Virtual Syllabus

ENG 400 African and African American Still Photography

(HYBRID: Writing Emphasis)

Prof. Spring Ulmer                  Email: SULMER@wcupa.edu                        Office: Main Hall 524

Office phone: (610) 436-2626           Office hours: MWF 10-12 and by appointment

MWF 1:00-1:50 p.m. Recitation 205 (face-to-face at beginning of semester, and increasingly becoming an online facilitated virtual class with a face to face or Skyped class meeting for every week the class “goes” virtual)

Virtual Technology

- Accept Blogger invite and become fluent using Blogger. Our class blog can be read at: http://africanandafricanamericanphoto.blogspot.com/

- Although the blog can be read at this address link, it cannot be added to virtually from that link—in order to fully participate you need to log in to your Google account and I will walk you through how to post onto the blog—something you will need to do each week, as this will be the showcase for all of your annotated bibliographies (and accompanying images, if you can upload them). You will also be required to comment on your peers’ annotated bibliographies by using the comment box on this blog.

- Email me all your required research proposals, drafts, and papers at the above email address.

- We will meet three times face-to-face at the beginning of the semester, and then there will be a space of about two or three weeks in which everything will be facilitated via blog and email. When I return from abroad, I will arrange a series of Skyped meetings, so be prepared to download and install Skype (it’s free, and it will allow us to discuss in real time virtually): http://www.skype.com/en/

- At the end of the semester, we will prepare a photo exhibit or your photographs, as inspired by those you have been studying all semester. We will discuss whether we would like this exhibit to be at West Chester University and/or a virtual exhibit.

Course Description

In this course we will study of the politics of representation (and the relationship between the image and ideology) in modern and contemporary African and African American still photography. Aesthetics, gender, class, the impact of slavery, lynching, colonialism, neocolonialism, and globalization on the arts, as well as issues of memory, identity, subjectivity, historical “truth,” race, and the African diaspora will be explored in relation to pan-African connections between African photographers, cross-cultural connections between African and African American photographers, and various national and international black arts’ movements. We will consider the production, distribution, consumption and archiving of these visual texts, as well as the materiality and mass replication of the photographic artifact, and examine various genres of visual texts, from the social documentary to portraiture to art photography. As we analyze the photography of Gordan Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, Lyle Ashton Harris, Seydou Keita, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Lalla Essaydi, and Zanele Muholi, among others, we will consider to what extent photographs comment upon or subvert racial identities and social hierarchies, what role the camera plays in protest movements, and whether one, as Audre Lorde asks, can ever dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools. Reading Franz Fanon, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Okwui Enwezor, bell hooks, and Deborah Willis will provide a theoretical basis for our discussions.

Textbooks

Enwezor, Okwui and Colin Richard. Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African

Photography. New York: Steidl/ICP, 2006.

Willis, Deborah. Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present.

New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002.

Films

This is not a film course. The film clips we will watch in this course are meant to provide visual rhetorical and cultural contexts for still-photographers’ works. Research will be based on still photography, but students are welcome to include films as secondary sources for research papers.

Black Girl (1966) Sembene; Daughters of the Dust (1991) Dash; Black Skin, White Mask (1996) Julien; And So Angels Die (2001) Absa; Grey Matter (2011) Ruhorahoza; Richardo Rangel (2012) Z’Graggen; Emmanuel Mbwaye. Photography Icon: Beacons of Time (2013) CRTV; Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (2014) Harris.

Course Objectives

This course fulfills the requirements for the Writing Emphasis (WE) component of the WCU General Curriculum. The development of students’ writing abilities is an objective of the course. It meets three General Education goals that help students learn to communicate effectively, respond thoughtfully to diversity, and think critically and analytically. Readings, assignments, workshop activities, discussions, and conferences are all designed to help you develop these abilities. Students will be given opportunities to revise their writing with the benefit of feedback from their instructor and peers. Students will engage in both informal and formal writing assignments. The final research seminar paper will consist of 2500-3000 words.

Course Outcomes

After completing this course, students should be able to:

1) Identify and discuss how African and African American photography is both a product of and responds to historical events and movements, including but not limited to colonialism, slavery, migration, Civil Rights, Independence, neocolonialism, and globalism.

2) Identify and discuss thematic and formal development of both African photography and African American photography; comment upon issues of belonging and community inherent in black photography of the African diaspora.

3) Understand main theoretical debates concerning politics of representation, production, distribution, consumption and archiving of photography, as well as the materiality and mass replication of the photographic artifact, and various genres of photography (i.e., social documentary, portraiture, art photography). In so doing, students will meet Program Learning Outcome #3: Theoretical Terms, Concepts, which requires that “Graduating seniors will define, apply, and integrate theoretical terms, concepts, and perspectives important to English as a discipline in their own work and will identify and analyze them in the work of other writers.”

4) Engage in issues of memory, identity, subjectivity, historical “truth,” ideology, and race as it surfaces within the black photographic tradition.

5) Learn to visually analyze photographs, differentiate between observations and inferences, and improve oral and written communication skills by participating in class discussions, drafting and revising writing assignments, and presenting this writing among an audience of peers. In so doing, students will meet Program Learning Outcome #1: Diverse Genres, which requires that “students will use the conventions of diverse textual genres (e.g., the nonfiction essay, poetry, proposals, autobiography, novel, memoir, film, plays, editorials, and so forth) in their own work and will explain and evaluate the use of these conventions in the work of other writers.” In this case, obviously, “diverse genres” refers to visual literacy and the ways that photographs interact with text to challenge genre definitions and challenge the meaning of images.

6) Appreciate the value of participating in a course that offers a global perspective; welcome the opportunity to articulate one’s social location (which may mean recognizing one’s privilege), and engaging with pressing topics of concern as relate to issues of representation that are becoming more and more politically pronounced given the onset of social media.

Distance Learning Statement

This course requires use of a Google blog, iCloud (to access required photographs), and a WCU e-mail account. You will also use Skype to connect with your instructor and your peers, so a computer camera peripheral is necessary.  Technical assistance is available through WCU Help Desk Support at 610.436.3350 or D2L 24/7 support at 1.877.730.6235.

This course meets both in person and in an online environment. As such it is a hybrid course. You must be computer literate in order to take the course. You will need to be proficient in Microsoft Word, WCU email and D2L, and know how to upload file attachments. Students without experience using D2L (Desire to Learn is the university’s current learning management system) can contact the Student Help Desk to arrange instruction. Training videos and technical support are also available: http://www.wcupa.edu/infoservices/d2l/default.asp. I will also provide instruction to help you navigate the Google blog, iCloud, and D2L platforms. You will need access to Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, as other browsers do not always work correctly in the D2L environment. Please contact the Student Help Desk if you have questions about whether your computer equipment is sufficient for success in the course (Phone:  610-436-3350, or by email via http://www.wcupa.edu/infoservices/acc/).

Conferences

As this class meets only approximately 20% of the time in a face-to-face environment, please take advantage of my office hours on campus at the beginning of the semester and begin a dialogue with me that we can then continue via email and Skype throughout the semester. My office hours are posted at the top of the syllabus, but I will make every effort to accommodate you at the beginning of the semester, should you need to meet me at another time. You can contact me by email at anytime, and I am committed to responding to your emails within 1 business day (when possible—at times I may be out of the country and unable to secure an internet connection, but I will make every effort to be as connected as I can be at all times, though on weekends and holidays I may also take longer to respond). I will also hold Skype office hours for 2 hours each week whenever possible.

Library Services Distance Education Policies

Distance education students enrolled at West Chester University have access to library services and support through the Internet and by telephone. Copies of journal articles that are available either through the university library’s own holdings or that are obtained through interlibrary loan will be mailed to the home address of distance education students. Distance education students must use the ILLIAD service to request copies of journal articles and there is no charge to students for this service. Registration for ILLIAD can be done by selecting ILLIAD from Quick Links toward the bottom of the library’s home page. Registration requires the entry of the student’s 14- or 16-digit authorization number, which can be found on their WCU I.D. card or requested by calling the library circulation desk (610-436-2946). While registering, distance education students must indicate their status as “Distance Ed Grad”. And include the mailing address where they would like the articles to be mailed. The articles can also be faxed if that option is chosen as a preference on the ILLIAD registration form. Sometimes articles can be e-mailed as an attachment if they are available in electronic format.

Civility

You will interact with your instructor and your peers in discussion forums on our blog, over Skype, and via email. You will be expected to communicate in a respectful manner and to keep your conduct professional, so as to meet the social expectations of this discourse community. Civility is outlined as an expectation of all students in the Student Code of Conduct.  Please refer to the section on civility located in the following website: http://www.wcupa.edu/_services/stu.lif/ramseyeview/policies/conduct_code.asp

Please also refer to the section on technology civility located in the following website:  http://www.wcupa.edu/infoservices/informationTechnology/TechCivility101.asp            

Writing Assignments

All papers are due by 11:59pm on the due date and must be sent to my email address. Please use 1” margins in 12 pt. Times New Roman for all written assignments and attach your papers, rather than pasting them directly into your email message. Please keep electronic copies of all of your completed essays. I will return your writing to you with my feedback on it via email. As this is a course focused on critical research writing, we will not spend much of our course time discussing grammar or correctness issues in your writing, but I will provide you with feedback on these issues as they appear in your writing, along with resources to work on those issues so that you can address them in future writing assignments.

Academic Honesty

I expect the writing you produce for this course to be your own, and if you submit the work of others as your own in this course it will result in a formal charge of plagiarism. Your active participation in discussion and in the revision process will allow me to see your ideas develop as you produce your drafts and papers, and this is one reason that I require drafts for your assignments. I expect the documentation of source information for your papers in this course to be exemplary. Since research is a requirement for the papers in the course, so is accurate documentation of your research sources. Failure to cite sources completely and accurately will result in a formal charge of plagiarism, in a failing grade on the plagiarized assignment, and almost certainly a failing grade in the course. I will be happy to answer your questions about appropriate use of source information and help you acknowledge sources correctly. Please ask if you have questions.

Course Requirements

Three significant writing assignments (worth 70% of your grade)

Annotated Bibliography (13 entries)              20%

Paper 1 (free-write draft - informal)               5%                                                     

Paper 2 (with peer commentary highlighted) 15%

Research Seminar Paper                                  35% [Program Learning Outcome #1 and #3]

Participation via blog and Skype discussions 15%

Photography project                                       10% [Program Learning Outcome #1]

The best seminar paper will be submitted for consideration for an award. (Students who don’t want their papers considered may notify me in writing.) Seminar papers will be researched, drafted, revised and peer-reviewed. Ten annotated sources will be required for the seminar research paper, and students will be required to draw their research from and argue with both primary and secondary source texts. In addition to writing a scholarly paper, students will be expected to participate in a mock-conference and deliver their papers in panels and in front of an audience comprised of their peers.

Participation

This course requires your active participation. As we will view photographs and read texts for this course, our interactions face-to-face and via blog comments and Skyped conference peer-to-peer and peer-to-instructor calls will teach us the most about how we look at the world—especially the African and African American world (if there is such a thing)—and how we read. You are not only responsible for completing the reading and writing assignments, but you are also responsible for contributing to the photography and writing community comprised of your peers and me. Completing assignments for the class will require you to engage actively with others. I expect all of your communications with me and with other students in the class to be respectful. While you will critique and analyze the work of professional photographers and writers and the work and ideas of your classmates, my expectation is that you will do so constructively and kindly. Please see the guidelines on civility included in this syllabus. You should fee free to contact me if you receive communications from classmates that you feel are inappropriate or offensive.

Annotated Bibliography

This assignment corresponds to the photographs you view and the texts you read concerning these images every week in the beginning of the course. I expect you to understand and demonstrate through this assignment your understanding of visual analysis and the difference between an observation and an inference.

Papers 1 and 2

You have two drafts of your research seminar paper due for this class. Each paper needs to be sent to me via email by 11:59pm on the due date.

Research Seminar Paper

Your research paper will be an original scholarly essay comparing works of two (or more) photographers studied in this class. You will be asked to describe and analyze several specific photographs, place them both within scholarly contexts (quoting other scholars who may have analyzed these works before you) as well as within appropriate political and cultural frameworks. As you attempt to theorize the relationship of these photographs from an attempted global standpoint, you will draw from outside sources that help deepen your discussion. Ultimately, your voice should be reflected in your argument. Your research paper should further the scholarship of either or both African and/or African American photography, and demonstrate theoretical understanding of photographic and neocolonial theories and fluency writing about the photographic as it collides with the textual to form hybridized genres. You must submit this paper to me by via email by 11:59pm on the due date.

Films

The films for this course are in the library and can be viewed by you at any time that is convenient. They are meant simply to further expand the visual rhetorical and cultural contexts within which still-photographers work. Except for Grey Matter, a DVD of which I own and will make available to you, and Emmanuel Mbwaye, Photography Icon; Black Skin, White Mask, and Baldwin’s Nigger which are available online, these films listed below are available in the FHG Library’s Instructional Media Center (IMC). The IMC is located on the lower level of the library and is open Mon-Thu 8am-10pm, Fri 8am-4pm, Sat 12-5pm, and Sun 2-10pm.

And So Angels Die (56 min.)

Mory, a troubled Senegalese poet leaves Paris after a break up with his French wife and returns to Senegal without any income, separated from his children. There he faces his abusive father’s wishes that he marry a Senegalese woman. Mory finds himself feeling alien in Europe and Senegal. Read “A Window on Whose Reality?” Mermin (online).

Black Girl (65 min.)

This film explores the experience of a Sengalese woman who travels to France to work as a nanny for a French family. Read “A Farewell Salute to Ousmane Sembene” Assensoh (online).

Black Skin, White Mask (68 min.)

Isaac Julien crafts an art film that follows the life of Frantz Fanon from Martinique to Paris to Algeria where he works as a psychoanalytic theorist for the anti-colonial movement. Read Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 2008.

Daughters of the Dust (112 min.)

A drama that takes place in the Georgia South Sea Islands and portrays Gullah culture. Read Delmez, Kathryn E., Henry Louis Gates Jr., Franklin Sirmans and Robert Storr, eds. Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012.

Emmanuel Mbwaye. Photography Icon: Beacons of Time (52 min.)

<http://african-photography-initiatives.org/index.php/archives/camerun>

This documentary portrays the career of Emmanuel Mbwaye, a news photographer in Cameroon and the ongoing efforts, after his retirement, to archive his negatives.

Grey Matter (100 min.)

This film within a film is set in Kigali, Rwanda. Balthazar tries to produce his first feature film about a brother and sister dealing with the aftermath of genocide, but cannot find any financial support. He borrows recklessly from a loan shark and eventually makes his film that shows the horror and systematic madness of trauma and political violence.

Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (2014) Harris.

Attendance and Participation

Because this class is structured as a seminar and workshop, attendance is vital. Excused absences must come accompanied with documentation. Please arrive on time for class; being more than fifteen minutes late counts as an absence. Come to each class session prepared to ask questions, pose topics for discussion, and respond to what other members of the class have to say. The class dynamic relies on the active participation of its members. Only three absences (the equivalent of a week) are allowed. Medical situations or emergencies are considered exceptions to this rule, and if you find yourself in such a situation, it is your responsibility to contact the Office of Judicial Affairs and Student Assistance at 610-436-3511. Too many missed classes can seriously affect your final grade. The Office of Judicial Affairs and Student Assistance provides a notification service on behalf of students who missed classes for an extended period of time (three days or more) due to a medical situation or a significant family emergency. This notification does not serve as an “excused absence,” it simply alerts me as to why you have been absent. If you are absent for a period longer than a week, please know that passing this course will be extremely challenging for you, and that you must call (610) 436-3511 to request assistance from the Office of Judicial Affairs and Student Assistance.

Absences Policy for University-Sanctioned Events

You are advised to carefully read and comply with the excused absences policy for university-sanctioned events contained in the WCU Undergraduate Catalog.  In particular, please note that the “responsibility for meeting academic requirements rests with the student” does not excuse you from completing required academic work, and that I will require a “fair alternative” to attendance on those days that you must be absent from class. I will designate such alternatives and their due dates prior to the event. This means that you must submit original documentation on University letterhead signed by the activity director, coach, or adviser detailing the specifics of the event in advance. You are also expected to turn in assignments due on days of the event prior to their due dates.

Diversity Fair Language

The writing for this course should not assume the gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability status, or sexual orientation of a person is a known.

Photography Project

There will be a final photography project that is assigned. It is not graded, but you will need to complete the assignment to pass the course, or suffer a loss of half a letter grade to your final grade as a consequence.

Grades

The goal here is to fall in love with photography and research. To achieve this aim, I will give you as much feedback on your visual analyses and writing as I can via hand-written comments, comments on your blog posts, and via email and Skype conferencing. I will conference with each one of you individually throughout the semester to discuss your writing and class progress. Grades will be based on traditional standards and I am always glad to discuss my rubrics and your grades with you at any time:

• A (93-100), A- (90-92)—Excellent: Work that presents original thinking or insight that is clearly, correctly, and gracefully written. The piece reflects a sophisticated voice, rhetoric, analysis, and language.

• B+ (87-89), B (83-86), B- (80-82)—Good: Work that fully satisfies an assignment's expectations with clear competence. The level of sophistication of thought and writing that represents an A is absent, but the piece is well written in terms of argument, mechanics, support and structure, and choice of details.

• C+ (77-79), C (73-76), C- (70-72)—Fair: An adequate piece of work that minimally meets an assignment’s specifications and is generally correct in terms of mechanics and structure, but one that lacks thorough analysis or elaboration and sharp focus.

• D+ (67-69), D (63-66), D- (60-62)—Poor: Work that is inadequate in at least one way, including failure to maintain focus, skimpy or illogical development, and significant errors in writing mechanics.

• F range (0-59)—Failure: Work that fails to respond acceptably to an assignment or that fails to be submitted on time.

Plagiarism and Academic Integrity

Plagiarism, or passing off the work of another as your own, is a serious offense. In the academic world, plagiarism is theft. Information from sources, whether quoted, paraphrased, or summarized, must be given credit through citations. It is especially important that paraphrase be both cited and put into your own words. Merely rearranging a sentence or changing a few words is not sufficient. It is your responsibility to adhere to the university’s standards for academic integrity. Violations of academic integrity include any act that violates the rights of another student in academic work, that involves misrepresentation of your own work, or that disrupts the instruction of the course. In addition to plagiarizing, other violations include (but are not limited to): cheating on assignments or examinations; selling, purchasing, or exchanging of term papers; falsifying of information; and using your own work from one class to fulfill the assignment for another class without significant modification. Proof of academic misconduct can result in the automatic failure and removal from this course. For questions, refer to the English Department’s Undergraduate Handbook, the Undergraduate Catalogue, the Ram’s Eye View, and the University website.

No Grade, Violation of Academic Integrity, and Violation of Student Code of Conduct

For questions regarding Academic Dishonesty, the No-Grade Policy, Sexual Harassment, or the Student Code of Conduct, refer to the English Department’s Undergraduate Handbook, the Undergraduate Catalogue, the Ram’s Eye View, and the University website. Please understand that improper conduct in any of these areas will not be tolerated and may result in immediate ejection from the class.

Z Grade Policy

The "Z" Grade designation will be given to a student who stops attending class, does not complete assignments, and fails to officially withdraw from a course by the 9th week of the semester. This grade has the same value as an F for all academic purposes, including computation of the cumulative average.

Informal Assignments

These will include in-class writing assignments and keeping a journal. Note that these minor assignments collectively will be worth more than 25% of your final grade.

Paper Format

Always include your name, the date, and course number and section on the top right corner of the page. Number your pages. Double space the lines for prose; single space for poetry. Staple multiple pages. Use 12-pt Times New Roman font.

Assignment Policy

I will accept NO late papers. (The only papers that are handed in post-deadline that I may award passing grades to will be written by students with documented, excused absences.) Papers must arrive in class on the day they are due, typed, and in paper form.

Writing Center 

Visits to the University Writing Center are encouraged.  Lawrence 214: 610-436-2121.

Library Support

FHG Library offers services to help students, including advice on locating traditional and electronic sources, and interlibrary loan (free of charge). Approach a reference librarian for assistance or visit the library web site for additional information. 

Students with Disabilities

If you have a disability that requires accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), please present your letter of accommodations and meet with me as soon as possible so that I can support your success. If you would like to know more about West Chester University’s Services for Students with Disabilities (OSSD), please contact the OSSD, located at 223 Lawrence Center. OSSD hours of Operation are Monday – Friday 8:30am - 4:30pm. Phone number: 610-436-2564. Fax number: 610-430-5860. Email address: ossd@wcupa.edu  Web address: http://www.wcupa.edu/ussss/ossd/

APSCUF

I am a member of APSCUF, the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties. We uphold the highest standards of teaching, scholarly inquiry, and service. We are an organization that is committed to promoting excellence in all that we do to ensure that our students receive the highest quality education. For more on our organization, see www.apscuf.org.

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS

You are encouraged to sign up for the University’s free WCU ALERT service, which delivers official WCU emergency text messages directly to your cell phone. For more information and to sign up, visit www.wcupa.edu/wcualert. To report an emergency, call the Department of Public Safety at 610-436-3311.

SCHEDULE OF READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS

NOTE: Unless the reading is from a required text, a photocopy will be provided to you; please come to class prepared with the required texts and/or photocopies assigned to you that week…

Week One: Negritude as Decolonization in African Portraiture

Monday August 24, Wednesday August 26, Friday August 28

Overview: bell hooks “Art on My Mind” in Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. Introduction to the hybrid learning atmosphere and requirements. Joining the blog, and how to comment on one another’s posts.

View: Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe

Read: Michelle Lamuniere’s You Look Beautiful Like That: The Portrait Photographs of Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe; Okwui Enwezor and Octavio Zaya’s “Colonial Imaginary, Tropes of Disruption: History, Culture, and Representation in the Works of African Photographers,” in In/sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present, (New York: Harry Abrams, 1996) pp. 26-35; Elizabeth Bigham’s “Issues of Authorship in the Portrait Photographs of Seydou Keita” in African Arts (Spring 1999): 56-67, 94-96.

Learn how to perform visual analysis (tell the difference between observation and inference) and how to compose an annotated bibliography.

Write: Annotated Bibliography #1 on the work of Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe

Discuss politics of representation, production, distribution, consumption and archiving of photography, as well as the materiality and mass replication of the photographic artifact.

________________________________________________________________________

Week Two: African American Slavery, Reconstruction, Migration, and Early Portraiture

Monday August 31 (Last day to add/drop), Wednesday September 2, Friday September 4

View and read: Deborah Willis’ Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present; Shawn Michelle Smith’s “Spectacles of Whiteness: The Photography of Lynching” in Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture.

Film Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People

Learn how to read a narrative in a photograph.

Due: Annotated Bibliography #1 posted on blog by midnight Monday, October 31. Respond to a classmate’s blog entry at some time this week.

________________________________________________________________________

Week Three African American Depression-era FSA Documentary Photography

Monday September 7 (NO CLASS; Labor Day), Wednesday September 9, Friday September 11

View: Gordon Parks from Charles Johnson’s The Photographs of Gordon Parks: The Library of Congress

Read: Gordon Park’s A Choice of Weapons

Learn the ins and outs of the genre of documentary still photography and in this way beginning to become familiar with multiple photographic (and often collaboratively) textual genres.

Write: Annotated Bibliography #2 on the work of Gordon Parks

________________________________________________________________________

Week Four: Issues of Memory and Identity in the African Diaspora (1940s-60) and the Archive

Monday September 14, Wednesday September 16, Friday September 18

View and read: Tina M. Campt’s “The Girl and/in the Gaze” from Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe; Homi Bhabha video: “On Global Memory: Thoughts on the Barbaric Transmission of Culture”

Learn about diaspora

Quiz: Demonstrate your understanding of belonging and community inherent in black photography of the African diaspora

Due: Annotated Bibliography #2 posted on blog by midnight Monday Sept. 14. Respond to a classmate’s blog entry at some time this week.

________________________________________________________________________

Week Five: Race and Subjectivity in Post-WWII American Documentary Photography

Monday September 21, Wednesday September 23, Friday September 25

View: Roy De Carava

Read: Erina Duganne’s “Roy DeCarava, Harlem, and the Psychic Self” and “Epilogue: Dawoud Bey and the Act of Reciprocity” in The Self in Black and White: Race and Subjectivity in Postwar American Photography

Learn: Ethics of documentary photography

Write: Annotated Bibliography #3 on the work of Roy De Carava. (I don’t have images to link to the blog for De Carava outside of those in the photocopied packet; I urge you to familiarize yourself with his photographs online.)

________________________________________________________________________

Week Six: African Revolution and the African Self-Portrait

Monday September 28, Wednesday September 30, Friday October 2

View: Samuel Fosso

Read: Frantz Fanon’s “Algeria Unveiled”; Samuel Fosso’s “Here’s Looking at Me” in The Guardian 27 June 2002.  <http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/story/0,3604,744638,00html>.

Film: Black Skin, White Mask (1996) Julien

Learn: Social location theory; introducing students to theoretical concepts.

Write: Annotated Bibliography #4 on the work of Samuel Fosso. (A few of Fosso’s photographs can be found in the “In/Sight” link posted to the blog week 1, but I urge you to familiarize yourself with his photographs online.)

Due: Annotated Bibliography #3 posted on blog by midnight Monday September 28. Respond to a classmate’s blog entry at some time this week.

________________________________________________________________________

Week Seven: African Independence and Artistic Militancy

Monday October 5 (NO CLASS; Fall break), Wednesday October 7, Friday October 9

Read: Ousmane Sembene: The Making of a Militant Artist; “A Farewell Salute to Ousmane Sembene” Assensoh (online); “Art at the Crossroads: Senegalese Artists Since the 1960s” Harney; Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Decolonising the Mind. The Politics of Language in African Literature, p. 4-17

Film: Black Girl (1966) Sembene. (You will have to watch this video at the library; please make time in your schedule, and be aware that many of you will be needing to view it and do not check it out).

Learn: MLA format overview, politics of language and culture workshop

Write: Annotated Bibliography #5 on the work of Ousmane Sembene (use the film as the annotated “photograph” you choose of his work, or you are also welcome to watch any other film by Sembene and annotate it), and Paper #1: Identify and discuss how African and African American photography is both a product of and responds to historical events and movements (3 pages, informal, free-write, no citations needed)

Due: Annotated Bibliography #4 posted on blog by midnight Monday Oct 5. Respond to a classmate’s blog entry at some time this week.

________________________________________________________________________

Week Eight: Gullah Culture in Contemporary African American Photography

Monday October 12, Wednesday October 14, Friday October 16

View: Carrie Mae Weems

Read: Deborah Willis “Photographing Between the Lines: Beauty, Politics, and the Poetic Vision of Carrie Mae Weems” in Kathryn E. Delmez, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Franklin Sirmans and Robert Storrs’ Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video.

Film: Daughters of the Dust (1991) Dash

Learn: Standpoint analysis, establishing voice when writing about art and issues of revision

Write: Annotated Bibliography #6 on the work of Carrie Mae Weems

Due: Annotated Bibliography #5 posted on blog by midnight Monday Oct 12. Respond to a classmate’s blog entry this week and email Paper #1 to me by midnight Friday Oct. 16.

________________________________________________________________________

Week Nine: Afrofemcentrism in Contemporary American Photography

Monday October 19, Wednesday October 21, Friday October 23

View: Lorna Simpson and Adrienne Piper

Read: John P. Bowles’ “‘Acting Like a Man’: The Mythic Being and Black Feminism” in Adrian Piper: Race, Gender, and Embodiment, and Hilton Als’ “Marianne Lately—Lorna Simpson and the Cinema of Feminine Illusion” in Okwui Enwezor’s Lorna Simpson

Learn: Introduction to Feminism Without Borders; Mohanty’s “‘Under Western Eyes,’ Revisited”

Write: Annotated Bibliography #7 and #8 on the works of Lorna Simpson and Adrienne Piper

Presentations on Skype of Paper #1

Due: Annotated Bibliography #6 posted on blog by midnight Monday Oct 19. Respond to a classmate’s blog entry this week.

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Week Ten: Postcolonial Feminist and Queer Identities in African Photography

Monday October 26, Wednesday October 28, Friday October 30

View: Lalla Essaydi, Zanele Muholi, and Yinka Shonibare

Read: Kylie Thomas’s “Passing and the Politics of Queer Loss Post-Apartheid” in Impossible Mourning: HIV/AIDS and Visuality after Apartheid; Okwui Enwezor’s “The Joke Is on You” in Nka, 2015, and Enwezor’s interview with Shonibare: “Yinka Shonibare: on hedonism, masquerade, carnivalesque and power,” as well as Lalla Essaydi’s artist statement in Lalla Essaydi: Converging Territories 

Learn: Aesthetics of queerness, disidentity theory, writing camp; again introducing students to theoretical concepts

Write: Annotated Bibliography #8, #9, and #10 on the works of Lalla Essaydi, Zanele Muholi, and Yinka Shonibare. (You will be responsible for researching the works of these photographers online and selecting a respective photograph for each for your annotated bibliographies.) Paper #2, an in-depth proposal of your research seminar paper

Due: Annotated Bibliography #7 and #8 posted on blog by midnight Monday October 26. Respond to a classmate’s blog entry this week. Email me a draft of Paper #2 (your proposal) due Friday October 30 by midnight.

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Week Eleven: Contemporary Queer African American Photography

Monday November 2, Wednesday November 4, Friday November 6

View: Lyle Ashton Harris

Read: Kwame Anthony Appiah’s “Lyle’s Images” and “A Conversation: Lyle Ashton Harris and Senam Okudzeto” in Cassandra Coblentz, Lyle Ashton Harris, Susan Krane, and Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Lyle Ashton Harris: Blow Up

Write: Annotated Bibliography #11 on the work of Lyle Ashton Harris

Learn: Queer writing about queer photography; introduction to Munoz’s “Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity”

Peer Review of Paper #2

Due: Annotated Bibliography #8, #9, and #10 posted on blog by midnight Monday November 2. Respond to a classmate’s blog entry this week.

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Week Twelve: Contemporary Documentary African Photography

Monday November 9, Wednesday November 11, Friday November 13

View: Zwelethu Mthethwa

Films: Ruhorahoza; Richardo Rangel (2012) Z’Graggen; Emmanuel Mbwaye. Photography Icon: Beacons of Time (2013) CRTV

Write: Annotated Bibliography #12 on the work of Zwelethu Mthethwa. Begin secondary research and gathering outside source material for your research seminar paper

Due: Annotated Bibliography #11 posted on blog by midnight Monday November 9. Respond to a classmate’s blog entry this week and email me the final proposal (Paper #2), revised after receiving my comments and having the proposal peer reviewed, by midnight Friday November 13. Begin your research paper immediately.

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Week Thirteen: Contemporary African Art Photography

Monday November 16, Wednesday November 18, Friday November 20

Read and View: Wangechi Mutu’s “The Power of Earth in My Work” in Karen Milbourne, Allan DeSouza, Clive van der Berg and Wangechi Mutu’s Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa; Okwui Enwezor and Colin Richard’s Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography;

Film: Grey Matter (2011) Ruhorahoza (I will come show this film in class one day this week with my son in tow)

Due: Annotated Bibliography #12 posted on blog by midnight Monday November 16. Respond to a classmate’s blog entry this week.

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Week Fourteen – Skype Conferences

Monday November 23 (Winter/Spring Registration begins), Wednesday November 25 (Thanksgiving break), Friday November 27 (Thanksgiving break)

Read: “A Window on Whose Reality?” Mermin

Film: And So Angels Die (2001) Absa. (This film is available in the library, and you will need to make time in your schedule to watch it. Please remember other students are also needing to watch the film, and be courteous and do not check it out.)

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Week Fifteen

Monday November 30 (Last day to withdraw), Wednesday December 2, Friday December 4

Peer Review

Learn: Photo projects

Due: Research Seminar Paper

Week Sixteen

Monday December 7 (Last day of classes)

Photography Show on campus

Finals December 8-12

Bibliography

Bowles, John P. Adrian Piper: Race, Gender, and Embodiment. Durham, NC: Duke University

Press, 2011.

African American artist Adrian Piper employs and problematizes the truth of photographs. In Mythic Being, Piper records her experience while assuming a black male identity, thereby challenging viewers to think about the social construction of identity. Adrian Piper: Race, Gender, and Embodiment will help students understand conceptual photographic framings of race.

Brielmaier, Isolde. Zwelethu Mthethwa. New York: Aperture, 2010.

Zwelethu Mthethwa is one of the most popular photographers in post-Apartheid South Africa. His color photographs of black and colored South Africans echo Walker Evans’ portraits of Depression-era farm workers. Mthethwa’s portrayal of labor issues, domesticity, and the environment through African portraiture marries the European and North American documentary photographic tradition to African commercial studio photography. Mthethwa’s photographs will encourage students to identify cross-cultural influences between African and African American photography.

Campt, Tina M. Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2012.

Certain black European communities used family photography to create forms of identification and community. Tina M. Campt examines two archives, one filled with snapshots of black German families (1900-1945), and the other comprised of studio portraits of West Indian migrants to Birmingham, England (1948-1960). Students will find these photographs comment on the experience of difference within diaspora.

Coblentz, Cassandra, Lyle Ashton Harris, Susan Krane, and Kwame Anthony Appiah. Lyle

Ashton Harris: Blow Up. New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2008.

Lyle Ashton Harris photographs, according to one critic, “the game of appearances and perception: how we present ourselves in public, how our bodies--and the meanings they carry--are received by others, how gender and race are constructed...” Blow Up features reproductions from throughout Harris’ career, including “white face” self-portraits of the late 1980s and his Ghana-based photographs.

Delmez, Kathryn E., Henry Louis Gates Jr., Franklin Sirmans and Robert Storr, eds. Carrie Mae

Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video. New Haven, CT: Yale University

Press, 2012.

Contemporary artist Carrie Mae Weems’ photographs, films, and installations engage in the presentation of African Americans and African American culture. Her photographs comment upon slavery, Gullah and Geechee culture, African American women and families, and global social inequalities. Students will be exposed to the complexity of visual representations of African American experience.

Duganne, Erina. The Self in Black and White: Race and Subjectivity in Postwar American

Photography. Darmouth, NH: Dartmouth, 2010.

Focusing on Bruce Davidson’s Civil Rights images and Roy DeCarava’s Harlem photographs, and tracing photographic movements from the Kamoinge Workshop, an African American photographers’ collective existent in the 1960s to the 1965 government-sponsored photography exhibition “Profile of Poverty,” Erina Duganne analyzes race and artistic subjectivity. Students will concentrate on the ways a photographer’s race reveals itself, as well as how photographs function within social movements and in communities.

Enwezor, Okwui and Colin Richard. Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African

Photography. New York: Steidl/ICP, 2006.

Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography presents the work of 30 African photographers, so as to comment upon how photo-based art has developed across the dialectic of traditional African aesthetic values and Western influences.

Johnson, Charles. The Photographs of Gordon Parks: The Library of Congress. Amy Pastan, ed.

Washington, D.C.: The Library of Congress Publishing Office, 2011.

Gordan Parks was the youngest of fifteen children born to a poor tenant-farming family in Kansas in 1912. Parks became a photographer, working for the Farm Security Administration. His most famous photo is “American Gothic,” which shows charwoman Ella Watson posed with mop and broom against an American flag. After photographing for the FSA, Parks worked at Life magazine.

Lamuniere, Michelle. You Look Beautiful Like That: The Portrait Photographs of Seydou Keita

and Malick Sidibe. Boston: Harvard Art Museums, 2001.

Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe were famous commercial photographers in Mali. Their portrait work straddles the time before and after Mali’s independence from France in 1960. Placed within the context of the history of portrait photography in West Africa since its beginnings in the 1840s, Keita and Sidibe’s photographs represent what it means for Africans to create images of African subjects for an African audience. (The archives and what became of these photographers’ negatives is another story.)

Milbourne, Karen, Allan DeSouza, Clive van der Berg and Wangechi Mutu, eds. Earth Matters:

Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa. New York: The Monacelli Press,

2013.

From mining to environmental sustainability, healing, identity, and memory, African contemporary artists from the continent and diaspora represent African relationships to the earth.

Muholi, Zanele. Faces and Phases: Zanele Muholi. New York: Prestel, 2010.

Photographer Zanele Muholi’s challenges the stigmatization of queer sexualities in Africa. Faces and Phases presents Muholi’s portraits of black lesbians from the townships in South Africa. After homophobic attacks led to mass displacement, Muholi expanded the ongoing series to include photographs of queer women from different countries.

Smith, Shawn Michelle. Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual

Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

Writing about and analyzing the photographs W. E. B. Du Bois compiled for the American Negro Exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition, Shawn Michelle Smith reveals the visual dimension of the color line. Smith traces Du Bois’s concepts of double consciousness, the color line, the Veil, and second sight to visual culture by reading Du Bois’s photographs in relation to other turn-of-the-century images.

Willis, Deborah. Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present.

New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.

Deborah Willis discusses individual African American photographers’ work. From those who operated photography studios to photojournalists documenting social change, to contemporary artists, Willis comments on black photographers’ role in the social history of the United States.

Other Important Titles

Bowles, John P. Adrian Piper: Race, Gender, and Embodiment. Durham, NC: Duke University

Press, 2011.

Brielmaier, Isolde. Zwelethu Mthethwa. New York: Aperture, 2010.

Coblentz, Cassandra, Lyle Ashton Harris, Susan Krane, and Kwame Anthony Appiah. Lyle Ashton

Harris: Blow Up. New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2008.

Duganne, Erina. The Self in Black and White: Race and Subjectivity in Postwar American

Photography. Darmouth, NH: Dartmouth, 2010.

Enwezor, Okwui. Lorna Simpson. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2006.

Essaydi, Lalla. Converging Territories.

<http://www.powerhousebooks.com/titless05/convergingterritories.html>.

Hesford, Wendy, and Brueggemann, Brenda. Rhetorical Visions: Reading and Writing in a

Visual Culture. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.

hooks, bell. Art on My Mind. Visual Politics.  NY: The New Press, 1995.

Johnson, Charles. The Photographs of Gordon Parks: The Library of Congress. Amy Pastan, ed.

Washington, D.C.: The Library of Congress Publishing Office, 2011.

Kasfir, Sidney Littlefield. Contemporary African Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1999.

Lamuniere, Michelle. You Look Beautiful Like That: The Portrait Photographs of Seydou Keita

and Malick Sidibe. Boston: Harvard Art Museums, 2001.

Milbourne, Karen, Allan DeSouza, Clive van der Berg and Wangechi Mutu, eds. Earth Matters:

Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa. New York: The Monacelli Press,

2013.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o.  Decolonising the Mind. The Politics of Language in African Literature.

Oxford: James Currey Ltd / Heinemann, 2011.

Parks, Gordon. A Choice of Weapons. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2010.

Thomas, Kylie. Impossible Mourning: HIV/AIDS and Visuality After Apartheid. Lewisburg, PA:

Bucknell University Press, 2013.