VISST-2000 courses develop students' visual analysis skills while providing the opportunity for in-depth study of the visual/structural artifacts associated with a particular topic, region, or movement. Students will also engage with the relevant primary/secondary literature for the topic at hand. Courses will pay particular attention to the larger cultural, historical, and theoretical/ideological contexts in which the visual artifacts and structures under consideration were created.COURSE DESCRIPTIONThis course looks at the emergence of African photography in the mid-nineteenth century initially as a medium used by Europeans during the colonialist era and subsequently employed by African photographers themselves as a medium of entrepreneurship, self-definition, and liberation. Lines of inquiry probe the myriad tensions associated with the expansion and complication of African photographic practices during the 20th century to our present moment. A wide range of examples will be examined including but not limited to: nineteenth-century African studio photography in Sierra Leone, royal photography, new global visibility of mid-twentieth century work by West African photographers, Seydou Keita, Malick Sidibé, and Samuel Fosso, photographs in important visual cultural outlets like the South African Drum Magazine, and works by contemporary African photographers. The political and stylistic aspects of portraiture, documentary, ethnography, pop and abstraction will be important to the discussion of the medium. Students will develop an understanding of the nuances of the frameworks and histories of photography in Africa and the African diaspora, while gaining an awareness of the vitality of photography as a dominant language of contemporary African art today. Requirements will include a balance of reading and discussion, research, writing, presentation, and original artistic responses to the material as well as trips to area exhibitions.

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