Stanford Humanities Center
Rhae Lynn Barnes, Princeton University (SHC Fellow '21)
In Conversation with Blair LM Kelley, President of the National Humanities Center (NHC Fellow '23)
As Heard on NPR's Fresh Air: "Quite enlightening." —Terry Gross
Named one of the Best Books of the Month by the New York Times, TIME, and Kirkus Reviews
A groundbreaking history, decades in the making, that chronicles how blackface dominated American society culturally, financially, and racially for nearly two centuries.
Never before has the disturbing story of blackface and its piercing reflection of American society been so comprehensively told. With Darkology, Princeton historian Rhae Lynn Barnes meticulously unravels the complex, subterranean, and all-too-often expunged history of “Darkology”—the insidious study, commodification, and dehumanization of Black life, through which performers caricatured the enslaved and formerly enslaved for their supposed subservience and happy demeanor.
Join us for the inaugural event in this new online book series, Need to Know, presented in collaboration with the National Humanities Center.
About the Speakers
Rhae Lynn Barnes, PhD is a distinguished historian, author, and multimedia storyteller whose work explores the powerful intersection of American culture and political discourse. An Assistant Professor of American Cultural History at Princeton University, Dr. Barnes has also served as the Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. She is a leading expert on the history of amateur blackface minstrelsy, providing an unflinching examination of how this tradition—and its enduring, toxic legacy—is woven into the fabric of American life.
Dr. Barnes’s landmark book, Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment (W.W. Norton & Company/Liveright, March 2026), is a Kirkus-starred excavation of America’s forgotten past. The first comprehensive work to unravel the subterranean history of amateur minstrelsy, Darkology maps the political and cultural geography of white supremacy from the Civil War to the present. Her scholarship has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Library of Congress, and she has had the privilege of being a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center.
A fierce advocate for democratizing history, Dr. Barnes has worked with the National Humanities Center’s education programs since 2019. She is the co-founder of U.S. History Scene, an open-access digital platform providing resources to thousands of public schools. Her expertise has been featured across major outlets, including The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post. She also served as a Senior Advisor and on-screen talent for the Peabody Award-winning PBS series Reconstruction: America after the Civil War.
A product of California’s public school system, Dr. Barnes earned her BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MA and PhD in history from Harvard University.
Blair LM Kelley, PhD is a renowned author, historian, and scholar of the African American experience. She is the seventh president of the National Humanities Center, the only independent center for advanced study in the world dedicated exclusively to the humanities. Kelley previously held senior leadership roles at the University of North Carolina at Chapel HIll as the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of the American South and at North Carolina State University where she served as Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Affairs and Partnerships and the Alumni Graduate Professor of History.
Kelley’s best selling book, Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class (Liveright, 2023), interweaves the stories of her own ancestors into a sweeping chronicle of Black labor from slavery to the present. Black Folk has received the 2024 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award, 2024 Brooklyn Public Library Book Award, and the 2024 Philip Taft Labor History Prize and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in History. Her newest book, Black Freedom: A Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days, (out June 2, 2026) is the first fully illustrated history of Juneteenth and other Emancipation Day celebrations, told through photographs, art, and an engrossing narrative from an award-winning historian.
A sought-after public intellectual, Kelley’s commentary has appeared on NPR’s Marketplace, Here & Now, and Fresh Air; and MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times and The Washington Post and other national outlets. Kelley earned her B.A. from the University of Virginia in History and African and African American Studies, and her MA and PhD in History from Duke University.
About the Series
Behind the noise are stories. Stories that can change how we think about the world, as it has been and as it is right now, stories waiting to be heard. Come be part of a conversation between great writers and thinkers of today.
Each event in this new series convenes a dialogue between fellows from two of the most prominent research centers in the United States and beyond—the Stanford Humanities Center and the National Humanities Center. Join award-winning authors as they talk about their books and the urgent stories behind them.
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