The Brown University Library, together with the Office of the Provost and the Department of Africana Studies, is delighted to announce the appointment of Renée Ater as a Provost’s Visiting Professor for the 2020-2021 academic year.

Professor Ater, Associate Professor Emerita of American Art at the University of Maryland, is highly regarded for her pathbreaking research on the intersection of race, public art, and national identity. She is currently working on a born-digital scholarly publication, Contemporary Monuments to the Slave Past: Race, Memorialization, Public Space, and Civic Engagement, for which she has received fellowship support from the Smithsonian, NEH-Mellon, and the Getty Research Institute. Professor Ater received her undergraduate degree from Oberlin College and her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Maryland.

A self-described “public art historian,” Professor Ater is curious about the ways in which politics imbue monuments with shifting meaning over time, and she is passionate about sharing her observations and insights with a broad audience. Her innovative scholarship has had an impact on both scholarly dialogues and community conversations. Professor Ater visited Brown last spring and provided a clear demonstration of the kinds of distinctive contributions and cross-disciplinary connection-building that she will bring to the University under the Provost’s Visiting Professor Program. In particular, she will make significant contributions to campus interests in slavery and justice, digital scholarship, and mentorship of students and younger faculty from Historically Underrepresented Groups in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. 

Professor Ater’s work, located at the intersection of politics, biography, and critical art theory, aligns closely with that of scholars in Brown’s Africana Studies Department, with their established interdisciplinary interests in critical Africana theory, black feminism, cultural studies, and performance, through the Department’s Rites and Reason Theatre. She will also provide significant support and mentorship for graduate students working on varied themes in contemporary popular culture, the civil rights movement, and the resistance to racism, particularly in the contemporary period. Her academic constituency on campus will also extend to the History of Art and Archaeology, History, and American Studies departments, the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage. The University Library will support Professor Ater’s current research focus on developing a digital publication. The Library is home to a pioneering Digital Publications Initiative supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Center for Digital Scholarship, which provides essential staff expertise and technology infrastructure for faculty digital projects.  

Additional Information:

Website:  https://www.reneeater.com/

Current Project Description:  https://www.reneeater.com/slavery-monuments

Presentation at Brown:  https://blogs.brown.edu/libnews/renee-ater/