About
This course surveys the American "Culture Wars" as played out on the intersecting fields of art, visual culture, and politics. We will focus intensively on a period encompassing the late 1980s to the early twenty-first century as a fever point in public debates over censorship, expression, and the relationship between art and public money. We will also challenge this periodization by analyzing the ways in which the reverberations of the events that transpired over this time impact the contemporary art landscape in America today. Through critical analysis of works of art, art historical texts, and primary sources, we will consider the ways in which broader social debates about the ideal relationship of the individual to the state manifested in the art and visual culture of this period, as well as legislative and community responses to these works.
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