CSUN Course Syllabus
Art 519: Art and Spectacle
Instructor: Peri M. Klemm, Ph.D.
Session/Year: Spring 2015
Contact Info: peri.klemm@csun.edu
Office Hours: Monday 1-3pm or by appointment
Office: Sagebrush 237
Required Texts:
1. Electronic readings and films on our class Moodle site
2. Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. 1st or 2nd edition. ‘They Say / I Say’ The Moves That
Matter in Academic Writing
Class description:
This course examines spectacle as a mode of critical inquiry and as an avenue for public
engagement. We’ll look at the ways in which spectacle has been interpreted by artists, theorists
and museums and from several vantage points that draw on performance studies, critical theory,
the post-colonial, tourism, gender studies, and visual ethnography.
Further, this course is designed for students to work on specific strategies for written
communication (e.g., proposals, theses, grants, refereed publications, artist statements). This is a
writing intensive course designed to provide students with the tools to write their proposed
projects effectively, and to prepare students to evaluate writing as future instructors.
Student Learning Objectives
Students will acquire:
1. In depth knowledge of the study of spectacle as a mode of critical inquiry and as a
framework for interpreting display and performance.
2. Advanced knowledge of critical theory and the ability to apply diverse theoretical
approaches to the politics of representation
3. Advanced skills in original research and scholarly writing
4. Sophisticated ability to use the principles of rhetoric to communicate content to diverse
audiences
5. Advanced ability to use information technologies for research and public presentations
Course Break-Down: (All assignments must be completed to pass this class)
10%-Class participation
15%- Presentation
25%- Journal
25%- Midterm Exam
25%-Research Paper
Research Paper: Approximately 15-20 pages double-spaced, the research paper should offer a
focused perspective on course themes. Alternately, you may present an article draft or thesis
chapter that engages directly with the course content.
Journal: In the spirit of "performing ethnography," you will keep a weekly journal where you will
document performance events. You should observe or serve as a participant observer in at least
one spectacle each week. These can include: rituals, plays, spectacles, acts, sports events, political
rallies, theater events, museum displays, historical reenactments, public lectures, reality tv, and
"everyday life" interactions. In this journal, you will record your observations and interactions,
detailing the happenings in ways that engages with class readings, film, and discussion. You will
share your writings with the class on March 2nd and April 27th.
Oral Presentation: You will provide the readings and lead the class discussion for the first hour of
one class meeting. Your presentation will focus on your approved research topic (ex. medieval
Karneval, Baroque pageantry, Ancient Greek or Roman theatre, sports, ritual, Fluxus, Relational
Aesthetics, The Society of Spectacle). Presentations should be concise and dynamic. The goal of
this exercise is not to exhaust a topic, but to highlight the main arguments, threads, and tropes that
connect the readings and your research to our course topic. Performative enhancements are
encouraged. The possibilities for presentation are limited only by your imagination. You can act
out a scene from a performance, show video clips, create a powerpoint presentation, lead the class
in an activity, design costumes, etc.
Reading Assignments:
All readings are required and should be completed before the section for which they are assigned.
Attendance and Participation:
The expectation in a 500 level seminar is that every student attends every meeting and comes on
time. However, if an absence is unavoidable, you are expected to (a) e-mail in advance and (b)
submit a 2-page summary of that week’s assigned readings at the next meeting. Generally, one or
two absences can be overlooked but more create the impression of a lack of seriousness.
Everyone is expected to come prepared to discuss the assigned readings.
Course Schedule
Week 1: January 26
Course Design and Overview
Introductions: Theatre of the Absurd exercise
Order Text
Week 2: February 2
Spectacle and the Avante-Garde
READ:
‘Spectacle’ The University of Chicago Theories of Media
Claire Bishop’s ‘Participation and Spectacle: Where Are We Now?’
Watch: Society of the Spectacle Remake 2012 (25 min)
Robert C. Morgan, Wolf Kahn, and Irving Sandler. 2006 “Allan Kaprow, the Happener.” The
Brooklyn Rail. Critical Perspectives on Arts, Politics, and Culture
Allan Kaprow. 1997 “Just Doing.” TDR 41 (3): 101-106
Watch: ‘What is Fluxus?’ (4:35 min)
Supplement Watch: ‘How to Make a Happening’ (25 min)
Week 3: February 9
Colonialism and Exhibited Others: Difference as Spectacle and Science
In class viewing of film: The Life and Times of Sara Baartman: The Hottentot Venus Yola
Masenko, 1998
READ:
Corbey, Raymond. 1993. “Ethnographic Showcases, 1870-1930.” Cultural Anthropology, 8 (3):
338-369.
Davie, Lucille. 2012. “Sarah Baartman, At Rest at Last” SouthAfrica.info
Scully, Pamela and Clifton Crais. 2008. “Race and Erasure: Sara Baartman and Hendrik Cesars in
Cape Town and London.” Journal of British Studies (47) 2: 301-323.
‘What is Ota Benga?’ New York Times, September 24, 1906
Supplement: Zine Magubane. 2001 “Which Bodies Matter? Feminism, Poststructuralism, Race,
and the Curious Theoretical Odyssey of the "Hottentot Venus." Gender and Society, 15(6): 816834.
Supplement: Gilman, Sander L. 1985. “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of
Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature” Critical Inquiry
12(1): 204-242.
Week 4: February 16
Performing Imperialism: Shigeyuki Kihara, Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña,
James Luna
READ:
Watch The Couple in the Cage (34 min)
Anna Johnson, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco. 1993. “Guillermo Gómez-Peña and
Coco Fusco.” BOMB 42: 36-39
Fusco, Coco. 1994. “The Other History of Intercultural Performance” TDR 38(1): 143-167
2007. “El Mad Mex responds to the question: Is the performance field racist?” in
“Is Performance Studies Imperialist? Part 3. A Forum” TDR 51(4)
READ ONLY pp. 17-20
Eduardo Mendieta. 2001. “A Latino Philosopher Interviews a Chicano Performance Artist”
Nepantla 2(3): 539-554
Supplement Chokri Ben Chikha and Karel Arnaut. 2013. “Staging/caging 'otherness' in the
postcolony: spectres of the human zoo” Critical Arts 27(6) Focus on pages 3-7
Supplement Watch Radical art, radical communities, and radical dreams: Guillermo Gomez-Pena
at TEDxCalArts (26 min)
Week 5: February 23
Spectacle and Fetishism: Nkisi and the Belgian Congo
Approval of research topic, working thesis, and reading list
READ:
McClusky, Pamela. 2002. “The Fetish and the Imagination of Europe: Sacred Medicines of the
Kongo.” In: Art from Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back Seattle: Seattle Art Museum.
Week 6: March 2
Spectacle and the Sublime
Submit Journals on Moodle
Midterm Review
READ:
Watch: Herzog’s Wodaabe: Herdsmen of the Sun (48 min)
Week 7: March 9
Midterm Exam
Week 8: March 16
Case Study #1
READ: Graff and Birkenstein Part I “They Say”
Week 9: March 23
Case Study #2
READ: Graff and Birkenstein Part 2 “I Say”
Week 10: March 30
Case Study #3
READ: Graff and Birkenstein Part 3 “Tying it All Together”
Week 11 Spring Break
Week 12: April 13
Presentation
READ: TBA
Case Study #4
Week 13: April 20
READ: TBA
Case Study #5
Week 14: April 27
Case Study #6
Submit Journals on Moodle
READ: TBA
Week 15: May 4
READ: TBA
Paper Due
Case Study #7
Further Readings
Ades, Dawn (ed), Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators 1930-45. London: Hayward
Gallery, 1995
Adorno, Theodor The Culture Industry. London: Routledge, 1991
Aristotle. "De Poetica," in Introduction to Aristotle. Trans. Ingram Bywater. Ed. Richard
McKeon. New York: The Modern Library, 1992
Barthes, R. "Leaving the Movie Theater," in The Rustle of Language. Trans. Richard Howard.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989
Baudrillard, Jean. "The Precession of Simulacra," in Art After Modernism: Rethinking
Representation. Ed. Brian Wallis. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984.
Benjamin, Walter. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Illuminations,
London: Fontana, 1992, pp.211-244
Bourriaud, Nicolas. Postproduction, New York: Lukas and Sternberg, 2002
Bruner, Edward. “The Maasai and the Lion King: Authenticity, Nationalism and Globalization in
African Tourism” American Ethnologist 28 (4): 881-908, 2001.
Crary, Jonathan. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999
Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1990
Crary, Jonathan. "Eclipse of the Spectacle," in Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation.
Ed. Brian Wallis. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books, 1997.
Foster, Hal. ‘Spectacle’ in ‘The ABCs of contemporary design’, October no.100, Spring 2002,
pp.191-9
Greenberg, Clement. ‘Avant-garde and Kitsch’, in Greenberg, Art and Culture: Critical Essays,
Beacon Press, 1989, pp. 3-21
Jameson, Fredric ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’, in Hal Foster (ed.), Postmodern
Culture. London: Pluto Press, 1985, pp. 111-25
Köhne, Eckart and Cornelia Ewigleben, eds. Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in
Ancient Rome. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000.
Krauss, Rosalind. A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition.
London: Thames and Hudson, 1999
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Signet, 1964.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," in Visual and Other Pleasures.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought.
University of California Press, 1994
‘Roundtable: the projected image in contemporary art’, October, no.104, 2003, pp71-96
Retort (Iain Boal, TJ Clark, Joseph Matthews, Michael Watts), Afflicted Powers: Capital and
Spectacle in a New Age of War, London: Verso
This syllabus is subject to change