ARTH 205
Picturing Race: From Early Modern Europe to Now
Last Offered Spring 2008
Division I
Cross-listed AFR 205
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Class Details

This historically wide-ranging course surveys visual representations of race in three different periods–early modern Europe, the 19th-20th centuries, and the contemporary–in order to ask questions about how art establishes conventions for racial imagery and about how art may challenge and revise these conventions. The course begins with the black servant motif in Renaissance portraits of white patrons by, for example, Anthony van Dyck, both to identify standard visual elements in the repertoire of poses for black attendants and, equally, to note departures from the norm. The second section considers Winslow Homer’s Caribbean paintings (with subsequent transformations in the subject by Romare Bearden and Derek Walcott), as well as works by African-American artists such as Henry O. Tanner and Jacob Lawrence. The course concludes with discussion of Glenn Ligon, Fred Wilson, Kara Walker, and other contemporary artists who engage in re-visionary explorations of identity. Throughout, analysis of race includes “whiteness” as a racial category. Time will be spent at the Williams College Museum of Art viewing works from the collection.
The Class: Format: lecture/discussion
Limit: 20
Expected: 20
Class#: 3259
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: evaluation based on participation in class discussions; midterm; final; short paper
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: Art majors and Africana Studies concentrators
Distributions: Division I
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ARTH 205 Division I AFR 205 Division I

Class Grid

Updated 4:47 am

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