The way space is visualized, imagined, and experienced has been instrumental to the global constitution of race. Maps are often regarded as the most accurate multidimensional tools for graphically representing air, land, sea, and beyond. In their various forms, maps aesthetically, textually, and materially convey how African Diasporic peoples understand the spaces they claim and inhabit. Expanding from familiar modes of scientifically charting area, this course broadly examines how space is conceived across artistic and expressive genres. Assigned readings temporally link visual economies of race and (dis)placement from early modernity to the present via Black global, hemispheric, and regional approaches. The overlapping frameworks we will engage put art history in conversation with geography, queer & trans theory, decolonial thought, science & technology studies, and more.

Textbooks: Readings accessible via Canvas.