AFS 490-00P: Senior Sem in African Studies (Spring 2010)

Two very broad changes have affected African art in the past twenty years: the movement of artists and their work from African countries to Europe and North America, as part of a broader migration and globalization process, and the designation of World Cultural Heritage sites by UNESCO, which has brought cultural tourism to many parts of Africa previously less visited and opened up new avenues of art patronage  and economic development. These two changes in turn have created a hotly-debated globalization discourse among African cultural critics and intellectuals and a parallel, if quite different, "cultural heritage" discourse among African cultural bureaucrats, business entrepreneurs and local political leaders. We will look at case studies of how each of these phenomena have altered the meanings of tradition, cultural identity and the global cultural field.