2024 George Gerbner Lecture in Communication: Jasmine Nichole Cobb (Ph.D. '09)

"Unsanctioned Histories: Archives, Images and Race in the United States"

The Gerbner Lecture will begin at 5:30pm. Join us for a light reception in the Forum before and after the lecture.

About the Talk

This talk considers the relationship between archives and images in imagining the legacy of race in the United States, from the 19th century to the present. It focuses on controversies surrounding images to think through narratives of the public with regard to Black Americans.

About the Speaker

Jasmine Nichole Cobb is Professor of African & African American Studies and of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University. A scholar of Black cultural production and visual representation, Cobb is the author three books including Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century (New York University Press, 2015), African American Literature in Transition, 1800-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2021) which is an edited volume; and most recently, New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair (Duke University Press, 2022).  

She has written essays for Public Culture, MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, and American Literary History. Currently, she is working on The Pictorial Life of Harriet Tubman, a visual history of the abolitionist, from the middle nineteenth century through the present. 

About the George Gerbner Lecture in Communication 

The annual George Gerbner Lecture in Communication was established in honor of George Gerbner, who retired as Dean of the Annenberg School at the end of the 1988 academic year. The annual lecture is typically given by an Annenberg School alumnus.