Author: Jacqueline Francis
Writer, educator, curator, arts consultant, and occasional artist in San Francisco, California. Follow me on Twitter @JackieFrancisSF and Instagram--jackiefrancissf
ACRAH at CAA NY/2015
Please join us for ACRAH’s session at The College Art Association Conference in New York:
Time: 02/11/2015, 12:30 PM—2:00 PM
Location: Hilton New York, 2nd Floor, Sutton Parlor Center
Chair: Susanna Gold, New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
The Drop Sinister: Harry Watrous’s Visualization of the ‘One Drop Rule’
Mey-Yen Moriuchi, La Salle University
You Are What You Eat: Racial Transformation and Miscegenation in Nineteenth-Century Representations of Food
Shana Klein, University of New Mexico
‘Half-Breed’: Picturing Native American Identity in the Early Nineteenth Century
Elizabeth W. Hutchinson, Barnard College, Columbia University
NOTE: ACRAH will not hold a business meeting on Sat., Feb. 14, 2015. But feel free to contact ACRAH co-chairs with question or concerns via email. Thank you.
How Africa Means in Visual Culture
Prince Harry and the herdsman: can we really fall for this imperial hokum?
To Collect—Essentially
This article dates to August 2014, but its concerns remain current and pressing: what do the ways in which we “collect” and “conserve” the past reveal about what we want from it?
Melissa Eddy, “Lost in Translation: Germany’s Fascination with the American Old West”
Visualizing Race, Ethnicity, and Nation in New Zealand
This article swings at and misses its targets; the journalist wants to express his admiration for what he reads as diversity and multicultural identity in New Zealand. But he fails to get out of the gate cleanly; he does not line up key terms to ensure that he and readers are on the same page when, for instance, “race” is evoked. For that reason, the absence of interrogation into historical relationships in the country is not surprising. One can only wish for a consideration of the Wellington (or Auckland) Street in this article. . . I guess the posted comments are telling.
There is something going on with haka performances. What do those who perform haka think they’re doing? What do various audiences see when they watch haka dances? Are they watching masquerade? Watching the visualization of a national anthem as movement and chanting? Is there a collective experience?
The Ku Klux Klan’s Images of Race, circa 2014
Yesterday’s New York Times included a story, “At Gateway to Hamptons, Ku Klux Klan Advertises for New Members,” by Al Baker. Here’s a link to Baker’s story, which rightly focuses on the undeniably anti-immigrant impetus behind contemporary flyers and pamphlets produced by the Klan:
I want to draw attention to one of the images that accompanied Baker’s story: Times photographer Nicole Bengiveno’s photo poignantly captures a pair of brown-skinned hands holding the Klan recruitment letter and hate-mongering caricatures. What’s striking is the Klan’s reliance on undying, racist iconography, which communicates the group’s belief that it’s still legible and viable in the twenty-first century:
That visual strategies–exaggerations and distortions of ethno-cultural physiognomies and the marshaling of symbols attached to class and national types–still work in nativist discourse makes clear that racialization is always dependent on representation.
What Will “Minority” Look Like in Late Twenty-First Century North America, UK, and Western Europe??
What Will “Minority” Look Like in Late Twenty-First Century North America, UK, and Western Europe??
In California, those who identify as non-Spanish speaking whites are the state’s ethno-racial minority. I’ve been thinking about what changes will be necessary to terms such as “minority,” “diversity,” and the like, especially when we write about power, discrimination, anti-racist politics, and the imperative for social justice. Today’s Guardian.com features a report about Britain’s struggle to take on these tasks.
Specific to ACRAH’s focus on the representation of racialization, some questions are especially pressing. What will “minority” look like, signify, and index in the late twenty-first century in North America, the United Kingdom, and Western Europe? In these locales, what images will be summoned and thrown into relief? How will demographic shifts in these regions demand new, sharper analyses of “race” and its histories?
Colgate University Announces the Kindler Chair in Global Contemporary Art
Colgate University seeks applications and nominations for an art historian with a distinguished record of research, publications, and teaching to fill the Kindler Chair in Global Contemporary Art. The appointment, to be made at the associate or full rank, will begin in the fall of 2014. This position will support the development and teaching of undergraduate courses in transnational and global art and art institutions since 1970. The area of specialization is open but the candidate’s research focus should be relevant to the shifting terrain of contemporary art and in particular to the interaction of aesthetic and cultural ideals across boundaries. The Kindler Chair is also expected to contribute to Colgate’s university-wide interdisciplinary programs. The position includes a very competitive salary, a travel and research budget, as well as the opportunity for collaboration with Colgate’s newly planned Center for Art and Culture. Please send nominations or letters of interest to Professor Mary Ann Calo, Chair, Kindler Chair Search Committee, mcalo@colgate.edu. Review of applications will begin on November 15, 2013 and will continue until the position is filled.
Colgate is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and candidates from historically underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply. Developing and sustaining a diverse faculty and staff further the university’s educational mission. Visa assistance for international candidates may be available. Applicants with dual-career considerations can find postings of other employment opportunities at Colgate and at other institutions of higher education in upstate New York atwww.upstatenyherc.org. Colgate is a highly selective liberal arts university of 2800 students situated in central New York. Colgate faculty are committed to excellence in both teaching and scholarship. Further information about the Art and Art History department can be found athttp://www.colgate.edu/academics/departments-and-programs/art-and-art-history.
SYMP: Midcentury Modernism Coference – (SeSAH) Annual Meeting @ UNC-Charlotte
Registration for SESAH 2013 is now open.
Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SeSAH) Annual Meeting
School of Architecture, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Charlotte, NC, September 25-28, 2013
Conference Theme: Midcentury Modernism
In recent years, architectural historians have begun to reconsider midcentury modernism with new eyes. These inquiries have ranged from an interrogation of the positive and negative consequences of CIAM modernism in Third World colonial territories, to local and regional histories of urban renewal and alternative modernisms that anticipated the shift toward postmodern heterogeneity. This reexamination has not only helped us to expand our knowledge of the legacies of midcentury modernism, but they also help us to contextualize the built environments that often mark cities that expanded during the postwar boom years. There are many cities in the Southeast that fit this latter description.
Charlotte is a paradigmatic New South City. It has continuously transformed its physical environment to emphasize the present – few older buildings survive in the Center City, and since the 1950s the architectural and urban focus has been distinctly modern. In recent years Charlotte has become increasingly aware of the importance of its mid-century heritage. The architecture of this era has become a critical topic of discussion among Preservationists in Charlotte and other cities, while at the same time the era of “Mad Men” has recaptured the imagination of the American public.
The SeSAH 2013 conference in Charlotte offers its participants a chance to engage in the critical exploration of the architecture and urbanism of the 1950s and 1960s as well as their historiographies.
ACRAH 