Colored by the Sea: Arts of the Black Atlantic Fall 2017

Instructor: Sampada Aranke Mondays, 1-4 pm in Spertus 707 Office Hours: Mondays, 11:30 am-12:30 pm or by appointment

Where is the Black Atlantic? What does it look, smell, taste, and feel like? How does it color our world? This class explores the visual and cultural history of the Black Atlantic—a phrase used to define the relationship between dissonant geographical locations that were forged into relationship with each other through the Transatlantic Slave Trade. We will forge an understanding of how vision, texture, touch, sound, and color owe their meanings through the Middle Passage and its production of arts of the Black Atlantic. Crucial to this class is the artwork of practitioners like Jacob Lawrence, Soly Cissé, the Carribean Artist Movement, Aubrey Williams, Faustin Linyekula, Julie Mehretu, and Renee Green. We will focus primarily on the visual history and cultural impact of the Middle Passage as discussed through the writings of Afro-Caribbean, West African, Black American, and Black British scholars. We will work with concepts like “native” visual forms, the coloniality of painting, Négritude, and the anticolonial imagination.

Course Objectives and Learning Outcomes: Areas of Knowledge • Acquire introductory knowledge of core concepts and theories of modernity, blackness, and aesthetics • Compare key interpretative visual vocabularies and theories as applied to critical race approaches to blackness and visual culture • Acquire comparative approaches to visualizing and articulating black experience that spans across the Caribbean, U.S., England, and West Africa • Experiment with new ideas, and critically interrogate prejudices and inherited worldviews

Skills • Explore varying interpretive frameworks for black artistic and other visual cultural productions • Connect theory with contemporary issues and practices • Acquire research skills that build on historical, theoretical, aesthetic, and contemporary methods and concepts in art history • Express in writing a critical position and well-structured logical argument, sustained by examples, figures, and relevant evidence • Gain public presentation skills based on primary research

Email Communication Please check your email frequently because we will communicate with you via email often. I respond to emails within 48 hours. This means plan ahead and do not expect me to respond overnight. I recommend speaking/ emailing one another first. Also, I do not read rough drafts over email. If you would like me to read a draft of your work, please bring a copy during office hours.

Course Assignments and Requirements: Attendance and Participation Students are expected to attend all lectures. You are allowed one unexcused absence. For any other absences, the student must consult with your instructor or receive advanced clearance. Absences affect your overall grade.

Participation: 25% Students are required to do all required reading and be able to critically address the texts during lecture. In addition to this, students will do short weekly responses at the end of class that will be counted towards participation. Many of the qualifications for a passing grade detailed here are executed in lecture and discussion. It is in your best interest to show up to class prepared and ready to participate. On this note, perfect attendance with minimal participation does not qualify as “A” level participation. This means you are expected to critically engage in the readings, activities, and discussions we have in class.

Colored by the Sea Syllabus Page 1 Exhibition Review: 25%

This assignment asks you to fairly assess an exhibition. In order to do that for our purposes, you are being asked to analyze the piece not only as a stand-alone event, but in relation to the history of arts of the Black Atlantic as we’ve studied it in this class, including references to at least three course readings. This is not a paper that asks if you like or don't like something, but rather tells the reader what’s being presented, analyzes its intentions, and interprets through your own lens what it does or says. You will also include a 150 word bio for yourself.

You will choose from the following exhibitions:

Senga Nengudi Improvisational Gestures September 7- December 10 DePaul Art Museum (935 W Fullerton)

Ayanah Moor + Krista Franklin Quiet Storm September 9- November 4 Produce Model (1007 W 19th St)

Jennifer Packer Tenderheaded September 9- November 4 The Renaissance Society (5811 South Ellis Ave, Cobb Hall, 4th Floor)

Detailed instructions and guidelines are available on canvas. Exhibition reviews are due on December 11th and should be uploaded onto canvas by 1 pm.

Critical Responses: (2 per semester at 10 % each): 20% Each student will sign up to do 2 critical responses to course material during the semester. Your critical responses will not be a summary of the reading, but will instead respond to the argument the text provides, how the author argues, and will offer insights and questions in response to the text. .

Each critical response should be 3 full pages. Review the Critical Response Guidelines (provided on the first day of instruction). Proper MLA citations required (see attached guide).

(All responses are due promptly at 1 pm, otherwise they will be considered late and docked 50%.) Due date

Critical Response #1 10/9 Critical Response #2 11/13

Creative Project: 30%

As we will chart throughout the semester, charting art histories of the Black Atlantic can prove difficult, especially given that the very notion of the archive is itself troubled given the history of the Transatlantic slave trade. In light of this historical and contemporary tension, students will create a piece of work that lends itself to a contemporary archive of the diasporic practice. This project can be take the form of any genre (real or unreal)— creative writing, a fictional object, a visit from the future, an experimental short, a painting, a found object, a curated exhibition, etc.

Students must submit a 2 page proposal for this project on Monday, October 30th at 1 pm. This proposal must include a 200 word abstract for the project, key citations (academic and artistic), and an articulation of how this creative project enriches an understanding of key themes from this course.

Colored by the Sea Syllabus Page 2 You must submit this creative project along with a 1- 2 page catalogue entry (which can be as creative or conventional as you please) for the work on the final day of class Monday, December 18th at 1 pm, where students will informally present their contributions.

Required Course Materials: • All readings will be available on canvas. You are required to bring a printed copy of all course readings to class.

Additional Information: Grades Students will need to complete all assignments in order to pass the class. Grades will be determined by the following numerical breakdown: 97-100: A+ 87-89: B+ 77-79: C+

94-96: A 84-86: B 71-76: C 90-93: A- 80-83: B- 60-70: D/ Failure

Classroom Conduct The classroom is a forum for inquiry and the exchange of ideas, regardless of how unpopular, controversial, or disconcerting they may be at times. All members of the class—students and instructor alike—are expected to treat one another with respect. If a student feels that they are not being treated in a respectful manner, they should inform the instructor immediately.

Attendance Policy As per SAIC policy, students are required to attend every class session on time. Habitual tardiness will count as an unexcused absence. Federal financial aid regulations require SAIC to verify student attendance in order to distribute federal financial aid. Students should miss class only with reasonable cause, such as a documented emergency. Remember: more than two absences is grounds for receiving No Credit.

Academic Misconduct Please refer to the section on Academic Misconduct in the Student Handbook to ensure that you do not plagiarize, intentionally or otherwise. Any assignment that is plagiarized or the result of academic misconduct will receive 0 points. As members of a community of artists, designers, and scholar-practitioners, we have a duty to honor the intellectual and creative labor of others.

Accommodations for Students with Disabilities: SAIC is committed to full compliance with all laws regarding equal opportunities for students with disabilities. If you have a known or suspected disability, or if you think you might benefit from assistance or accommodations, please contact the Disability and Learning Resource Center (DLRC) by phone at 312-499-4278 or email at [email protected]

Writing Center Please visit https://www.supersaas.com/schedule/saic/WritingCenter or call 312-499-4138 to schedule an appointment.

Finally, this syllabus is our course contract. Read it carefully and thoroughly. As the instructor, I reserve the right to change the course material or schedule at any time in the semester. Should participation be lacking in class, I reserve the authority to administer quizzes, writing assignments, and other exercises, which will be figured into your participation grade.

Colored by the Sea Syllabus Page 3 Course Reading Schedule:

Week Readings

Introduction and Housekeeping W1 In-class Reading: 9/11 Glissant, Édouard, and Betsy Wing. Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. 5-9.

Excerpt from: Hartman, Saidiya. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008.

Audio: Jimmy Cliff’s Many Rivers to Cross (1969) Theories and Topographies of the Black Atlantic W2 Gilroy, Paul. “The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity.” The Black Atlantic: 9/18 Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993. 1-40.

Thompson, Robert F. "An Aesthetic of the Cool." African Arts. 7 (1973): 40-43; 64-67; 89-91.

Art Histories of the African Diaspora W3 Thompson, R F. "An Introduction to Transatlantic Black Art History: Remarks in Anticipation of 9/25 a Coming Golden Age of Afro-Americana." Journal of Asian and African Studies. 9 (1974): 192-201.

Thompson, Krista A. "A Sidelong Glance: The Practice of African Diaspora Art History in the United States." Art Journal. 70 (2011): 6-31.

Paul, Annie. "Visualizing Art in the Caribbean. MOSAKA, Tumelo." Infinite island: contemporary Caribbean art. Slavery’s Touch and Circum-atlantic Performance W4 Copeland, Huey, and Krista Thompson. "Perpetual Returns: New World Slavery and the 10/2 Matter of the Visual." Representations. 113.1 (2011): 1-15.

Roach, Joseph R. “Echoes in the Bone.” Cities of the Dead: Circum-atlantic Performance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. 33-68.

Practicing Diaspora W5 Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. "Criteria of Negro art." Crisis 32.6 (1926): 296. 100-105. 10/9 Hughes, Langston. The Negro artist and the racial mountain. 1926. 91-95. Critical Response #1 Edwards, Brent H. The Practice of Diaspora : Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Due Internationalism. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003. 1-15.

Cheng, Anne A. "Skin Deep: Josephine Baker and the Colonial Fetish." Camera Obscura. (2008): 35-52.

Colored by the Sea Syllabus Page 4 W6

10/16 No Class

Jazz Paintings: Sounding/Seeing the Harlem Renaissance W7 Calo, Mary Ann. "Alain Locke and American Art Criticism." American Art. 18.1 (2004): 88-97. 10/23 O'Meally, Robert G. "The Flat Plane, the Jagged Edge: Aaron Douglas's Musical Art." American Studies. 49.1 (2010): 21-35. Black Internationalism and Anticolonial Imagination W8 Brathwaite, Kamau. “History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in 10/30 Anglophone Caribbean Poetry.” Roots. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1993. 259-304.

Creative Fanon, Frantz.. “This is the Voice of Algeria.” A Dying Colonialism. New York: Grove, 2003. Project 69-97. Proposal Due Wainwright, Leon. "Aubrey Williams: A Painter in the Aftermath of Painting." Wasafiri : Perspectives on African, Caribbean, Asian and Black British Literature. (2009): 65-79.

Montage’s Edge W9 Ellison, Ralph. "The Art of Romare Bearden." The Massachusetts Review. 18.4 (1977): 11/6 673-680.

Bearden, Romare. Rectangular Structure in My Montage Paintings. New York, NY: Pergamon Press, 1969.

Glazer, Lee. "Signifying Identity: Art and Race in Romare Bearden's Projection." Art Bulletin. 76 (1994): 411-426. Black Arts Movement: AfriCobra + Art & Soul W10 (guest lecture by Marissa Baker, PhD Candidate, Art History, University of Illinois, 11/13 Chicago)

Zorach, Rebecca. "Art & Soul: an Experimental Friendship between the Street and a Critical Museum." Art Journal. 70.2 (2014): 66-87. Response #2 Due Donaldson, Jeff. "Africobra and Transatlantic Connections." Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. (2012): 84-89.

Hogu, Barbara J. "Inaugurating Africobra: History, Philosophy, and Aesthetics." Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. (2012): 90-97.

Black Abstraction

W11 Jones, Kellie. “In Motion: The Performative Impulse,” in South of Pico : African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. Duke University Press, 2017. 185- 263. 11/20 Mercer, Kobena. “Black Atlantic Abstraction: Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling Discrepant Abstraction. London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 2006. 182-205.

Colored by the Sea Syllabus Page 5 Queering the Black Atlantic

W12 Tinsley, Omise'eke Natasha. “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the Middle Passage.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies - Volume 14, Number 2-3 (2008): 11/27 191-215.

Russell, Nadia E. "Out and Bad: Toward a Queer Performance Hermeneutic in Jamaican Dancehall." Small Axe. 15.2 (2011): 7-23.

From BLACK to BLK

W13 Bernier, Celeste-Marie. " ‘Save Our Shit. Save Our Souls. Save Our Struggle’: Politics, Protest and Aesthetic Experimentation In the Blk Art Group exhibition (2011–12)." Slavery & 12/4 Abolition. 34.3 (2013): 515-523.

Fusco, Coco. “Captain Shit and Other Allegories of Black Stardom: The Work of Chris Ofili.” Bodies That Were Not Ours: and Other Writings. [2001]: 37- 42.

Chambers, Eddie. "Through the Wire: Black British People and the Riot." Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. (2015): 6-15. Return of the Sea: Texture, Tools, and Trade W14 Copeland, Huey. “Renée Green’s Diasporic Imagination.” Bound to Appear: Art, Slavery, and 12/11 the Site of Blackness in Multicultural America. , 2013. 153-197.

Anatsui, El, and Chika Okeke. "Slashing Wood, Eroding Culture: Conversation with El Anatsui." Nka : Journal of Contemporary African Art. (1994).

Enright, Robert. Resonant Surgeries: The Collaged World of Wangechi Mutu. Winnipeg: Arts Exhibition Manitoba Publications, 2008. Review Due

W15 Where do we go?: Past, Present, and Future in Contemporary Black Worldings

12/18

Creative Project Presentations

Colored by the Sea Syllabus Page 6