For the final lecture in WFF’s year-long series, ”Knowing,” Laura Wexler delivered a talk on ” ‘In Order to Form a More Perfect Likeness:’ Frederick Douglass, Photography, and the Image of the Nation.” The famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass was one of the earliest and most trenchant theorists of photography. This lecture explored his ideas about photography with reference to the Civil War and to the future of the post-war nation.
Laura Wexler is Professor of American Studies, Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and was Co-Chair of the Women’s Faculty Forum from 2008–2011. She holds an affiliation with the Film Studies Program, the Program in Ethnicity, Race and Migration, and the Public Humanities Program. She chaired the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program from 2003-2007. In 1999 she founded, and she continues to direct, the Photographic Memory Workshop at Yale.
Professor Wexler’s talk was co-sponsored by the Departments of American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.