Speaker: Tao Leigh Goffe, Assistant Professor in the Department of Africana Studies and the Department of Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Cornell University

In this talk, Professor Tao Leigh Goffe will discuss the aesthetic challenge ‘Chinese’ poses as a racial category in the Caribbean. The introduction of Chinese as a category of labor to the West Indian plantation (Jamaica, Trinidad, Cuba) is a history she traces from 1803 to the present through the institution of “racial indenture” as a replacement from enslaved African labor, chiefly on sugar plantations. Identifying common aesthetic strands of Chinese cosmology in artwork by people of Chinese descent with roots in the Caribbean, Goffe asks questions about the Chinese haunting of the Caribbean plantation.

Made possible by the generous support of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Presented via Zoom
Join at: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/93136279659?pwd=VUo2cVBHRUE0ZnppM0hlUE56YWNtQT09