[-empyre-] Welcome to the -empyre- April 2016 Discussion: Liquid Blackness: Formal Approaches to Blackness and/as Aesthetics

[Derek Murray]

Welcome to our April discussion on -empyre- soft-skinned space, *Liquid
Blackness: Formal Approaches to Blackness and/as Aesthetics*.


The moderator of this month’s discussion will be Alessandra Raengo (United
States). We are thrilled that Alessandra Raengo’s exciting and timely
research on race, aesthetics, and form has been the catalyst for this
month’s topic, which highlights conceptual issues around the materiality of
blackness as it expresses itself across various forms of cultural
production, including: visual art, cinema, music, and photography. Thanks
to you, Alessandra, and each of your guests for joining us this month.



Moderator Bio:

Alessandra Raengo is Associate Professor of Moving Image Studies in the
Department of Communication at Georgia State University and
coordinator of *liquid
blackness*, a research project on blackness and aesthetics. Her work
focuses on blackness in the visual and aesthetic field and her essays on
contemporary African-American art, black cinema and visual culture, and
race and capital have appeared in *Camera Obscura*, *Adaptation*, *The
World* *Picture Journal*, *Discourse *(forthcoming) and several
anthologies. She is the author of *On the Sleeve of the Visual: Race as
Face Value* (Dartmouth College Press, 2013) and of *Critical Race Theory* *and
*Bamboozled (Bloomsbury Press, 2016). With Robert Stam, she has also
co-edited two anthologies on adaptation studies, *Literature and Film *and *A
Companion to Literature and Film *(Blackwell, 2004 and 2005).



We turn the discussion over to you now, Alessandra, to further introduce us
to your topic, your exciting research on *Liquid Blackness*, and to share
the bios of those guests who will be participating in the conversation this
month.



All best,

Derek Conrad Murray

Soraya Murray

Co-Moderators, -empyre-
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