Alongside its importance for understanding color, light, form, density, and dimension, this seminar explores how blackness has been deployed throughout Atlantic World visual culture to connote death, emptiness, and chaos. From Robert Fludd's The Great Darkness to Kasimir Malevich's Black Square, two-dimensional monochrome images invite varied interpretations. While Fludd invoked blackness to depict the infinite void preceding the universe's creation, Malevich scrawled the racist phrase "Negroes battling in a cave" onto his canvas before covering it with paint. The creatures populating H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror alongside the Marvel Comics character Venom are among other case studies in which blackness is portrayed as amorphous monstrosity. During our collaborative study, we will ultimately trouble taken for granted distinctions between 'racial blackness' and 'non-racial blackness' by critically theorizing blackness' multivalence throughout the arts and expressive cultures.

Textbooks: Readings accessible via Canvas.