Women and the Kemper Lecture: Anne Anlin Cheng
What happens when a thing changes into a person and when a person transforms into a thing? What does it mean to be a human ornament, to be a subject who survives as an object? What is beauty for the unbeautiful?
In this lecture titled Monsters, Cyborgs, and Vases: Specters of the Yellow Woman, Anne Anlin Cheng, professor of English at Princeton University and Visiting Hurst Professor in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, considers a series of humanoid art objects—monsters, cyborgs, and standing vases—as visual fulcrums through which to explore how racialized gender, specifically the specter of the yellow woman, animates European-American narratives about the past and designs for the future, as well as how contemporary Asian artists disrupt these representations of Asiatic femininity.
The lecture is free and open to the public, but registration is required.