Month: July 2022

CFP: US Art and Critical Whiteness Studies at CAA 2023

U.S. Art and Critical Whiteness Studies: Looking Back, Looking Forward
Session will present: In-Person

James W. Denison
Email Address(s): jwden@umich.edu

More than fifteen years have passed since the publication of Martin Berger’s Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture, which was widely celebrated for bringing a promising new category of analysis, critical whiteness studies, into the discipline of U.S. art history. However, despite its potential to speak to issues of social stratification and power at the core of the history and historiography of U.S. art, critical whiteness studies has yet to become a regular component of the analytical toolbox employed by scholars of American art. Recent years have seen a spate of scholarship focused on white supremacism and eugenics in U.S. art, but incorporation of the insights of the broader field of whiteness studies, especially regarding more everyday forms of racial bias and self-understanding, remains infrequent and haphazard. How have American artists of various backgrounds visually articulated “whiteness”, and how can we historicize such articulations? How have artists propelled or stymied prejudice through their representations of “white” people? How has whiteness affected how artists represent racialized people, places, and objects? How has it intersected with other forms of identity, including ethnic, gender, and class identities? Finally, what has kept critical whiteness studies from entering the mainstream in art history, a field so long dominated by white artists and scholars? This session seeks to analyze and address these and related questions, inviting papers that examine the past and future of whiteness as a subject of analysis in American art studies and/or offer new directions for such investigation.

Potential topics for papers might include:
·         The history and future of critical race art history
·         Whiteness and nationalism in the history of American art history
·         Whiteness, the art world, and elitism/class concerns
·         Relationships between critical whiteness studies and other forms of critical race studies within art history
·         The invisibility of whiteness/the visualization of whiteness
·         Whiteness and ethnicity/historicizing whiteness
·         Whiteness and gender, including masculinity, femininity, and feminism

·         Whiteness and modernist primitivism

JOB: Asst. Prof., African American Art @ Santa Clara University

SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY, a Jesuit, Catholic university located in the Silicon Valley area of California, seeks candidates to fill the position of Assistant Professor, a tenure-track faculty position in African American art, secondary expertise in the arts of Africa or the greater African Diaspora desirable. The Department of Art and Art History has a commitment to recruit faculty from under-represented groups, contributing to our continuation to meet our diversity and inclusion goals and actions, both in the classroom and in the larger Department community. Courses to be taught include a two-quarter Culture and Ideas 1 & 2 sequence, possibly one course for Culture and Ideas 3, an introductory course in African American, African diaspora, or African art, and upper division courses in the candidate’s area of specialty. Cultures and Ideas courses will be broadly grounded in the applicant’s specialty with a strong interdisciplinary approach to the field; see http://www.scu.edu/provost/ugst/core2009/faculty.cfm for more information. Ability to teach African American art as part of a broader global perspective is thus highly desirable. Ph.D. required by time of appointment, as well as publications and teaching experience beyond the level of teaching assistant. The Department of Art and Art History is situated in a recently-built facility, equipped with custom designed art history classrooms. The department offers majors and minors in Art History as part of well-rounded liberal arts education. We are seeking teaching scholars who will develop and present their scholarship at a national and international level while maintaining a successful learning environment for students.

This position is part of a cluster hire in Race, Inequality, and Social Justice. The six participating departments are Art and Art History, English, Political Science, Psychology, Public Health, and Religious Studies. The 2022 cohort includes faculty in Anthropology, Child Studies, Classics, Communication, History, and Religious Studies. The purpose of the cluster hire is to recruit talented, accomplished, diverse faculty members who will advance knowledge and understanding in this area through their scholarship and teaching. Once hired, the faculty in the cluster will meet regularly as a cohort to network with a variety of colleagues in the College and University involved in scholarship and teaching related to the theme of the cluster.

Santa Clara University is an educational institution that highly values ethics, social justice, and global engagement. The ability to involve undergraduate students in your scholarship is strongly desirable, as well as the potential for engagement with one of our three Centers of Distinction (Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education, and the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics). Salary and benefits are highly competitive. Benefits package includes registered domestic partners, housing subsidy program, pre-tenure research leave, and internal grant program.

For more information and to apply, visit: https://wd1.myworkdaysite.com/en-US/recruiting/scu/scu/job/Assistant-Professor–African-American-Art-African-or-African-Diaspora_R2619

CFP: Histories of People of Color @ Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Conference

The Nineteenth-Century Studies Association is currently collecting papers for potential inclusion in their 2023 conference, to be held at the end of March in Sacramento, CA.  We are seeking papers to include in a panel proposal for the conference and would love to hear from those interested in participating. The working description for the panel is described below.  We welcome scholars from any discipline interested in participating in our panel to submit an abstract and one page CV no later than August 25th.  Abstracts and CVs can be emailed directly to  ahazar1@saic.edu andwcastenell@wlu.edu.  If the panel is chosen, panelists will need to be current members of NCSA by the time of the conference.

Working Panel Description:
Working Title: The Why of History: Rethinking Histories of People of Color Within Structures of Power in the Long 19th-Century US
The history of BIPOC people and other marginalized groups in the US is one that has been overlooked and continuously rewritten to preserve a narrative that privileges the majority population, and specifically those within structures of power.  These narratives have been put forward as the foundation of the history of many of the major events of the long 19th century, including the institution and effects of slavery, the Civil War, and westward expansion, among other histories. Throughout this history, the role and treatment of marginalized groups has been framed in a way that is at best heavily mediated, and is often inaccurate.  Although significant steps have been taken in recent years to rectify these oversights and reframe trends of history and culture that have formed our understanding of events and the mechanisms that surround them, it is still an area that requires investigation.  Doing this helps us to better understand how national narratives and histories have shaped the perception of past events and their impact on marginalized people by bringing to light new considerations that resituate these overlooked and misunderstood histories in the historical narrative.  This panel will interrogate the ways in which we have understood and continue to understand the history of BIPOC people and other marginalized groups in the US in the long 19th century, and the way that cultural artifacts including but not limited to images, literature, and other archival documents have mediated that understanding.

JOB: Deputy Director @ Hood Museum of Art

The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College is seeking a Deputy Director. For more information, see https://searchjobs.dartmouth.edu/postings/63574