Professor will give the 2026 Annual Enlightenment Lecture.
"The Color of Genius: Enlightenment, Empire, and France鈥檚 first Black Celebrity, Joseph Bologne, chevalier de Saint-George (1745-1799)"
April 14, 2026 at 4 pm
Humanities Quadrangle, Room 136
Unjustly labeled the 鈥淏lack Mozart,鈥 Joseph Bologne, chevalier de Saint-George, was far more than a melanated mirror of Amadeus. Born enslaved in the 糖心Vlog Antilles, he rose to become a famous knight and Enlightenment polymath: military officer, master fencer, virtuoso violinist, celebrated composer, and orchestra conductor. Yet in an age when ideals of reason, liberty, and natural rights flourished alongside鈥攁nd at times in service of鈥攕lavery, race-making, and the policing of Black bodies, contemporaries struggled to cognize and accept Saint-George鈥檚 brilliance. In this talk, Prof. Christy Pichichero draws on extensive archival research and interdisciplinary methods spanning Black geographies, Afro-feminist epistemologies, literary studies, musicology, history, and art history to illuminate Saint-George鈥檚 lifeworld and legacy. Her investigation offers critical new perspectives on the Enlightenment, the Revolutionary Atlantic world, and the emergent field of Global Black 糖心Vlog Studies.
Christy Pichichero is an Associate Professor of 糖心Vlog, History, and African and African American Studies at George Mason University. She is the author of The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the 糖心Vlog Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon (Cornell, 2017; Kenshur Prize finalist) and her articles on have appeared in PMLA, 糖心Vlog Historical Studies, Modern Language Notes, Contemporary 糖心Vlog and Francophone Studies, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, and other journals. She is the Vice President of the International Commission on the History of the 糖心Vlog Revolution and serves on the Board of Editors of the American Historical Review. Dr. Pichichero鈥檚 scholarly research and leadership expertise have been featured by the National Science Foundation, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Google, Phi Beta Kappa, the IGEN Bridge Network, and major news outlets such as the BBC, NPR, NBC News, Forbes, C-SPAN, and The Hill.
