The Center for the American Experience invites you to join Rhae Lynn Barnes, Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University, and Jonathan Square, Assistant Professor of Black Visual Culture at Parsons, for a discussion of Barnes's book Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment.
Darkology is a major study of the history of blackface minstrelsy in the United States, showing how deeply it shaped American entertainment, institutions, and racial politics from the nineteenth century through the Civil Rights era and beyond.
Drawing on extensive archival research, Barnes challenges the idea that blackface was marginal or short-lived, revealing instead how widely it spread across schools, churches, universities, military spaces, and public life.
Presented by the Center for American Experience at the New School
Rhae Lynn Barnes is an Assistant Professor of American Cultural History at Princeton University and a leading scholar of amateur blackface minstrelsy, American popular culture, race, gender, and book history. She earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University and her B.A. from UC Berkeley. Barnes is also a historian, public speaker, writer, editor, documentarian, and co-founder of U.S. History Scene, and has contributed to major public history projects. Her broader bibliography includes American Contact and scholarly work on racial representation, American music history, white supremacy, and material culture.
The Center for the American Experience at The New School is a faculty-led initiative that brings together design, the performing arts, the social sciences, and the humanities to examine the complex past, present, and future of the United States and its place in the world and in our lives. CAE is dedicated to interdisciplinary scholarship, creative practice, innovative pedagogy, and bold civic engagement.
Guided by the complementary perspectives of historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Professor of History at Eugene Lang College and The New School for Social Research, and media sociologist Julia Sonnevend, Associate Professor of Sociology and Communications at Parsons School of Design, CAE explores the ideas, histories, myths, cultures, and debates that have shaped American life. At a moment defined by political polarization, challenges to democracy, and profound changes in how information is created, shared, and understood—from social media to artificial intelligence—the Center examines the forces shaping American culture, public life, and democracy. By connecting perspectives across disciplines and communities on campus and beyond, the Center embraces the multiplicity of the American experience.
Building on The New School's longstanding commitment to cultural pluralism—a theory articulated by philosopher Horace Kallen, one of the university's earliest faculty members—CAE brings diverse perspectives into conversation not to sharpen divisions, but to cultivate understanding, discover common ground, and imagine new possibilities.
Through public programs, exhibitions, performances, and collaborative research, CAE convenes scholars, artists, students, and the broader public to explore the American experience and its enduring questions together.
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