Lyneise Williams

Dr. Lyneise Williams is an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Ph.D., Yale 2004). She is the author of Latin Blackness in Parisian Visual Culture, 1852-1932, (February 2019, Bloomsbury Academic), which examines how Parisians’ visual iconography of Latin Americans in popular imagery inextricably links blackness to Latin American identity beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. Three case studies focusing on the imagery of Cuban circus entertainer, Chocolat, Panamanian World Bantamweight Champion Alfonso Teofilo Brown, and Black Uruguayans by Uruguayan painter, Pedro Figari, demonstrate the way this strategy was reconfigured in portrayals of phenotypically black Latin Americans, and argue for a nuanced reconsideration of blackness in early twentieth century Paris. Her second book project, which continues to tease out Hispanophone components in French Atlantic Studies, explores the intersection of male beauty, masculinity, sports, and the black male body through the images and performances of Alfonso Brown in 1920s and 30s Paris. She has published articles on the paintings of Uruguayan artist Pedro Figari, the depictions of Panamanian boxer Alfonso Teofilo Brown, as well as on African art and hip-hop jewelry. Williams has curated exhibitions on African art, and she is a member of the team selected from an international competition to design the North Carolina Freedom Monument Project in Raleigh, North Carolina.