2008

Dalila L. Scruggs

  • Doctoral Candidate
  • Harvard University
Picture of Dalila L. Scruggs

Project

Traveling Pictures: Imaging African-American Settlers in Liberia, West Africa.

Program

Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowships in American Art

Department

History of Art and Architecture

Abstract

This dissertation examines art of “colonization,” a movement to send blacks to Africa as a solution to slavery in antebellum America. This project takes an object-oriented approach to colonization imagery by focusing on photographs exchanged between black settlers in Africa and white pro-colonization reformers in America, exploring how this exchange reveals tensions and conflicts between the two groups. This dissertation explores how these black settlers and white reformers each used colonization images to represent Liberian settler identity to an American public faced with resolving the “problem” of race in the United States.