Panel Discussion with Hank Willis Thomas and Lunch!

Commercial Bodies: The Market of Sports and Race

Do sports and their marketing also advertise and sell race? Commercial Bodies brings together scholars, writers, artists, agents, and athletes to discuss issues Hank Willis Thomas raised in Other People's Property. How have concepts of "property" and "image," which figure prominently within the history of race, applied and worked within the development of professional sports and the increasing commercialization of college sports? How are these issues playing out amid the diversification and cross-over of media from radio and television to video games to Twitter, Facebook, and other new social media?

Friday, March 22

12:30-2pm

Stokes 106

Roundtable discussion

A panel of scholars and conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas consider the role of race in sports, advertising, and commercial consumer culture. How have ideas of "property" and "image" informed and been informed by this history and contemporary social dynamics?

Hank Willis Thomas, conceptual artist, Other People's Property, and curator of White Boys

Adrian Burgos, Professor of History, University of Illinois, and author of Playing: America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line and Cuban Star: How One Negro League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball

Elizabeth Chin, Professor of Media Design, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA, and author of Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

Fath Davis Ruffins, Curator and Archivist, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

lunch will be provided