I0x-v9Hu8gxtw4z5ibbapV5EOhI77C0B1dxe6enVw4UvceO27CkvBT6ymPS8pnLaRduszlrz-Qz8VwTQ1TCX7q6nULxymXcxgvsnCcp2Xei05XiwbSHD3SWdpdXvQHiAi-xMEymtiTe4W2Z7Jl3A3H_AP65MDNkk05LYOkZOC0XCHUjF1EtsrRkJDfYwa8vJfj0-PFBCJx-qRQF0iNMsefRc_aG3e1OM1xIISXVN3f9jpzStd_zDziLdzaT6JxKOpKGltoGPHYZ3VaIpfMeltKJtcv8d0jYmeYTdU7FzLAcXN1icMuB9NAO8PSzb-Vz86KFJ-6RTIz8QDjhCFXRgacvxZWuHZ-hEEihdTJpOsal6Pz0Y-dBogMrLuHtIBjRXqEHHXhlz3ayZhf4D_fWh-Ge4tHTkzy7688-ZRK-WmDw-okAuGHkTvNu95Fe6drgneBxq2EPcYLP4yBgQz_JJT5UlH4iRVLPUyXmOanQcuLxok9DmMT_tPMLM-pDL-rpVvF99YGw41Z0r5oj4XG3kEvOt-jrxi5WFshu6xbJLMvSsdtjCSriKrIXhRu-vrZF6Gff0qGi9c-TUzTyLo5x68-GVux_bV5LsC7l9MAz45F3-ZGIz1a6OnKXL3MjEMqrpJcYYIAIXzkGbHN-a_cM9e5i5Y0Zu1OrBbO8A48GDpGI7CTLCe4kdTtqygBuzRk2LHLDzM6kBrgSIf67kCHenK9NwAdJrOByKgV8CkAliAIi0kkeUfX8DrFwGT_uEvTNzuryY4ul1uc2QesROzIeiUjjiKxxBhW_8_zl5cJPQh-Pj3UrnjYO3PbToFhM-9RFznrTNVB-pZwBthQgjUy2Ya4_5lkmYPc1lP4-jbjtfPAEE-6hX_ETDTD-vr4z7i0659F8fcPKVzdT7s210gSsTeP53WMP2QMzXPCEVK08lcZ927MSJeGi84-1-cqyLVSduDNPQh9N-wjwiYQkWZS3Hux0QR1hHIYkiibVDw_HHtcB2nPw] Small Axe 12, no. 2 (June 2008): 1–14. Rush, Dana. Vodun in Coastal Bénin: Unfinished, Open-Ended, Global [https://www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com/9780826519085/vodun-in-coastal-benin/]. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2013. Acknowledgments This podcast is made possible through the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation [https://www.mellon.org/], whose commitment to the humanities sustains the conditions under which scholarly conversations of this kind can be undertaken with care. We extend our deepest gratitude to the Mellon Foundation, to our guests for the generosity of their time and thinking, and to the institutional partners and communities whose collaboration anchors this work. Suggested Citation Estrela, Sarah M. and Amelia Hansen, co-hosts. "Black Cartographies with Dr. Matthew Rarey." Reparative Histories of Art and Architecture, episode 5, May 22, 2026, https://arthistories.libsyn.com/black-cartographies-with-matthew-rarey [https://arthistories.libsyn.com/black-cartographies-with-matthew-rarey]. Transcript and Contact For inquiries, corrections, or accessibility requests, please contact reparative.haa@pitt.edu [reparative.haa@pitt.edu].

The Brazilian Atlantic with Dr. Ana Ozaki

Summary In our fourth episode, Dr. Ana Ozaki (UPenn) joins us to discuss how she arrived at her method of "quilombo thinking" through her interdisciplinary studies in architecture and urban planning. Describing how that method has situated her to consider race in architectural analysis through a Black feminist historical lens, Dr. Ozaki examines how racism, sexism, and classism overlap. As communities comprised of fugitives and those outside the law, quilomboshave functioned as sites of active resistance even to the present day. Dr. Ozaki draws on these communities' histories to delineate ways of thinking that observe Brazilian architectural forms beyond their Portuguese colonial precedents. As a result, Ozaki's insights and critiques allow us to think critically about the ways that Brazilian and Atlantic histories have been told, which often center non-Black narratives in architecture especially. Guests Dr. Ana Ozaki [https://arth.sas.upenn.edu/people/ana-gisele-ozaki], Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Architectural History, University of Pennsylvania. Trained as an architect in Brazil, she earned her Ph.D. in the History of Architecture and Urban Development from Cornell University and was the inaugural Mellon Race, Place and Equity Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. Her research investigates how racial ideologies have shaped architectural understandings of climate and environment across the Black Atlantic, with a focus on Brazil's connections to West and southern Africa. Amrita Vinod [https://www.haa.pitt.edu/people/amrita-vinod] is a Ph.D. Student in History of Art & Architecture, University of Pittsburgh focusing on the connected histories of architecture and landscapes in southern India and northern Sri Lanka. Host and Production Credits Co-Hosts: Sarah M. Estrela, Amelia Hansen Producer: Amelia Hansen Co-Editors: Amelia Hansen; Sarah M. Estrela Music: Jacob Napier Research Assistance and Show Notes: Allison Naydan Key Topics Discussed 00:03:28 – Dr. Ozaki describes architecture as a discipline that felt insufficient for the social, racial, and political questions she wanted to pursue, especially as a woman practicing in Brazil. She traces a path from undergraduate training in architecture and Fine Arts, to a double Master's in architecture and urban planning at the University of Cincinnati, to a Ph.D. in the history of architecture and urban development at Cornell. 00:11:50 — Dr. Ozaki describes a crisis during her graduate studies, when the transnational scope of her project required immense encouragement from her advisors and mentors. Ozaki credits this encouragement with sustaining what became quilombo thinking. 00:14:01 — Dr. Ozaki defines quilombo thinking as a methodology grounded in Black feminist theory, situated within what she calls the "Brazilian Atlantic" as a distinct diasporic formation, informed by Beatriz Nascimento's understanding of the quilombo as a living, ongoing way of being rather than a static, historical site. 00:20:40 — Dr. Ozaki pushes back against "post-racial" ideology, particularly Brazil's mythology of racial democracy as coined by Gilberto Freyre, drawing on Djamila Ribeiro's argument that anti-racism is a structural, rather than individual, responsibility. 00:24:30 — Dr. Ozaki places quilombo thinking alongside antropofagía as a specifically Brazilian disciplinary purchase with anti-colonial potential and reflects on the post-2020 institutional self-censorship she encountered when a proposed seminar was retitled. 00:28:33 — Dr. Ozaki discusses her contribution to the collaborative digital humanities project, "The World We Became: Map Quest 2350," specifically its quilombo and maroon mapping strand, organized around Christina Sharpe's framework of annotation and redaction as a practice of engaging archives. 00:36:00 — Dr. Ozaki frames social justice in architectural terms: architecture's historic complicity in racial and colonial regimes, and its structural role in producing and accumulating capital through the transformation of land and nature into property and commodity. 00:41:15 — Dr. Ozaki discusses expanding the concept of Blackness beyond the register of labor alone—thinking with Tiffany Lethabo King, Saidiya Hartman, and Sylvia Wynter, and situates the plantation and its afterlives within the ongoing climate crisis as a site of architectural complicity and potential intervention. 00:46:00 — Dr. Ozaki cites the Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America exhibition and its Black Rconstruction Collective as a model of reparative intellectual labor in their distribution of honoraria and credits across the group. Ozaki names Anna Tsing's Feral Atlas as an example of collaborative digital work that resists academic incentive structures. Reading List Bibliographic entries below follow the notes-bibliography formatting conventions of the 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, ordered alphabetically by author surname. Works Cited in Conversation Anderson, Sean, and Mabel O. Wilson, editors. Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America. [https://www.artbook.com/9781633451148.html] New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2021. Freyre, Gilberto. The Masters and the Slaves [Casa-Grande e Senzala]: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization. [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_WYFFbVYEzvkC] Translated by Samuel Putnam. 2nd English-language edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986 [1933]. Goffe, Tao Leigh, et al. "The World We Became: Map Quest 2350, A Speculative Atlas Beyond Climate Crisis." [https://einaudi.cornell.edu/research/publications/world-we-became-map-quest-2350-speculative-atlas-beyond-climate-crisis] Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas 7, no. 1–2 (2022): 5–49. Nascimento, Beatriz. "O conceito de quilombo e a resistência cultural negra [https://www.scribd.com/document/392505138/NASCIMENTO-Beatriz-O-Conceito-de-Quilombo-e-a-Resistencia-Cultural-Negra]." Afrodiáspora nos. 6–7 (1985): 49–64. Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. [https://www.dukeupress.edu/in-the-wake] Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Tsing, Anna L., Jennifer Deger, Alder Keleman Saxena, and Feifei Zhou. Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene. [https://feralatlas.org/index.html] Stanford University Press, 2020. Suggested Further Reading Deckker, Zilah Quezado. Brazil Built: The Architecture of the Modern Movement in Brazil [https://api.taylorfrancis.com/content/books/mono/download?identifierName=doi&identifierValue=10.4324/9781315011325&type=googlepdf]. London: Taylor & Francis, 2001. Gerber, Raquel, dir. Ôrí. [https://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/54524/-r] Narrated by Beatriz Nascimento. Rio de Janeiro: Angra Filmes, 1989. 91 min. Hartman, Saidiya. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374531157/loseyourmother/]. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007. King, Tiffany Lethabo. The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies [https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-black-shoals]. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. Nascimento, Abdias do. O genocídio do negro brasileiro: processo de um racism mascarado. São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, 2016 [1978]. Nascimento, Beatriz. The Dialectic Is in the Sea: The Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento. [https://doi-org.pitt.idm.oclc.org/10.2307/jj.3079202.] Edited by Christen A. Smith, Bethânia N. F. Gomes, and Archie Davies. Princeton University Press, 2023. Nascimento, Beatriz. Uma história feita por mãos negras: relações raciais, quilombos e movimentos [https://www.companhiadasletras.com.br/livro/9786559790067/uma-historia-feita-por-maos-negras]. Alex Ratts, editor. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2021. Ribeiro, Djamila. O que é lugar de fala? Belo Horizonte: Letramento/Justificando, 2017. Acknowledgments This podcast is made possible through the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation [https://www.mellon.org/], whose commitment to the humanities sustains the conditions under which scholarly conversations of this kind can be undertaken with care. We extend our deepest gratitude to the Mellon Foundation, to our guests for the generosity of their time and thinking, and to the institutional partners and communities whose collaboration anchors this work. Suggested Citation Estrela, Sarah M. and Amelia Hansen, co-hosts. "The Brazilian Atlantic with Dr. Ana Ozaki." Reparative Histories of Art and Architecture, episode 4, February 27, 2026, https://arthistories.libsyn.com/the-brazilian-atlantic-with-ana-ozaki [https://arthistories.libsyn.com/the-brazilian-atlantic-with-ana-ozaki]. Transcript and Contact For inquiries, corrections, or accessibility requests, please contact reparative.haa@pitt.edu [reparative.haa@pitt.edu].

Marking Time with Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood

Summary In our third episode of "Reparative Histories of Art and Architecture," guest interlocutor Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood (NYU) discusses the impact of her work and her approach toward justice, drawing primarily on her book, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (2020). She uses her concept of carceral aesthetics to understand how art made in and about prisons is conditioned by the institution of the U.S. punitive system — conditions that can be a source of further insight rather than cause for devaluing the artwork. Marking Time features a diverse collection of art made by people while incarcerated, which Dr. Fleetwood uses to demonstrate the impact of the conditions under which it was created. The conversation also takes up questions of methodology, archives, global resonance, and the practice of justice as, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "love in action." Guests Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood [https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/nicole-r-fleetwood] is the Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU Steinhardt and in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. A MacArthur Fellow, she is the author of Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (Harvard University Press, 2020) and curator of the traveling exhibition of the same name, which debuted at MoMA PS1. Kale Serrato-Doyen [https://www.haa.pitt.edu/people/kale-serrato-doyen] is a Ph.D. Student in History of Art & Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh where she studies Black and Latinx artists in modern and contemporary art history of the United States. Host and Production Credits Co-Hosts: Sarah M. Estrela, Amelia Hansen Producer: Amelia Hansen Co-Editors: Amelia Hansen; Sarah M. Estrela Music: Jacob Napier Research Assistance and Show Notes: Allison Naydan Key Topics Discussed 00:02:39 – Dr. Fleetwood discusses how her family sparked her path in a life of inquiry. 00:07:28 – Dr. Fleetwood redirects the conversation on social justice in her work toward justice in general, and how she views justice as love in action through a forward-facing approach. 00:13:38 – Dr. Fleetwood discusses her views on methodology, holding that methods are tools for inquiry: while scholars need to make their work legible, they should not confine themselves to one approach. 00:18:12 – Dr. Fleetwood emphasizes the global resonance of her work despite its focus on the U.S. penal system. She references her collaboration [https://www.artbook.com/9783906915852.html] with Mark Bradford [https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/2838-mark-bradford/] and discusses an exhibition of the artist Malangatana [https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9169/malangatana-mozambique-modern]. 00:27:40 – Dr. Fleetwood examines the balance between creating a valuable space for the work of incarcerated artists and the unavoidable limitations of that project. She cites Steven Fullwood and Miranda Mims' Nomadic Archivists Project [https://www.nomadicarchivistsproject.com/about-nap] as an inspiration, along with artists featured in Marking Time, including Jerome Washington [https://www.instagram.com/jeromewashington_pe/], Ojore Lutalo [https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/532], and Kamisha Thomas [https://thereturningartistsguild.org/about-kamisha/]. 00:35:42 – Dr. Fleetwood discusses the value of conceptual terms such as prison art and carceral aesthetics, which recognize art's direct relationship to institutions, citing artist Sable Elyse Smith [https://sableelysesmith.com/] as an example. Reading List Bibliographic entries below follow the notes-bibliography formatting conventions of the 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, ordered alphabetically by author surname. Works Cited in Conversation Boesten, Rosa Ruth, dir. Master of Light. One Story Up/Docmakers/Vulcan Productions, 2022. HBO Documentary Films. Fleetwood, Nicole R. Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration. [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674919228] Harvard University Press, 2020. Fleetwood, Nicole R. Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo10184159.html]. Chicago University Press, 2011. Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California [https://www.ucpress.edu/books/golden-gulag/paper]. University of California Press, 2007. Lytle Hernández, Kelly. City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 [https://uncpress.org/9781469631196/city-of-inmates/]. University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Rancière, Jacques. The Politics of Aesthetics [https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/politics-of-aesthetics-9781780935355/]: The Distribution of the Sensible. Translated by Gabriel Rockhill. Bloomsbury Academic, 2013 [2004]. Suggested Further Reading Bedford, Christopher, and Katy Siegel, editors. Mark Bradford: Tomorrow is Another Day. [https://www.artbook.com/9781941366141.html] New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2017. Betts, Reginald Dwayne. Felon: Poems. [https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393652147] New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019. Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete? [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/213837/are-prisons-obsolete-by-angela-y-davis/] New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003. Acknowledgments This podcast is made possible through the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation [https://www.mellon.org/], whose commitment to the humanities sustains the conditions under which scholarly conversations of this kind can be undertaken with care. We extend our deepest gratitude to the Mellon Foundation, to our guests for the generosity of their time and thinking, and to the institutional partners and communities whose collaboration anchors this work. Suggested Citation Estrela, Sarah M. and Amelia Hansen, co-hosts. "Marking Time with Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood." Reparative Histories of Art and Architecture, episode 3, February 27, 2026, https://arthistories.libsyn.com/marking-time-with-nicole-fleetwood [https://arthistories.libsyn.com/marking-time-with-nicole-fleetwood]. Transcript and Contact For inquiries, corrections, or accessibility requests, please contact reparative.haa@pitt.edu [reparative.haa@pitt.edu].

Indigenous Futurisms with Dr. Nicole Furtado

Summary In our second episode introducing the first of our interlocutors, Dr. Nicole K. Furtado (UC Santa Cruz) draws on insights from her studies in Indigenous Futurisms, literature, and remix theory to illustrate the impact of what she calls perspectivism on art history and social justice. Exploring how the question, "What does it mean to be human?" has influenced her academic inquiry thus far, Furtado discusses her primary research focus, Indigenous futurities, a field in both academia and art that centers the role of Indigenous people in imagining the future. Furtado's work is supplemented through speculative aesthetics and remix theory, both of which concern methods of creating. Rather than accepting the futures prescribed by normative civilizational development, Furtado illuminates how speculative aesthetics imagine different ways the future might look, while remix theory reimagines combinations of preexisting ideas to create something new. Furtado also discusses her insight on perspectivism, a method that recognizes that nothing can be viewed with complete objectivity because everyone holds unique viewpoints. Throughout our conversation, Dr. Furtado discusses how she uses these practices to center Indigenous people and perspectives in the face of progressing social technologies that may otherwise prioritize colonial ideologies in art and academia. Guests Dr. Nicole Kuʻuleinapuananiolikoʻawapuhimelemeleolani Furtado [https://campusdirectory.ucsc.edu/cd_detail?uid=furtado], Assistant Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California, Santa Cruz. A Kānaka Maoli, or Native Hawaiian, writer, Dr. Furtado earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and her Master's and Ph.D. in English from University of California, Riverside. Her research develops the methodology of moʻolelo, or Kānaka Maoli-storytelling, to reimagine Indigenous futurities, and has appeared in the Science Fiction Research Association Review and the American Indian Culture and Research Journal. Meghan Hipple [https://www.haa.pitt.edu/people/meghan-hipple], Ph.D. Student in History of Art & Architecture and Film and New Media Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Hipple studies the histories of art, technology, and postmodernism, with a particular interest in how digital and internet culture influence sociality and visual forms. Host and Production Credits Co-Hosts: Sarah M. Estrela, Amelia Hansen Producer: Amelia Hansen Co-Editors: Amelia Hansen; Sarah M. Estrela Music: Jacob Napier Research Assistance and Show Notes: Allison Naydan Key Topics Discussed 00:03:04 – Dr. Furtado discusses her journey from studying science fiction to Indigenous futurisms and perspectives. 00:07:48 – Dr. Furtado interrogates how and whether social justice can be defined, and the significance of the conversations stemming from this debate. 00:13:20 – Dr. Furtado explains how she applies interdisciplinary approaches to developing a method of discussing problems within her communities. 00:16:50 – Referencing artists Solomon Enos [https://www.solomonenos.com/meet-solomon] and Noah Harders [https://waikapucollective.com/about] alongside scholars Sylvia Wynter [https://dlcl.stanford.edu/people/sylvia-wynter] and José Muñoz [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Esteban_Mu%C3%B1oz], Dr. Furtado returns to the central inquiry of what it means to be human, specifically in relation to technology in art, and further defines and expands the parameters of "futurism." 00:21:35 – Using her short story as an example, Dr. Furtado explores how she applies speculative aesthetics, mentioning her mentors, Professors Sherryl Vint [https://profiles.ucr.edu/app/home/profile/sherrylv] and Nalo Hopkinson [https://creativewriting.ubc.ca/profile/nalo-hopkinson/], who helped Furtado begin her own creative writing and academic practice. 00:28:36 – Dr. Furtado examines remix theory, articulating the agency students need within their research and professional development, sharing how academics such as Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua [https://politicalscience.manoa.hawaii.edu/noelani-goodyear-kaopua/] and Mark Amerika [https://markamerika.com/pages/who-is-mark-amerika-html.html] guided her. 00:35:25 – Dr. Furtado concludes by returning to Indigenous perspectivism, arguing that it is essential for addressing art-historical nuances otherwise inaccessible through objective analysis alone. By way of example, she references her discussion with colleague Dr. C.J. Jackson about John Gast's allegorical history painting, American Progress [https://collections.theautry.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=M545330;type=101] (1872), which illustrates the concept of Manifest Destiny. Reading List Bibliographic entries below follow the notes-bibliography formatting conventions of the 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, ordered alphabetically by author surname. Works Cited in Conversation Amerika, Mark. remixthebook. [https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816676156/remixthebook/] University of Minneapolis Press, 2011. Furtado, Nicole Kuʻuleinapuananiolikoʻawapuhimelemeleolani. "Indigenous Futurisms." [https://www.routledge.com/The-New-Routledge-Companion-to-Science-Fiction/Bould-Butler-Vint/p/book/9780367690533] In The New Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, and Sherryl Vint. Abingdon: Routledge, 2024. Furtado, Nicole Kuʻuleinapuananiolikoʻawapuhimelemeleolani. "Wandering the World's Most Isolated Metropolis: Structured Dispossession and Post-Apocalyptic Stress Syndrome in the Film Waikiki." [https://sfrareview.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/5104-waikiki.pdf] SFRA Review 51, no. 4 (Fall 2021): 108–118. Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. [https://nyupress.org/9781479874569/cruising-utopia-10th-anniversary-edition/] NYU Press, 2009. Wolfe, Patrick. "Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native." [https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240] Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 387–409. Wynter, Sylvia. "Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation — An Argument." [https://www.jstor.org/stable/41949874] CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 257–337. Suggested Further Reading Dillon, Grace L. editor. Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction [https://birchbarkbooks.com/products/walking-the-clouds]. University of Arizona Press, 2012. Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, Noelani. The Seeds We Planted: Portraits of a Native Hawaiian Charter School. [https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816680481/the-seeds-we-planted/] University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Hopkinson, Nalo. Midnight Robber [https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/nalo-hopkinson/midnight-robber/9780446675604/]. Grand Central Publishing, 2000 [Warner Aspect, 1998]. Hopkinson, Nalo and Uppinder Mehan, co-editors. So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy. [https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/S/So-Long-Been-Dreaming]Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004. McKittrick, Katherine, editor. Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis [https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/199/Sylvia-WynterOn-Being-Human-as-Praxis]. Duke University Press, 2015. Acknowledgments This podcast is made possible through the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation [https://www.mellon.org/], whose commitment to the humanities sustains the conditions under which scholarly conversations of this kind can be undertaken with care. We extend our deepest gratitude to the Mellon Foundation, to our guests for the generosity of their time and thinking, and to the institutional partners and communities whose collaboration anchors this work. Suggested Citation Estrela, Sarah M. and Amelia Hansen, co-hosts. "Indigenous Futurisms with Dr. Nicole Furtado." Reparative Histories of Art and Architecture, episode 2, December 1, 2025, https://arthistories.libsyn.com/indigenous-futurisms-with-nicole-furtado [https://arthistories.libsyn.com/indigenous-futurisms-with-nicole-furtado]. Transcript and Contact For inquiries, corrections, or accessibility requests, please contact reparative.haa@pitt.edu [reparative.haa@pitt.edu].