Blk WomenArt Vis Cult in Amer

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Since the inception of transatlantic racial slavery and European settler colonialism in the Americas, women of African descent have drawn on their embodied experiences and cultural and artistic traditions to resist gendered anti-Black oppression in a number of ways. From the patchwork quilts of enslaved African women in the nineteenth century to the political and artistic movements of Black women artists and cultural producers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Black women throughout the Americas have used art and culture to not only survive and combat gendered racism but also to imagine alternative social arrangements and ways of being in the world. This third year seminar will explore the themes, methods, and questions that have animated Black women’s visual art in the Americas. Additionally, the course will ask the following questions: What are the contours of and continuities between Black women’s visual art in the Americas? What insights might a hemispheric lens yield in the study of Black women’s art? Lastly, what is the relationship between Black women’s art and their social and political struggles throughout the hemisphere?