ART 228 - African American Art

3 credit hours - Three hours weekly; one term.
This course meets the Arts & Humanities General Education Requirement. This course meets the Diversity Requirement.

Study African American visual arts encompassing African art forms, the arts of the African Diaspora, and the varied work of African-American artists. Lectures and discussions will be supplemented by trips to museums in the Baltimore-Washington area. No previous art courses are necessary.

Crosslisted: Also offered as AFA 228 ; credit is not given for both ART 228 and AFA 228 .

Course Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

Describe cultural differences
- Identify aspects of behavior that are culturally variable
- Apply measures of significance to expressive behavior
Construct models of cultural continuity and change
- Define “continuity” and “change” as cultural concepts
- Identify ways that race affects evaluations of social progress
- Examine interpretations of artistic expression in democratic and undemocratic societies
Identify roots and branches of African-American art
- Investigate regional patterns in West-African art
- Connect African and Caribbean cultural forms
- Evaluate relationship of idiosyncratic art to art bound by tradition
Define aspects of racial identity expressed in visual media
- List ways in which racial identity is expressed in everyday life
- Compare expressions of race in popular culture
- Compare expressions of race in fine arts
Explain social circumstances that shape African-American visual expression
- Trace experience of African-Americans from slavery to abolition as revealed in visual media
- Trace experience of African-Americans from abolition to contemporary times as revealed in visual media
- Assess the imprint of historical experience in contemporary African-American visual media
Interpret visual expressions that contain markers of racial identity
- Locate in-group and out-group concepts of identity
- Identify examples of race-based message-making in visual media
- Assess ethical and political considerations in the application of visual identity-making
Classify visual expression according to period, culture, and community
- Identify examples of art that carries intentional markings of place and time
- Calibrate the importance of community in art-making
Illustrate concepts of race and class with examples drawn from visual media
- Identify “hidden” messages of race and class in visual media
- Compare folk, popular, and elite expressions of race and class in visual media
Connect visual media to other cultural expressions of African-American identity
- Locate examples of African-American identity in performing arts
- Locate examples of African-American identity in literary arts
- Compare images of African-American identity conveyed in visual arts with those derived from performing and/or literary art forms

Core Competencies
Core 1 Communication Core 2 Technology Fluency Core 3 Information Literacy Core 9 Global Perspective Core 10 Innovative and Critical Thinking