Afro-Atlantic Histories and Visual Culture

Catalog description

This course takes its name from a recent exhibition, Afro-Atlantic Histories, which began in São Paolo and traveled to several museums across the United States. Afro-Atlantic Histories serves as a key framing device for studying the interconnected histories and visual cultures of Black Atlantic exchanges. Central to this course is Paul Gilroy?s seminal work, The Black Atlantic (1993), and its critical use of the Atlantic as a unit of analysis for understanding Black consciousness and modernity. While the framework of the Black Atlantic puts into sharp focus the interconnectedness between the US/Europe and the African Diaspora, this course aims to expand the framework to closely study pertinent histories and visual culture production in the Caribbean and Latin America as well. Through an interdisciplinary and transhistorical approach, the course will explore themes of modernity, nationhood, nationalism, revolution, identity formation, diaspora, ritual and spirituality, liberation, freedom, portraiture, indigeneity, feminism, and performance through visual culture from the 16th century to the present. Each week, students will engage with relevant primary and secondary readings associated with the course?s specific theme. We will also pay particular attention to the larger cultural, historical, and ideological contexts in which the art and visual culture being discussed were created.