this document is the UMI dissertation abstract submitted in June 2009. It provides insight on my research interests and a project that I spent several years working on with the support of several (inter)national Mellon Foundation grants.

1. Saadia N. Lawton University of Wisconsin-Madison UMI Dissertation Abstract June 2009
CONTESTED MEANINGS: AUDIENCE RESPONSES
TO THE WEDGWOOD SLAVE MEDALLION, 1787-1839
Saadia N. Lawton
This dissertation investigates how audiences responded to the Wedgwood slave
medallion and some of its subsequent permutations. The project builds upon and challenges the
premise that the Wedgwood slave medallion received universal affirmation and approbation
from its different audiences across time. Theories about audience reception and the intersections
of race, class, gender, and nationality drive this investigation to reveal how commonalities within
a given community cannot serve as indicators that homogenous responses will be manifest. In
fact, this project uses audience reception studies to demonstrate that personal characteristics and
experiences inform unique, individualized understandings of any given object. In the case of the
Wedgwood slave medallion, the object’s inherent ambiguity, both in its design elements and in
the multiple meanings its various audiences ascribed to it, gave rise to contested readings by
targeted users and unexpected makers alike. As these audiences grew and split into separate
distinct interpretive communities, individual responses to the object produced new meanings and
new permutations that reflect a complex heterogeneous understanding and negotiation of the
object’s imagery.
The dissertation contains four chapters organized by different groups. Starting with the
1787 British production and ending with the 1839 permutation made and used by free African
Americans in Philadelphia, each section uses organizational minutes, ledgers, rare books, diaries,
speeches, newspaper editorials, articles, narratives, images and objects to explore audience
responses as unique case studies. These studies show that even audiences who shared similar
characteristics such as race, class, gender, and nationality reacted to these objects differently.
These case studies evince that commonalities do not imply homogeneous responses. They also

2. Saadia N. Lawton University of Wisconsin-Madison UMI Dissertation Abstract June 2009
illuminate the relationship between production and consumption to reveal how audience
responses to the slave medallion were a direct result of the object’s inherent visual ambiguities
that left it susceptible to contested meanings. This project offers new ways to include and
investigate marginalized and excluded audiences in art history. It reveals the rich conclusions
that pragmatic methods offer studies based on a hypothesis, and encourages scholars to locate
new readings of historical images.