Enfilade

From TORCH:

Neoclassicism, Race, and Empire
Online, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, March 2022

Charmaine Nelson (NSCAD University)
Wednesday, 2 March, 4.00–5.30pm GMT (11am EST), register here»

Anne Lafont (L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales)
Wednesday, 16 March, 4.00–5.30pm GMT (12pm EST), register here»

Louis Nelson (University of Virginia)
Wednesday, 30 March, 4.00–5.30pm BST (11am EST), register here»

This three-part series examines the intersection between neoclassicism and questions of race, colonisation, empire-building, and national identity. With a focus on the British and French Atlantic worlds from the eighteenth century onwards, but with attention to a broader geographical field, we will ask how classical ideas and forms were invoked in art, architecture, and aesthetics in ways that intersected with colonial expansion, the assertion of imperial power, and the development of racial ideologies. Through a series of seminars led by pioneering scholars in this field—Charmaine Nelson, Anne Lafont, and Louis Nelson—we will explore the stylistic phenomenon of ‘neoclassicism’ within its broadest political and cultural contexts, while discussing the longer historiographical legacy of self-consciously classical art made in the modern age of empire. Registration is required for each online talk.

Please note that in the USA and Canada, the session on 16 March starts an hour later than the others, because the clocks go forward on different dates.