ARTH 379 Postcolonial Theory in Art History: Politics of Archival Turnt

• Fridays, 11:45 am - 2:30 pm
• Instructor: Sanaz Sohrabi

The “archival turn” following the seminal exhibition “Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art,” curated in 2008 by Okwui Enwezor at International Center for Photography, New York opened up radical possibilities for generating counterhegemonic social and cultural histories. This new critical gaze toward the archives became a gateway for many scholars across contemporary art and artists to uncover, recover and examine the histories of groups that were marginalized or erased within the colonial, imperial, and nationalist grand narratives and their institutional archives. In this lecture course, we will investigate how power structures have historically shaped the production, constitution, restitution, and ownership of the archives and why “archival turn” became a key and integral component of postcolonial criticism. Throughout this lecture course, we will study the ways contemporary artists and filmmakers have reinvented and engaged with critical archival practices in their representations of marginalized communities to unsettle and undo the colonial forms of storytelling that are still present within political institutions, museums, and contemporary art infrastructure in our era of globalization.

Students will be introduced to foundational concepts, terms, and writers whose contribution to the field of postcolonial theory and criticism has been influential in shaping and responding to critical analysis of the archives and politics of representation. This lecture course examines conceptual and analytical interventions that seek to foster critical, intersectional, and non-Eurocentric approaches to archival practices and their connection and contribution to wider debates about the politics of historical visibility in contemporary art.