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Listed in: Anthropology and Sociology, as ANTH-37
Carol S. Kiefer (Section 01)
This interdisciplinary course examines issues of art and cultural identity. We will consider strategies employed by artists from the nineteenth century to the present who negotiate the terrain of cultural identity in their work. Key theoretical texts by Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and others will inform discussions on the definition of cultural identity, competing claims of place and time, national, regional, religious, geographic, and ethnic identity. We will consider the experience of exile, displacement, diaspora, alienation, hybridity, and in-betweeness. Other topics include cultural imperialism and cultural property. Student papers will focus on the works of contemporary artists represented in the spring 2008 exhibition at the Mead Art Museum entitled The Third Space: Cultural Identity Today. Included in the exhibition will be artists in residence at Amherst College (Copeland Fellows) during the term of the course. Limited to 15 students. First semester. Visiting Lecturer Solomon Kiefer.