Caste is a social and religious system of power with a long history in South Asia and its diasporas. This exhibit explores caste through an intersectional lens. It focuses on the relationship of caste to religion, politics, and gender.

Caste is not simply limited to South Asia, but also extends to its many diasporas in places such as the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean.  In recent years, American anti-caste organizations such as Equality Labs have spearheaded successful campaigns to make caste a recognized and legally protected category alongside race, religion, sexuality, age, ancestry, and ability. In 2019,  Brandeis University, was the first North American institution of higher education to add caste to its non-discrimination policy, and since then many other universities have followed suit. Caste has been an important site of contestation for tech companies such as Google and Cisco, as well as local governments, including Seattle and the state of California. Caste is a growing topic of conversation across many North American universities, including Emory University. 

This exhibition by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives & Rare Book Library features three artists whose collections are housed at Emory – Benny Andrews, Flannery O’Connor, and Alice Walker, all of whom grew up in middle Georgia. “Crossroads” focuses on O’Connor’s short story, “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” which Andrews later illustrated. Walker also responded to O’Connor’s work through an essay, “Beyond the Peacock,” and a short story, “Convergence.”     
   
Using rare archival photos, journals, letters, original manuscripts and artwork, and personal artifacts, "At the Crossroads” examines how Andrews, O’Connor and Walker overlap geographically as Georgia natives, chronologically during their lifetimes, and creatively through their work. It reflects on their divergent origins and paths, while acknowledging the accolades and controversies in their lives, and illustrates how these three artists in different ways continue to reflect their time and place.

Related Links

Read the Emory News story "Emory Libraries exhibition examines intersecting lives and work of Benny Andrews, Flannery O'Connor and Alice Walker"

Watch the video "At the Crossroads: A Conversation with the Curators"

Image credits, left to right: Benny Andrews, photo courtesy of SCAD and with permission of the Benny Andrews estate; Flannery O’Connor, photo courtesy of Ina Dillard Russell Library, Georgia College and State University; Alice Walker, photo by Rhoda Nathans, The New York Times.

"Amid a groundswell of national attention to racial and social injustice, Emory professors and students joined with the Atlanta artist in the fall of 2020 to explore how creative thinking and artistic expression can inspire change. "

The Arts and Social Justice Fellows Program was envisioned as an opportunity for faculty members to work alongside partnered ASJ fellows to embed creative projects reflecting on social inequities into existing courses. 

This exhibit provides a survey of the collaborations between those ASJ fellows and faculty with students. Components of the exhibit feature the work of Jim Alexander, renowned Atlanta photographer, and Hank Klibanoff, veteran journalist who directs the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory, along with other notable fellows and faculty working with students to translate their learning into creative activism in the name of social justice.