ART, TRAVEL, and IMPERIALISM

ARH 4800-002/6798-004                                                                      Professor E. Fraser

Mon 2-5:50                                                                                            office: FAH 272

Fall 2005                                                                                 tel. 974-4549 (no voice mail)

University of South Florida                                                                To leave messages: 974-2360

(meets in FAH 227)                                                                              E-mail: fraser@arts.usf.edu

 

Office hours: Wednesdays, 1:00-2:00 p.m. and by appointment

 

Description of class

Traveling to rural Italy and France, to South America, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tahiti, Africa, and the Caribbean, nineteenth-century artists left metropolitan centers behind.  This course looks at a host of artists – from Delacroix and Renoir to Matisse and Gauguin, to name a few – who went beyond the traditional gentleman’s Grand Tour and the classical artist’s requisite visit to Rome, to find new and unfamiliar places.  These artists, along with numerous writers, scientists, tourists, and adventurers, sought out exoticism and “otherness” to revitalize western culture.  This class will look at mainstream artistic and literary movements of the 19th century from the “outside”: we will consider how these European movements were formed in the “contact zone” with other cultures and on the periphery of Europe.

 

Our class will ask such questions as: How did travelers understand and represent “others” and how did these “others” respond to their visitors?  Is all representation of the “other” exploitative?  How does the history of tourism and colonialism change our views of artistic travelers?  Our interdisciplinary readings draw on new ideas from a variety of perspectives, from Edward Said’s pioneering Orientalism to post-colonial theory.  The course emphasizes critical approaches to the representation of travel, with a special focus on new analyses of imperialism.  We will read recent books and articles with differing approaches and geographical emphases, and we look at travel representation in film, painting, prints, travel journals, and literature.  The course is issue-based (not a survey); weekly readings are followed by in-depth class

discussion (rather than lectures).

 

undergraduate prerequisite: 19th-Century Art (ARH 4430)

 

Readings and excerpts from

L. Turner and J. Ash, The Golden Hordes: International Travel and the Pleasure Periphery

J. Buzard, The Beaten Track; European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to Culture, 1800-1918

C. Chard and H. Langdon, eds.  Transports: Travel, Pleasure, and Imaginary Geography

T. Mann, “Death in Venice” in Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories

R. Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society

N. Lübbren, “North to South: Paradigm Shifts in European Art and Tourism, 1880-1920"

M. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation

T. Porterfield, The Allure of Empire; Art in the Service of French Imperialism

D. G. Grigsby, “Rumor, Contagion, and Colonization in Gros’s Plague-Stricken at Jaffa”

J. Ballerini, “The In Visibility of Hadji-Ishmael: Maxime Du Camp's 1850 Photographs of Egypt”

A. Behdad, “Notes on Notes, or with Flaubert in Paris, Egypt”

R. Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, and French North Africa, 1880-1930

P. Gauguin, Noa-Noa, A Tahitian Journal

A. Solomon-Godeau, “Going Native: Paul Gauguin and the Invention of Primitivist Modernism”

E. Childs, “Gauguin as Author: Writing the Studio of the Tropics”

 

Books available for purchase (at USF bookstore)

required: 1) Sylvan Barnet, Short Guide to Writing about Art (any edition will do),

2) Thomas Mann

3) Mary Louise Pratt

4) Noa Noa

 

highly recommended: Benjamin

optional: Buzard

 

Assignments

1) weekly one-page position papers (8), distributed on E-mail the day before class; students are required to read all other students’ position papers before class meetings

2) completion of readings by class period, and participation in class discussion, which will occasionally include preparation a week ahead of class

3) in-class presentations: 1) images of Italy; 2) travel books from Pratt; or, 3) Gauguin’s Tahitian notebooks

4) essay on representations of Italy and the “myth of Italy,” 4-5 pp.

5) final research paper: undergrads: 8 pp.; grads: 12 pp. minimum

6) participation in at least one group-led discussion

 

 

Approximate grade distribution

25% participation in discussion (including group-led discussion and in-class presentations)

Exchanging ideas and views is an integral part of intellectual development; exercising self-expression and explaining your thinking to your classmates is the best way to test your ideas and to move beyond assumptions.  Class discussion is a collective learning process whereby a diversity of opinions and approaches enriches us all.  (Good participation is active, thoughtful, and respectful of other students; monopolizing discussion rather than listening and responding to other students will be evaluated negatively.)

25% weekly position papers (distributed on E-mail before class)

25% for essay on representations of Italy (paintings, Enchanted April, or “Death in Venice”)

25% final paper

 

 

Attendance policy

Since this is a seminar, most of the work takes place during class time.  Because we meet only once a week, no unexcused absences are allowed.  Every unexcused absence will affect your final grade; two absences (or more) of any kind (except in dire circumstances) will automatically reduce your final grade to a “C” or lower.

 

                                               

Class E-mail list:

I will sign you up.  To send a message use this address:

            art&travellist@lists.arts.usf.edu


Class schedule

            * = group-led discussion

 

Aug      29        Introduction; viewing of Enchanted April

 

 

I.  TOURISM (Italy and France)

Sept     5         LABOR DAY: NO CLASS

 

            12        History and overview; tourism and anti-tourism: Turner and Ash, pp. 11-92 (e-reserve); Buzard, pp.1-17 (e-reserve; book for purchase)

                                    Viewing of Enchanted April

 

            19         Grand Tour to decadence (Italy): R. Wrigley and C. Chard, in Transports, Langdon and Chard, eds., pp. 77-149 (e-reserve); Thomas Mann, “Death in Venice” (book on reserve, purchase)

 

            *26      Painting tourism (France, primarily): Herbert, pp. 265-306 (book on reserve); Lübbren, “North to South: Paradigm Shifts in European Art and Tourism, 1880-1920" (e-reserve)

                                    Presentations of images of Italy

 

Oct      3         NO CLASS:  essay on myth of Italy due

 

                                   

II.  SCIENTIFIC NATURALISM (Africa, South America, Caribbean)

 

Oct      10        Pratt, pp. 1-107 (book on reserve, purchase)

                                    Viewing of Tales from the Map Room: A Tissue of Lies

 

Oct      *17      Pratt, pp. 111-197

                                    Presentations of travel books from Pratt in library’s Special Collections

 

 

III.  ORIENTALISM (Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria)

 

            *24      Porterfield, pp. 43-79 (book on reserve); Grigsby, “Rumor, Contagion, and Colonization in Gros’s Plague-Stricken at Jaffa” (e-reserve)

                                    Viewing of Edward Said on Orientalism

           

            31        Ballerini, “The In Visibility of Hadji-Ishmael: Maxime Du Camp's 1850 Photographs of Egypt” (e-reserve); Ali Behdad, “Notes on Notes, or with Flaubert in Paris, Egypt” (e-reserve)

            Presentation of Francis Frith, 19th-century photo albums of Egypt in Special Collections

 

Nov     *7       Benjamin, pp. 33-55, 159-190, 221-248 (book on reserve, purchase)

 

 

IV.  PRIMITIVISM (Polynesia)

 

*14      Gauguin, Noa-Noa (book on reserve, purchase); Solomon-Godeau, “Going Native” (e-reserve); and Childs, “Gauguin as Author” (e-reserve)

                                    Presentations of Gauguin facsimiles in Library Special Collections

 

            21        RESEARCH TIME: preliminary bibliography and paper topic due

 

            28        RESEARCH TIME

 

Dec      5         RESEARCH TIME

 

             9         FINAL PAPERS DUE


Explanation of assignments

 

Position papers

Approximately one full page, due weekly: send on class E-mail list by Sunday (day before class) at 5:30 p.m.  Bring hard-copy with you to class to be handed in.  (Save all your graded position papers to the end of class, to be handed in on the last day of classes.)

 

Position papers are your responses to the assigned readings.  The form of the position papers is very free, but should include at least the following:

1) What is the main argument?

2) What evidence and sources are used to defend this argument?

3) How is this author’s view or method different from or similar to others’ we’ve read?

3) List your questions about the reading (discussion questions and questions about concepts you don’t understand).

 

The position papers are meant to help you come to class prepared to discuss, ensuring that you have digested the reading with some critical distance.  You will not be graded on the literary form but on the content and thoughtfulness of your position papers.  It is very important to realize that the position papers are not summaries or re-statements of the authors’ position, but your own evaluations of the readings.  Focus on the global issues posed by readings, not on minor points or bits of information.  You must read all other students’ position papers before class meeting each week, bringing in questions and points of contention about them.  If you are absent from class, you are required to turn in a position paper for that class meeting by the next class period.

           

In class presentations:

1) images of Italy; 2) travel books from Pratt; or, 3) Gauguin’s Tahitian notebooks

The purpose of these presentations is to explore concepts from class in direct application to specific visual images and objects.  Since it is an exploratory project, your thinking will be somewhat speculative; feel free to be creative.  In pairs, you will present works, telling us at least: 1) the place the image/book represents (be as specific as possible) and 2) how concepts from class so far could be used to analyze the image/book.  As you prepare your presentation, say to yourself that you are presenting the book/image to someone who doesn’t know anything about it and who needs to be basically informed in order to understand it.  Ideally, you will also tell us about the circumstances of the travel, who the artist/traveler is, and why he or she traveled to the place represented.  The presentations can be fairly straightforward and shouldn’t take more than 15-20 minutes total.  How you divvy up the presentation between you is up to you.

 

Essay on Italy: What is the Myth of Italy?

4-5 pp., an analysis of a representation of travel to Italy – using 19th-century paintings, Enchanted April or “Death in Venice” – and applying concepts from class readings.

 

To what extent does your work reflect or perpetuate a “myth of Italy”?  How does it use conventions of travel writing or other representation?  What relationship does it construct between Northern and Southern Europe?  Your essay should have an argument (or thesis), going beyond simple description of the travel and the transformation of the traveler, applying concepts from class in an analysis of your chosen object.

Final paper

Based on some topic related to class readings and discussion, hopefully using resources available through local museums or the library’s special collections.  (Requirements: a thesis, substantial research, footnotes or endnotes, and a bibliography.  You become an “expert” on your subject, writing to a reader as informed as any member of our class about your subject.)

 

 

Examples of possible research paper topics:

Humboldt in Latin America

Napoleon’s Egyptian excursion, and the Description de l’Egypte

Delacroix’s Moroccan notebooks (facsimiles in USF library)

Delacroix’s paintings of Morocco

African travel accounts from Pratt’s book

Egyptian photography

Italian travelers: Géricault, Turner, Corot, Manet, Monet, Renoir, etc.

Mediterranean travelers: Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, etc.

Artist-travelers to Brittany and Normandy

Gauguin materials in library: notebooks from Tahitian period with writings and images

Gauguin in Polynesia

Matisse (et al) in Morocco

 

See also extensive online travel images.

 

Other resources recommended for this class:

In the readings for this class, you will encounter unfamiliar names, historical references, and words.  These resources will help you puzzle through them, and I encourage you to use them often.

            - Encyclopaedia Britannica Online (available through library databases)

            - link to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary from Britannica.  This is particularly good for looking up etymologies (the history and origins of words), something we discuss periodically in class

            -Grove Dictionary of Art Online (Groveart), available through USF library’s online databases: for looking up unfamiliar art references and basic information about individual artists and artistic movements.