I’m enjoying the responses to our field trip, and glad to see that there is a real discussion to be had about the ways that we as students/residents might engage the space. I look forward to continuing that in class tomorrow. Also for tomorrow, please prepare brief, informal presentations about your project. If you have anything you’d like to show the class, if you can email it to me before hand that would really help, so that we can show everything from my computer.

Also, remember to bring a draft or description of your project, in order to get some feedback from a classmate. If we have time, we’ll do that in class.

Finally, Kevan wanted me to share this link to some of his work.

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Hi all;

Looking forward to our walk through Strathcona tomorrow. Please be in the lobby of  Pacific Central Terminal, 1150 Station St by 9am.

If I bump into you at the nearby Starbucks beforehand, coffee is on me. If you need to reach me or find us at any point, my cell # is 604-374-5211.

If you are coming from campus, the 84 bus stops at Main st. and from there it’s a short walk. It’s also very close to the Science World Skytrain station. We’ll be done by 10ish  to give you time to get back to campus if necessary.

Here is some information that Kevan (aka Scruffmouth) sent. There’s some supplementary literature and his bio. If you could please read this before coming that would be great. (sorry for the late post!)

Kevan Bio and Articles

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For Tuesday:

First, take a look at the website and accompanying videos:

Black Strathcona website: http://blackstrathcona.com/

then, please read the following:

Paul Hebert, Race and Imperialism in Canada, from Black Perspectives, March 2017

Paul Carr, The Equity Waltz in Canada: Whiteness and the informal realities of racism in education” Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education, 2008

This is optional but will be very interesting for those of you who want to do some comparative thinking:

Lea Geler, “African Descent and Whiteness in Buenos Aires” in Eduardo Elena and Paulina Alberto, eds. Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

If you’re still not done, this volume is online via the UBC library and includes some lots of fascinating articles about race in Argentina.

Please post your thoughts here.

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Thanks for some great discussions yesterday. I wanted to outline the rest of term, and update everyone on decisions that we made in each of the discussions.

Thursday March 23: Film/discussion about whiteness and blackness in Ontario/Canada

Tuesday March 28: Discussion of readings, TBA.

Thursday March 30: Field Trip, Black Strathcona.  Please meet at 9am, Pacific Central Terminal, 1150 Station St  in the lobby. If you are coming from campus, the 84 bus stops at Main st. and from there it’s a short walk. It’s also very close to the Science World skytrain station. We’ll meet in the lobby, and will be done by 10ish  to give you time to get back to campus if necessary.

Tuesday April 4: Presentations of projects. Bring a draft or a write up of your project and we will spend some time on peer review. For your presentation, just plan on a very brief and informal description of what you are working on. Everyone should plan to come for the whole time.

Thursday April 6:  Papers/Projects due. No formal class. Please bring your papers/projects to my office, 1121 Buchanan Tower, sometime before noon.

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For Tuesday, we’ll continue the conversation about issues raised by the museum exhibit, as well as to the relationship of racialized politics and identities to media and technology.

Here are some articles to start us off:

Representation, Polyphony, and the Construction of Power in a Kayapo Video

by Terence Turner, in Kay Warren and Jean Jackson, eds. Indigenous Movements, Self-Representation and the State in Latin America, (Ch. 7)

and

Quai Branly in Process

by James Clifford, October, Vol. 120, Spring 2007, pp. 3-23

Please write your thoughts here

By now, everyone who has submitted a proposal to me should have gotten it back, with comments. Please let me know if I’ve missed yours somehow.

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What is Afrofuturism? Here are some examples, so that we can begin to figure this out.

old afrofuturism: Sun Ra

new afrofuturism: Erykah Badu

art: C Kabiru

Indigenous futurism

Literature: Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild”

guide

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On Tuesday we’ll get a guided tour of the new MOA exibit on Amazonia, given by Nuno Porto, the curator of the exhibit. The material is related to the kinds of issues we’ve been talking about, but from a very different perspective. I’m looking forward to the visit, and to your comments, which you can post here afterwards.  Please meet me at the entrance of the Museum of Anthropology at 9:30am on Tuesday.

Also, remember that you need to email me your proposals and annotated bibliographies by Tuesday. I’ll be in my office on Monday from 12-3pm. guidelines for the proposals and projects are here. Please don’t hesitate to write if you have any questions or if we didn’t get a chance to chat last class.

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For your paper, due March 7;

Choose one from these three:

Radiolab: “Ally’s Choice” “Straight outta Chevy Chase”,

Soundcheck: “There Were No Black Artists with No. 1 Hits in 2013”

AND one from these three:

“First Comes Love”, “Pop, Power, Privilege”; “The Most Visible Minority”

These are all on the same page, “Colour Code”

Write a two page paper that both compares the histories of race in the US and Canada, and also compares the ways that the podcasters are talking about and framing the question of race. Which categories work across borders, and which don’t? How similar or different are the concerns? (These are questions that are meant to start you thinking; feel free to follow your interests in this paper and make your own arguments). It will be helpful to draw from some of the readings we’ve done over the course of the semester and connect to the broader themes we’ve been talking about).

Remember also to read Saunt, chs. 1-5 for March 7.

Have a great week! I will be on email if you need anything, and can make appointments for Monday if you need to speak to me in person about your paper or anything else.

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Over reading week, please read and prepare the following. Here is the blog post page

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

and

Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera

Also, watch this space as I will post guidelines for the podcast paper and the final project over the next couple of days.

And, post here if you would like to write a blog post about a Black History Month film at the  VIFF.

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For Tuesday, we’ll think about the ways that the contributions of black women change our understandings of histories of race in the Americas. Following our work on Thursday, please read the following from Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (UNC Press, 2015). (Available online via the UBC Library website.)

Introduction

Histories Fictions and Black Womanhood Bodies by Martha Jones

PLUS

Choose and download (and read!) ONE of the chapters more specific to the texts we read together on Thursday:

Arlette Frund, “Phillis Wheatley, a Public Intellectual”

Mia Bay, “The Battle for Womanhood Is the Battle for Race: Black Women and Nineteenth-Century Racial Thought”

Corinne T. Field, “Frances E. W. Harper and the Politics of Intellectual Maturity”

Farah J. Griffin, “Ann Petry’s Harlem”

Cheryl Wall, “Living by the Word: June Jordan and Alice Walker’s Quest for a Redemptive Art and Politics”

I’ll look forward to continuing the discussion on Tuesday. For those of you who didn’t make it, here are the texts that we read and discussed. Please read at least one in preparation for discussion on Tuesday

Wheatley, To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Duty to Dependent Races

Ann Petry, Like a Winding Sheet

Alice Walker, In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens

and finally, for those of you who got movie tickets, I will bring them! Sorry I haven’t done so sooner. And for anyone thinking of going, here is a review in the New York Times, and an interview with the director, Raoul Peck.

Film schedule: VIFF

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