Course Syllabus
Decolonizing Art & Culture in America
Fall 2021
Class Meets: Online
Course Description
This interdisciplinary course offers the opportunity to re-examine 19th-21st century American art and culture through the lens of postcolonial and anti-racist thought. Students will examine how the dominant colonial worldview has shaped perceptions of quality and beauty in our evaluation of cultural objects and expression. Students explore the value, quality, influence, and integrity of the artistic and cultural expressions of Native American, African American, and immigrant communities and artists in the United States. The course examines short fiction, poems, essays, visual art, and music to see how individual artists and thinkers deliberately tackle and seek to dismantle racist and colonial ways of thinking and seeing.
Essential Objectives
- Define important terms such as colonialism, postcolonialism, neocolonialism, ethnocentrism, racism, and antiracism.
- Identify how power structures and systems of thought have shaped of perceptions of art and culture.
- Identify the ways that colonial and ethnocentric perspectives have shaped ideas of beauty and quality to deliberately exclude and denigrate non-European ideas of beauty and quality.
- Discuss the effect of colonization and systemic racism on the arts and cultures of Native American, African American, and immigrant communities and individuals.
- Identify the ways that individuals and communities demonstrate resilience, flexibility, and agency through art and culture.
- Examine how particular art/cultural objects may project a specific, inaccurate, or limited image of a culture.
- Evaluate how interacting with cultural/art objects through different perspectives can bring about a perceived loss or gain in one’s identity when the lens changes.
- Critically read, view, analyze, and evaluate selected works as they relate to postcolonial and antiracist thought.
- Examine the historical, social, economic, political, and cultural circumstances that surround the creation of art.
- Critically view and analyze short fiction, poems, essays, visual art, music, and elements of culture that overturn and dismantle the colonial narrative
Downloadable Syllabus
Decolonizing Art and Culture Syllabus 15Wk.pdf
To view the complete Course Description, please click on the following link: V21FA HUM-2200-VO01