Semester:
Offered:
Sarah Lewis
In 2023, it is hard to look anywhere and not see the force of black culture in media, entertainment, and the visual arts, now more heavily represented in the exhibitions and displays in museums around the country. It is hard to read the political landscape in American life and not engage with the work of black culture from film to sculptures, public installations to paintings. This course focuses on the visual work of racial politics as a critical technology for contestation, redress, and rights-based advocacy in the United States.
This course method represents a change in how we can study the arts and humanities today. It was once possible to produce scholarship on vision and visuality in the United States as if it was somehow sealed off from the discursive force of racial formation. It is not any longer. In the 1990s, a methodological shift occurred as scholars including but not limited to Martin Berger, Maurice Berger, Kirsten Pai Buick, Eddie Chambers, Hal Foster, Édouard Glissant, Kellie Jones, Nicholas Mirzoeff, W. J. T. Mitchell, Toni Morrison, Steven Nelson, Michele Wallace, and Deborah Willis began to focus on the polemics, process, and construction of vision, absence, and opacity in the history of racial formation and social power.
The dual aim of this course is to give students—undergraduate and graduate—of all backgrounds and concentrations an understanding of core topics in Black Art, and a critical understanding of the imbrication of visuality, race, and politics in the United States through a series of case studies.
The final project will be a presentation of an exhibition concept to the class that can be developed into larger research projects including theses and dissertations.
Enrollment is capped. This seminar will include trips to the King Embrace Memorial in Boston and Hartford, Connecticut.