Clark Fellow lecture--Jessica Horton: “Earth Diplomacy: Diné Arts of Reciprocity, 1966–1968”

Clark Fellow Jessica Horton presents “Earth Diplomacy: Diné Arts of Reciprocity, 1966–1968.”

From 1966 to 1968, the United States government commissioned Diné (Navajo) artists Bertha and Fred Stevens to demonstrate weaving and sandpainting across Eurasia and Latin America, ostensibly as an exercise of Cold War “soft power.” Drawing upon Indigenous knowledge, International Relations theory, and the methods of ecocritical art history, this talk reframes the Stevens’ tour as a creative instance of what Horton calls “earth diplomacy.”