American and Indigenous Studies Program Presents

Unnoticed and as Beautiful: The Native American Figure in Toni Morrison’s Literature

Scholars have been concerned either to criticize or to praise Morrison’s sparing inclusion of Native Americans in her novels. Are they beneath her notice? Or have they gone unnoticed by us? Following Morrison’s own methods in arguing that the “real or fabricated” “Africanist presence” in white American literature is crucial to writers’ “sense of Americanness,” we might pursue how the “Native American presence” works in her literature not only in historical and political terms, but also in aesthetic and cultural terms. This talk considers how, across her oeuvre and career, the Native American figure—meaning literary character; racial type; literary trope; and silhouette or profile—shapes her ‘sense of blackness.’

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Sponsored by Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck, a Mellon Foundation Humanities for All Times project, this lecture series celebrates the work of both Electa “Wuhwehweeheemeew” Quinney, a citizen of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican nation and the first woman to teach in a public school in the territory which would become Wisconsin; and the American novelist, essayist, and editor, Toni Morrison, who was a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Bard College from 1979-1981. The series invites luminaries from fields like Native American and Indigenous studies, American studies, Ethnic studies, and Black studies to give one lecture each fall and spring semester over the grant duration which models the kind of multi-disciplinary and intersectional scholarship that Rethinking Place seeks to promote.

In 2023, Professor Glenda Carpio presented Migrant Aesthetics as the inaugural Morrison lecture for Rethinking Place. This year, we are thrilled to host Namwali Serpell, a Zambian writer and Professor of English at Harvard. She’s the author of Seven Modes of Uncertainty (Harvard, 2014), The Old Drift: A Novel (Hogarth, 2019), Stranger Faces (Transit, 2020), and The Furrows: An Elegy (Hogarth, 2022).

Dr. Serpell’s lecture, Unnoticed and as Beautiful: The Native American Figure in Toni Morrison’s Literature, will take place on Thursday, April 11th at 3:00PM EST in Olin Auditorium at Bard College. 

The lecture will be followed by a reception to begin at 4:30 EST catered by Samosa Shack Kingston. A recording of the lecture will be available upon request.

The Quinney-Morrison Lecture Series provides opportunities for academics and other regional partners to learn what work needs to be done in the creation of land acknowledgement projects. It provides space to reflect on individuals' relationships with spaces, lands, and borders, to dissuade action without reflection, and to share responsibilities for encouraging this type of thought and engagement beyond tribal communities to all.

For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

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Time: 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

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