The Arts as Black Resistance in Eighteenth-Century London
“The Arts as Black Resistance in Eighteenth-Century London: The Life and World of Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780)” is an interdisciplinary, arts-focused research group affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers-New Brunswick and comprised of faculty from the Mason Gross School of the Arts (Departments of Music and Theater), the School of Arts and Sciences (Departments of Art History, English, and History), and the Rutgers University Libraries as well as scholars from institutions elsewhere in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The research group, led by Rebecca Cypess, former Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers–New Brunswick, has worked together to build a public-facing digital platform that addresses the arts in the worldview and practice of Ignatius Sancho, a Black British writer and musician who was deeply engaged with the visual and performing arts as means for resisting discrimination, dehumanization, and the enslavement of Black people in London and across the British empire.
Even as new research is emerging about Sancho’s biography, the research group offers the results of its work on antiracism in the arts in Sancho’s worldview and practice. With the use of audio/visual materials as well as explanatory essays written by members of the research group, the site offers a new understanding of eighteenth-century London, situating Ignatius Sancho within a racially and culturally complex landscape and highlighting the role of the arts in advancing the cause of racial justice.
Image credit: Francesco Bartolozzi, engraving of Ignatius Sancho after a portrait by Thomas Gainsborough (1768). The engraving was later printed in the posthumous collection Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African.
Access the The Life and World of Ignatius Sancho website here.
