Author: Camara Dia Holloway

I am the Project Manager for the Romare Bearden Digital Catalogue Raisonné at the Wildenstein Plattner Institute. I earned my PhD at Yale University in the History of Art Department and specialize in twentieth century American art with a particular focus on the history of photography, race and representation, and transatlantic modernist networks. I also serve as a Founding Co-Director of the Association for Critical Race Art History (ACRAH).

CFP: Culture and Society in Post-Colonial Nigeria in honor of ULLI BEIER.

Institute of African Studies
CALL FOR PAPERS
Culture and Society in Post-Colonial Nigeria in honor of ULLI BEIER.
November 28 – 30, 2011

The conference is being organised in honour of Ulli Beier, not only to invoke his memorable role in the cultural production in Nigeria from the years immediately before and after the independence, but also to incite robust discussion on his entire oeuvre as a cultural interventionist. In literature, in performance and in Visual Arts, the long list of artists that Ulli Beier’s many fora (Black Opheus, Mbari, Mbari Mbayo) fostered is a proof of his sterling contribution to African culture.

Culture itself encapsulates the dialogic production of meaning and aesthetics through a variety of practices. It also captures discourses associated with a mix of public and private institutions such as cinemas, the media, museums and other sites of socio-historical production. Discourses around such issues expose the mindset of a people; they mirror where a nation is coming from and the direction in which it is moving. After fifty years of independence, Nigeria requires looking back to assess itself.  The project of evolving a new Nigeria has placed emphasis on political and economic factors rather than developing cultural potential for sustainable development. This is a huge lacuna given the fact that culture plays a significant role in the life of a nation.

The conference is intended to stimulate new dimensions of assessing the predicament of pre-colonial Nigeria, privileging cultural history and production. More specifically, we anticipate an interrogation of the double-bind of fusion and rupture of politics and culture. In an attempt to answer many questions that emanate from this, we expect that the conference will generate theses from a wide range of perspectives such as economics, art and science, among others.

Sub-themes include but  are not limited to the following:
* Culture Theory
* Culture, Gender and (Wo)Men’s rights
* Culture, Democracy and Governance
* Globalization, Mass Culture and the New Media
* Material Culture and Cultural Performance
* Culture and Ecology
* Traditional Medicine and Spirituality
* Conflict Prevention and Management
* Social Movements and Ethics

Keynote speaker 1:
Professor Akin Ogundiran, Chair, Africana Studies Department,
University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC.
Topic: Crises of Culture and Consciousness in the Postcolony: What is the Future for Nigeria?

Keynote Speaker 2:
Professor Wole Ogundele, Director Centre for Black culture and International Understanding, Osogbo, Osun State.
Topic: He Lived among the Orisha: Ulli Beier and the Yoruba Cultural Revival.

Conference Venue: Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
An abstract of not more than 250 words is expected to reach the conference organizers through the following e-mail addresses: Ohioma Pogoson <tellohio@yahoo.com<mailto:tellohio@yahoo.com> >; Ayo Adeduntan <grandeekay@yahoo.com<mailto:grandeekay@yahoo.com> > not later than August 15, 2011.

Participants shall be notified of the acceptance of their abstracts by August 31, 2011.

CFP: Christianity in Modern and Contemporary African American Art

Coinciding with PAFA’s exhibition, Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit, this March 24, 2012 symposium focuses on intersections of faith, identity, and history in a broad range of works created by modern and contemporary African American artists with special interest in Christian symbols, themes, and motifs relating to issues of faith, family, and community and the struggle for freedom, equality, and justice.

We seek 20-minute papers that examine specific examples of art from the turn of the 20th century to today, exploring such aspects with special interest in art historical methodology.

Paper proposals of no more than two pages double-spaced should be submitted along with a cover letter and c.v. to ALL symposium co-chairs, Dr. Nikki A. Greene nikki.a.greene@gmail.com, Dr. Emily Hage ehage@sju.edu, and Dr. James Romaine drjamesromaine@gmail.com.

Deadline for submission is October 1, 2011.

See the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA) website: http://christianityhistoryart.org.

CFP: Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage

Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage
Editor, Christopher C. Fennell, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

The Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage provides a focal point for peer-reviewed publications in interdisciplinary studies in archaeology, history, material culture, and heritage dynamics concerning African descendant populations and cultures across the globe. The Journal invites articles on broad topics, including the historical processes of culture, economics, gender, power, and racialization operating within and upon African descendant communities. We seek to engage scholarly, professional, and community perspectives on the social dynamics and historical legacies of African descendant cultures and communities worldwide. The Journal publishes research articles and essays that review developments in these interdisciplinary fields.

Submitting a Manuscript to the Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage Manuscripts should typically be no longer than 35 double-spaced pages, or approximately 8,750 words, in length. Submissions should include a cover letter, an original manuscript, and any illustrations. All manuscripts should be submitted electronically in MS Word format for the manuscript text and accompanying illustrations should be embedded in the manuscript in low-resolution format. Illustrations should also be provided in separate .tiff format digital files in higher resolution of at least 300 dpi. On the cover page of the manuscript, please include the title, your name, your affiliation, postal address, telephone number, and email address, and a one-paragraph abstract of no more than 200 words, followed by 4 keyword terms for potential use by indexing services. At the end of the manuscript, provide a biographical note of not more than 50 words about each author.

Submissions should be sent to: Editor Christopher Fennell at cfennell@illinois.edu.
An author should contact the editor if unable to submit an electronic version of the manuscript.

More information about the journal, subscriptions, and the full submission guidelines can be found at:
http://lcoastpress.com/journal.php?id=15

PUB: The Art of Americanization at the Carlisle Indian School by Hayes Peter Mauro

In this historical study, Mauro analyzes the visual imagery produced at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School as a specific instance of the aesthetics of Americanization at work. His work combines a consideration of cultural contexts and themes specific to the United States of the time and critical theory to flesh out innovative historical readings of the photographic materials.

http://unmpress.com/books.php?ID=12462974913924&Page=book

OBIT: Twins Seven-Seven (1944-2011)

Date: June 16, 2011

Twins Seven-Seven is dead
By Ozolua Uhakheme, Assistant Editor (Arts)

A multidimensional artist, singer, musician, actor, writer and poet, Twins Seven-Seven, one of the greatest artists of the Osogbo School, has died at aged 67. He passed on yesterday at  the University College Hospital, Ibadan, where he had been on admission following a stroke.

The artist, real name Olaniyi Osuntoki was one of the most famous products of Ulli Beier’s experimental art workshops, held in Osogbo in the 1960s.

In recognition of his contribution to the promotion of dialogue and understanding among peoples, particularly in Africa and the African Diaspora, he was named a UNESCO Artist for Peace in 200, in the presence of former president Olusegun Obasanjo who was Chairman of the African Union. The ceremony took place on Africa Day.

The Director-General of CBAAC, Prof. Tunde Babawale described the death of Twin Seven Seven as another tragic news to the art and culture community, barely few days after the passing away of the Managing Director of GT Bank, Mr. Tayo Aderinokun, who was a strong arts enthusiast and collector.  According to Babawale, Twin Seven Seven was revered across the world for his art, and recognized by UNESCO as a torch bearer. “Our hearts go to the family hoping that God will grant him eternal rest. I hope many Twin Seven Sevens will strive  our landscape and I wish Osun State government will immortalize his name,” Babawale said.

Seasoned theatre practitioner and former Deputy Editor The Guardian, Mr. Ben Tomoloju, said the late artist was a pioneering prime mover of the Osogbo Arts commune. He noted that he was so versatile that he influenced a number of Osogbo artists. “His art is spiritual. Though he did not school formally in the arts, but he was a great artist respected across the globe,” Tomoloju added.

Born in 1944, his career began in the early 1960s. He has since become the most famous representative of the renowned Oshogbo school of painting, which is at the heart of Yoruba civilization. His work reflects the cosmology and mythology of the Yoruba culture. He has choose the pseudonym, Twin Seven Seven as a reference to his birth: he is the sole survivor of a line of seven sets of twins.

His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions throughout the world, notably at France’s National Museum of Modern Art – Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Houston Contemporary Arts Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. and the National Modern Art Gallery in Lagos.

His encounter with the graphic arts and painting came about in 1964 when he met a group of artists known as the Mbare Mbayo Group. This is where the Oshobgo School had it’s origins. Twins Seven-Seven began by drawing on paper. Drawing and engraving have remained a constant and central reference in his work. The originality of his line comes from the fact that it appears to unfold blindly, with no plan, through a progressive invasion of the entire surface. This technique gives his paintings their extraordinary detail.

With the exception of a few paintings which represent “profane” themes, the universe of Twins Seven-Seven is thoroughly rooted in the Yoruba imagery, both religious and folkloric.

This report will be published in The Nation newspaper website tomorrow, Friday June 16.

Ozolua Uhakheme, Assistant Editor (Arts) <ozoluauhakheme@yahoo.com>

PUB: Representations 113 – New World Slavery and the Matter of the Visual

Representations 113
A Special Issue on New World Slavery
Representations 113 from University of California Press—A Special Issue: New World Slavery and the Matter of the Visual, edited by Huey Copeland, Krista Thompson, and Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby.This special issue features essays on the ongoing effects of racial bondage as seen through art and the visual archive—Including 16 color reproductions.

Representations 113: New World Slavery and the Matter of the Visual makes an eloquent case for the critical importance of visual representation to the rewriting of slavery’s imaginary.
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In New World Slavery and the Matter of the Visual:
Perpetual Returns: New World Slavery and the Matter of the Visual
Huey Copeland, Krista Thompson
Read this articleNegative-Positive Truths
Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby

The Evidence of Things Not Photographed: Slavery and Historical Memory in the British West Indies
Krista Thompson

Artists’ Portfolios (16 full-color reproductions)
Hank Willis Thomas, Fred Wilson, Christopher Cozier

Glenn Ligon and Other Runaway Subjects
Huey Copeland

The Museu do Negro in Rio and the Cult of Anastácia as a New Model for the Memory of Slavery
Marcus Wood

Neither Lost nor Found: Slavery and the Visual Archive
Stephen Best

“What emerges, ultimately, is the definitively unfinished nature of freedom and the expansiveness of the peculiar institution’s deep structure: aspects of its legacy are always differently coming into view, underlining how our approach to its memory in the visual field must necessarily be shifting and recursive, ever alert to both the promises and perils of slavery’s perpetual returns.”
—Huey Copeland and Krista Thompson, from Perpetual Returns: New World Slavery and the Matter of the VisualVisit Representations online.
Copyright © 2011 University of California Press. All Rights Reserved.
2000 Center Street, Suite 303 | Berkeley | CA 94704
Visit our website

REF: Transatlantic Project Retrieves Rare Livingstone Manuscripts

Transatlantic Project Retrieves Rare Livingstone Manuscripts

For 140 years, rare manuscripts crucial to our understanding of the last years of the celebrated Victorian explorer and abolitionist David Livingstone in Africa were inaccessible due to their fragility and near-indecipherable script. Now a pioneering transatlantic collaboration among scholars from Birkbeck College (University of London), U.S. imaging scientists, and British and American cultural institutions has begun to make these manuscripts available online, starting with the publication of the revised edition of Livingstone’s Letter from Bambarre (http://livingstone.library.ucla.edu/) by Livingstone Online and the UCLA Digital Library Program.

The transatlantic collaboration is among the first to apply multispectral imaging–a preservation technology previously used to recover erased writing in medieval palimpsests–to restore the text of a nineteenth-century British manuscript. The revised critical edition (2011, orig. 2010) of Livingstone’s 1871 letter to his close friend and future editor Horace Waller includes a full transcription of the text, detailed critical notes, an extensive bibliography, an overview of spectral imaging, and a selection of spectral images processed to enhance both text and topographical features.

Continue reading “REF: Transatlantic Project Retrieves Rare Livingstone Manuscripts”

CFP: 49th Parallel

To coincide with the publication of its latest issue, the American and Canadian Studies journal 49th Parallel is issuing a call for papers.

http://www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/

49th Parallel is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary e-journal devoted to American and Canadian Studies. Since 1999, it has sought to transcend traditional boundaries and promote innovative and challenging academic work.

49th Parallel is also excited to be establishing links with the cutting-edge blog site EA Worldview<http://www.enduringamerica.com/>, which will shortly be providing a platform for the discussion of selected articles.

The editors wish to encourage 5,000-7,000 word submissions that cover the broad range of subjects that typically fall within American Studies as well as articles of a more interdisciplinary nature.

Possible subject areas include: literature; history; cultural studies; politics; film; foreign relations; photography.

This multidisciplinary approach aims to promote a broad spectrum of academic debate, and to utilise the multimedia capabilities offered to an e-based journal. In this sense 49th Parallel also hopes to encourage traditional academic essays alongside the use of video and photo academic texts.

49th Parallel – which gets its name from the U.S.-Canadian border – is predominately a North American Studies Journal. However, we also want to encourage articles that engage with wider notions of America, so welcome submissions concerning Latin and Central America.

We are also happy to receive submissions from postgraduates and early career scholars alongside established academics.

To ensure the highest academic quality, all articles are fully peer reviewed.  For full submission guidelines please visit our website http://www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk

If you have any other queries or wish to submit an article please email the editors 49thParallel@bham.ac.uk.

A list of books available for review can also be found on our website
http://www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/submissions.htm#books

For regular updates you can now follow us on Facebook

<http://www.facebook.com/pages/49th-Parallel-Journal/156640984351326>

and

Twitter

<http://www.twitter.com/49th__Parallel>

LEC: Conversations: Among Friends (South African Artists) @ MoMA

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT: CONVERSATIONS: AMONG FRIENDS

A public series presented by the Friends of Education of The Museum of Modern Art, Conversations: Among Friends explores works of art as reflections of their political and social contexts. Please feel free to share this invitation with friends, family, and colleagues. Tickets ($35) may be purchased at the Museum information desk, film desk, online, or through the Friends of Education office.

Conversations: Among Friends
FEATURING ARTISTS SENZENI MARASELA, VUYILE VOYIYA, AND SUE WILLIAMSON
WITH RIASON NAIDOO, DIRECTOR, SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL GALLERY

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

7:00 pm program | 8:15 pm reception

Doors open at 6:45 pm

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

The Museum of Modern Art

11 West 53 Street, New York City

 

 TICKETS ($35) MAY BE PURCHASED IN PERSON AT THE MUSEUM, ONLINE AT MOMA.ORG,

OR BY CALLING THE FRIENDS OF EDUCATION OFFICE  AT (212) 408-8517.

All tickets will be held at the door.

Please use The Ronald S. and Jo Carole Lauder Building entrance,
east of the Museum’s main entrance on Fifty-third Street.

This evening’s program presents a conversation between artists Senzeni Marasela, Vuyile Voyiya, and Sue Williamson, moderated by Riason Naidoo, Director, South African National Gallery, and featuring an introduction by Judy Hecker, Assistant Curator, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, and organizer of Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now. Following the program, guests are invited to continue the conversation and meet the participants at an intimate reception in The Agnes Gund Garden Lobby.

Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now, on view through August 14 in The Paul J. Sachs Prints and Illustrated Books Galleries, presents nearly 80 prints, posters, books, and wall stencils created over the last five decades that demonstrate the exceptional reach, range, and impact of printed art in South Africa during and after a period of enormous upheaval. Drawn entirely from the Museum’s collection, this exhibition includes recent projects by Senzeni Marasela and Vuyile Voyiya, as well as a seminal work from the 1990s by Sue Williamson. Read more at MoMA.org/southafrica.

Continue reading “LEC: Conversations: Among Friends (South African Artists) @ MoMA”

PUB: Paths of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Interactions, Identities, and Images By Ana Lucia Araujo

Of particular interest to art historians:

Part IV: Paths of Representations

Chapter 10: Hidden Beneath the Surface: Atlantic Slavery in Winslow
Homer’s “Gulf Stream”
Peter H. Wood

Chapter 11: Slaves’ Supplicant & Slaves’ Triumphant: The Middle Passage of
an Abolitionist Icon
Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie

Chapter 12: Picturing Homes and Border Crossings: The Slavery Trope in
Films of the Black Atlantic
Awam Amkpa and Gunja SenGupta

http://www.cambriapress.com/cambriapress.cfm?template=15&bid=444

Description

Based on innovative and extensive research, this edited volume examines the complex and unique human, cultural, and religious exchanges that resulted from the enslavement and the trade of Africans in the North and the South Atlantic regions during the era of the transatlantic slave trade. The book shows the connections between multiple Atlantic worlds that contain unique and diverse characteristics. The Atlantic slave trade disrupted African societies, families, and kin groups. Along the paths of the slave trade, men, women and children were imprisoned, separated, raped, and killed by war, famine and disease. The authors investigate some of the different pathways, whether physical and geographical or intellectual and metaphorical, that arose over the centuries in different parts of the Atlantic world in response to the slave trade and slavery. Highlighting unique and similar aspects, this groundbreaking book follows the trajectories of individuals, groups, and images, rethinking their relations with the local, and the Atlantic contexts.

Continue reading “PUB: Paths of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Interactions, Identities, and Images By Ana Lucia Araujo”