Michael Rossi - "The Republic of Color" - Darby English

Michael Rossi discusses The Republic of Color: Science, Perception, and the Making of Modern America. He will be joined in conversation by Darby English. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.

Presented in partnership with the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT)

At the Co-op

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About the book: The Republic of Color delves deep into the history of color science in the United States to unearth its origins and examine the scope of its influence on the industrial transformation of turn-of-the-century America.

For a nation in the grip of profound economic, cultural, and demographic crises, the standardization of color became a means of social reform—a way of sculpting the American population into one more amenable to the needs of the emerging industrial order. Delineating color was also a way to characterize the vagaries of human nature, and to create ideal structures through which those humans would act in a newly modern American republic. Michael Rossi’s compelling history goes far beyond the culture of the visual to show readers how the control and regulation of color shaped the social contours of modern America—and redefined the way we see the world.

About the author: Michael Rossi is assistant professor of the history of science and medicine at the University of Chicago.

About the interlocutor: Darby English is the Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History and Director of the Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture at the University of Chicago. English is author or coeditor of six books. Three of these are monographs: To Describe a Life: Notes from the Intersection of Art and Race Terror, 1971: A Year in the Life of Color ( published by the University of Chicago Press), and How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness. Three are coedited volumes: Among Others: Blackness at MoMA with Charlotte Barat; Art History and Emergency with David Breslin; and Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress with Ian Berry, Vivian Patterson, and Mark Reinhardt.