The Appointment of Deborah Willis as Director of IAAA

May 16, 2018
To:                  The IAAA Community
From:              Provost Katherine Fleming
Subject:           The Appointment of Deborah Willis as Director of the IAAA

I am delighted to announce that Deborah Willis, University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts, will be the new director of the Institute of African American Affairs, effective September 1, 2018.

A renowned art photographer and historian of African American photography and culture, Deb teaches courses in Tisch and the College of Arts and Science on photography & imaging, iconicity, and cultural histories visualizing the black body, women, and gender. She is a past recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and a former Richard D. Cohen Fellow in African and African American Art at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center. She was also a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and an Alphonse Fletcher, Jr. Fellow. As an expert in the visual arts, she will take the IAAA in new directions, while sustaining its core mission.

2019 marks the 50^th anniversary of the IAAA. Since its establishment in 1969, the Institute’s mission has been to research, document, and celebrate the cultural and intellectual production of Africa and its diaspora in the Atlantic world and beyond, with a commitment to the study of Blacks in modernity through concentrations in Pan-Africanism and Black Urban Studies. Within the IAAA, Deb will create the Center for Black Visual Culture (CVBC), a space for scholarly and artistic inquiry​ into the understanding and exploration of images focusing on Black people globally, with critical evaluation of images in multiple realms of culture, including how representations are constructed in various archives and visual technologies.

We thank University Professor Manthia Diawara for his 26 years of dedicated service to the IAAA. During his tenure as Director, the Institute contributed immeasurably to the intellectual life of our university and greater communities. 

Please join me in congratulating Deb Willis on assuming this exciting new role.