www.arthistory.northwestern.edu art-history@northwestern.edu

Quarter/Year Course Number Day/Time Instructor

Fall 2017 ART-HIST 460 W 2-5 Copeland

Course Title

Studies in 20th Century Art: Appropriation

Within North American art-historical discourse, “appropriation” often refers to a brand of photo-based practice associated with the work of white women artists such as Cindy Sherman who emerged in the New York art world of the late 1970s. In this exploratory graduate research seminar, we will aim to historicize, contest, and expand this mobilization of the term by considering how various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences have differentially defined appropriation as well as how forms of “borrowing” and theft—whether of images, artifacts, bodies, or lands—have shaped the unfolding of the modern world and the contemporary politics of cross-cultural encounter. Course readings will include texts by Homi Bhabha, Douglas Crimp, E. Patrick Johnson, Karl Marx, Sarah Nuttall, and many others.

Required Textbooks Assessments

All readings and films will be available for free via the course Canvas website.

Assignments will include: weekly written responses; leadership of class discussion; 12-15-page final essay.