The Black doll symposium

Hosted by The African & African American Studies Department at Duke University

Betye Saar  Ushering in the development of Assemblage art, Betye Saar’s practice reflects on Black American identity, spirituality, and the connectedness between different cultures. Her symbolically rich body of work has evolved to demonstrate the cultural, political, racial, and historical context in which it exists, encompassing the feminist mantra "the personal is political" as a fundamental principle. Galvanized by the 1965 Watts Riots and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's assassination, Saar began her politically charged artwork, which included her now-iconic assemblage, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972). Activist Angela Davis referred to this work as the inception of the Black Women’s movement. Saar’s work is in over 80 museum collections including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Whitney Museum; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; National Gallery of Art; Studio Museum in Harlem; Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2018, the Museum of Modern Art acquired 42 important early works, making their holdings the largest public collection of Saar’s artwork. Since 1961, Saar has been represented in over 900 exhibitions. Current exhibitions include: Betye Saar: New Work, Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA (February 24 - April 7, 2024); Betye Saar: Drifting Toward Twilight, The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA (November 11, 2023 – November 25, 2025). Saar is the subject of the publication Betye Saar: Black Doll Blues. Published in 2022 by Roberts Projects, the book is an investigation into Saar's lifelong interest in Black dolls, with new watercolors, historic assemblages, sketchbooks and a selection of Black dolls from the artist’s collection.

Jasmine Nichole Cobb is Professor of African & African American Studies and, of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University. She is the author of Picture Freedom:  Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century (NYUP 2015) and New Growth:  The Art and Texture of Black Hair  (Duke University Press, 2023). She has written essays for MELUS:  Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, American Literary History and Public Culture and she is the editor for African American Literature in Transition, Vol. 2 (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Myla Perkins is a pioneer in the documentation of black dolls and black doll collecting. She amassed a collection that spanned two hundred years of black representation and has authored two books: Black Dolls: An Identification and Value Guide 1820-1991 (1993) and Black Dolls Book II (1994). Her collection has been exhibited in museums across the country and featured on television and in various news outlets.  When parts of her collection became available through auction, doll collectors felt honored. Parts of her collection are now owned by her oldest daughter, Julie. Myla is an educator. She has committed her life to not only educating the world about black dolls but also educating young children. As an early childhood educator, she directed and owned an early childhood center and a private elementary school in Detroit, Michigan. Myla continues to inspire doll collectors across the globe through her publications and mentorship.

Debbie Behan Garrett is a black-doll enthusiast, doll historian, author of three books on the subject of black dolls, and editor and layout artist of two books by doll artist, Goldie Wilson. Garrett is also the founder and curator of DeeBeeGee's Virtual Black Doll Museum at: https://virtualblackdollmuseum.com.

Georgette Taylor, is co-founder, host and co-producer of "In The Doll World" podcast and co-founder of Big Beautiful Dolls™, has significantly impacted the doll community. Her creation of the first plus-size fashion dolls led to features in major magazines, renowned collaborations, and the prestigious 2015 Doll Legacy Award from the Detroit Doll Show.

Tammy Fisher collaborates with doll professionals and advocates for diversity in doll spaces. She owns Curiositeej, LLC, and In The Doll World Media, LLC. Tammy, founder of In The Doll World podcast, is a public speaker, professional artist and writer, and editor of Izabela Kwella’s "Doll Photography".

Sabrina Thomas is a social scientist and faculty member in the Program In Education at Duke University where she also serves as an academic dean. She is a doll collector and doll historian whose research focuses on the politics of black doll production during the first half of the twentieth century. She has published articles and book chapters on the topic and is currently working on a book-length manuscript. She has been a featured speaker at the Strong Museum of Play for the panel “Black Dolls and Social Movements in the American Toy Industry,” and as a special guest of their Meet The Collectors Series. She was recently selected as Scholar-in-Residence for El Proyecto La Muneca Negra in La Lisa, Havana Province, a project focused on the art of dollmaking in Cuba. Sabrina holds a Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of North Carolina - Greensboro. She is a co-organizer of the Black Doll Symposium.

Dale Guy Madison is an award-winning educator, LGBTQ activist, playwright, author, filmmaker, performance artist, and doll collector. He knows how to show and sell, as one of the first African American hosts of QVC, and the first to produce the African Marketplace shopping hour on the popular shopping network. He’s an avid doll collector and his own line of handmade African dolls sold out in five minutes! Because of the exposure on QVC, the Baltimore native became a nationally recognized doll designer, and traveled around the country, promoting African art. 

Cynthia Davis is an Assistant Professor and Program Director in the College of Medicine and College of Science and Health at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.  In 1986, Davis was asked to direct one of the first federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention programs targeting the African American community. In 1988, Professor Davis was recruited by AIDS Hospice Foundation, currently called AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), and after a year of community mobilization efforts, a new hospice, called the Carl Bean Hospice, opened in 1991 in South Los Angeles. Davis joined the Board of Directors of AHF in December 1988. In 1998, Davis developed, as a World AIDS Day project, the Dolls of Hope Project, which involves making handmade cloth dolls to be given to agencies working with HIV/AIDS affected and/or infected children, youth and women on a local, national and international level. To date, over 7,000 Dolls of Hope have been disseminated in South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Thailand, India, Brazil, Peru, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba and Canada as well as throughout the United States. Davis currently teaches in CDU’s Urban MPH program in the College of Science and Health.

Jeri Robinson is a doll collector who co-founded the Black Gold Doll Club of New England whose members support junior doll clubs in the Boston area and, on World Doll Day, hosts an annual Adopt-A-Doll party. Jeri is a member of the Doll Study Club of Boston and the Doll Chat Club. For fifteen years, she served as Vice President of Early Childhood Initiatives at the Boston Children’s Museum where she developed the PlaySpace exhibit, an early prototype of museum learning spaces. Jeri currently serves as a regional director for the United Federation of Doll Clubs.  

Mark Ruffin is an accomplished industry professional with an extensive list of credits in television, film, and Broadway, including a Daytime Emmy® award for his work on CTW Sesame Street®. Ruffin founded Black Dolls Matter®, a brand/movement promoting self-love and positive perceptions of people of color worldwide.

Sandra Epps, After three near death experiences due to lupus, Sandra Epps established Sandy’s Land LLC in 2005 to encourage women and children to love themselves. Epps is an author, artist, and founder of the Detroit Doll Show, which is coined as the largest black doll show in the world.

Sherri Lumpkin, the founder and Director of the Ragbaby Exchange (RBE) a doll-making workshop that builds self-esteem in women and children. As a life-long self-love advocate and social entrepreneur, Lumpkin founded RBE in 2009. Her work uplifts people through therapeutic doll-making which they create from their soul outward, filling it with self-love. Her organization centers on women's and children's social and emotional well-being by connecting with diverse communities and exploring the culture of African Americans, Latinas, and the African diaspora. She has implemented programs that tether doll-making to cultural identity, uplifting BIPOC and the imperatives of social justice. She was recently selected as Scholar-in-Residence for El Proyecto La Muneca Negra in La Lisa, Havana Province, a project focused on the art of dollmaking in Cuba. She's an Artivist Fellow with Social Art & Culture in collaboration with Aspen Ideas Environment, focused on Arts and Environmental Justice in communities of color.

Yolanda Hester Is a public historian and oral historian. Her research on the Shindana Toy Company was featured in PBS’s Lost LA and in the American Journal of Play. She is the guest editor of the second edition of Contours: Arts. Activism. Pathways (Spring, 2024), which will focus on Black dolls. She has worked on projects for the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Local Projects, The Center for Oral History Research at UCLA, and the Forest History Society. She is currently the project director of the Arthur Ashe Oral History Project at Arthur Ashe Legacy at UCLA. She is a co-organizer of the Black Doll Symposium.

Ann duCille is Emerita Professor of English at Wesleyan University, and currently Visiting Scholar at the Pembroke Center at Brown University. She is the author of The Coupling Convention: Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women's Fiction, Skin Trade, Technicolored: Reflections on Race in the Time of TV, and Thin City: Hollywood and the Skinny on Fat (in progress), along with numerous articles in African American studies, popular culture, and feminist theory.

Elizabeth Chin is an ethnographer and anthropologist. She is author of Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2001). Currently she is Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association. 

Michelle Mitchell is associate professor of history at New York University. In addition to her book, Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction (2004), Mitchell has co-edited Dialogues of Dispersal: Gender, Sexuality, and African Diasporas (2004); Gender, Imperialism and Global Exchanges (2015); and Heterosexual Histories (2021). She is currently writing Idle Anxieties: Youth, Race, and Sexuality during the Great Depression.

Aria Halliday is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. She has three books: The Black Girlhood Studies Collection (2019), Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture (2022), and Black Girls and How We Fail Them (2025).

Rob Goldberg is a historian and author of the newly published Radical Play: Revolutionizing Children's Toys in 1960s and 1970s America (Duke UP, 2023). Rob's research on Shindana Toys has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and American Journal of Play, and he's been a speaker at The Strong Museum of Play for "Black Toys and Toymakers: The Story of Shindana" and the exhibit "Black Dolls." Rob holds a Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of Pennsylvania. He is Head of the History Department Head at Germantown Friends School. Rob is a co-organizer of the Black Doll Symposium.

Debra Britt is the director of the National Black Doll Museum of History and Culture. Under her direction and vision, located in Mansfield, MA, the National Black Doll Museum of History and Culture opened with seven permanent galleries and one rotating gallery. Prior, Mrs. Britt served as the president of the Doll E Daze Project & Museum Inc. (2003–2012), where she coordinated with schools, libraries, and shelters in diverse communities statewide to annually exhibit and host workshops to celebrate the contributions of African Americans. A self-taught artist, doll collector, and historian, Britt has consulted on movies, city exhibits, and sister museums. Her lectures and presentations to museum professionals and scholars have taken her to major cities in the U.S. and consultations abroad, such as France & Canada. The Museum is currently open in the Emerald Square Mall in Attleboro, MA. nbdmhc.org

Camila Bryce-Laporte is a doll artist and curator of exhibitions on African American dolls and puppets. She has dedicated herself to researching and developing cultural programming as a folklife specialist and community scholar for esteemed institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution and The Library of Congress. Her focus has been on researching the expressive cultures of various cultural groups, including traditions of the African Diaspora in the Mid-Atlantic, and the intersection of diverse immigrant communities in the Chesapeake region. Bryce-Laporte has been the principal curator for several programs on the African American doll tradition. Her most current exhibitions include "The Village of African American Doll Artists" (Douglass-Myers Museum, Baltimore, Md.) and "The Calling: The Transformative Power of African American Doll and Puppet Making" (City Lore Gallery, NYC).

Rosalyn Myles is a multidisciplinary artist who lives in Los Angeles. In her practice, she works in several mediums: textiles, sculpture, paper, and photography. Her dolls explore stories about the black body, its many colors and shapes, the hair, and the colorful self-expression. Her work has been shown in Museums, Art Centers, and professional galleries in the US and abroad. She did undergraduate studies at Mills College and Cal State Dominguez Hills. Rosalyn completed her graduate studies at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. www.rosalynmylesart.com

Aryol (Eh-re-ooh-l) Prater (Pray-tur) is Research Specialist for Black Play and Culture at The Strong. Blogger, curator, and culture critic, Aryol has a BA in Sociology, as well as an MA in African-American History from Columbia University’s Union Theological Seminary. In his short time with The Strong he has developed several exhibits, most recently “Re-Play: 50 Years of Hip-Hop Fun."

 Lagueria Davis directed her first feature BLACK BARBIE: A DOCUMENTARY whose world wide rights have been acquired by Netflix and Shondaland after its acclaimed premiere at SXSW 2023. The film has screened at 75+ film festivals around the globe to enthusiastic audiences garnering awards including:  Best Documentary Special Jury Prize at the deadCenter Film Festival, The Gordon Parks Award for Black Excellence in Filmmaking & the EDA Award for Best Female-Directed Feature at the Tallgrass Film Festival, and Best Feature Film at the Flatlands Film Festival. While making this documentary, she shadowed on the full third season of THE L WORD: GENERATION Q for Showtime, where she was able to direct establishing shots and marketing materials. Prior to shadowing for all of season three, she was the writer's PA on season two of THE L WORD: GENERATION Q with Showrunner Marja-Lewis Ryan. Lagueria hails from Fort Worth, TX, and brings her Southern, Black, and Queer perspective to a range of premium storytelling as a writer and director.