Studies in 20th & 21st-Century Art (460-0-1)

Topic

Transdisciplinary Experimentalism and the Art of B

Instructors

Krista Thompson

Meeting Info

Kresge 4354 Art Hist. Sem. Rm.: Tues 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

This course engages and expands existing understandings of "Black study," scholarly orientations and methodologies that arise from Black communities (primarily in the United States and the Caribbean). The seminar especially attends to how studies emerging from Black life might call for, demand, transdisciplinary (or undisciplined) and multimodal forms of scholarly work. Focused on scholars and artists who work across scholarly writing, studio arts, film, fiction, photography, and/or book arts, we examine the work of Elizabeth Catlett, Kevin Adonis Browne, Lisa Gail Collins Simone Leigh, Joshua Myers, Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, and Deborah Thomas, among others. We also look at the significance of sociality, retreats, and rest as forms of Black study. In addition, we explore experimental forms of writing related to Black study highlighting elements like the footnote, redaction, erasure. Students are responsible for weekly response papers, co-leading one presentation of the readings, and creating and presenting on a final research project.

Class Materials (Required)

Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth-century America. WW Norton & Company, 2022. (Revised edition). 978-1324021582

Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate histories of riotous Black girls, troublesome women, and queer radicals. WW Norton & Company, 2019. 978-0393357622

Sharpe, Christina. Ordinary Notes. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023. 978-0374604486

Browne, Kevin Adonis. A Sense of Arrival. Duke University Press, 2024. 978-1-4780-3092-8

Collins, Lisa Gail. Stitching Love and Loss: A Gee's Bend Quilt. University of Washington Press, 2023.

Scruggs, Dalila, ed. Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies. University of Chicago Press, 2024. 9780226836577

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Art History MA and PhD Graduate Students Only