This one day international conference will focus on the work and legacy of Dean C. Worcester, zoologist, entrepreneur, and American imperialist whose work in the Philippines has had long-lasting effects on ideas about race and the representation of Filipinos in both the United States and its former island colony
This one day international conference will focus on the work and legacy of Dean C. Worcester, zoologist, entrepreneur, and American imperialist whose work in the Philippines has had long-lasting effects on ideas about race and the representation of Filipinos in both the United States and its former island colony. The purpose of this conference is to pay critical attention to one of the most controversial dimensions of Worcester’s work in the Philippines: the many thousands of photographs that Worcester took of native Filipinos, often in the name of justifying the “civilizing” mission of United States imperialism, sometimes for reasons that could only called voyeuristic. The conference will bring together researchers and archivists from the United States, Europe, and the Philippines to analyze and discuss both the content of Worcester’s photos and their life in circulation, especially as they have made their way into a number of archives throughout the world.
Accompanying the conference will be the first public showing of the Worcester’s newly rediscovered
1913 film: “Native Life in the Philippines” and an exhibition of Worcester’s photographs from the UM Museum of Anthropology Collection in the International Institute Gallery.
Co-Organizers:
Deirdre de la Cruz (Departments of Asian Languages and Cultures and History)
Carla M Sinopoli (Museum of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, Museum Studies Program)
