This interview was recorded at Susan Vogel's home in New York City on August 5, 2018 and subsequently debated and edited by RM and SV. As this was recorded three years before the publication date, the authors have chosen to leave the content unchanged to reflect the date of the recording rather than to update to reflect subsequent developments.
Risham Majeed (RM): Let's talk a little bit about how we started out. I came to Columbia University as a PhD candidate in medieval art, having no ideas about Africa that were not inflected with politics in some regard. What was attractive about your classes, for me, was that you represented Africa in the same language as any other part of the world. The alternative is to insist on its particularity, without giving it the kind of language and context that the rest of art history has. Until that point,...