ARTSpeak: A Conversation with Nell Irvin Painter

FIT is hosting a virtual conversation with renowned historian and artist Nell Irvin Painter as part of the ARTSpeak series.

Nell Painter is a distinguished and award-winning scholar, writer, and visual artist. A graduate of Harvard University, Painter went on to become the Edwards Professor Emeritus of American History at Princeton University. She is the author of seven books and countless articles relating to the history of the American South. Painter’s book The History of White People guides us through more than 2,000 years of Western civilization, illuminating not only the invention of race but the frequent praise of “whiteness.”

Her other books of history include Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, which won the nonfiction prize of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association; Southern History Across the Color Line; Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919, which won the Letitia Brown Memorial Publication Prize; and Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction.

Painter retired from Princeton in 2005, and used her newly acquired free time to earn a BFA degree from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2009 and received her MFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2011. In June 2018, Painter published her book Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over about her experiences during this time.

This event is part of the ARTSpeak 2020–21 lecture series presented by the departments of Fine Arts, History of Art, and English and Communication Studies, and has been made possible in part through funding from the School of Liberal Arts.

This virtual event is free and open to the public; REGISTER HERE.