As part of Auburn University’s celebration of Black History Month, Harvard best selling author and Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture as well as African and African American Studies Dr. Sarah Lewis will speak in Foy Auditorium on February 28 at 7:00 PM. Dr. Lewis’ most recent book, The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery (Simon & Schuster), will serve as her basis for her talk.
A Dubois scholar at Harvard, Dr. Lewis has published essays on race in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Art in America, as well as in publications for the Smithsonian, The Museum of Modern Art, and Rizzoli. She has also received critical acclaim for her essay in The Meaning of Michelle: 16 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own, cited by The New York Times as “what might be the finest essay” in that publication.
Among other distinctions, Dr. Lewis acted recently as a guest editor for Aperture magazine’s issue “Vision & Justice,” which was the topic of her first course at Harvard and the related exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums. Dr. Lewis also has served as a critic at Yale University School of Art. She is a Trustee of Creative Time, The CUNY Graduate Center, the Brearley School, and the Andy Warhol Foundation of the Visual Arts.
As part of her Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, Lewis will be researching her contracted next book on the role of photography in the exposing the fiction of racial categories. Prior to her Harvard appointment, Lewis held curatorial positions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Tate Modern, London.
Her presentation here at Auburn will focus on prominent African American figures who worked through “failure” to achieve “mastery” as part of their process of innovation and discovery, and it is open to the University and surrounding communities.
“Mastery requires endurance,” Dr. Lewis says. “Mastery, a word we don’t use often, is not the equivalent of what we might consider its cognate—perfectionism—an inhuman aim motivated by a concern with how others view us. Mastery is also not the same as success—an event‐based victory based on a peak point, a punctuated moment in time. Mastery is not merely a commitment to a goal, but to a curved‐line, constant pursuit.”
Members of the Africana Studies speaker selection committee believed that the themes and variety of individuals examined in her talk and in the book in which her talk is based will resonate with students and faculty creating a space for groups and individuals to come together in cross-disciplinary conversations. A book signing of Dr. Lewis’ book will follow.
The organizations that are sponsoring the event are the Africana Studies Program, the Cross Cultural Center for Excellence, the Women’s Leadership Institute, the University Special Lectures Fund, Auburn Athletics, Auburn University Libraries, the College of Education, the Department of English, the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work; the Philpott-Stevens Research Fund, the Office of the Vice President of Student Affairs; the College of Liberal Arts Community and Civic Engagement Initiative; the Caroline Draughon Marshall Center for the Arts and Humanities; and the College of Architecture, Design and Construction.
To read more about Dr. Lewis, read The Lavin Agency‘s page.