BHPC Program Events

Around 1900, Ho-Chunk artist and book illustrator Angel de Cora created a portrait for Mary Catherine Judd’s collection Wigwam Stories. That portrait, “The Indian of To-Day,” serves as the frontispiece for the book’s final section, which is about what was then contemporary Indigenous American life in the US. The image depicts a Native adult, wearing a bandanna, pants, shirt, and moccasins. Their hair is in two plaits, and they are leaning into a log cabin doorway. It is a portrait that is both unremarkable in its suggestion of an informal, every-day existence, and unlike other common images of ca. 1900 Indigenous persons. By tracing the circulation of turn-of-the-century Indigenous portraits alongside Angel de Cora’s journeys as an artist, this talk establishes a thick textual context for this picture. What can this unremarkable yet unusual image tell us about Native book illustration and the formation of new ideas of Indigenous modernity, labor, and gender identity? How are Indigenous artisans, pressmen, and other laborers involved in book production using their roles to negotiate and shape responses to settler colonialism? In short, who was the “Indian of To-Day”?

In addition, Professor Wigginton will lead a special seminar for students the day after the lecture (Friday, October 13, 10:00 am) in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. This seminar will draw on materials from the Fisher collection and will develop themes from her talk. This seminar is open to all graduate students in BHPC’s participating units, including students not enrolled in the BHPC program, and to upper-year undergraduates in the BMS program. Advance registration is required. To register, contact our Program Coordinator by Friday, October 6. Space is limited, so please sign up only if you know you can attend.

Caroline Wigginton (she/they) is an Associate Professor of English and Director of Undergraduate Studies. She teaches courses in early American literatures and race, gender, and sexuality studies. Currently, she is at work on a second monograph, Indigenuity: Native Craftwork and the Material of Early American Books, which examines the aesthetic, material, and imaginative influence of Native craftwork on American literatures.