Reparative Aesthetics: Art, Medicine and the Colonial Plantation

This course focuses on the representation of slavery and unfree labor in historical and contemporary artistic production, in a global context. It follows the lead of contemporary artists who have 'returned' to the plantation, and whose work consequently compels us to explore more closely the implications and afterlives of the plantation in our contemporary moment. Like these artists, this course also uses the lens of repair to look back at the plantation's visual histories, and to track its legacies in the present, while also considering what a term like repair can look for us now, and in the future.