“Hieroglyphs of Blackness: Egypt, Fantasy, and the American Imaginary” examines representations of Egypt to reconceptualize the meanings and limits of transnational affinity relative to discourses about the black diaspora. Covering a long historical arc from the 18th century to the present, with particular attention to the aesthetic practices of iconography, this talk analyzes how cultural producers have imagined Egypt in various representations from classical civilization to anti-colonial polity to animate “blackness” both as a critique of the nation and the embodiment of a transnational political currency.

Ivy Wilson teaches courses on the comparative literatures of the black diaspora and U.S. literary studies with a particular focus on African-American culture at Northwestern University where he is associate professor of English and Art, Theory, and Practice as well as director of the Program in American Studies. He has published a number of books on nineteenth-century American literary studies including Specters of Democracy: Blackness and the Aesthetics of Politics (Oxford UP, 2011) and, most recently, the essay collection Unsettled States (NYU P, 2014) with Dana Luciano.