Dr. Anne Lafont is a professor at the École des hautes
études en sciences sociales in Paris. A specialist in
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art and visual
culture in the transatlantic world, her interests include
early modern art and the material culture of France and its colonial empire,
as well as contemporary art, Blackness, and diasporic Africa. She has
published extensively on art and knowledge in imperial contexts, artistic
historiography, and gender issues. Now she is researching the invention
and making of African art in the early modern period. Lafont’s books
include L’artiste savant à la conquête du monde moderne; 1740, un abrégé
du monde—Savoirs et collections autour de Dezallier d’Argenville; and L’art
et la race: L’Africain (tout) contre l’œil des Lumières, which received the
Prix Littéraire Fetkann Maryse Condé and Prix Vitale et Arnold Blokh. She
recently received a fellowship from Villa Albertine (Cultural Services of the
French Embassy in the United States), and she currently serves as Robert
Sterling Clark Visiting Professor at Williams College.

Dr. Anne Lafont
Outstanding Mid-Career Scholar