IAHIS 3530 African-American Art: The Harlem Renaissance Through the Civil Rights Movement
The primary goal of this course is to study the responses of African-American artists of the twentieth century to the issues of power, otherness, and selfhood. Following a brief glance at the history of African-American cultural representations from the eras of slavery and the Civil War, the course pays critical attention to the five decades between the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement. The class first studies the New Negro" awareness among artists in the years between the world wars moving up through the Civil Rights Movement when more complicated questions of gender class and political identities profoundly affected the strategies of African-American artists. The semester concludes with a quick look at the more recent contributions of African-Americans to the discourse of contemporary art.
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