Art History: African Art

Catalog description

Introduction to the visual arts of North, West, and Central Africa, from the Nubians in the Nile Valley to the Yoruba people in Nigeria and the Kuba people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The course will provide an overview of the range of artistic expression among selected ethnic and cultural groups. Diverse media, including wood, ivory, and stone sculpture, metalwork, ceramics, and textiles, will be studied within their social and cultural contexts. The course will examine the everyday and ceremonial uses of art objects, their religious use such as in rites of passage and initiation, funerary and other rituals, and ancestral cults, as well as the social functions of art objects (including bodily adornment and clothing) as expressions of gender roles, systems of hierarchy, methods of social control, and the power of kingship.