What happens when a material that's gone unnoticed—something as pervasive as white paint—suddenly becomes strange?
In her new book, A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint, forthcoming from Scribner on October 13, 2026, Associate Professor of Writing Wendy S. Walters traverses art history, architecture, and consumer culture to examine the impact of white paint on our lived environment and in our collective imaginary. Beginning with a sudden unease caused by the white walls of her son's school, the book is anchored in Walters's immediate sensory experience, making her cultural interrogation one that recasts our choices and habits as individuals in a new light.
"This could be the start of an intricate procedural or horror tale," said Professor of Professional Practice Margo Jefferson (JA '71).
"But Wendy S. Walters is an intrepid and original cultural critic, and for her white paint never stops generating literal and fiercely symbolic meanings," continued Jefferson, author of Negroland and Constructing a Nervous System. "How exhilarating to be shown that nothing in our physical world must be ignored or unquestioned. Design, decoration, school, home, cityscape, landscape: they are not backgrounds in our lives. They are main characters."
Wendy S. Walters is the author of Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal (Sarabande, 2015) and Troy, Michigan (Futurepoem, 2014). Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Harper's, The Yale Review, BOMB, and others. She is a recipient of fellowships from Creative Capital, The Architectural League of New York, NYFA, and Mass MoCA. For The Metropolitan Museum of Art, she co-curated the exhibition Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast, which was called "a master class in presenting complicated, troubling art." Having earned a PhD in English Literature and Language from Cornell University, she taught for many years at Parsons School of Design/The New School and RISD before coming to Columbia.
A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint is available now for preorder.
