Punctuating Art in Action: An Erasure Workshop with Dr. Risa Cromer

Erasure is a process of removing parts of existing text to form something new. More than word play, erasure is a creative and critical tool for exploring possibility within limits. In this hands-on workshop, participants will explore the power of erasure art as it relates to the 2025–26 Taft Center theme: Period.

Periods end sentences, mark cycles, and signal rupture as well as renewal. Drawing on this theme, we will consider what happens when altering texts to bring forth new meaning. For instance, how might erasure help us reimagine human relationships with more-than-human worlds? What is revealed or reimagined when erasing what forecloses as well as advances social justice goals, like climate crisis policy or reproductive rights? How do acts of removal require reckoning with what persists, what disappears, and what must change?

The session will include a brief overview of the history and ethics of erasure, examples across literary and visual traditions, time to experiment with producing erasure art, and group reflection.

No prior experience is necessary and art supplies will be provided! Participants should bring a sense of curiosity as well as printed sources inspired by the theme “period.” Anything printed with writing is a good candidate for erasure, e.g., newspapers, novels, cereal boxes, speeches, diary entries, consent forms, pill bottles, dictionaries, religious texts, FBI affidavits, DNA tests, magazine essays, bureaucratic forms, Medic*tion inserts, political speeches, textbooks, sermons, shopping lists, receipts, catalogs, personal writing, etc. What potential sources does the theme “period” generate for you? As you brainstorm ideas, reflect on how you relate to the source, how you feel about it, and how you feel about erasing it. Insights can clarify how you may want to approach the content in your erasure, such as by honoring, challenging, or transforming.

By the end of the session, participants will have new tools for using erasure for reflection, resistance, and re-visioning.

Facilitator: This workshop is led by anthropologist and erasure artist, Risa Cromer, who recently erased each page of the US Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling in her Doctoring Dobbs project. Risa is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Purdue and author of .

Sponsored by the Taft Research Center, School of Environment and Sustainability, and Department of Anthropology at the University of Cincinnati.

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