Tag: race

Check out the conversation “Vision is a Battlefield: Histories of Race and Media”

Vision is a Battlefield: Histories of Race and Media

Event held March 26, 2024 at the Graduate Center, CUNY

How is our basic perception of the world influenced by concepts of racial identity? Join us for an illuminating discussion with the authors of four recent books exploring the intertwined histories of photography, media, and race. The panel of experts on art and visual culture features Brooke Belisle, associate professor of art at Stony Brook University, speaking on computational imagery and AI; Emilie Boone, assistant professor of art history at New York University, on Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee; Monica Huerta, assistant professor of English and American studies at Princeton University, on the aesthetics of racial capitalism; and Nicholas Mirzoeff, professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University, on the visual politics of whiteness. Claire Bishop, professor of art history at the CUNY Graduate Center, moderates.

JOB: Asst. Prof, Media Studies @ University of Richmond

Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Communication Studies – Media Studies, University of Richmond
https://richmond.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/1/home/requisition/3135?c=richmond

The University of Richmond’s Rhetoric and Communication Studies Department invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track Media Studies teacher-scholar at the level of Assistant Professor. The position will begin in the fall of 2024. A Ph.D. in Media Studies or a related field is preferred and, ultimately, required at the time of appointment. The Department welcomes applications from scholars with transdisciplinary approaches and degrees.

The department seeks candidates with a particular focus on the politics of media representation that will further the department’s curricular vision in media studies and rhetoric. We particularly encourage candidates whose work brings together intersectional issues such as race, gender, and sexuality including black, feminist, indigenous, and/or queer perspectives and draws on a host of methodologies. Media studies is a capacious field, and we seek candidates studying a wide variety of media forms and phenomena, including the explosion of social media, the rapid growth of gaming, the increased engagement with digitality in public life, and technological developments like artificial intelligence. The successful applicant will teach sections of the department’s RHCS105 (Media, Culture, & Identity) course as well as upper-level courses related to their research and interests.

The University of Richmond is a private university located just a short drive from downtown Richmond, Virginia. Through its five schools and wide array of campus programming, the University combines the best qualities of a small liberal arts college and a large university. With approximately 4,000 students, an 8:1 student-faculty ratio, and more than 90% of traditional undergraduate students living on campus, the University is remarkably student-centered, focused on preparing students “to live lives of purpose, thoughtful inquiry, and responsible leadership in a global and pluralistic society.”
The University of Richmond is committed to developing a diverse workforce and student body, and to modeling an inclusive campus community which values the expression of difference in ways that promote excellence in teaching, learning, personal development, and institutional success. Our academic community strongly encourages applications that are in keeping with this commitment. For more information on the department and its programs, please see rhetoric.richmond.edu.
Applicants should apply online at http://jobs.richmond.edu or by contacting Dr. Timothy Barney, Search Chair, at tbarney@richmond.edu and submit a curriculum vitae, cover letter, and teaching statement. The cover letter might particularly relate the candidate’s experiences to their potential for success as a teacher-scholar at an undergraduate liberal arts institution. The teaching statement should be approximately one (1) to two (2) single-space pages in length and should articulate the candidate’s teaching philosophy, interests, and future professional development goals as well as involvement in and commitment to inclusive pedagogy. Candidates for this position may be asked, at a later date, to provide the names and contact information for three references who will be asked to submit letters of recommendation. Review of applications will commence Feb. 23 and continue until the position is filled.

JOB: Asst Prof, Visual Culture Studies @ UT Austin

The Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor with expertise in the areas of visual culture and art history with research focusing on gender, sexuality, race, and power. Applications from affiliated disciplines are welcome. The specializations might include (but are not limited to) visual or material culture, museum studies and cultural studies, anthropology and media studies across Africa, Latin America, Oceania, or Asia; the arts of the Black Atlantic and African Diasporas; or trans-Asian cinema.

We are particularly interested in applicants whose research, teaching, and scholarship engage in artistic and humanistic inquiry into Black communities, emphasizing visual art and culture as they relate to gender, sexuality, race, and power. The ability to situate these interests within a global context is desirable. Desired candidates will have an emerging research record relating to visual culture and art history at the intersection of gender, sexuality, race, and power articulated within Africa and the African Diaspora. A successful candidate will help expand curricular offerings, promote Black Studies, and participate in an increasing intellectual community across disciplines.

The African and African Diaspora Studies Department (AADS) is committed to interdisciplinary scholarship and creative production that explores the history and culture of Black people around the globe. AADS is part of the Black Studies Collective, which includes the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies, the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis, and the Art Galleries at Black Studies. Our scholarship, cultural creativity, and pedagogical practices reflect our investment in comparative and transnational approaches, intersectional analyses, and critical theoretical frameworks. These attributes mirror our collective commitment as scholars, artists, teachers, and students to bridging the perceived gap between scholarly and artistic work and political engagement. We promote the activist academic careers of our students and faculty members, coordinate with Black staff on University issues of relevance to our communities, and collaborate with local, national, and international organizations in the investigation and enhancement of the lives of Black people.

Job duties include teaching undergraduate and graduate courses related to Black visual culture studies and related topics at the introductory and advanced levels; engagement with and contribution to the intellectual community, which necessarily means participating on and chairing search committees; organizing lecture series and other related programming; and mentoring students, among other activities.

Qualifications

Applicants must hold a Ph.D. for appointment as an Assistant Professor or expect to obtain it within a year of joining the faculty as an Instructor. Preference is for a Ph.D. in African and African Diaspora Studies or a Black Studies equivalent. Applicants holding a Ph.D. in a traditional discipline or interdisciplinary field must have a record or trajectory of research on the visual culture of people of African descent. Preferred qualifications also include a solid and ongoing history of research, publication, and teaching on gender, sex/sexuality, race, and power articulated within Africa and the African Diaspora.

Application Instructions

Review of applications will begin October 15, 2023, and continue until the position is filled. Please submit a cover letter, a list of at least three references, a sample of scholarly writing (30 pages maximum length), and a curriculum vitae to the following link: http://apply.interfolio.com/130580
Semi-finalists will be invited to participate in an on-campus interview in early 2024.

Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience and qualifications. Position funding is subject to budget availability.

For further information, please contact:
Michael Ray Charles, Search Committee Chair
Email: mrcharles@utexas.edu

Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, The University of Texas at Austin

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/aads/index.php

The University of Texas at Austin is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.

LEC: “Race Matters: Cultural Politics in the 1960s” webinar series on Zoom in September

We hope you can join us for this exciting webinar series hosted by the WPI, Race Matters: Cultural Politics in the 1960s

The 1960s was a tumultuous moment in American history as racial equality movements propelled sweeping changes to the body politic. This critical juncture in the nation’s race relations captured the public’s attention as the media delivered the unfolding drama to their doorsteps. The turbulent racial climate spurred the artist’s Romare Bearden’s pivotal turn to collage and return to Black figuration. 

This webinar series presents new insights into the work of Bearden and his contemporaries. His fellow artists, who came from diverse racial backgrounds, joined Bearden in responding to the tenor of the times and tackling Black subject matter and/or racial themes in their work. The series will expand our understanding of how racial concerns were articulated during this watershed decade.

About the Webinars:

Tomorrow I May Be Far Away — with Bridget R. Cooks

Thursday, September 7, 1pm ET 

Register here

In this talk, art historian Bridget R. Cooks addresses Romare Bearden’s ability to engage the Black and mainstream art worlds during the 1960s and ’70s. During this time, his art was revered as exemplary of American art and Black art in different institutional contexts delineated by race. Cooks discusses how Bearden navigated his presence in both worlds through his art and exhibitions.

Bridget R. Cooks is a scholar and curator of American art. She serves as Chancellor’s Fellow and Professor of African American Studies and Art History at the University of California, Irvine. She is most well-known as the author of the book, Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum.

Romare Bearden, the South, and the Southern Black Arts Movement— with James Smethurst

Thursday, September 14, 1pm ET

Register here

This talk will discuss the place of the South, what Romare Bearden described as the “homeland of my imagination” in Bearden’s work. It will also consider the impact of Bearden and his work on the Black Arts Movement in the South during the 1960s and 1970s. 

James Smethurst is a Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946; The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s; The African American Roots of Modernism; Brick City Vanguard: Amiri Baraka, Black Music, Black Modernity; and Behold the Land: A History of the Black Arts Movement in the South. 

Bearden and Harlem in the 1960s — with Maya Harakawa 

Thursday, September 21, 1pm ET

Register here

This talk explores Romare Bearden’s evolving relationship with Harlem in the 1960s, a decade when Bearden depicted Harlem in his art, joined the neighborhood’s cultural council, curated exhibitions in Harlem, and protested reductive curatorial approaches to Harlem’s history. In addition to discussing Bearden, the talk will also focus on the artistic landscape of 1960s Harlem and highlight the neighborhood’s role in defining artistic practice at a moment of profound social and artistic change. 

Maya Harakawa (she/her) is assistant professor of art history at the University of Toronto. A specialist in art of the African Diaspora in the United States, she is currently writing a book on art and Harlem in the 1960s.

Witness: Rauschenberg Reflects the Tumultuous 1960s — with Helen Hsu

Thursday, September 28, 1pm ET

Register here

Deploying methods of collage, innovated with solvent transfer and screenprinting techniques, Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) appropriated from, intervened in, and disrupted the ever proliferating mass media imagescape. “Witness” presents examples of the artist’s work from the 1960s that crystallize the decade’s cultural reckonings and historical crises. Rauschenberg’s remaking and reinvention of collective visual sources invites viewers to critically engage with shifting conditions of recognition and obscurity, recasting the encounter with an artwork as a form of creative participation.

Helen Hsu is the Associate Curator for Research at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. She was formerly an assistant curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and is an alumna of Stanford University.

CFP: Blackness, Race, and Racism in Nineteenth-Century Studies

Special Issue of Nineteenth Century Studies: 

Blackness, Race, and Racism in Nineteenth-Century Studies

deadline for submission: August 15, 2024

full name(s)/name of organization:

Wendy Castenell and A. Maggie Hazard co-editors/Nineteenth-Century Studies

contact email(s): wcastenell@wlu.edu; ahazar1@saic.edu

This special issue will explore how Blackness was constructed and problematized by a hegemonic global structure across national boundaries during the long nineteenth century. The issue will pay particular attention to emerging concepts of Black identities during this period.  Critically, majority narratives have driven these constructions, propagating mediated histories that subjugate Black people, yet the full impact of these narratives has not been thoroughly explored and needs additional interrogation. Essays might consider topics related to images, texts, other forms of media, and more. Possible topics could include expressions of Black autonomy in white supremacist cultures; colonialism/decolonization; trauma studies; slavery/emancipation; Black soldiers; Black artists/photographers/writers; the development and expression of stereotypes; the practice of lynching; the transatlantic migration and the Black diaspora; and other relevant subjects. Nineteenth Century Studies publishes studies of nineteenth-century world cultures in all humanistic fields, including literature, art history, history, musicology, and the history of science and the social sciences. It is an interdisciplinary journal issued annually by the Nineteenth Century Studies Association. One exciting aspect of Nineteenth Century Studies is that the journal encourages authors to enhance their contributions with pertinent artwork.

Please submit manuscripts for scholarly essays of 6,000-10,000 words, pedagogical essays of 2,000-4,000 words, or book reviews of 600-1000 words formatted in Chicago Manual Style to guest editors Wendy Castenell and A. Maggie Hazard at wcastenell@wlu.edu and ahazar1@saic.edu. Additionally, we welcome suggestions of books for review relevant to the theme of this special issue. Please send your suggestions to the editors. Early expressions of interest and proposals of topics are also welcome. The initial deadline for submission of full manuscripts will be August 15, 2024, but earlier submissions are encouraged.

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: Research Specialist, Race and Daniel Chester French

Opportunity: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Research Specialist

Date: May 2022

Division: Preservation

Department: Historic Sites

Office: Chesterwood

Project Manager: Executive Director

About the Organization

Chesterwood is the former summer home and studio of sculptor Daniel Chester French (1850-1931). Located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Chesterwood is a historic site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, an organization that protects significant places representing our diverse cultural experiences. Today, Chesterwood preserves and interprets the work and legacies of French as a significant creator of monumental art.

The Research Specialist project is  funded in full by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Scope of Work

The Research Specialist will research and examine a selection of sculptures from French’s body of work through the perspectives of African Americans and/or Indigenous Americans. A list of over 40 of his works have been identified as complex, problematic and even racist. These works include depictions of individuals considered important to the dominant culture during French’s lifetime who were also enslavers, or politicians who wrote legislation that removed Native peoples from their homelands, for example. Alternatively with other sculptures it is the artist’s representation of Black or Indigenous persons which is problematic. The scholar will explore these pieces through critical frameworks and the Black and/or Indigenous gaze to provide nuance and fresh context for French’s work in contemporary society. This project will provide broadly applicable humanities-based models for examining historical/political monuments and memorials in the fuller contexts of their time.

The Research Specialist is invited to work remotely, but also encouraged to visit Chesterwood to review curatorial files and plaster studies of French’s public sculpture. In addition, the Research Specialist is encouraged to visit Chapin Library, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, where Chesterwood’s archival and photographic files are located. The length of the project, from research to deliverables, is one year, anticipating the Research Specialist will be working part-time. 

A small, additional budget for a stipend is available if the Research Specialist chooses to conduct interviews, focus groups, workshops or do oral history research to support this project. 

Deliverables

The outcome of this scholarly and curatorial endeavor will be an online exhibition and catalogue of French’s more problematic public works through the National Trust’s Collections Portal; the research compiled will serve as an educational resource for Chesterwood’s interpretive staff; and lastly, the material will be shared with Chesterwood visitors, offering a full and honest accounting of these important works of sculptural art. Deliverables include:

o A detailed study on the outlined works of art. To be published online with the exhibit.

o Online exhibit introduction text.

o Appropriate “label copy” text, i.e., short synopsis of each work’s complexity and significance. 

Chesterwood staff will be available as a resource to the Research Specialist and handle the creation of the online collection itself. 

The Research Specialist is a NEH-grant funded position of $15,000 for the duration of the project, which is expected to be completed within the course of one calendar year. Dispersal of grant funds will be at predetermined installments by the Executive Director, with the final dispersal upon receipt of all deliverables. 

Qualifications

• Applicants who identify as African American/Black or Indigenous/Native American/American Indian are strongly encouraged to apply.  

• The position is open to independent scholars, tenured and non-tenured professors, and graduate students. 

• Experience researching, writing about, curating exhibitions on, or teachingIndigenous/Native American/American Indian and/or African American history or 

• Applicants should have a demonstrated area of expertise and interest in the areas of monumental sculpture, 19th century sculpture, or public art, and may include those with backgrounds in history, public history, art history, museum studies and curation. 

• A high degree of cultural competency is a necessity, especially when writing or speaking about Black and Indigenous people of color perspectives and when in conversations with members of the Black/African or Indigenous/Native American communities. 

• Must be conversant in topics and issues relevant to Indian Country or US based Black communities today.

• Attending or having a professional or alumni affiliation with a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) or Tribal Colleges and Universities is a plus.

Please send proposal with CV and background materials regarding skills and expertise to Donna Hassler, Executive Director, Chesterwood, at dhassler@chesterwood.org, outlining your interest in participating in this project.  Deadline to submit this information is May 15, 2022.

JOB: Curator/Director @ Univ. of Connecticut

The University of Connecticut has opened a search for a Curator and Director of the Contemporary Art Galleries, who would also serve as an Assistant Professor in Residence in the Department of Art + Art History. We are especially interested in candidates whose curatorial activities, research, and teaching actively confront the dehumanizing legacies of racism and colonialism in relation to the arts and visual culture.

https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/21031

Inquiries can be directed to Emily Larned (Search Chair, emily.larned@uconn.edu), or Charlene Haukom (Department Administrator, charlene.haukom@uconn.edu). 

Assistant Professor/Associate Professor, Tenure-track in Department of Architecture, University of Buffalo (State University of New York). Applications due by Sept. 30, 2021

Info here.

CFP: “South and North American Positionalities: Representing the Other in the Interdisciplinary 19th century [CAA 2022]–proposals due by Sept. 16, 2021

“South and North American Positionalities: Representing the Other in the Interdisciplinary 19th century”

The representation of the Other has been prioritized through the study of the cross-Atlantic relationship between Europe and the Americas; examples of exhibitions and publications include, Ojos británicos: Formación de la imagen visual de Colombia en el siglo XIX (Museo Nacional de Colombia, 2003) and Ana Lucía Araujo´s book, Brazil through French Eyes: A Nineteenth-Century Artist in the Tropics (2015). Research on the long nineteenth-century has focused on the connections between North and South America through scholarship like Katherine Manthorne’s landmark study Tropical Renaissance: North American Artists Exploring Latin America, 1839-1879 (1989), Picturing the Americas: Landscape Painting From Tierra Del Fuego to the Arctic (2015) and Traveler artists: Landscapes of Latin America from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection (2015). These studies have focused mainly on landscape representation through the eyes of the traveler.

This panel seeks to build upon the representation of the Other through visual culture and through an interdisciplinary lens. Interdisciplinary fields may include visual and textual relations, print culture, photography, theater studies, science and art, and material culture. A key point of discussion around the South and North two-way relationship will be structures of power and inherent biases of positionality. The Other in this proposal is understood within the nineteenth-century context as “different.” In this specific history, difference can be viewed not only through geographical distance but also through ethnographic distance. Questions of positionality may also address contemporaneous and historiographic accounts of audience reception and ideological interpretation of representations of the Other across the South-North divide. 


Topics may include but are not restricted to:

Travel/travelogues

Race

Ethnicity

Indigeneity

Gender

Age

Class

Spirituality

Religion

Politics

Nature

Landscape

Animals

Submission of proposals should be sent to: v.uribe20@uniandes.edu.co. Proposals must include 250-word abstracts and shortened CV sent by September 16, 2021.