Course Offering:
AFRI0840, Fall 2020
(revised for Fall 2021, Fall 2022 & Spring 2024)
Africana Studies, Brown University
Course Description:
In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, monuments and public spaces tied to the violent histories of racism, slavery, colonialism, and white supremacy have received renewed interest and debate. Protestors and individuals have defaced, toppled, and petitioned for the removal of Confederate monuments and statues to the white male power elite from public spaces, courthouse lawns, and government buildings.
In this undergraduate seminar, we explore a variety of monuments, some of them well known, others less so, in public spaces in the United States. We will learn about the ways in which artists and communities have negotiated history and the politics of of memory and remembrance through public monuments, statues, and memorials. The course also considers the meaning and purpose of monuments, investigating the problematic narratives and historic controversies surrounding such objects.
The removal of monuments in the contemporary moment asks us to think hard about who is represented in public space and what kind of stories and histories dominate. The current intense focus on monuments asks us to question whose histories have been forgotten, ignored, or suppressed, and what monumental justice might look like.
Syllabus available upon request.
Course Offering:
AFRI2005, Spring 2021 & Spring 2023
Africana Studies, Brown University
Course Description:
In the early 1990s, various international groups (ie. UNESCO) and countries began efforts to commemorate the Atlantic slave trade and slavery. Some of the earliest monuments and memorials to the slave past were dedicated in Benin and Ghana. In the early 2000s, monuments celebrating emancipation began to appear in Caribbean nations and South America. European countries also began to acknowledge their deep ties to the slave trade and slavery with memorialization efforts. The slowest nation to recognize its slave past has been the United States. The push from global and local communities as well as universities to address the legacy of slavery and to come to a deep reckoning of the trauma of slavery has also led to memorial efforts in the United States.
This graduate seminar is concerned with the memorialization of the slave past through monumental form in the Atlantic world. We will consider a range of writings on monument, counter-monument, and sites of memory in order to think about how and why slavery is represented and embodied. Over the course of the semester, we will examine a number of case studies, monuments and counter-monuments to the slave past located in Benin, Ghana, Senegal, England, France, the Netherlands, Brazil, Haiti, Jamaica, Barbados, Guadeloupe, and the United States. Recent writings on the intersection of slavery, cultural heritage, and dark tourism will also play a role in our considerations.
Syllabus available upon request.
Course Offering:
AFRI1430, Spring 2022
Africana Studies, Brown University
Course Description:
Lincoln was the first president to be photographed extensively--dozens of images survive of him. In modern America, his image/persona is ubiquitous and continues to circulate in a range of media including in tv commercials for companies such as GEICO and Ancestry.com, in novels/films such as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and as one of the "RacingPresidents" for the Washington National's baseball team.
In 1923, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Class of 1897, acquired The Charles Woodberry McLellan Collection of Lincolniana in memory of John Hay, Class of 1858, one of Abraham Lincoln's WhiteHouse secretaries. In the nearly 100 years since its acquisition, the collection has been increased to more than five times its original size. Today, the collection is made up of 30,000+ items in various media by and about Lincoln.
This undergraduate course investigates the material culture in the collection through biography, archival studies, representation, and race. We will learn about the ways in which Lincoln's image has endured in the United States through prints and paintings, music scores, sculpture, advertising and other material culture. The class also considers the nature of the archive, the way in which Lincoln's presidential image has been used over time, and the ways that race are inflected in the archive including the visualization of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Course Exhibition:
At the center of this course was the collaborative curation of a digital exhibition on the representation of race in the Charles Woodberry McLellan Collection of Lincolniana. The exhibition is entitled Caricature and Character: The Visuals of Race in the Lincoln Archive and was created using the platform, CultureConnect.
Syllabus upon request.
View Student Exhibition HERE
Course Offering:
AFRI1060D, Fall 2023 & Fall 2024
Africana Studies, Brown University
Course Description:
In this introductory undergraduate course, we focus on the Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, the important African American artistic and socio-cultural moment that dates roughly from 1919-1934. Organized as an interdisciplinary course, we examine the historical, social, and artistic contexts of the period.
This class considers the ways in which the women and men of the period sought to self-consciously transform the nature of African American identity and culture in the early twentieth century.
Syllabus available upon request.
Course Offering:
A co-developed course with Eric Sung, Providence College
AAH392~1, Summer 2024
College Unbound, Providence, RI
Course Description:
This course explores the intersection of monuments and photography through historical case studies and direct engagement with the camera. Students examine monuments through photography, practicing the ability to see, describe, analyze, and engage creatively with the monument landscape.
Seeing Monuments focuses on two intersecting subjects: monuments and photography. Physical monuments continue to dominate our public spaces and landscapes, shaping stories of the nation, of power, and often of war. Using the camera as a means to engage monuments, we will think about how photography shapes our visual understanding of monuments and the public spaces they inhabit. Photographers have used their cameras to capture the aura of the monument, to note their monumentality and mundaneness, to document a historic moment of iconoclasm, and to visualize anew. We ask you to slow down, to notice the monuments near you, and to look carefully at the monuments and memorials that anchor the public spaces of your town and cities. Then we ask you to see through the camera lens.
Syllabus available upon request.
Course Offering:
A co-developed course with Melaine Ferdinand-King
AFRI1181, Fall 2024 & Spring 2025
Africana Studies, Brown University
Course Description:
Black women visual artists have made significant contributions to the contemporary art world, pushing boundaries with their selected media and referencing identity, sexuality, and gender in complex ways. In this undergraduate class, we focus on art created after 1980, centering the artistic production of Black women of the African Diaspora. Some of the artists we will study were born in the United States, while others arrived from the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe as exiles and migrants, making the United States home. Their work challenges us to think about the Black female body, community, notions of home and migration, Black materiality and presence, deviance and difference, and the role and construction of the past, present, and future.
The undergraduate course highlights the art of Sonya Clark, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Simone Leigh, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Ebony G. Patterson, Tschabalala Self, Mickalene Thomas, and Kara Walker.
Syllabus available upon request.
