FEIT SEMINAR: IDC 4050H PV2
PROFESSORS FRAN ANTMANN AND ROSLYN BERNSTEIN
FALL 2008
TUESDAYS: 12:50-3:45 PM
Room 8-190
Class blog: http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/captur…
Capturing Communities in Words and Images:
From Hassids to Hip Hop, from Bedouins to the Brooklyn Boardwalk
The class will explore the ways that writers and photographers have imagined, encountered, and documented diverse communities. We will look at traditionally defined communities such as the Dominicans in Washington Heights, African Americans in Harlem, Orthodox Jews in Borough Park, and Southeast Asians in Flushing as well as non-traditional communities drawn together by shared passions, predilections, and predicaments-rappers, graffiti artists, gypsies, bikers, and runaways. We will examine the work of photographers including Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, and Joseph Koudelka and writers including James Agee, Adrian Nicole Le Blanc, William Faulkner and Sandra Cisneros. Seminar participants will produce their own Capturing Communities project.
Class 1
What is a community?
Sept. 2
Varying definitions of community
Present different perspectives on Communities:
Sociological, Anthropological, Literary perspective
Discussion of the Need for a community
Discussion of how images and text can be used in parallel, complementary and divergent ways in documentary work
Overview of the course
Class requirements: Description of Capturing Community Final Project
5-page essay on the community that student has examined, class oral presentation, minimum of 20 images with captions.
Reading Assignment: Jacob Riis: How The Other Half Lives and article on Riis.
Chapters: 1,3,5,9,10,13, 15, 20 and 25.
Class 2
How and Why to Look at a Community?
Sept. 9
Jacob Riis: How The Other Half Lives
Lewis Hine [Bernstein]
Disfarmer [Disfarmer]
Reading: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Class 3
Documenting a Community
Sept. 16
James Agee and Walker Evans: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (p.107-283)
FSA Photographers and FSA philosophy (role of government)
View documentary film on FSA
Life Magazine and Eugene Smith
Assignment: Shoot 3-5 images of a Traditionally Defined Community for Oct. 7th (Little Odessa, Chinatown, Little India, Little Italy, Borough Park, Harlem, etc.) Write Captions. Be prepared to talk about these images in class on Oct. 7.
Reading Assignment: The House on Mango Street
Class 4
Traditionally Defined Communities I [Ethnic, religious, geographic]
Sept. 23
Dorothea Lange and others (Excerpts from Lange’s Reports from the Field)
Latino Life– Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
Guest Photographer: Arlene Gottfried (Lower East Side)
Class 5
Indigenous Communities (Guatemala, Peru, Canadian Arctic including Inuit)
Oct. 7
Traditional Communities: Presentation of Your 5 Images and Captions
Assignment Oct. 21: In-class presentation of Final Project Proposal on a Community (Traditional, Non-Traditional, etc
Reading Assignment for 10/21: Excerpt from Francine Prose,
Reading Like a Writer.
Class 6
Student Proposals
Oct. 21
Student Proposals for Final Capturing Communities Projects
(Five images and one page of text)
Oct. 21: Reading and Conversation with Francine Prose
Reception 5 PM: Reading 5:45 PM Newman Conference Center
151 East 25th Street/ 7th Floor.
Reading Assignment: Excerpt from Colum McCann’s Zoli.
Class 7
Unto Themselves
Oct. 28
Gypsies – Photographs of Joseph Koudelka and text by Colum McCann (Zoli)
Hutterites-Larry Towell
Hassidic Jews
Amish
Fran Antmann-images and text
Class 8
ICP CLASS TRIP
Nov. 4
Class 9
Outsiders
Nov. 11
Fran Antmann: Images and Text (continued)
Discussion of work of Susan Meiselas and Cornell Capa (ICP)
2nd half: Work-in-Progress
Diane Arbus, Lisette Modell, Danny Lyons (Bikers), Nan Goldin
(to be continued November 25)
Reading Assignments Nov. 18:
pp. 1-37 Random Family by LeBlanc
Class 10
Renegades: Families by Default
Nov. 18
1st half: Work-in-progress
2nd half: Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Random Family
and photos of South Bronx.
Class 11
Unintended Communities: Nina Berman
Nov. 25
Nina Berman:
Continuation: Arbus, Modell, Lyons, and Goldin
Work-in-progress
Reading Assignment: Boardwalk Stories
Class 12
Constructing a Community
Boardwalk Stories Roz Bernstein and Kenneth Tydings
Dec. 2
Class 13
Hip Hop and Graffiti
Dec. 9
Sacha Jenkins visit and images/texts
Chalfant’s Subway Art, Martha Cooper’s photos.
Class 14:
Capturing Communities Student Presentations
Dec. 16
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Required Reading:
James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South. Mariner Books.
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives. Dover Publications, Inc.
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street. Mc-Graw-Hill College.
Additional materials (fiction and non-fiction) to be distributed to class.
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