In this lecture, “The Currency of Cotton: Art, Materiality and Memory”, Anna Arabindan-Kesson explores the visual and material implications of the global dimensions of the nineteenth century cotton trade. As historians uncover the ways the trade in cotton connected people and places throughout the nineteenth century, Arabindan-Kesson considers how these connections were mediated, materialized and visualized by cotton, and its representation, in the nineteenth century.

Anna Arabindan-Kesson is a Professor of Art and Archaeology at the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University.