WHO:             Salamishah Tillet

Assistant Professor of English

University of Pennsylvania

WHAT:            Penn Lightbulb Café lecture series  talk, “From Douglass to Django: Slavery and Freedom in the Age of Obama"              

WHEN:          Tuesday, Feb. 26, 
6-7 p.m. 

WHERE:        World Café Live Upstairs, 3025 Walnut St.

This past year, Hollywood revived the twin themes of slavery and freedom in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained.  Slavery is the historical backdrop in each film against which contemporary artists and audiences can gauge racial problems or progress.  Drawing on her book Sites of Slavery, Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination Tillet will put these cinematic conversations in context with discussion on how contemporary African-American artists like Bill T. Jones, Toni Morrison and Kara Walker reimagine slavery in order to challenge a national silence about racial inequality in the present and model a more robust democracy for the future. 

The talk is part of the Penn Lightbulb Café free public-lecture series presented by the School of Arts and Sciences and the Office of University Communications that takes arts, humanities and social-sciences scholarship out of the classroom for a night on the town.  Food and beverages will be available for purchase.

Seating is limited. Reservations can be made by contacting Gina Bryan at 215-898-8721 or bryangm@upenn.edu.