The Grapevine
Natural Histories: Everald Brown
The work of self-taught painter and sculptor Everald Brown is best understood in the context of religious Rastafari and African-Jamaican spirituality. Like many other religious Rastafarians, Brother Brown was attracted to the teachings and ritual practices of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and in the early 1960s established the Assembly of the Living, a self-styled mission of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church which was located at 82 ½ Spanish Town Road. The beliefs, ritual practices and symbols of Brother Brown and his church community were however far from “orthodox’” and freely combined elements of religious Rastafari, Freemasonry, Kumina, Revival, and Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity.
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Workshop: Feminist Object(ive)s: Writing Feminist Art Histories
Natural Histories: Shoshanna Weinberger
Shoshanna Weinberger’s work takes beauty and sex appeal and turns them on their head. Her swollen, awkward humanoid creatures have all the trappings of beauty- gold chains, stilletos, and curves aplenty- but for all their glamour and glitter they are decidedly ugly, a potent and pungent distillation of stereotypes and female and racial objectification. Her use of grids, and titles like A Collection of Strange Fruit illustrate her interest in scientific discourse, and her own mixed race background fuels a fascination with hybridity.
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CFP: Feminist Art History Conference @ American University, November 2013
Announcing the Fourth Annual FEMINIST ART HISTORY CONFERENCE at American University in Washington DC
Friday-Sunday, November 8-10, 2013
Keynote speaker:
Professor Patricia Simons, University of Michigan
Sessions and keynote will be held on the campus of American University
CALL FOR PAPERS
This fourth annual conference continues to build on the legacy of feminist art-historical scholarship and pedagogy initiated by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard at American University. To further the inclusive spirit of their groundbreaking anthologies, we invite papers on subjects spanning the chronological spectrum, from the ancient world through the present, to foster a broad dialogue on feminist art-historical practice. Papers may address such topics as: artists, movements, and works of art and architecture; cultural institutions and critical discourses; practices of collecting, patronage, and display; the gendering of objects, spaces, and media; the reception of images; and issues of power, agency, gender, and sexuality within visual cultures. Submissions on under-represented art-historical fields, geographic areas, national traditions, and issues of race and ethnicity are encouraged.
To be considered for participation, please provide a single document in Microsoft Word (title the document [last name]-proposal.doc or .docx) comprising a one-page, single-spaced proposal of no more than 500 words for a 20-minute presentation, followed by a curriculum vita of up to two pages.
Submit materials by May 15, 2013 to: fahc4papers@gmail.com
Accepted proposals will be notified by July 1, 2013.
Please direct inquiries to: fahc4papers@gmail.com.
Sponsored by the Art History Program, Department of Art, College of Arts and Sciences at American University
Organizing committee: Kathe Albrecht, Juliet Bellow, Norma Broude, Kim Butler, Mary D. Garrard, Namiko Kunimoto, Helen Langa, and Andrea Pearson
CFP: “Gendering Native Modernisms” Panel @ Native American Art Studies Association Conference
I am seeking submissions for my panel on Gendering Native Modernisms at the biannual conference of the Native American Art Studies Association. The conference will be held in October in Denver. For more information on the conference go to: http://nativearts.org/ The deadline for submission is just around the corner. If you are interested but might need a little time, please do email me.
Gendering Native Modernisms
Chair: Cynthia Fowler, Emmanuel College
Recent scholarship on Native Modernisms has revealed the far more complex ways in which Native artists have actively defined and shaped Modernist art movements than has been previously recognized when relying solely on the lens of primitivism. In this scholarship, the agency of Native artists in defining modernism on their own terms has been recognized and relationships between Native and non-Native artists and collectors are now being more comprehensively understood through the lens of transcultural exchange. But the role that gender plays in these new narratives about modernism needs further exploration. To what extent are Native women artists included in these new narratives? To what extent do the gender biases of art museums influence the construction of these new narratives as art historians rely on existing collections in constructing them? How did gender constructions in Native communities affect the creation and distribution of Native modern art and how do they continue to influence these new narratives today? Overall, the panel will attempt to consider the impact of historical and contemporary gender constructions on emerging narratives about Native Modernisms.
Submit 100-word abstract for session Gendering Native Modernisms, by May 15, 2013 directly to: fowlecy@emmanuel.edu
CFP: “Italian American?” @ Italian American Studies Association Conference
The 2013 conference of the Italian American Studies Association (October
3-5, New Orleans) examines the politics of the identifying term “Italian
American” from multiple perspectives and in different time periods. What
are the social conditions in which the ever-changing narratives of
collective identity are formulated and perpetuated? How are ethnic symbols
and practices mustered and re-invented at the service of “Italian
American?” And ultimately, how do competing politics reveal and engender
intragroup tensions but possibly also productive dialogue, both of which
might re-configure understandings and enactments of the very term “Italian
American?” The conference is open to scholars in different disciplines,
creative writers (novelists, poets, and memoirists), and visual and media
artists.
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: JUNE 15, 2013.
Abstracts for scholarly papers (up to 500 words, plus a note on technical
requirements) and a brief, narrative biography should be emailed as
attached documents, by June 15, 2013, to
iasa2013conf@italianamericanstudies.net to whom other inquiries may also be
addressed.
Prospective presenters may expect to be advised of their acceptance or
otherwise by August 1, 2013. All presenters, respondents, and discussants
must be members in good standing of the Italian American Studies
Association by September 15, 2013.
Conference Committee: Bénédicte Deschamps, Michael Eula, Laura E. Ruberto,
Joseph Sciorra, chair
The Relationship between Visual and Text
While we seem to spend an enormous amount of virtual space at AIAC critiquing the ways that Africa and Africans are represented, we do so because we believe that it is possible to subvert expectations, to create images that shatter myths and ideology and that make people think about why they are surprised by particular representations. It is exciting, therefore, that the journal Cultural Anthropology has used ‘Corpus: Mining the Body’, a photographic essay of West African mine workers by Danny Hoffman to kick off a conversation about visual ethnography and the visual as story telling medium, all things we are into here at AIAC.
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Bajan Sitcom To Hit Uk Screens
Natural Histories: Hope Brooks, Slavery Trilogy
Hope Brooks’ Slavery Trilogy is a combination of three series: (from left to right) Kings and Princes,Backra Pickney and Trilogy. The work explores the history and development of racial identities, imposed and self-chosen, in the context of the African Diaspora. Originally the artist presented the work with extended text labels that provided extensive reference material about the slave trade and the experience of the enslaved as well as the verbal vocabulary that evolved from this context. Of particular interest is a list of ethnic slurs taken from Wikipedia, one for each letter of the alphabet.
The grid installation and repetition of the work with its subtle variations in facial expression and colour spectrum also recall the Casta paintings of colonial Latin America. Casta is the origin of the English word “caste”, the paintings were common in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in Mexico, where they were used to…
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ACRAH 