The Grapevine

The Sounds of Ethncity, Race and Region

how-to-speak-midwesternIn today’s New York Times, Jennifer Schuessler reviewed a new book, How to Speak Midwestern. Interestingly, the headline in the print edition is:  “Midwesterner, Yes, You Do Have an Accent”. This phrasing is a gentle nudge to rethink what might be perceived as a norm, which, of course, is actually as inflected as anything else. Apparently, this truth is one of author Edward McClelland’s motivations for writing this book.

In the review, Schuessler comes out from behind the curtain of reviewer neutrality. She pronounces, self-deprecatingly: “Full disclosure: Like Mrs. Clinton, I’m a white woman who grew up in the Chicago suburbs. When it comes to pinched nasal vowels and strongly pronounced r’s (a phenomenon linguists call rhoticity), I’m With Her.”

Schuessler also notes: “The heavily industrialized (and segregated) Inland North–as dialectologists call the region stretching from roughly from central New York across the Great Lakes–‘has a wider divergence between white and black speech than anywhere in the country,’ Mr. McClleland writes, with African-Americans largely maintaining speech patterns brought from the South. (Mr. McClelland notes the existence of various Midwestern ‘blacaccents,’ though he doesn’t explore them.)”

Such “blaccents” are not the only subjects deserving of further study by critical race scholars. So is the consideration of the visual. Tellingly, the designers for McClelland’s book eschew figures for its cover, as if to acknowledge the demographic diversity of the region’s populace. Smart move.

Consider the ideology of an earlier publication (1960) with almost the same title:

thomas-how-to-speak-midwestern

This book is a “humor” offering. See Google Books for a brief excerpt:

“To speak good Midwestern you need to: Get gear’d up by studyin’ this book. Before you know it you’ll be speaking Midwestern Pertnear as good as Everybody.”

Thomas’s cover design is serious in its invocation, i.e., the Midwest is American Gothic (1930). It is a move to use the authority of the original painting, without any awareness of its intended satire.

 

 

EVENT: Black Art & Activism NOW @ Decolonize This Place 12/04/2016

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JOB: Director of Curatorial Services @ African American Museum in Philadelphia

African American Museum in Philadelphia
Director of Curatorial Services

The Director of Curatorial Services manages and directs the curatorial and interpretive initiatives and activities of the African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP). The Director of Curatorial Services has primary oversight of AAMP’s exhibition, collection, and conservation functions. The Director of Curatorial Services provides the leadership necessary for the presentation of intellectually rigorous and compelling exhibits that fulfill AAMP’s mission while fostering civic engagement. The Director of Curatorial Services also oversees AAMP’s collection; ensuring its on-going preservation, daily management, and accessibility to diverse audiences. The Director of Curatorial Services works with the President and CEO and AAMP’s Board to ensure the development, adoption and implementation of policies and procedures to that adhere to established standards of stewardship. The Director of Curatorial Services works directly with the President and CEO and is part of the Museum’s Senior Management Team

Principal Duties and Responsibilities:

• Exhibitions. Lead the development of exhibition proposals and ensure they meet intellectual, interpretive, audience, and mission goals; identify and hire outside curators, artists, art historians, and historians to develop or consult on exhibition proposals and exhibition development; lead research phase of exhibition development; develop three- to five-year exhibition schedule; oversee exhibition design, production, and installation. Collaborate with AAMP’s Education and Public Programming Departments to ensure that exhibits create compelling and meaningful educational experiences for visitors to the Museum; oversee regular and ongoing audience research and evaluation of exhibitions and partnerships; oversee written, visual, and oral interpretive tools and collateral materials; assist in fundraising efforts for exhibitions..

• Collection and Conservation Management. Supervise the management of AAMP’s collection, including registrarial activities (loans, accessioning, deaccessioning, recordkeeping, inventory); preservation activities; and making the collection accessible through exhibition and online resources; oversee the updating and implementation of collection policies, procedures, and practices that meet prescribed national standards; assist the AAMP Board in to develop a collection strategy to build the collection to ensure it reflects the Museum’s mission; assist in fundraising efforts for collection preservation and access activities and programs.

Also:

• Oversees training and supervises professional staff, including the Exhibit Manager and the Collections Coordinator
• Develops annual goals and objectives for the exhibitions, and collection and conservation management in accordance with the institutional mission and strategic plan
• Serves as staff liaison to AAMP’s Collections and Acquisitions Committees;
• Represents, as assigned, the Museum on external committees, panel, or councils
• Develops and implements an annual budget
• Assumes other duties as appropriate for the operation of the Museum, or as assigned by the President and CEO

Qualifications:

• MS/MA in African American Studies, American History, Art History (African or American Art focus preferred), or a related humanities field
• Ten years experience in museum collection and curatorial work
• Seven years experience as a supervisor
• Record of scholarly research and publications and intellectual leadership
• Experience writing foundation and state and federal grants
• Knowledge of standard collection museum policies and procedures
• Experience managing exhibition development, production, and installation
• Experience leading and managing partnerships with other cultural organizations and community groups
• Ability to plan and manage budgets
• Ability to supervise people and manage complex programs and projects
• Ability to plan and implement new programs
• Ability to solve technical, administrative, and personnel problems creatively
• Ability to think strategically
• Superior verbal and written communication skills
• Commitment to the mission, values, and programs of the African American Museum in Philadelphia

To apply, send cover letter, resume and any supplemental materials to  Patricia Wilson Aden via email at pwilsonaden@aampmuseum.org or via the post at:

Patricia Wilson Aden
President & CEO
African American Museum in Philadelphia
701 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA  19106

Inquiries via email only.

 

In This Political Season, A Film Portrait of East Coast, White Working Class Racial Identity

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Critic A.O. Scott take a while to get around to it in yesterday’s New York Times, but towards the end of his review he writes: “The movie takes up, indirectly and perhaps inadvertently but powerfully and unmistakably, a subject that has lately reinserted itself into American political discourse. It’s a movie, that is, about the sorrows of white men.” Of the film’s main character, Lee Chandler (played by Casey Affleck),  a Boston apartment building janitor who was born in a Bay State seaside town, Scott surmises: “Cast out of this working man’s paradise, Lee is also exiled from the prerogatives of whiteness.  . . .to deny that Manchester By the Sea has a racial dimension is to underestimate its honesty and overlook its difficult relevance.”

Sounds like critical race visual cultural studies is in yet another the critical conversation.

A.O. Scott, “Currents of Grief Beneath Everyday Life–Film Review,” New York Times, November 19, 2016, Weekend Arts Section I, 1, 12.

 

 

Marvel celebrates fifty years of Black Panther at NYCC — Dark Matters

LINK: “I can’t believe we were publishing this in 1973!”

via Marvel celebrates fifty years of Black Panther at NYCC — Dark Matters

CFP: “Art History as Créolité/Creolising Art History” @ AAH Conference, Loughborough University, UK

“Art History as Créolité/Creolising Art History”

Deadline: November 7, 2016

Association of Art Historians (AAH) annual conference

6th – 8th April 2017

Loughborough University, England

As part of the three-day workshop titled ‘Créolité and Creolisation’, which took place on St Lucia as one of the platforms of Documenta 11 (2002), participants explored the genealogy of terms such as ‘creolization’ and ‘Créolité’, and their potential to describe phenomena beyond their historically and geographically specific origins (however slippery they are). Surprisingly, there has been little engagement with the potential of creolisation as a way of doing or writing art histories differently since that time. This session aims to redress this lacuna.

Stuart Hall, one of the workshop participants, writes that what distinguishes creolisation from hybridity or diaspora is that it refers to a process of cultural mixings that are a result of slavery, plantation culture, and colonialism. Yet, Martinican-born poet and theoretician Édouard Glissant notes that creolisation can refer to a broader set of sociocultural processes not only in the Caribbean but also ‘all the world’ (Tout-monde). Drawing on Hall and Glissant, Irit Rogoff suggests that créolité can more broadly reference the construction of a literary or artistic project out of creolising processes.

What would it mean to re-imagine art history as Créolité? That is, hegemonic Western art history has created in its wake an array of ‘other’ art histories connected to regions such as Latin America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and South Asia to name a few. Of special interest in this session is not only considering such regional art histories as relational to each other, but also exploring how other constructions of identity – such as gender, sexuality, race, and class – are intertwined with them. Papers exploring contemporary and historical periods are both welcome; and those critically examining Glissant’s terms – such as ‘opacity’ and ‘globality’ – to bear on the session theme are especially encouraged.

Please email your proposals (max 250 words) for a 25-minute paper to session convenor Alpesh Kantilal Patel (Florida International University, Miami) at alpesh.patel@fiu.edu by November 7.

Also, include a short title, your name, affiliation and email.

The Sounds of Race

 

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Quentin Hardy, ” Seeking a Choice of Voices in Conversational Computing,” NY TIMES, Mon., Oct. 10, 2016, B1, B4.

Cultures and ethnicities are represented–visually, orally, and in other ways as well.

Joseph Beuys proposed that speech is sculptural, and certainly, we do perceive the body “behind” the words that form them.

Asked the question “What can I do for you?” what image is formed in our minds?

[Voice over American actor Susan Bennett provides the voice of Siri for Apple.]

 

On Race-casting

richard-lund-hollywood-sign-at-nightImage from Filmathon–For the Love of Films

The ethno-racial look always informs the casting decision, from Bourne and Bond to Eliza Doolittle, Evita, M. Butterfly, Nina…and so on.

Yesterday, in the Guardian, film writer Ben Child wrote a blunt critique of “yellow-casting.” Child makes many good points. But a word (i.e., warning) to the reader: this op-ed is not for the faint of heart. Child’s piece is, as they say on sports radio, “real talk.”

And, if you wanna get really riled up, see Britt Julious’s op-ed from last year.

Color portraits of immigrants at Ellis Island – in pictures | Culture | The Guardian

Immigrants as types — Ellis Island arrivals

CFP: Terra Foundation Int’l Research Travel Grants for US-based Scholars

Terra Foundation International Research Travel Grants offer US-based scholars working on American art and visual culture prior to 1980 the opportunity to conduct research outside the United States. Grant funding is available for short-term travel for scholars whose research projects require study of materials outside the United States, enabling scholars to:

  • Discover new primary source material;
  • Experience works of art first-hand in museums and private collections;
  • Make contact with artists, critics, art dealers, archivists, curators, and university scholars;
  • Consult archives and library collections outside the US;
  • Establish professional networks for future research.

Applications are due Jan. 15, 2017.
Grants will be awarded to doctoral students as well as postdoctoral and senior scholars.

For more information, go to the Terra Foundation’s website.