Cristian’s Profile Student Toggle navigation

“I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today’s existence.” — Robert Mapplethorpe This course surveys the history of photography from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century to the present. We will examine the use of photography for aesthetic, documentary, and “scientific” purposes, stylistic shifts in photography related to aesthetic concerns, and varying interpretations of subject matter based on social and cultural concerns at specific moments in history. We will also consider the relationship between photography and the visual arts in general, which culminates with the primacy of photography as a medium by the late twentieth century.

“I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today’s existence.” — Robert Mapplethorpe This course surveys the history of photography from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century to the present. We will examine the use of photography for aesthetic, documentary, and “scientific” purposes, stylistic shifts in photography related to aesthetic concerns, and varying interpretations of subject matter based on social and cultural concerns at specific moments in history. We will also consider the relationship between photography and the visual arts in general, which culminates with the primacy of photography as a medium by the late twentieth century.

African Cultural retentions in the Americas is presented this semester as a reading and writing-intensive course focused on the continuities, transformations, adaptations and re¬inventions of African culture found within the African diaspora in the Americas since the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Some of the research and writing conducted by historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, and musicologists pertinent to our subject matter will be studied. Lectures, readings, classroom discussions and writings will explore cultural developments in the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the United States. In addition to our readings, a number of documentary films will be shown and reviewed. In the Americas, Africans encountered Native Americans and Europeans; therefore, a major focus of this course is to explore and to understand the new cultural contexts which emerged, and Africa’s contributions to those contexts.

African Cultural retentions in the Americas is presented this semester as a reading and writing-intensive course focused on the continuities, transformations, adaptations and re¬inventions of African culture found within the African diaspora in the Americas since the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Some of the research and writing conducted by historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, and musicologists pertinent to our subject matter will be studied. Lectures, readings, classroom discussions and writings will explore cultural developments in the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the United States. In addition to our readings, a number of documentary films will be shown and reviewed. In the Americas, Africans encountered Native Americans and Europeans; therefore, a major focus of this course is to explore and to understand the new cultural contexts which emerged, and Africa’s contributions to those contexts.