Christian Ayne Crouch
Bard College

The Prince’s Tale
In this lunchtime talk, Christian Crouch traces the narrative of Prince Alamayu Tewodros, a captive child in Victorian Britain, who troubled the foundations of the empire but left few firsthand records. Crouch outlines the utility of material culture, sketchbooks, photography, and memorials both in reconstructing the prince’s world and in developing new questions, and new insights, into Black British history.

Christian Ayne Crouch is dean of graduate studies and associate professor of History and American and Indigenous Studies at Bard College. She is the author of the award-winning Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Martial Cultures, Indians, and the End of New France and publishes widely on early modern Atlantic and Indigenous history. Her current book project, Queen Victoria’s Captives: A Story of Ambition, Empire, and a Stolen Ethiopian Prince looks at the human and material culture consequences of the 1868 British Maqdala Expedition. She also researches and writes on contemporary Indigenous art and served as curatorial advisor for the Brooklyn Museum’s 2020 show, Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire is Applied to a Stone it Cracks.

Tuesday, October 31, 12:15 pm
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall

Lunch will be served starting at noon. Registration required.