AFRICAN AMERICAN ART 01:082:332:01 Professor Tanya Sheehan 01:050:301:02 Art History Department Spring 2011 Rutgers University tsheehan@rci.rutgers.edu Tu/Th 2:50-4:10pm Murray Hall 301 Office: Art History Annex Office hours: 60 College Avenue Tues 4:30-6pm Room 302 732-932-0122 ext. 20 TA: Brenna Graham Course description This course surveys the work of African American artists, from the nineteenth century to the present. Lectures will cover a range of visual media, including painting, sculpture, prints, photography, and contemporary performances. We will consider the ways in which artists and scholars have worked to define African American art in relation to Euro-American and African cultural production as well as to the evolving social and political history of people of African descent in the United States. In addition to attending lectures, participating in discussions, and completing two writing assignments, students will visit area museums to view original artworks. Graded work and expectations 10% Class participation; assessment based on attendance, contributions to class discussion, demonstrated effort and commitment to course goals 40% (2) reading exams 50% (2) writing assignments Attendance and prompt arrival at all classes is required. Students are allowed up to three absences per semester (this includes excused and unexcused absences). Unless approved by a faculty member or dean, more than three absences will seriously impact your final grade and may result in failure. All assigned readings are required and should be completed before class to enable your full participation. Detailed descriptions of your writing assignments will be provided in separate handouts. Please note that late work will receive a 5% grade reduction per day late; if two classes pass after the due date, your work will receive a failing grade. Exceptions will be made in documented cases of illness, family emergencies, religious holidays, etc. Please make sure to keep me informed of any circumstances that may prevent you from coming to class and/or passing in your best work on time.
Open communication between students and instructor is very important to me; it also directly contributes to your success in this (as in any other) course. I encourage you to meet with me in office hours or schedule an appointment to discuss any aspect of your performance in the course and/or specific course materials/content. Please note that I will also comment on drafts of your written work in person, but not by email. Writing guidelines All of the writing assignments for this course must be typed and should adhere to the following style: 12- point, Times New Roman font; double spacing; single-sided pages; and 1-inch margins on all sides (you will need to set these in MS Word). Please include internal citations when necessary e.g., (Sheehan, 5) as well as a bibliography, both of which should adhere to either MLA or Chicago style. MLA and Chicago style guides are available in libraries throughout campus. All papers must be carefully proofread for typographical errors as well as spelling and grammatical mistakes. Students who do not follow these guidelines will be asked to revise and resubmit their essays, which will then be subject to the penalties for lateness defined above. Plagiarism and academic honesty Please familiarize yourself with the definition of plagiarism in Rutgers s official policy statement on academy integrity: http://academicintegrity.rutgers.edu/integrity.shtml. As a student in this course, you are responsible for understanding and thus avoiding the varieties of plagiarism in college writing outlined in this statement. Any student who plagiarizes will receive a zero for the given assignment and, in some cases, a failing grade for the course. Course materials and resources Textbook You should purchase the following book, which has been ordered for you at the Rutgers University Bookstore and NJ Books. Additional readings on our syllabus have been posted to Sakai. Sharon F. Patton, African-American Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); 978-0192842138 Sakai (Rutgers s course webpage system) All of our course materials, including the syllabus, scanned readings, writing assignments, and the PowerPoint presentations used in class are available for download through Sakai: http://sakai.rutgers.edu/portal. Weekly syllabus and required readings TU, Jan 18 TH, Jan 20 Introduction to African American art Constructing identities: early portraiture I Joshua Johnston, Moses Williams
Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles : Silhouettes and African American Identity in the Early Republic, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 149, no. 1 (March 2005): 22-39 Patton, 42-49 TU, Jan 25 TH, Jan 27 NO CLASS (in lieu of Feb 19-20 events) Constructing identities: early portraiture II Augustus Washington, James P. Ball Deborah Willis, The First Sixty Years: 1840-1900, in Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 3-15, 333-334 Patton, 71-74 TU, Feb 1 Mastering landscape Robert S. Duncanson, Edward Mitchell Bannister Margaret Rose Vendryes, Race Identity/Identifying Race: Robert S. Duncanson and Nineteenth- Century American Painting, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, no. 1 (2001): 82-99, 103-104 Patton, 74-89 TH, Feb 3 Sculpting race and gender Edmonia Lewis Kirstin Buick, The Ideal Works of Edmonia Lewis, in Marianne Doezema and Elizabeth Milroy, eds., Reading American Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 190-207 Patton, 89-98 TU, Feb 8 Class visit to the Art Library Groups 1 and 2: conduct research for your first writing assignment Kymberly N. Pinder, Black Representation and Western Survey Textbooks, The Art Bulletin 81, no. 3 (September 1999): 533-538 James Smalls, Ghost of a Chance: Invisibility and Elision in African American Art Historical Practice, Art Documentation 13, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 3-8 TH, Feb 10 Class visit to the Art Library Groups 3 and 4: conduct research for your first writing assignment
Kymberly N. Pinder, Black Representation and Western Survey Textbooks, The Art Bulletin 81, no. 3 (September 1999): 533-538 James Smalls, Ghost of a Chance: Invisibility and Elision in African American Art Historical Practice, Art Documentation 13, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 3-8 TU, Feb 15 Locating African American art circa 1900 Henry Ossawa Tanner Judith Wilson, Lifting the Veil : Henry O. Tanner s The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful Poor, in Mary Ann Calo, ed., Critical Issues in American Art: A Book of Readings (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), 199-219 Patton, 98-103 TH, Feb 17 The idea of the New Negro Class discussion of readings: Groups 1 and 2 meet in Murray 301; Groups 3 and 4 meet in the Maxwell Multipurpose Room, Zimmerli Art Museum W. E. B. Du Bois, Criteria of Negro Art, The Crisis 32 (October 1926): 290-297 Alain Locke et al., The New Negro (1925; New York: Athenaeum, 1968). Selections: Alain Locke, The New Negro (3-16); Albert C. Barnes, Negro Art and America (19-25); and Alain Locke, The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts (254-267) James Porter, The Negro Artist and Racial Bias, Art Front (June-July 1937): 8-9 Sat, Feb 19 Marion Thompson Wright Lecture Series Beauty and the Black Body: History, Aesthetics, and Politics Paul Robeson Campus Center, Rutgers University Newark Campus, 9:30am-3:30pm The Marion Thompson Wright Lecture Series, New Jersey s largest and most prestigious conference commemorating Black History Month, celebrates its 31 st anniversary. This year s conference will examine how the presence and persistence of African Americans in the United States have challenged and reshaped notions of beauty, especially in the realms of art, popular culture, and photography. Speakers include Deborah Willis, Richard Powell, Maxine Craig, Tiffany Gill, and Okwui Enwezor. Talks will be followed by a visit to the Newark Museum exhibition, Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present. Deborah Willis, Introduction, in Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), xiii-xxxii http://www.newarkmuseum.org/posingbeauty.html Sun, Feb 20 A Public Conversation: The Art and Social Impact of Great Photographs Newark Museum, 2:30-3:30pm with reception to follow
Professor Sheehan will moderate a discussion with artists Lewis Watts, Lauren Kelley, and Jamel Shabazz. Their work will be on display in the Posing Beauty exhibition. Pre-registration is required; call 973-596-6550. TU, Feb 22 Picturing the New Negro I James Van Der Zee, the Scurlock Studio Deborah Willis, The New Negro Image: 1900-1930, in Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 35-48, 334-335 Patton, 105-114 TH, Feb 24 Picturing the New Negro II Palmer Hayden, Archibald Motley, Jr. Paper #1 due Patton, 114-128, 135-139 TU, Mar 1 Picturing the New Negro III Meta Fuller, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Augusta Savage, Sargent Johnson Judith Wilson, Sargent Johnson: Afro-California Modernist, in Kymberly N. Pinder, ed., Raceing Art History: Critical Readings in Race and Art History (New York: Routledge, 2002), 307-319 Patton, 128-135 TH, Mar 3 Murals and the Federal Arts Project Aaron Douglas, Charles Alston Diana Linden and Larry A. Greene, Charles Alston s Harlem Hospital Murals: Cultural Politics in Depression Era Harlem, Prospects 26 (2001): 391-421 Patton, 139-150 TU, Mar 8 Documenting Harlem Jacob Lawrence Patricia Hills, Home in Harlem: Tenements and Streets, in Painting Harlem Modern: The Art of Jacob Lawrence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 169-204 TH, Mar 10 The politics of abstraction William H. Johnson, Hale Woodruff, Norman Lewis Patton, 150-181 TU, Mar 15 NO CLASS (Spring Break)
TH, Mar 17 TU, Mar 22 NO CLASS (Spring Break) The visual culture of the Civil Rights Movement I Maurice Berger, Introduction: Weapons of Choice, in For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 1-9 Martin Berger, Race, Visuality, and History, American Art 24, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 94-99 Patton, 183-185 TH, Mar 24 TU, Mar 29 MIDTERM EXAM The visual culture of the Civil Rights Movement II Spiral and Black Arts Patton, 185-232 TH, Mar 31 Black Feminisms I Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar Judith Wilson, One Way or Another: Black Feminist Visual Theory, in The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, edited by Amelia Jones (2003), 22-24 Tanya Sheehan, Faith Ringgold: Forging Freedom and Declaring Independence, and Faith Ringgold and Rutgers University: A Selected Chronology, in A Declaration of Independence: 50 Years of Art by Faith Ringgold, edited by Judith K. Brodsky and Ferris Olin (New Brunswick: Institute for Women and Art, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 2009), 3-12, 50-51. TU, Apr 5 Black Feminisms II Renée Cox, Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson Guest lecturers: Tashima Thomas and Ellen Brueckner, graduate students, Art History Department Lisa Farrington, Reinventing Herself: The Black Female Nude, Woman s Art Journal 24, no. 2 (Fall 2003/Winter 2004): 15-23 TH, Apr 7 Class visit to the Morse Center Groups 1 and 2: Discussion of second writing assignment and selected works on paper by Emma Amos, Chakaia Booker, Willie Cole, Paul Pfeiffer, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, and Fred Wilson TU, Apr 12 Class visit to the Morse Center Groups 3 and 4: Discussion of second writing assignment and selected works on paper by Emma Amos, Chakaia Booker, Willie Cole, Paul Pfeiffer, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, and Fred Wilson
TH, Apr 14 Postmodern explorations of the self David Hammons, Lyle Ashton Harris Richard J. Powell, African American Postmodernism and David Hammons, Body and Soul in David C. Driskell, ed., African American Visual Aesthetics: A Postmodernist View (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 121-135 Patton, 232-273 TU, Apr 19 Subverting stereotype Robert Colescott, Michael Ray Charles, Kara Walker Karen Dalton, Michael Harris, and Lowery Sims, The Past is Prologue but Is Parody and Pastiche Progress? A Conversation, International Review of African American Art 14, no. 3 (1997): 17-30 TH, Apr 21 Remaking American history Fred Wilson Paper #2 due Lisa G. Corrin, Mining the Museum: Artists Look at Museums, Museums Look at Themselves, in Fred Wilson, Mining the Museum: An Installation (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), 1-22 TU, Apr 26 Post-black art? Glenn Ligon and Freestyle Thelma Golden, Introduction, in Thelma Golden et al., Freestyle (New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, 2001), 14-15 Cathy Byrd, Is There a Post-black Art? Investigating the Legacy of the Freestyle Show, Art Papers 26, no. 6 (November/December 2002): 34-39 TH, Apr 28 Field trip to the exhibition Glenn Ligon: AMERICA at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City Details TBA FINAL EXAM: Wed, May 11, 4-7pm