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18.2: Background Readings

  • Page ID
    172758
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    Figure \(18.2.1\): Glenn Ligon Untitled, 1992.

    • Bearden, Romare and Harry Henderson. A History of African American Artists: From 1972 to the Present (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993).
    • Chang, Gordon, Mark Johnson and Paul Karlstrom, eds. Asian American Art: A History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008).
    • Powell, Richard. Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
    • West, Cornel. Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001).

    Reading Assignments (For Students)

    • Mercer, Kobena. “Reading Racial Fetishism: The Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe.” Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1994).
    • Yenawine, Philip, Marianne Weems and Brian Wallis. “Introduction,” Art Matters: How the Culture Wars Changed American (New York: NYU Press, 1999).  Art Matters: How the Culture Wars Changed America provides a good compilation of essays that discuss the effect of the Culture Wars during the 1980s.
    • This site, Culture Wars Redux provides a wonderful synopsis, images and videos referring to the newest round of culture wares in the artistic landscape.

    Possible Videos


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