Blackness in the Field of the Visible

This course will survey some theories of visuality as they interface with considerations of Blackness, gender, and sexuality. The course will also include class visits from a few contemporary Black artists so as to facilitate in–depth conversations about the fraught interface of visuality and Blackness. Readings might include: Rizvana Bradley Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form; Krista A. Thompson, Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice; Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America; Darby English, How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness; Huey Copeland, Touched by the Mother: Black Men, American Art; Huey Copeland, Bound to Appear: Art, Slavery, and the Site of Blackness in Multicultural America