AFRS400-02 – Black Arts and Humanities: Black Art History Matters
Black Arts and Humanities - “Black Art History Matters” (Units: 3)Fall 2016
Prerequisite:Upper division standing or consent of instructor.
This course is focused on:
- the creative efforts of Black visual artists and writing about them;- the values they expressed in these art works and their relation to African American culture
Course Attributes:• UD-C: Arts and/or Humanities• American Ethnic and Racial• Social Justice
This central course material is visual expression by historical and contemporary Black American artists and artists of African descent which is exhibited in the US. We will see these art works in class and in the required readings; we will also visit SFSU’s Art Gallery and local museums to closely examine art objects, and attend a campus symposium about the career of filmmaker Cheryl Dunye, Assistant Professor in SFSU’s School of Cinema.
AFRS 400-02 is a chronological survey of their varied stylistic approaches to painting, sculpture, photography, installation art, performance, and film and video making. We will also pay attention to how historians, critics, and in some cases, the artists themselves have written about this artistic production over time.
Different from the typical survey, this subject and issues of AFRS 400-02 will be discussed in reverse chronological order. That is, we'll start with contemporary artists and then, travel back in time to study historical artists of the previous centuries including enslaved craft artists of the colonial period.