Charles F. Peterson will present at the Museum Conversations Seminar on Tuesday, April 9, at 6 pm. His talk is entitled “The Colored Museum: Notes on Africana Identity, Power, and Culture in Curatorial Spaces.”

In this talk, Peterson will examine the use of the museum space in the 2018 film Black Panther (Dir. Ryan Coogler), the 2018 documentary on author Toni Morrison’s 2006 curation in The Louvre, The Foreigner’s Home (Dirs. Rian Brown, Jonathan Demme, and Geoff Pingree), and that same year’s music video release by Beyoncé and Jay-Z, “Apeshit.” These performances will be read as (African) Diasporic and intertextual interventions in hegemonic curatorial spaces, revealing the seen and unseen, hidden and obvious messages of identity, power, and culture therein.

Charles F. Peterson, a native of Gary, Indiana, earned a BA in Philosophy from Morehouse College (1992). He earned his MA and PhD in Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture from Binghamton University (1995, 2000). He has taught at Florida International University, Temple University, and The College of Wooster, and is presently Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Oberlin College. He is a co-editor of De-Colonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies (African World Press, 2003), and author of DuBois, Fanon, Cabral: The Margins of Elite Anti-Colonial Leadership (Lexington Books, 2007). He has published in the fields of Africana Philosophy, Africana Political Theory, and Aesthetics. He teaches courses in Africana Philosophy, Africana American Politics, Black Nationalism, and Marxism.