November 19, 2014

Author, Cultural Historian and Harvard Professor Robin Bernstein Gives Lecture at Lewis Center for the Arts

“‘I’m proud to be part of the reality-based community’: How Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home Uses Digital Photography and Performance to Counter the Post-Reality of George W. Bush” is presented in conjunction with the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies and the

Department of English

Photo caption: Author, cultural historian and Harvard Professor Robin BernsteinPhoto credit: Courtesy of Robin BernsteinWho: Author, cultural historian and Harvard University Professor of African and African American Studies and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Robin Bernstein

What: Lecture entitled “‘I’m proud to be part of the reality-based community’: How Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home Uses Digital Photography and Performance to Counter the Post-Reality of George W. Bush”When: Monday, December 8th, 2014 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.Where: Room 207, 185 Nassau StreetFree and open to the public

(Princeton, NJ) The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, in conjunction with the

Department of English and Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, will present a lecture by

author, cultural historian, and Harvard Professor Robin Bernstein entitled “‘I’m proud to be part

of the reality-based community’: How Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home Uses Digital Photography

and Performance to Counter the Post-Reality of George W. Bush”. The lecture will take place on

Monday, December 8 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Room 207 at 185 Nassau Street and is free

and open to the public.

Bernstein is a cultural historian who specializes in American performance and theater from the

nineteenth century to the present. Her other areas of study include formations of race, age,

gender, and sexuality, and her research integrates the study of theatrical, visual, material, and

literary evidence. She received her doctorate in American Studies from Yale University and is

currently a Professor of African and African American Studies and of Studies of Women,

Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University.

Bernstein is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Racial Innocence: Performing American

Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. In the book, Bernstein argues that the concept of

“childhood innocence” has been central to racial formation in the United States since the mid-

nineteenth century. Racial Innocence won the Outstanding Book Award from the Association for

Theatre in Higher Education, the Grace Abbott Best Book Award from the Society for the

History of Children and Youth, the Book Award from the Children’s Literature Association, the

Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize from the New England American Studies Association, and the

IRSCL Award from the International Research Society for Children’s Literature. Bernstein’s

other books include the anthology Cast Out: Queer Lives in Theater and a Jewish feminist

children’s book entitled Terrible, Terrible!

Alison Bechdel, whose work is discussed in the lecture, is a cartoonist and graphic memoirist

who explores the complexities of familial relationships in multilayered works that use the

interplay of word and image to weave sophisticated narratives. Bechdel was originally known for

the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which followed the lives of women in the

lesbian community as they influenced and were influenced by the important cultural and political

events of the day. She achieved critical and commercial success in 2006 with her graphic memoir

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, which is the subject of this lecture. Fun Home is a nuanced

depiction of Bechdel’s relationship with her father in their small Pennsylvania town. Bruce

Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which his daughter and

her family referred to as the "Fun Home." It was not until college that Bechdel, who had recently

come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation,

he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve. An impeccable observer

and record keeper, Bechdel incorporates drawings of archival materials, such as diaries, letters,

photographs, and news clippings, as well as a variety of literary references in deep reflections

into her own past.

Bechdel is also the originator of the widely-used test for gender bias in fiction called the Bechdel

test. The test asks if a work of fiction features at least two (named) women who talk to each other

about something other than a man.

To learn more about this event, and the over 100 other activities presented at the Lewis Center

each year visit arts.princeton . edu .

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