Prompt for October 14

For your blogs this week, consider the following questions. Make sure to support your responses with specific examples.

•What are sources of vodou material culture and ritual? How is Haitian vodou religion and some African peoples’ beliefs similar?

•What meaningful connections can you make between what you know about African arts and what you read and saw about Haitian art?

•What meaningful connections/relationships can you make between the reading and the DVDs (Maya Deren’s “Divine Horsemen” and Henry Louis Gates' “Black in Latin America”?)

Prompt for October 7

Discuss how Yoruba visual culture communicates Yoruba spirituality. You can go in-depth with one or two examples, or write a comparative blog that is more all-encompassing. What seem to be major themes in Yoruba cosmology and spiritual belief?

General comments on comparisons

This week I noticed a lot of room for improvement.

It is also clear some folks are not reading the text--or at least, not reading it carefully. Misspellings, incorrect identification of peoples--these are all items that can be fact-checked with the resource you are meant to be reading for every class meeting.


Editorial mistakes were big this week too. You should write a draft and edit before you publish your post.


By this point in the semester, your blogs should be thoughtful, fact-checked, organized, and edited. There are three major writing skills everyone can improve upon:

Introductions
It would be good to start with an interesting introduction relating to theme and thesis rather than "I chose to compare". It is more efficient to begin with overarching comparative themes and support with formal analysis.

Theses

This is not a specific thesis: "Though both of these items are pencils, they represent very different things as well vary in their appearance." 

Neither is this: "When comparing the cheese to the cracker there are both similarities and differences between the two." We will practice making these specific in class.

Contestable information: Citations

There were quite a few instances where folks made statements that needed citations. If it is a claim that is contestable, it needs a citation. Ie: "It has been suggested that..." (Who suggested this idea?)

Prompt for September 30

Create your own comparison of objects from two different peoples whom we have studied thus far. Make sure to fully identify each object as you are required for the online museum project.

• people/artist who made it
• description of object medium/process of construction if applicable
• function

Create a meaningful comparison that highlights significant themes or aspects of the cultural contexts in which the objects were created. Avoid using the same comparisons studied in class. Pay attention to organization and mechanics in your essay!

Prompt for Friday, September 23

For this week's blog, make sure to address Cole’s essay and relate the concepts he explains to what you’ve learned about the Baule, Bamana, and Bwa. How do masquerades mark and effect change? Provide specific examples.

Prompt for Friday, September 16

For this week's blog, make sure you respond to the essay "Radiance of the King" by Donald Cosentino in African Arts.

• Do you think the paintings are “ambassadors of cross-cultural pollination”? How? What other arts have we looked at that also seem to fit this label?

• Do you recognize any similarities in themes and/or modalities between the contemporary Ghanaian paintings and other Akan art we have seen? Provide examples.

Remember--learning is about making relevant connections.

Make sure your blog is organized, thoughtful, and edited.

General Comments on your responses to Nani

It was great to see that so many of you enjoyed the workshops with Nani and the performance. Many of you commented on the things Nani said in the performance and on Friday in the workshop. That's great! One student commented that Nani himself used "tradition" to describe visual and performing arts, and that he also drew distinctions between public staged dances versus private spiritually activated dancing. I hope you all can see how "tradition" and "art" are social and temporal constructs. In each cultural manifestation of an art form--and each individual's creation--it becomes something new. Ie: "tradition" is actually constantly changing. For example, motifs like fans or autos on fancy-wax prints are symbolic, still a "sign" for something--, just as an adinkra stamp may be, albeit not from the older repertoire.


I enjoyed students' photos and video links, but this week there was a little less attention paid to copy editing. Make sure you edit your grammar, spelling, and sentence structure.