ART 325 - Race and Representation in American Art

Units: 3 ; Breadth Area: GE-UD-C; Diversity
The construction and representation of race across American art and visual culture from colonial encounter to contemporary movement politics, attending to how power functions through visual images to imbed ideas about identification in subcultural communities and dominant culture.

Strongly Recommended Preparation: Upper division status (greater than 60 earned semester units) and completion of lower division Area C requirements.
Prerequisites: Completion of GE Areas A1, A2, A3 and B4 with grade C- (CR) or better.
Possible Instructional Methods: Entirely On-ground, or Entirely Online, or Hybrid.
Grading: A-F grading only.
Breadth Area(s) Satisfied: GE-UD-C - Upper Division Arts or Humanities, Overlay - Diversity
Course Typically Offered: Fall & Spring

Student Learning Outcomes - Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:

Locate and explain authors’ arguments about race and representation of diverse identities in American art and visual culture;
Describe and analyze American art with appropriate vocabulary and with sensitivity to the diverse makers and audiences of art and visual culture in the United States;
Connect images, designs, and performances throughout US history with social, economic, and political factors that shape knowledge about identity, representation, and access to power;
Defend ideas about the construction and representation of race, class, gender, and sexuality, based on evidence drawn from textual analysis and from close observation of images;
Practice attentive listening to teammates and to classmates with differing viewpoints.

UD-C. Upper-division Arts or Humanities Learning Outcomes

demonstrate an understanding of and ability to apply the principles, methodologies, value systems, and thought processes employed in the arts and humanities;
analyze cultural production as an expression of, or reflection upon, what it means to be human; and
demonstrate how the perspectives of the arts and humanities are used by informed, engaged, and reflective citizens to benefit local and global communities.

Diversity Overlay Learning Outcomes

describe the histories and/or experiences of one or more U. S. cultural groups and the resilience and agency of group members;
identify structures of oppression and the diverse efforts and strategies used by groups to combat the effects of oppressive structures;
analyze the intersection of the categories of race and gender as they affect cultural group members’ lived realities and/or as they are embodied in personal and collective identities;
recognize the way that multiple differences (including, for example, gender, class, sexuality, religion, disability, immigration status, gender expression, color/phenotype, racial mixture, linguistic expression, and/or age) within cultural groups complicate individual and group identities.