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Moving Stones

About the Art of Edmonia Lewis

Jennifer DeVere Brody

$69.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English
Duke University Press
09 June 2026
Moving Stones explores the extraordinary life and work of Edmonia Lewis, the Black and Ojibwe sculptor who rose to international fame in the nineteenth century. Blending biography, history, and theory, Jennifer DeVere Brody approaches Lewis’s legacy through a Black feminist and queer lens, illuminating how her sculptures and self-fashioning challenged constraints of her time. Living much of her life in Rome as a free Afro-Native woman, Lewis used neoclassical forms to carve out a life in art. Brody considers how Lewis’s works were viewed historically and how they resonate with postmodern artists, engaging themes of race, materiality, sexuality, and embodiment. Rethinking one of the most important sculptors of her era, Moving Stones shows how Lewis’s art continues to inspire contemporary artists and scholars today.
By:  
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm, 
Weight:   445g
ISBN:   9781478038528
ISBN 10:   1478038527
Series:   The Visual Arts of Africa and Its Diasporas
Pages:   310
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Further / Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
List of Illustrations xi Foreword xv Introduction 1 1. A Head of Her Time 21 Interlude: Faith Ringgold 48 2. Animating Stones 57 Interlude: Beverly Buchanan 69 3. With Holding Hands 73 Interlude: Kent Monkman 101 4. About the Nude 105 Interlude: Mickalene Thomas 135 5. A Rose Somebody Knows 139 Interlude: Simone Leigh 152 6. About Photography 161 Interlude: Zanale Muholi 186 7. Engraving Edmonia 191 Interlude: Maud Sulter 207 Afterword 215 Acknowledgments 217 Notes 221 Index

Jennifer DeVere Brody is Professor of Theater and Performance Studies as well as African and African American Studies at Stanford University. She is the author of Punctuation: Art, Politics and Play and Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity and Victorian Culture and the co-editor of James Baldwin’s Little Man, Little Man, all of which were published by Duke University Press.

Reviews for Moving Stones: About the Art of Edmonia Lewis

""Moving Stones reimagines the life and legacy of Edmonia Lewis, the first internationally recognized woman sculptor of African and Native descent. Centering the varied notions of 'about'--movement, distance, desire--the book animates Lewis's sculptures, archives, and ephemera, while placing her legacy in context with artists such as Faith Ringgold, Mickalene Thomas, Simone Leigh, and zanele muholi. Brody reveals Lewis as an artist always in motion, whose resonance endures today.""--Deborah Willis, University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging, New York University


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