Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

Description

How an eighteenth-century engraving of a slave ship became a cultural icon of black resistance, identity, and remembrance One of the most iconic images of slavery is a schematic wood engraving depicting the human cargo hold of a slave ship. First published by British abolitionists in 1788, it exposed this widespread commercial practice for what

Cheryl Finley is associate professor of art history at Cornell University. She is the coauthor of Harlem: A Century in Images and the coeditor of Diaspora, Memory, Place: David Hammons, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Pamela Z.

"Winner of the Historians of British Art Book Prize, 1600-1800" "Winner of the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Book Prize, Bard Graduate Center" "Honorable Mention for the William Sanders Scarborough Prize, Modern Language Association" "A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year" "Published in 1788, the famous engraving of the human cargo of a slave ship was used widely by campaigners for the abolition of slavery. Finley looks at the dissemination of the image in the 18th century and its ongoing political and artistic resonances." * Apollo * "[Committed to Memory] wonderfully shows how the ship travelled from its 18th-century departure port of protest to multiple destinations - prison reform movements, anti-capitalist campaigns, resistance to racial and sexual discrimination, and refugee advocacy."---Catherine Molineux, Times Higher Education "[B]eautifully illustrated and brilliantly conceived . . . [t]his book not only constitutes an innovative, gripping and convincing approach to the narrative of slavery, but it also succeeds in anchoring its heritage in the present moment and casting light on contemporary 'passages.'"---Helene B. Ducros, EuropeNow "[Committed to Memory is] a politically attuned chronicling of slave ship representations from the late 18th to present century. . . . Finley has broken new ground in the discipline of art history . . . [a] valuable, clearly-written, well-researched, global aesthetic history of artistic protest, and explicitly black art."---Devon Epiphany Clifton, Make Literary Magazine