Postcolonial Pictures

Our next meeting will be on Monday, 8 March from 4-6 pm in BSB 007.

We will be discussing colonial and postcolonial art, in particular how art relates to power and how it can be used as a way of ‘painting back’.

In keeping with the spirit of inter-disciplinary collaboration, your task is to select an image that, for you, represents the postcolonial, and to forward it to us as a good-quality jpeg or url to pocoperspectives@googlemail.com. We're particularly interested in images produced and/or appropriated by colonial powers, although images of resistance are also welcome. It would be helpful if you could also (re)familiarize yourself with the context of the image, its production, circulation, reception, and so on. We will then collate the images into a slideshow to be screened in the meeting. In order for us to do so, we need to have received your submissions by 4 p.m. on Friday, 5 March.

The readings for the next meeting are:
- Mackenzie, John. "Orientalism in Art" in Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995, pp.43-70.
- Ryan, James R. Conclusion. Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualisation of the British Empire. London: Reaktion, 1997.

They will be available to collect from the table next to the printer on the lower ground floor of the BSB from Wednesday 23 February. In case you can't make it to the BSB, both books are available from the library on short loan.

We hope to see you on the 8th!

Reading Material (12/02/10)

The reading for the first meeting, in which we will be discussing what it means to approach our disciplines from a postcolonial perspective, is:

- Julia Bush’s 'Moving On: and Looking Back' History Workshop Journal , 36, (1993), 183-194.
http://bit.ly/dvAQPq
- Ella Shohat’s ‘Notes on the “Postcolonial”’. Social Text No.31/32 (1992), 99-113.
http://bit.ly/c0M1cL

The meeting is from 4-6pm in BSB 007 on Friday 12th Feb.

Introduction

Postcolonial Perspectives is an interdisciplinary postgraduate reading group at the University of York that seeks to explore both old and new ways of thinking about the postcolonial. The reading group will meet every three weeks to read and discuss critical theory, historical texts, and cultural products. Though the reading will reflect the members' specific research interests and concerns, we intend to use these contexts as case studies from which to approach the larger issues at stake in the theorization of postcoloniality in various disciplines. This promises to be an exciting addition to postgraduate life at York, and is a great opportunity to broaden your understanding of a key critical field in the academy and beyond.