Week 7

Arab/American Feminisms
Mona Hatoum

How does Mona Hatoum use installation art to reflect on the politics of displacement, occupation, and diaspora? How does Hatoum engage with intimacy, whether through close-ups such as Corps étranger (1994) or transnationally in such works as Measures of Distance (1988)?

How does her work help you think of relationships between embodiment, performativity, and politics?

How did Mona Hatoum become a feminist artist? How would you characterize her or her art as feminist?

How might you compare Mona Hatoum’s work to that by Shirin Neshat or Anna Mendieta? How does each artist’s work explore loss, intimacy, diaspora, imperialism, sexuality, and bodies?

T 05.12

Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Alsultany, and Nadine Naber, “An Introduction” in Arab & Arab American Feminisms

Salwa Mikdadi Nashashibi, Laura Nader, and Etel Adnan, “Arab Women Artists: Forces of Change,” in Forces of Change

Aruna D’Souza, “Measures of Difference” in Witness to Her Art

Th 05.14

Class Visit: Nadine Naber, Associate Professor, Gender & Women’s Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago

Nadine Naber, “Decolonizing Culture: Beyond Orientalist and Anti-Orientalist Feminisms” in Arab & Arab American Feminisms

Nadine Naber, “Taking Power and Making Power: Resistance, Global Politics, and Institution Building: An Interview with Anan Ameri,” in Arab & Arab American Feminisms

Group Work: In-class curatorial project collaboration session (second 50 min.)

DUE: Wikipedia Gap Analysis

Mona Hatoum, Traffic, old suitcases and human hair, 2002