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DESCRIPTION:Fath Davis Ruffins will be coming to speak at the Seminar in\nN
 ew York and American Material Culture Wednesday\, October 20\, 2010\, on “
 Do\nObjects have Ethnicities? : Race and Material Culture.”\n\nFath Davis 
 Ruffins is Curator of African American History\nand Culture in the Divisio
 n of Home and Community Life at the Smithsonian’s\nNational Museum of Amer
 ican History in Washington D.C.\, where she was\npreviously the Head of th
 e Collection of Advertising History. She received her\neducation from the 
 Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University\, the Graduat
 e\nSchool of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and the National Arch
 ives’\nModern Archives Institute in Washington D.C. She has been the Presi
 dent of\nthe Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society\, recipient
  of the Award\nfor Contribution to Scholarship from the Society for Women 
 and Historic\nPreservation\, and in 2009 was awarded a Research Opportunit
 ies Grant by the\nSmithsonian Institution to conduct research on comparati
 ve national public history\nin Australia.She has published numerous essays
  and articles\, most\nrecently: “Black Material Culture and Community Cons
 ciousness Formation” in 1968:\nA Global Year of Student Driven Change (edi
 ted by Jeffrey Stewart\, 2010)\;\n“The Paradox of Preservation: Gullah\, C
 ulture and Imagery” in Grass Roots:\nAfrican Origins of an American Art (e
 dited by Dale Rosengarten\, Theodore\nRosengarten and Enid Schildkrout\, 2
 008)\; “Money Makes a Difference: The Impact\nof Rising Prices on African 
 American Collecting Since 1968” in The\nInternational Review of African Am
 erican Art (January\, 2008)\; and “A Community\nRevealed: The Reginald F. 
 Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and\nCulture” in Curator
  (January\, 2006).Fath Davis Ruffins’ talk is entitled “Do Objects have\nE
 thnicities? : Race and Material Culture.” Over the last 30 years\, materia
 l\nculture studies have drawn from many sources\, including the connoisseu
 rship\nmonographs of the decorative arts\, which are resolutely “non-raced
 \,” as well as\nethnographic scholarship which focuses on the tangible and
  intangible\nproductions of various “folk” who are highly specified in ter
 ms of race\, class\,\nand other categories such as region\, religion\, and
  ethnicity. Yet most material\nculture studies\, especially those that ana
 lyze 20th century\nproduction/consumption patterns\, tend to elide any con
 siderations of race or\nethnicity when discussing the individually produce
 d and mass-produced objects\nof modern and contemporary societies. Certain
 ly\, individuals and groups make\nand use objects to signify personal and 
 group identities. Do specific uses then\ninscribe identities upon particul
 ar objects? Can object identities be multiple\,\nmalleable\, and include r
 acial or ethnic associations in production\,\ndistribution\, and use? Are 
 there race-neutral or generic objects? Do object\nidentities change based 
 on the context of collecting and/or display? What do we\nmean when we say 
 that an object is Latino or African American\, or any other\nracial/ethnic
  designation? Does that make all other objects Anglo or white? The\ngoal h
 ere is to raise questions and to stimulate both a theoretical and\npragmat
 ic conversation about race and material culture.Please join us in the Lect
 ure Hall at 38 West 86th Street\,\nbetween Columbus Ave and Central Park W
 est\, at 5:45pm for a reception before\nthe talk.
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20101020T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20101020T200000
SUMMARY:Bard Graduate Center: Do Objects have Ethnicities?: Race and Materi
 al Culture
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