Professor Stuart Smith brings ancient Egyptians and Nubians to Zoom at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center
Professor Stuart Tyson Smith’s (Anthropology) research seeks to unravel the historic relationship between ancient Egyptians and Nubians. His latest contribution to the region’s history is presented below in an inaugural W.E.B. Du Bois Virtual Lecture at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, titled “Black Pharaohs? Egyptological Bias, Racism, and Egypt and Nubia as African Civilizations”. Moderated by the Center’s Director and famed literary scholar, Henry Louis Gates Jr., the lecture delves into misconceptions and discoveries pertaining to the race and ethnicity in these two great African empires. With 130,000 views and counting, Professor Smith’s lecture gets to the heart of this thought-provoking question—one often neglected in popular discussion—bringing it to the forefront of discourse targeting identity and perception in early African history.
Following his noteworthy discussion, Professor Smith was included in a recently published book from the University of New Mexico Press entitled Archaeologies of Empire: Local Participants and Imperial Trajectories. As Director of UCSB’s Institute for Social Behavioral & Economic Research, Smith brings his multidisciplinary expertise to the text, contributing “Colonial Entanglements: Imperial Dictate, Individual Action, and Intercultural Interaction in Nubia”. Using a borderlands approach that emphasizes theories of cultural entanglement, this chapter situates localized relations between Egyptians and Nubians in the larger context of the ebb and flow of empire and its aftermath.
To see more of Professor Smith’s research, please visit https://www.anth.ucsb.edu/people/stuart-tyson-smith or https://tombos.org/.
Professor Smith’s W.E.B. Du Bois Virtual Lecture at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QK7P0Bdpj0
By CMES Lead Intern Matthew Ross.