In this gallery talk, Dr. Panton explores the following questions: What stories are Black women artists telling about the interior lives of Black women? What “light and truth” are they illuminating against the dominant narrative of Black women’s lived experiences? Advancing the concept of Double Consciousness, originally articulated by W.E.B Dubois, Triple Consciousness Theory (TCT) maintains that beyond the duality defined by Dubois, Black women see themselves through three lenses: as Americans, as Black, and as women. Black women artists, as in the Lux et Veritas exhibition, often reimagine stereotyped narratives of Black womanhood in contemporary American culture (and even transnationally) by unpacking multiple layers of consciousness in their work. This talk will highlight critical considerations that traverse the intersections of gender and race in the diaspora, as well as art as resistance in the reimagining of Black female identities through selected works in the Lux et Veritas exhibition now currently showing at the NSU Museum.

Rachel Panton, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences at NSU, where her primary research and teaching is on women’s narratives of wellness and transformation.
Dr. Panton also serves as a reviewer for the Black Women’s Wellness Series at SUNY Press and for the University of California, Berkeley’s Race and Yoga Journal, where she was a guest editor for Sassin’ Through Sadhana, a special volume based on her dissertation.
She is the founder of Women Writing Wellness, helping purpose-driven women write stories of healing and renewal. Dr. Panton’s is the editor of the forthcoming book, Black Girls Om Too: Black Women’s Bodies & Resistance to the Visual and Narrative Rhetoric of Yoga and is co-editor of Calling of the Crowns: Black American Priestess Narratives of Awakening to the Divine Feminine.