Appropriation Series: Part One

What constitutes cultural appropriation, and when is it unethical? Should we adopt voices beyond our own, and if so then what factors must be weighed beforehand?  

Pressing on hard research questions may lead to ethical dilemmas of how to speak in relation to another. This panel will discuss what it means to think, research, and write across cultures and ways of being. 

This is the first of two panels on appropriation in Fall 2024. 

Bio: Ayanna Thompson is a scholar of Shakespeare, race, and performance. She is the author of many books including Blackface and Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America. A Regents Professor of English and director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. In addition to her scholarship, Thompson collaborates with many theaters and theater practitioners.

Bio: Cristóbal Martinez is an artist in the interdisciplinary artist collective Postcommodity. The collective’s work functions as a shared Indigenous lens and voice connecting indigenous narratives of cultural self-determination with diverse publics. In Postcommodity, Martinez has exhibited work nationally and internationally, including: 18th Biennale of Sydney, in Australia; Whitney Biennial 2017, in New York City; documenta14, in both Athens, Greece, and Kassel, Germany; Carnegie International, 57th Edition, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Desert X, in Coachella Valley, California.

This hybrid event is hosted by Humanities Institute.