Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
SYMPOISUM | Thinking Through Tea: Art, Resistance, and Global Entanglements in the Age of American Independence (Thursday, May 7, 2026–Friday, May 8, 2026)
Marking the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, this program reconsiders American resistance not as a singular political rupture, but as a material and visual process shaped through objects, images, and everyday rituals. Rather than treating independence as an abstract ideal, it asks how freedom was experienced, negotiated, resisted, and contested through practices often far from the political stage yet deeply enmeshed in global systems of extraction and exploitation. From drinking tea and sweetening foodstuffs with sugar, to furnishing interiors with tropical woods, wearing imported or locally adapted textiles, or handling silver objects, these material acts encoded both refinement and refusal.
Friday, May 8, 2026
Roundtable 3: The Art of Refusal and Everyday Resistance
What does resistance look like when it happens quietly, domestically, and collectively, through everyday objects, plant commodities, and rituals rather than overt political action? By beginning with domestic refusal—such as tea boycotts and the political meaning of American tea silver—this session reframes revolutionary resistance as embedded in everyday material practice, much of it undertaken by women.
Moderator: Jennifer Van Horn (Professor, Joint Appointment with History, Director of Graduate Studies, Art History, North American Art and Material Culture, University of Delaware)
Speakers: Yota Batsaki (Executive Director and Principal Investigator, Plant Humanities Initiative, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC) and Catherine Molineux (Associate Professor of History, Vanderbilt University)
SYMPOISUM | Thinking Through Tea: Art, Resistance, and Global Entanglements in the Age of American Independence (Thursday, May 7, 2026–Friday, May 8, 2026)
Marking the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, this program reconsiders American resistance not as a singular political rupture, but as a material and visual process shaped through objects, images, and everyday rituals. Rather than treating independence as an abstract ideal, it asks how freedom was experienced, negotiated, resisted, and contested through practices often far from the political stage yet deeply enmeshed in global systems of extraction and exploitation. From drinking tea and sweetening foodstuffs with sugar, to furnishing interiors with tropical woods, wearing imported or locally adapted textiles, or handling silver objects, these material acts encoded both refinement and refusal.
Friday, May 8, 2026
Roundtable 3: The Art of Refusal and Everyday Resistance
What does resistance look like when it happens quietly, domestically, and collectively, through everyday objects, plant commodities, and rituals rather than overt political action? By beginning with domestic refusal—such as tea boycotts and the political meaning of American tea silver—this session reframes revolutionary resistance as embedded in everyday material practice, much of it undertaken by women.
Moderator: Jennifer Van Horn (Professor, Joint Appointment with History, Director of Graduate Studies, Art History, North American Art and Material Culture, University of Delaware)
Speakers: Yota Batsaki (Executive Director and Principal Investigator, Plant Humanities Initiative, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC) and Catherine Molineux (Associate Professor of History, Vanderbilt University)
