Smith article for Week #2 + more discussion questions & information about Week #3

Spectacles of Whiteness Reading (in Addition to the Willis Reading) for Week #2

In “Spectacles of Whiteness: The Photography of Lynching,” Shawn Michelle Smith proposes that the invisibility of whiteness can be fractured by looking at postcard photographs of whites attending lynchings, especially as some such spectators are still alive today (not to mention the present day lynchings of African Americans; i.e., James Byrd and Michael Brown). She also proposes that this fracture can happen when studying such images for biracial spectactors of lynchings pictured among white supremacist crowds, as such biracial persons were, during this era, signifiers of their conception (white masters’ raping of female slaves). Smith also argues that the postcard photograph of lynchings functioned as commodities that signified a return of another postcard (of, one might imagine, another lynching) from the card’s receiver.

Pages 132 and 135 of Smith’s text offer examples of photographic analysis that you should recognize from beginning your annotated bibliographic assignments. Think about the construction of Smith’s article (which is, of course, just one article taken out of context from an entire book, but can still give you an idea of how one might choose to write an academic research paper on photography). Throughout the first half of the course, continue to notice how the writers you read for this course write about photography, as, in time, you will begin your own research-based writing about one photograph, several or a series of photographs, or an archive of photographs.

Spectacles of Whiteness Discussion Questions #2 for Week 2 (please respond by Friday September 11 at midnight)

- What does it mean to look through your eyes as viewers of African and African American reinscriptions of embodied blackness? Think about the photographs you’ve looked at thus far, and relate your experience as audience of these images. Do you commodify them? Have they transformed you? (Remember our bell hooks’ discussion?)

- Think of a photograph that you think works (or worked) both to foster white supremacy and African American protest? Describe this photograph.

- What is the difference, in your opinion, of a mug shot and a studio portrait? Is the difference discernable?

- Describe any photograph you may have seen that depicts white violence in minutiae.

- Respond to anything that moves you from this article.

- Why do you think Smith included the image selections she did for this particular article?

Information for Week #3 & Link for Week #3 Images

There is no required reading for this week, as I mistakenly canceled the class’s purchase of Gordon Parks’ autobiography. The book, A Choice of Weapons, is totally worth the read, however, especially if you grow interested in Parks’s photographs. I do request, in light of the absence of reading for Week #3, that you Google Parks and familiarize yourself with his personal formation as a photographer, his aesthetic, and the time period in which he photographed. This will invariably strengthen the inference paragraph of your annotated bibliography assignment. Annotated Bibliography #2 is due Monday, September 14, at midnight. Please be courteous and submit your work on time. If posting doesn’t happen by this date, I may have to start awarding Fs to work not submitted by the deadline. I don’t want to do this, so let’s please be conscious that commenting on others’ posts is important. Please put more effort into your bibliographies and comments. I will be emailing you your grades for Annotated Bibliographies 1 and 2 by the end of week three. If you increase your efforts this week, your first week grade will also improve.

The link for rephotographed Parks’ photographs is:  https://goo.gl/photos/UDF3QgJBLpG6FyAq9