Critical Race and Art History: Theories and Methods
ARHA 295
Spring 2022 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
AFAM 263, AMST 239 |
| Course Cluster and Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate |
How does the study of art shift if we begin with questions of race, power, and colonialism, rather than treating them as secondary? Concepts such as mastery, familiarity, strangeness, taste, and beauty are formed by conditions of domination and subjugation. Moreover, the histories of material production and cultural expression are fundamentally entwined with the circuits of enslavement, forced migration, and the extraction of resources, people, goods, and "styles."
For the bulk of the semester, we will focus on a series of case studies drawn from the 15th to 20th centuries, a period of intense European contact and conquest in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Americas. Topics will include: representations of Africans in Renaissance Germany; African depictions of the Portuguese circa 1492; the appearance of parrots, kraak (Chinese) porcelain, and other goods from "exotic" locales in 17th-century Dutch still lifes; the taxonomies of racial difference in Spanish casta paintings; debates about sculptural polychromy and the "whiteness" of marble; the relationship between expansionism, empire, and the genre of landscape; "primitivism" and European artists' "discovery" of African artistic forms; the critical interest in "racial art" in the interwar U.S.; and contemporary conversations about museums and restitution, among others.
Throughout, works of art are primary sources with which to study the specificities of periods, places, and their social arrangements. While we will emphasize difference and historical contingency, our longue durée approach will enable us to draw connections about art's role in processes of primitive accumulation, dispossession, and racial capitalism. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ART |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (AFAM-MN)(AFAM)(ARHA-MN)(ARHA)(ARST) |
Major Readings:
Authors include: Sylvia Wynter, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Lisa Lowe, Cedric Robinson, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Ann Laura Stoler, Kobena Mercer, Nikhil Pal Singh, Jodi Melamed, Howard Winant and Michael Omi, Stuart Hall, Dana Leibsohn, Paul Kaplan, Claudia Swan, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Johann Winckelmann, Gottfried Semper, Cécile Fromont, Kailani Polzak, Maggie Cao, Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Lisa Blee and Jean M. O¿Brien, Anne Anlin Cheng, Philip J. Deloria, Elizabeth Hutchinson, Jacqueline Francis, Huey Copeland and Krista Thompson, Felwine Sarr and Benedicte Savoy.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Examination and Assignments
1) Participation in class meetings; 2) Visual annotations; 3) Reading responses; 4) Two papers: Formal Analysis (3¿4 pages) and Final Research Paper (9¿10 pages), the latter done in stages, with primary source / archival research, revision, and peer editing workshops. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Additional Requirements and /or Comments
During pre-registration interested students should email the instructor (cjdamman@wesleyan.edu) introducing themselves, outlining their reasons for wanting to take the course, and listing any relevant previous courses taken. Students should be prepared to participate frequently in seminar-style discussion, take on an independent research project, and attend the spring lectures in the Race/Art History series. |
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