Semester:
Offered:
Brenda Croft
Australian First Nations' arts and cultural practices and cosmological beliefs span 60,000+ years, with Australian First Nations' Peoples standing firm in the belief that they have been here since deep time associated with Australian First Nations' Ancestral Beings, creation stories and cosmologies. This course explores the diversity of pre-contact, post-contact Australian First Nations' arts and cultural manifestations, from customary to contemporary representations, incorporating diverse media and trans-disciplinary platforms. Critical Australian First Nations Performance, Collaborative Autoethnography and Storywork will be represented through communal, individual, personal and political manifestations.
The course in Australian First Nations’ visual arts and culture has three main aims:
1. Provide students with basic geographical, historical and contextual frameworks for the study of Australian First Nations’ visual arts and culture in mainland Australia, Tasmania and the Torres Strait Islands.
2. Familiarize students with concepts that are fundamental to Australian First Nations’ understandings of the interconnected relationships between art, culture and life, both historically (pre- and early post-contact, up to the early 20th century) and in a contemporary (early 20th - present-day) context.
3. Assist students in developing ideas about how contemporary Australian First Peoples’ visual arts and cultures contribute to cross-cultural critical theory, representation and identity, and trans-disciplinary practice and research.
Wherever possible collections and exhibitions at national arts, cultural, social history and archival institutions are used as part of the teaching and learning experience. Upon successful completion, students will have the knowledge and skills to:
1. identify historical and geographical origins of Australian First Nations’ Arts, Culture and Cultural Practices.
2. conduct culturally relevant critical appreciation of Australian First Nations’ Arts, Culture and Cultural Practices.
3. develop cross-cultural awareness in the processes of interpretation of Australian First Nations’ Arts, Culture and Cultural Practices.
4. research and access culturally appropriate and, whenever possible, scholarly information on Australian First Nations’ Arts, Culture and Cultural Practices; and
5. speak and write with appropriate cultural sensitivity and awareness on Australian First Nations’ Arts, Culture and Cultural Practices.
Cultural institutions and collections at Harvard will be actively engaged with throughout the course: the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology collection, specifically Australian First Nations cultural material, and the Harvard Film Archive. I will be drawing upon the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection at the University of Virginia. I will also be liaising with colleagues at NYU, who have worked extensively with Australian First Nations Art and Culture, Professor Fred Myers and Professor Faye Ginsburg, based on our professional relationship of a quarter century. This course will also include international First Nations/Indigenous and Native American content and context.