Summer Lecture Series: Anna Storti, Ph.D.: If Porcelain Had a Race

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Renowned as white gold, Chinese porcelain played an integral role in imperial trade when it was introduced into Europe in the 14th century. Soon after, porcelain had come to reference a white woman’s fair and unblemished skin. Moreover, its features—delicate, glossy, oriental, fragile, still—deliver a stereotypical rendition of Asian femininity. An ornate object like porcelain, in other words, can be abstracted to represent a racialized and gendered aesthetic, begging the following question: If porcelain had a race, would it be Asian or white? Drawing on recent debates in feminist theory, Asian Americanist critique, and object studies, this lecture offers one answer.

Dr. Anna Storti is Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at Duke University where she also teaches in the Asian American and Diaspora Studies Program and is affiliated with the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute and Critical Asian Humanities. An interdisciplinary scholar trained in feminist theory and queer of color critique, Storti explores the aesthetic and affective relations between race, empire, violence, and pleasure, specializing in art and culture across the Asian diaspora. She is currently at work on her first book, which asks what the growing population of mixed-race white and Asian Americans elucidates about intimacy, violence, and the permanence of war. Her writing is published in Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Feminist Studies, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, and elsewhere. She also has poetry published with Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary and Art Journal. Prior to joining Duke, she was the Guarini Dean's Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian American Studies at Dartmouth College, and she holds a PhD in Women's Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park.