Events

Resistance, Not Psychological Damage: Re-Evaluating the Clark Doll Tests
A lecture by Robin Bernstein (Harvard), followed by a conversation with Freyja Hartzell (BGC) and Dominique Jean-Louis (New-York Historical Society).
October 12, 6–7:30 pm
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall

Long Table Conversation
Join an object-based discussion with our scholars in residence and Freyja Hartzell. Observe and join in on a lively interrogation of dolls and the complex question of likeness.
October 13, 12:15–1:15 pm
38 West 86th Street, Penthouse North
This event is open to BGC students, faculty, fellows, and staff. Food is not permitted in the space.

In Residence

Robin Bernstein is a cultural historian who specializes in US racial formation from the nineteenth century to the present. A professor at Harvard University, Bernstein is the author of the award winning book, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. She has received a Public Scholars Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the William Riley Parker Prize for the best article in the journal PMLA (Publications of the Modern Language Association), and the Darwin T. Turner Award for the best article in the journal African American Review. She is currently completing a book about the origins of industrial prison labor in the antebellum North.

Dominique Jean-Louis is Associate Curator of History Exhibitions at New-York Historical Society, where she has worked on Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow (2018), Our Composite Nation: Frederick Douglass’ America (2022), and is the co-curator of Black Dolls (2022). She received her BA in comparative ethnic studies from Columbia University and is completing her doctoral dissertation at NYU on race, education, and immigration in post-civil rights era New York City. Dominique also regularly writes and lectures on black history, schools and education, and New York City.