Arna Alexander Bontemps

Arna Alexander Bontemps Associate Professor of African American Studies and History African American Studies Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona 85287-3802 (480) 965-5862 [email protected]

Education:

Fisk University, Nashville, TN, 1963-65, 1968-69, BA (History)

Atlanta University, 1971-72, MA (American History)

University of Illinois, Urbana, 1976-79, 1989, Ph.D. (Colonial American; African American; U.S. National; and Latin American)

Employment:

Lecturer in African American History at Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa, 1973

Assistant Professor, Department of History, Hampton University1988-90

Assistant Professor, Department of History, Dartmouth College July, 1990-2001

Associate Professor, African American Studies, Arizona State University, August 2001-Present

Fellowships:

Graduate College Fellowship, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1976-77 Teaching Fellow, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1977-78 Teaching Fellow, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1978-79 Research Fellow, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute (Harvard), 1980-81

Grants:

The National Endowment for the Humanities, 1979. For the national touring exhibition "Forever Free: An Exhibit of Art by African American Women, 1962-1980. Grant writer. Also served as research director for the project and editor of the exhibition catalogue. National Endowment of the Arts, Philip Morris Companies, Links, Inc., 1983-85. For the national touring exhibition "Choosing: An Exhibit of Changing Perspectives in Modern Art and Art Criticism by Black Americans, 1925- 1985". Wrote grant, conceived and developed project, edited the exhibition catalogue. Burke Award Grant, Dartmouth College, 1990-93.

Research and Publications:

"Away From Harlem," The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Sept. 20, 1987. Review of Wayne F. Cooper, Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance

"African American Women Artists: An Historical Perspective," Sage, IV (Spring 1987)

"Art Criticism by African Americans, 1925-1985: A Historiographical Perspective," in the exhibition catalogue Choosing: Changing Perspectives in Modern Art and Art Criticism by Black Americans, 1925-1985. Publication funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Links, Inc., Hampton University, and Philip Morris Companies.

"African American Art History: The Feminine Dimension," in Forever Free: Art by African American Women, 1862-1980, the exhibition catalogue for the national touring exhibit of the same name. Publication for the exhibition and its catalog was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

"Black Culture in Colonial North Carolina: A Social History," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1989.

"Appearances: Outward Signs of Inner Feelings among People of African Origin in Colonial North Carolina", paper presented at a meeting of the Trinity College Historical Society, Duke University (Fall 1994)

"Questions of Identity as Reflected in Visual Images of Blacks in the Colonial South," paper presented to a Seminar on African American Life and History, The National Humanities Center, Research Triangle, North Carolina (Fall 1994)

Review of Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination by Robert H. Abzug. American Quarterly (December 1996)

"African American Art History: The Feminine Dimension," in Jacqueline Bobo, ed., Black Feminist Cultural Criticism (London: Blackwell Publishers, 2001)

“Seeing Slavery: How paintings make words look different,” Common-Place, An Interactive Journal of Early American Life, July 2001.

Chaired Panel on “Sources/Methodologies for Recovering Women’s Voices,” for The conference, Atlantic Crossings: Women’s Voices, Women’s Stories from the Caribbean and the Nigerian Hinterland, sponsored by York University/ UNESCO/SSHRCC and held at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, May18-20, 2001.

Selving: The Aesthetic Dimension of Black Life in Colonial America (forthcoming, University of Pennsylvania Press). The contract for the book is dated March 13, 2001. I hope to complete the manuscript by the end of 2002. The title used here is the title on the contract but it is a tentative, working title.

The Punished Self: Surviving Slavery in the Colonial South (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, June 2001)

“Trimalchio and Christopher McPherson: A Comparative Approach” a paper presented with Prof. Roberta L. Stewart (of Dartmouth College) at the International Centre for the History of Slavery at the University of Nottingham (England) on Sept. 11, 2001. The 2001 Conference focused on Freed Slaves: Integration and Exclusion. Papers submitted for presentation at the annual Conference are rigorously juried.

Presented the following paper at the Slavery/Diaspora Project Scholars’ Meeting on November 3, 2001 in New York City: “Objects and Agents: Enslavement as a Psychological Battleground.” Firethorn Productions, Inc. convened the meeting. A prominent producer of documentaries, Firethorn was commissioned by New York’s public broadcasting station (WNET) to develop a documentary series on slavery in America for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The Meeting brought twenty leading scholars on the subject of the upcoming documentary to New York for consultative purposes and to present formal papers in the area of their specialties. The papers are to serve the producers as background for producers in the development of the series and also as a source of guidelines and suggestions for the treatment of each scholar’s area of specialization.

“Visual Representations of African and African American Slaves in Colonial and Early National America,” a lecture for Committee for African American Research (CAAR) at Arizona State University, February 13, 2002. Review of Teach Me Dreams: The Search for Self in the Revolutionary Era (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000) by Mechal Sobel for the American Historical Review (forthcoming, Fall 2002 or Winter 2003). I am also currently writing a review of Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002) by Kirsten Fischer for the Journal of Social History; and a review of Born In Bondage: Growing Up Enslaved in the Antebellum South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000) by Marie Jenkins Schwartz for Labor History