American Rodeo | Black History Month: American Aftermaths: A Journey Through the South

Around the second inauguration of President Trump, Eva Ulrike Pirker set out on a research trip through the American South, following the traces of African-American and African-diasporic artists. Her journey led her to museums, art collections, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities – places where Black creativity, resistance, and memory are powerfully archived and expressed. But alongside these encounters with art and scholarship came another, unavoidable narrative: the unresolved legacy of slavery, lynching, segregation, and political violence – still haunting landscapes and communities alike. From roadside markers to whispered memories, the South speaks in layers. In early 2025, the echoes of civil rights struggles intertwined with the drumbeat of the recent MAGA movement, creating a charged atmosphere of both reckoning and resistance. This lecture reflects on how these threads converged during Pirker’s travels – offering a moving, multi-
faceted portrait of a region shaped by its past and trembling toward an uncertain future. Pirker is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.