Art History: Photo & Perf in Global South

A study of selected examples of recent and current art and/or architecture, with a focus on the diversity of human experience. Material emphasis and geographical focus will vary with instructor. Representative topics: East Asian Art's Dialogue with Traditions. May repeat for credit with different content. Topics vary by offering; periodic offering at intervals that may exceed four years. Prerequisite: ARTH 1018, ARTH 1420, FTS 1420, or FTS 1430.

Prereqs enforced by the system: ARTH 1018 or 1420 or FTS 1420 or FTS 1430 PACE students by permission and override

By the turn of the twenty-first century the inherited models for understanding photography and performance seemed outmoded and its very geography was constituted by a kind of provincialism. Critiques of photography’s history pointed out that it really only accounts for and can make sense of Euro-American phenomena; Any non-western work is considered a performance of Western society rather than presenting themselves to each other as they are. In response, scholarship and exhibitions about the cultural specificities of the medium’s history in the so-called Global South have become increasingly popular. But what are the ideological underpinnings of the "global turn" in the history of photography? What is the relationship between photography and performance, with the colonial, postcolonial, and neocolonial condition? What are the larger implications of reframing photography as a global and highly differentiated practice? Does an emphasis on difference fundamentally de-center established norms or does it in effect only reify problematic notions of the “other”? Or both? This course investigates these and related questions by focusing on recent artwork and scholarship about photography and performance art in Africa, the African Diaspora, Latin America, and Asia.