October 1, 2026
The 2026 Roger Ebert Lecture will be held on Thursday, Oct. 22, at 4 p.m. in the Knight Auditorium of Spurlock Museum and via Zoom.
“Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History” will be given by Allyson Nadia Field, professor and chair of the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago.
This event is free and open to the public and is presented by the Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies at the College of Media. To join via Zoom, please register here (registration link to come).
Field’s talk will focus on her new book Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History (University of California Press, 2026). The book traces the rediscovery, identification, and significance of Something Good-Negro Kiss, an early film produced by William Selig in Chicago in 1898 that represents the earliest portrayal of Black affection on screen.
Rare film clips will be featured throughout the presentation.
About the Presenter
Allyson Nadia Field’s primary research interest is in Black cinema, both silent era film and more contemporary filmmaking practices, and is unified by two broad theoretical inquiries: how film and visual media shape perceptions of race and ethnicity, and how these media have been and can be mobilized to perpetuate—or challenge—social inequities.
Field is also the author of Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film & The Possibility of Black Modernity (Duke University Press, 2015) and co-organized the 2023 Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts, a retrospective and homage to the 1976 Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts, considered the first Black women’s film festival.
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