From Africa to America and African American Arts in the Colonial Era

Essay Instructions:

1. Watch: Unit Two VoiceThreads: “From Africa to America” and “African American Arts in the Colonial Era”
2. Consider: How scholars think about art history of the African “diaspora,” as discussed by scholar Krista Thompson:
“African diaspora art history explores the role of art, visual culture, and visuality in African diasporic cultures. It examines in part the visual representations, tropes, technologies, and practices through which diverse internally differentiated groups of people of African descent came to see, understand, and represent themselves as connected to each other or as sharing cultural expressions, religious practices, political views, experiences and conditions, pasts, or imagined futures. Art does not simply illustrate these efforts, but has been an intrinsic part of the ongoing processes through which diverse individuals and groups, under distinct social conditions, forge and express a sense of diasporic belonging . . . Particularly in the case of some early forms of African diasporic expression, which were created within the context of slavery, form and content were often strategically not aligned. Subject at times to sanction and a host of social and material conditions, form indeed could hide content. Creators in the African diaspora [have] to be attentive to the invisible and un-visible (that which is not seen while in plain view), as well as cognizant of that which remained in the realm of the visible.”
- Krista Thompson, “A Sidelong Glance: The Practice of African Diaspora Art History in the United States” Art Journal 70, no. 3 (Fall, 2011), 7.
3. Read: Barbara J. Heath, “Buttons, Beads, and Buckles: Contextualizing Adornment Within the Bounds of Slavery,” and Patricia M. Sanford, “Strong is the Bond of Kinship”: West African-Style Ancestor Shrines and Subfloor Pits on African-American Quarters,” in Maria Franklin and Garrett Fesler, eds., Historical Archaeology, Identity Formation, and the Interpretation of Ethnicity (Colonial Williamsburgh Foundation, 1999) (.pdf)
4. Read: Stephanie M. H. Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004) (pdf)
5. Watch: The History of the African Burial Ground National Monument (24 minutes)
https://www(dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=haPBZtDXnW0
6. Read: Amelia Peck and Paula M. Bagger, “Prince Demah Barnes: Portraitist and Slave in Colonial Boston” Antiques (January/February, 2015), 155-159. (pdf)
7. Submit: three entries in the Journal platform on BlackBoard that reflect on all six sources of information in this unit. Each entry should be 200-300 words in length and discuss specific points of information, using names of authors, videos, artists, places, dates, titles, etc. You can think about these entries in terms of answering general questions about your engagement with each VoiceThread, reading, or video. For example, discuss something new that you learned, or something that surprised you. Did course materials lead you to think about the topic, the United States, or yourself, in a new way? DUE DATE: Complete all entries no later than July 14th at Midnight.

Essay Sample Content Preview:

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Journal Entries
Entry 1
“From Africa to America” an “African American Arts in the Colonial Era” are two essential pieces of evidence. From Africa to America offers an interesting view of race. To most people, African American means the color black and hence the occasional use of the phrase black Americans. However, from this clip, I learned that being African American is more than race or having been born in an African American setup. The example of Rachel Dolezal is one that confirms the statement above. Having been born white. Dolezal identified herself as black. So, race ought not to be looked at through the eyes of colonialists in American history. The lesson from this is that race is what we make it to be and not the color of our skin.
Krista Thompson’s A Sidelong Glance: The Practice of African Diaspora Art History in the United States and African American Arts in the Colonial Era, are two interesting pieces. From these two, I gather that art is an extension of who a person or a community is. Through analysis of a people’s art, it is possible to understand what a group of people stand for and who they represent. It is also possible to know a bit of their history. However, one that stands out in the discussion of African American art is the expectation that African Americans have to showcase hints of their identity in their work. While it is okay to showcase one’s identity in art, having it as an expectation limits the standards of determining an artist’s work. One deduction I made from these sources is that African American art is rich and diverse.
Entry 2
Reading Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South offered me perspective and a new understanding of the slavery era. While talking about this period, people generalize and talk about the evils of slavery. However, few seem to talk about the differences in the ways men and women experienced slavery. It is true that slavery was bad and that both men and women suffered at its hands. But, these two groups experienced it differently and had different ways of coping with the same as well. Few women are mentioned as real threats to the existence of slavery. However, reading this article helps me realize that more is often left unsaid. Women in the slavery era were victims ...

Updated on January 26, 2024

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From Africa to America and African American Arts in the Colonial Era

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