W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits with Dr. Whitney Battle-Baptiste

About the talk:

Famed sociologist, writer, and Black rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois fundamentally changed the representation of Black Americans with his exhibition of data visualizations at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Beautiful in design and powerful in content, these data portraits make visible a wide spectrum of African American culture, from advances in education to the lingering effects of slavery. They convey a literal and figurative representation of what he famously referred to as “the color line.”

We are pleased to welcome to Pratt Dr. Whitney Battle-Baptiste, the editor of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America (Princeton UP, 2018). This book assembles Du Bois’ data visualizations, and in this talk Dr. Battle-Baptiste will take the audience through some of them and provide background and context.

After the talk, a reception will be held in the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, where In Our Time: Eleven Artists + W.E.B. Du Bois curated by Loretta Yarlow is on display. Leading artists reflect on the legacy of one of the most profound and influential African American intellectuals of the 20th century and on the impact that Du Bois has had on their work. Artists on display include Radcliffe Bailey, Theaster Gates, Mickalene Thomas, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. Artists in the show have been inspired by Du Bois’ data portraits among other aspects of his work.

About Dr. Whitney Battle-Baptiste:

Whitney Battle-Baptiste, is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst. A native of the Bronx, Dr. Battle-Baptiste is an activist-scholar who sees the classroom and campus as a space to engage contemporary issues with a sensibility of the past. Her academic training is in Black study, history and historical archaeology. Her research critically engages the interconnectedness of race, gender, class, and sexuality through an archaeological lens. Her research sites include Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage Plantation, the Abiel Smith School on Beacon Hill in Boston, the W. E. B. Du Bois Homesite (or House of the Black Burghardts) in Great Barrington, MA, and a community-based heritage site at Millars Plantation, on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera. Her books include, Black Feminist Archaeology (2011), W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America (2018), co-edited with Britt Rusert. In her spare time, she is completing a second edition of Black Feminist Archaeology with Routledge and an upcoming volume on new research coming from the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst with Richard Benson II. She is currently the Chair of the Black Advisory Council at UMass Amherst, President of the American Anthropological Association (2023-2025), and the Charles Norton Memorial Lecturer for the Archaeological Institute of America (2024-2025).