introduction to african american art

2000 Level

Fall 2019

This class argues that the history of African American Art offers us, in practice and theory, histories of “high” and “low” art, everyday objects, and ways of seeing. By conducting a chronological approach to African American Art, we will trace moments of historical continuity as well as emerging practices in order to better understand how the methods, materials, and meanings bracketed under the category of African American Art have been a site of innovation, experimentation, and avant-garde practice. We will spend this semester juxtaposing conventional approaches to art (painting, sculpting, line drawing, installation) with innovative approaches to visual culture (found objects, everyday materials, contemporary performance). Artists of inquiry include Augusta Savage, Aaron Douglass, Hale Woodruff, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Faith Ringgold, Sam Gilliam, Alma Thomas, David Hammons, Senga Nengudi, Marlon Riggs, Arthur Jafa, Rashid Johnson, Sadie Barnette. We will also discuss author-less works, collectives, and collaborate projects. Students are required to complete an annotated bibliography, weekly in-class assignments, and a 3 hour final examination. 

history of new genres

4000 Level

Fall 2019

his survey course will examine the work of artists who privilege the conceptual terrain in their practices. Between the 1950s and 1980s, the art object was famously "dematerialized" and instead transformed into a poetics of gesture, residue, or citation. This course combines lecture and discussion to navigate through various histories of New Genres from its inception to the present. We will prioritize forms of art based on elements of concept, material, time and process, including; action, language, performance, systems of light and space, installation, and video. We will trouble the disciplinary waters by paying particular attention to artists whose forms escape categorization, and whose practices shape and shift the past, present, and future tenses of ‘the new.’ Assignments include a conceptual journal, midterm examination, and short critical response essays.

mean moms and other feminist strategies

5000 Level

Fall 2019

Angry, mean, cruel, cold, obstinate, neglectful and bitchy have all been used to delegitimize feminist intellectuals and the knowledge they produce. Feminists themselves have worked to reclaim and repurpose these denigrations as key strategies for research and writing. We will study feminist art-historical methods. Students can expect to engage the many shades of feminist frameworks and histories that aim to generate critique and to advance the field of art history. We will read notable scholars like Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock, Deborah Willis, Anne Wagner, Laura Mulvey, Mieke Bal, Coco Fusco, Jennifer Gonzalez, Nancy Szabo, Kellie Jones, and Krista Thompson, among others. Key frameworks will include “hysterics” (Bal) and “differencing the canon” (Pollock) as approaches to the archive as well as “reverse ethnography” (Fusco) and the “sidelong glance” (Thompson) as strategies of refusal. Assignments will include a detailed object-based analysis, annotated bibliography, and a final paper.