Dr. Chris Bennett Develops Art History Class Focused on Inclusion
Mon, 02/14/2022 - 2:55pmHarriet Tubman, 1868–69 (Unknown photographer)
Tubman and her life story as explored in very recent/contemporary art since 2000 are a significant part of Chris Bennett’s new class “Inclusivity in Art History” being offered for the first time this spring (2022)
In fall 2021 Chris Bennett developed a new upper-level art history course entitled “Inclusivity in Art History, Western and Non-Western.” The course builds upon his past classes covering similar ground at UL Lafayette, including “Art and the Civil Rights Movement,” “Flash Forward: New Studies in Non-Western Art,” and segments of “Art Since 1945,” and also on Chris’s four years of service, from 2016–20, on College Art Association’s international Diversity Practices Committee. The description for the new course, being offered this spring, follows: “Alongside other recent productive developments in Art History, this class, by way of a sequence of case studies, investigates the question of what a more inclusive account of contemporary art, or art since 1945, might look like. The course consists of three main parts or topics: (1) African-American art; (2) recent studies of Women in the visual arts; and (3) other global threads including contemporary Native American and Mexican-American art; art in and pertaining to Asia, the Middle East, and South Africa; interracial coupling and identity; and Gay, Bi, and Trans cultural production.”