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Image & Identity in California 1950 - 1985 - HOA00013H

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  • Department: History of Art
  • Module co-ordinator: Dr. James Boaden
  • Credit value: 40 credits
  • Credit level: H
  • Academic year of delivery: 2021-22
    • See module specification for other years: 2022-23

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Spring Term 2021-22 to Summer Term 2021-22

Module aims

This module aims to examine art made in California that addresses the idea of identity, which might include that of the artist communicated in their work as well as the community within which that work is received. California as a state which up until 1848 was under Mexican rule provides a particularly rich backdrop against which to understand the art created within the struggles for civil rights in the United States at mid-twentieth-century. This module will look at the very particular way in which the debates surrounding race, gender, and sexuality that developed in the 1960s are nuanced in California in the period covered by the course. Students will develop a vocabulary and a theoretical understanding that will allow them to discuss the relationship between identity politics and art making in the period.

Module learning outcomes

Subject content

  • At the end of the course: Students should be able to clearly articulate what is meant by the term identity politics
  • Students should have a broad understanding of the history of the State of California and the particular geography of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
  • Students will have a developed knowledge of the way in which identity politics manifested itself in California (particularly in Los Angeles and San Francisco)
  • Students will have developed nuanced ways of thinking about the relationship between identity politics and art making.
  • Students will be able to discuss in detail a number of institutions in the state of California that supported art making linked to identity politics in the period.

Academic and graduate skills

  • Students will develop key skills in: independent research, presenting their work, condensing and explaining the arguments of others, writing clearly and articulately in an academic context

Assessment

Task Length % of module mark
Essay/coursework
Two 2,000 word essays		 N/A 100

Special assessment rules

None

Reassessment

Task Length % of module mark
Essay/coursework
Two 2,000 word essays		 N/A 100

Module feedback

Students will receive feedback on their formative work the following week.

Students will receive feedback on their summative work within 20 working days.

Indicative reading

  • Elizabeth Smith, Case Study Houses: The Complete CSH Program 1945-1966, (Tashen, 2009)
  • Beatriz Colomina ed. Cold War Hot Houses, (Princeton, 2003)
  • Beatriz Colomina, Domesticity at War, (MIT, 2001)
  • Ethel Buisson, The Presence of the Case Study Houses, (Birkh ¤user GmbH, 2004)
  • Lynn Spiegel, Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs (Duke, 2001)
  • Richard Dyer, White, (Routledge, 1997).
  • Michael Duncan, Semina Culture, (DAP, 2003)
  • Lisa Philips (ed), Beat Culture and the New America, (Whitney Museum, 1996)
  • Richard Candida Smith, Utopia and Dissent: Art, Poetry, and Poltics in California, (California, 1996)
  • Margit Rowell ed, Ed Ruscha: Photographer, (Steidl, 2006)
  • Richard Marshall, Ed Ruscha, (Phaidon, 2005)
  • Ralph Rugoff ed. Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting (Hayward Gallery, 2009)
  • Alexandra Schwartz, Ed Ruscha s Los Angeles, (MIT, 2010)
  • Alexandra Schwartz ed, Leave Any Information at the Signal, (MIT, 2002)
  • Franklin Sirmans et al, Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster 1964-1966 (Menil, 2011)
  • Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, (California, 2009)
  • Kellie Jones ed. Now Dig This: Art and Black Los Angeles, (Prestel, 2011)
  • James Cristen Steward, Betye Saar: Extending the Frozen Moment, (California, 2005)
  • Jessica Morgan et al, John Baldessari: Pure Beauty, (Tate, 2009)
  • Lisa Bloom ed. Eleanor Antin, (LACMA, 1999)
  • Judy Chicago, Through the Flower, (I Universe, 2006)
  • Gale Levin, Becoming Judy Chicago (Harmony, 2007)
  • Norma Broude and Mary Garrard, The Power of Feminist Art, (Abrams, 1996)
  • Jill Fields ed, Entering the Picture: Judy Chicago, the Fresno Feminist Art Program, and the Collective Visions of Women Artists (Routledge, 2011).
  • Steve Anker et al eds, Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, (California, 2010)
  • Barbara Hammer, Hammer! Making Movies out of Sex and Life, (The Feminist Press, 2010)
  • Alice Hutchinson, Kenneth Anger, (Black Dog, 2011)
  • William E Jones, Halstead Plays Himself (MIT, 2011)
  • David E James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angles, (California, 2005)
  • Scott Macdonald, Canyon Cinema, (California, 2008)
  • Eva Cockcroft et al, From the Heart: California Chicano Murals, (New Mexico, 1996)
  • Mary Olmstead, Judy Baca, (Raintree, 2004)
  • Rita Gonzalez ed. Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Art Movement, (California, 2008)
  • Rita Gonzalez ed. Asco: Elite of the Obscure, (LACMA, 2011)
  • Max Benavidez, Gronk, (UCLA, 2007)
  • Gordon Massman, Gronk, (Ohio, 2006)
  • Chon Noreiga et al, LA Xicano, (UCLA, 2011)
  • Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism and the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, (Verso, 1992)
  • Amelia Jones, Self/Other, (Routledge, 2006)
  • Yve Lomax, Jaspar Joseph-Lester: Revisiting the Bonaventure, (Copy Press, 2009)


The information on this page is indicative of the module that is currently on offer. The University is constantly exploring ways to enhance and improve its degree programmes and therefore reserves the right to make variations to the content and method of delivery of modules, and to discontinue modules, if such action is reasonably considered to be necessary by the University. Where appropriate, the University will notify and consult with affected students in advance about any changes that are required in line with the University's policy on the Approval of Modifications to Existing Taught Programmes of Study.