Art and Activism

Spring 2023

Seminar: F 9am-12pm, CMA 5.130

Professor: Curran Nault
Office Hours: Fridays, 3-6pm
(by appointment on Calendly: calendly.com/currannault/30min)
Email: [email protected]

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course immerses students in the intersectional study of transmedia art and activism, its
attendant theories, practices, and places—from the protest march, to the performance space, to
the online hacktivist enclave, to the speculative worlds of science fiction, and beyond. Students
will explore salient politics, strategies, creativities and movements for radical liberation, both
past (e.g., the Situationist International) and present (e.g., #BlackLivesMatter), delving into a
diversity of art and activist formations, from documentaries to doulas, across spaces and times.
Students will read key art/activist texts—all informed by feminist/queer/trans/BIPOC insights
and experiences. This course insists on an intersectional approach that celebrates differences of
race, gender, sexuality, class, nation, ability, generation…Collectively we will uncover/recover a
wayward lineage of freaky, carnal, affective, agitational, artful action and cultural resistance.

REQUIRED TEXTS
All readings will be posted on Canvas. Students are responsible for retrieving and reading them.

COURSE GRADING

Requirements % of Final Grade

Attendance + Participation 25%
Weekly Canvas Posts 25%
Discussion Facilitation 25%
Semester Project 25%

Note: This course will use a standard +/- grading rubric: 93-100% (A); 90-92% (A-); 87-89% (B+)...

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GRADING GUIDELINES

Attendance + Participation: Students are expected to attend all seminar sessions, to arrive on time, and to be
prepared to explore assigned readings and attendant materials with intellectual rigor. Students are asked to be active in
their education by offering insights, participating in debate and engaging in thoughtful, lively conversation with the
professor and their classmates. Over the course of the semester, students will participate in thought experiments,
creative endeavors and rigorous discussion filtered through class readings, images and outings—all of which will be
factored into the participation grade. Please plan accordingly, including for 2 anticipated off-campus outings.

Reading Responses: Students will compose (~300 word) weekly posts via the discussion board on Canvas,
responding to assigned readings and other materials, sometimes with a specific prompt. This is intended to be a “low
stakes” writing assignment: a space for students to work through initial thoughts, raise inquiries and to explore new
ideas. Throughout the semester, we will use these responses as catalysts for our in-class conversations. Responses
are due each Thursday by 9pm.

Discussion Facilitation: Each student will facilitate the discussion of one class reading. These facilitations will
include: 1) brief author biography; 2) concise summary and critique of the reading; 3) questions about the reading
intended to spur class conversation. Students are welcome to prepare additional materials (e.g., media clips,
handouts) to clarify the reading and its relation to the course. Students will be given a choice as to which reading/s
they present. Further instruction and sign-up forthcoming.

The Semester Project will entail either a graduate-level research paper (15-25 pages, standard formatting) or an
equivalent creative project. Your project must be related to the course and draw from course insights and materials.
Your project will also need to be approved by the professor in advance: One paragraph proposals due on Friday,
March 3rd. Additional deadlines: Bibliography due on Friday, March 31st; final draft/creations due on Friday, April
28th (EOD). Additional instructions forthcoming.

ADDITIONAL GUIDELINES
Services for Students with Disabilities: The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate
academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. Students with physical or learning disabilities
should provide the professor with a letter requesting reasonable academic accommodation, and work directly with
the professor to determine what accommodations are needed. This letter can be obtained from Services for Students
with Disabilities, located in the Student Services Building. For more information, contact the Office of the Dean of
Students at 471-6259, 471-4641 TTY, or visit their website at: http://www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/ssd/.

Counseling Support: Taking care of your well-being is an important step in being a successful student. If stress,
anxiety, depression, racing thoughts, feeling inert…is getting in the way of your health or happiness, there are
options available for support, including:

• Counseling and Mental Health Center (CMHC): M-F 8-5p | SSB, 5th floor | 512-471-3515
• CMHC Crisis Line| 512.471.2255 |cmhc.utexas.edu/24hourcounseling.html CARE
• For additional resources, you may wish to visit the Gender & Sexuality Center:
https://diversity.utexas.edu/genderandsexuality/

Important Safety Information:

If you have concerns about the safety or behavior of fellow students, TAs or Professors, call BCAL
(the Behavior Concerns Advice Line): 512-232-5050. Your call can be anonymous. If something
doesn’t feel right – it probably isn’t. Trust your instincts and share your concerns.

Title IX Reporting
Title IX is a federal law that protects against sex and gender based discrimination, sexual harassment,
sexual assault, sexual misconduct, dating/domestic violence and stalking at federally funded educational
institutions. UT Austin is committed to fostering a learning and working environment free from
discrimination in all its forms. When sexual misconduct occurs in our community, the university can:

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 1. Intervene to prevent harmful behavior from continuing or escalating.
2. Provide support and remedies to students and employees who have experienced harm or have
become involved in a Title IX investigation.
3. Investigate and discipline violations of the university’s relevant policies.

Faculty members and certain staff members are considered “Responsible Employees” or “Mandatory Reporters,”
which means that they are required to report violations of Title IX to the Title IX Coordinator. I am a Responsible
Employee and must report any Title IX related incidents that are disclosed in writing, discussion, or one-on-
one. Before talking with me, or with any faculty or staff member about a Title IX related incident, be sure to ask
whether they are a responsible employee. If you want to speak with someone for support or remedies without
making an official report to the university, email [email protected] For more information about
reporting options and resources, visit titleix.utexas.edu or contact the Title IX Office at [email protected].

The University of Texas Honor Code: The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning,
discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility. Each member of the University is
expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect toward peers and community.

Scholastic Dishonesty: The University defines academic dishonesty as cheating, plagiarism, unauthorized
collaboration, falsifying academic records, and any act designed to avoid participating honestly in the learning
process. Scholastic dishonesty also includes, but is not limited to, providing false or misleading information to
receive a postponement or an extension on a test, quiz, or other assignment, and submission of essentially the same
written assignment for two courses without the prior permission of the instructor. By accepting this syllabus, you
have agreed to these guidelines and must adhere to them. Scholastic dishonest damages both the student’s learning
experience and readiness for the future demands of a work-career. Students who violate University rules on
scholastic dishonesty are subject to disciplinary penalties, including the possibility of failure in the course and/or
dismissal from the University. For more information on scholastic dishonesty, please visit the Student Judicial
services website: deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sjs.

Sharing of Course Materials is Prohibited: No materials used in this class, including, but not limited to, lecture
hand-outs, videos, assessments (quizzes, exams, papers, projects, homework assignments), in-class materials, review
sheets, and additional problem sets, may be shared online or with anyone outside of the class unless you have my
explicit, written permission. Unauthorized sharing of materials promotes cheating. It is a violation of the
University’s Student Honor Code and an act of academic dishonesty. I am aware of the sites used for sharing
materials and any materials found online that are associated with you, or any suspected unauthorized sharing of
materials will be reported to Student Conduct and Academic Integrity in the Office of the Dean of Students. These
reports can result in sanctions, including a failure in the course.

Class Recordings: Class recordings are reserved only for students in this class for educational purposes and are
protected under FERPA. The recordings should not be shared outside the class in any form. Violation of this
restriction could lead to Student Misconduct proceedings.

Difficult Course Content: At times this semester we will be discussing material that may be upsetting to some
students. In a class dedicated to art and activist practices and productions, discussion and critique of significant, but
sometimes contentious and difficult, issues related to race, gender, sexuality, etc., is to be expected.

Land Acknowledgment: As the flagship institution in our state university system, it is important that The
University of Texas at Austin demonstrate respect for the historic and contemporary presence of Indigenous Peoples
in Texas and, particularly, in the greater Austin area. To that end, it is incumbent upon The University of Texas at
Austin to recognize that our campus resides on what were historically the traditional territories of Indigenous
Peoples who were dispossessed of their homelands. Land Acknowledgements are an expression of gratitude and
appreciation to the Indigenous Peoples, the traditional caretakers of the land, for the use of their lands on which we
work, study, and learn. As such, we would like to acknowledge that we are meeting on Indigenous land, and to
acknowledge and pay our respects to the Carrizo & Comecrudo, Coahuiltecan, Caddo, Tonkawa, Comanche, Lipan
Apache, Alabama-Coushatta, Kickapoo, Tigua Pueblo, and all the American Indian and Indigenous Peoples and
communities who have been or have become a part of these lands and territories in Texas, here on Turtle Island.

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Course Schedule (Work-in-Progress)
Note: Readings should be completed prior to the class period under which they are listed.

PART 1: SCAFFOLDS

Week 1: Campus

1/13 Introductions
Possible excerpt from Come and Take It (Spiro & Raval, 2020)

Recommended Readings:
Guy Debord, “The Commodity as Spectacle” (5pp)
Achille Mbembe, “Decolonizing the University”
Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, “The University and the Undercommons”

Week 2: Resistance

1/20 Readings:
1. Stephen Duncombe, “Resistance” (4pp)
2. Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer” (18pp)
3. Robin D.G. Kelley, From Race Rebels (3pp)
4. Judith Butler, “Rethinking Resistance and Vulnerability” (15pp)
5. Bell, “Be Otherwise: Thirteen Acts of Resistance” (17 pp)
6. La Force, et al., “25 Most Influential…American Protest Art Since WWII” (images)

*Come to class prepared to “show & tell” a favorite example of creative cultural
resistance (broadly defined).

Recommended Readings:
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, “The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas”
Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge
Michel de Certeau. The Practice of Everyday Life
Raymond Williams, “Culture is Ordinary”
Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces
Combahee River Collective Statement
Valerie Soe, “Fighting Fire with Fire”

Week 3: Signs

1/27 Readings:
1. Stuart Hall, “Saussure’s Legacy” (3pp)
2. Dick Hebdige, from Subculture: The Meaning of Style (11pp)
3. Kobena Mercer, “Black Hair/Style Politics” (22pp)
4. Andy Campbell, excerpt from Queer X Design (mostly images)
5. Jackie Jia Lou, et al., “Itineraries of Protest Signage…Hong Kong Umbrella (23 pp)
6. Tamar Carroll, “Reproductive Justice and Visual Activism” (17pp)

Check out: https://www.collection-politicalgraphics.org/main.php?module=objects

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 Recommended Reading:
Ferdinand Saussure, Course in General Linguistics
Roland Barthes, Mythologies
Hal Foster, et al., “The Politics of the Signifier”
Thanavi Chotpradit, “Shattering Glass Ceiling: Art and Activism in Thailand”
Mark Dery, “Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, Sniping in the Empire of Signs”

Week 4: AIDS

2/3 Readings:
1. Anonymous Queers, “Queers Read This: I Hate Straights”
2. Douglas Crimp, “AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism”
3. Joshua Chambers-Letson, excerpt from “Tseng Kwong Chi & The Party’s End” (227-39)
4. Lucas Hildebrand, “Retroactivism”
5. Karma Chávez, “ACT UP, Haitian Migrants & Alternative Memories of HIV/AIDS”
6. Marlon Bailey, “Performance as Intravention: Ballroom Culture &…HIV/AIDS”
7. Andy Campbell, “A Series of Transitions…What Would an HIV Doula Do?”
8. Paul Preciado, “Learning from the Virus"

*Additional guidelines given for final project assignment*

Recommended Readings:
Cathy Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers & Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics”
Simon Watney, “The Spectacle of AIDS”
David Wojnarowicz, Close to the Knives
Alex Juhasz, “So Many Alternatives: The Alternative AIDS Video Movement”
Ann Cvetkovich, “Video, AIDS, and Activism”
Darius Bost, “A Voice Demonic and Proud…Absotto Sain’t Sacred Life, Art, AIDS”
Juana María Rodriguez, “Activism and Identity in the Ruins of Representation”
Robb Hernandez, Archiving an Epidemic: Art, AIDS & the Queer Chicanx Avant-Garde
Roger Hallas, Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image
David Gere, “With a Camera & a Tape Recorder: Through Positive Eyes, The AIDS Pandemic…”

Week 5: Abolition

2/10 Readings:
1. Angela Davis, et al., “Abolition. Feminism. Now.” and/or Morgan Bassichis, et al.,
“Building an Abolitionist Trans & Queer Movement with Everything We’ve Got”
2. Marita Sturken, “Absent Images…Remembering & Reenacting Japanese Internment”
3. Anne McClintock, “Paranoid Empire: Specters from Guantánomo & Abu Ghraib”
4. Laura Gutiérrez, “Performing Borders…Notes on Mexican & Chicano/a…”
5. Macarena Gómez Barris, “Art in the Shadow of Border Capitalism”
6. Rebecca Zorach, “Abolition Art: Contemporary Imaginings Against Carceral State”
7. Saidiya Hartman, “The Anarchy of Colored Girls Assembled in a Riotous Manner”

Check out https://xmap.us/

Recommended Reading:
Sayak Valencia, Gore Capitalism
George Lipsitz, “Not Just Another Social Movement”
Gloria Anzaldúa, “La Conciencia de la Mestiza”
Guillermo Gomez-Peña, The New World Border

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Week 6: Queer

2/17 Readings:
1. Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, “Sex in Public”
2. Curran Nault, excerpt/s from Queercore: Queer Punk Media Subculture
3. Jack Halberstam, “Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies”
4. Justin Torres, “In Praise of Latin Night at the Queer Club”
5. Emily Johnson and Karyn Recollet, “Kin-dling and Other Radical Relationalities”
6. Louise Siddons, “The Visual Politics of Queerness in the Navajo Nation”

Check out QT Voices on OUTsider:

a. Curran Nault, “What Mischief Can We Make Today?”
b. Karma Chávez & Laura Gutiérrez, “Queer Performance, Pleasure & Possibility”
(podcast)

*Outing to OUTsider 2023*

Recommended Reading:
Judith Butler, “Is Kinship Always Heterosexual?”

PART 2: STRATEGIES

Week 7: Outrage(ous)

2/24 Readings:
1. Kate Bornstein, “Gender Terror, Gender Rage” and/or Susan Stryker, “…Performing
Transgender Rage”
2. Jack Halberstam, “Imagined Violence, Queer Violence” and “A New Kind of
Wildness: Rites of Spring and Indigenous Aesthetics of Bewilderment” (69-76)
3. José Esteban Muñoz, “The White to Be Angry: Vaginal Davis’s Terrorist Drag”
4. Sergei Prozorov, “Pussy Riot & the Politics of Profanation: Parody, Performativity..”
5. Namusa Makhubu, “Foul-Mouthed Activists: Disobedience as Care Work…”

Recommended Reading:
Mikhail Bhaktin, Rabeleis and His World
Frantz Fanon, “On Violence”
Tricia Rose, “Prophets of Rage: Rap Music & the Politics of Black Cultural Expression”
Jayna Brown, “A World on Fire: Radical Black Feminism in a Dystopian Age”
Tavia Nyong’o, “Deep Time, Dark Time”
Jack Halberstam and Tavia Nyong’o, “Theory in the Wild”
Martin Manalansan, “Messy Mismeasures: Exploring the Messiness of Queer Migrant Lives”
Mel Y. Chen, “Agitation”
José Esteban Muñoz, “The Wildness of the Punk Rock Commons”
Kristen Schilt: “I’ll Resist…: Girls & Zine Making as a Form of Resistance”

Week 8: Inscrutable

3/3 Readings:
1. Simone Browne, “When Blackness Enters the Frame”
2. Jack Halberstam, “Low Theory” from The Queer Art of Failure
3. Vivian Huang, from Surface Relations: Queer Forms…Asian American Inscrutability

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 4. Anthony Romero, “La Viviendo Es La Cura: Latinx Art, Politics, Housing Justice…”
5. Shaka McGlotten, “Black Data”
6. Jacob Gaboury, “Becoming NULL”

Check out: Tourmaline, “On Being a Nobody” (2016 Hampshire College

Commencement video)

**Final project proposals due**

Recommended Reading:
James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak
Michel Foucault, “Panopticism”
Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance
Saba Mahmood, “Feminist Theory, Embodiment and the Docile Agent”
Jonathan Katz, “John Cage’s Queer Silence; How to Avoid Making Matters Worse”
Julia Bryan-Wilson, “Remembering Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece”
Kara Keeling, “Corporate Cannibal: Risk, Errantry and Imagination in the Age of Catastrophe”
Doran George, “Negotiating the Spectacle in Transgender Performances”
Eliza Steinbock, Shimmering Images: Trans Cinema, Embodiment and Aesthetics of Change
Zach Blas, “Informatic Opacity”
Jennifer Rhee, “Adam Harvey’s ‘Anti-Drone Wear”
Ana María Reyes, “Activating Vulnerability: Artivism in Colombia’s Precarious Peace Process”
M. Lamar and Tucker Culberston, “Forever Disappearing: The Theater of ‘Negrogothic’ Cinema”

Week 9: Death(less)

3/10 Readings:
1. Sara Ahmed, “Feminist Killjoys (and Other Willful Subjects)”
2. Douglas Crimp, “Mourning and Militancy”
3. Daniel Tucker, “The1-to-1 Tactic: Media and Public Mourning…”
4. Mary Trent, “Historical Memory in…African American Activist Photography”
5. Kashif Jerome Powell, “Making #BlackLivesMatter: A Hauntology of Blackness”
and/or Sharon Holland, “Bill T. Jones, Tupac Shakur and the (Queer) Art of Death”
6. Aren Z. Aizura, “Trans Feminine Value”

Recommended Readings:
Achilles Mbembe, Necropolitics
C. Riley Snorton and Jin Haritaworn, “Trans Necropolitics”
Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?
Jasbir K. Puar, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!”
Curran Nault, “Documenting the Dead: CHG and the Trans Activist Afterlife of Jennifer Laude”
José Esteban Muñoz, “A Jeté Out the Window” & “Feeling Brown, Feeling Down”

Week 10: Spring Break (No Class)

Week 11: Joyful

3/24 Readings:
1. Paul Preciado, “Your Death”
2. Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic”
3. Lyndon Gill, “Chatting Back An Epidemic: Caribbean Gay Men…Uses of Erotic…”
4. Madison Moore, “Unapologetic Femme””

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 5. Le’A Kent, “Fighting Abjection: Representing Fat Women”
6. Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, from Assuming Ecosexual Position: Earth as Lover
7. Aleksandra Szaniawska, “…Janelle Monáe’s Vision of Black Queer Futurity”

Recommended Readings:
Marlon Riggs, “Reflections of a Snap! Queen”
Joan Morgan, “Why We Get Off: Towards a Black Feminist Politics of Pleasure”
Javon Johnson, “Black Joy in the Time of Ferguson”
Adriennne Marie Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good
Kemi Adeyemi, Feels Right: Black Queer Women & Politics of Partying in Chicago

PART 3: SITES

Week 12: Streets

3/31 Readings:
1. Tamar Carroll, “…Whose Streets? Our Streets!”: New York City, 1980–2000”
2. Sarah Ahwad, et al, “The Street Art of Resistance”
3. Cassandra Hartblay, “Disabling Structures…Marginalization in a Russian Cityscape”
4. Akemi Nishida, “Bed Activism: When POC Are Sick, Disabled, and Incapable”
5. Carla Rice, et al., “Decolonizing Disability Through Activist Art”

Screening: I Didn’t See You There (Reid Davenport, 2022)

**Bibliographies due**

Recommended Readings:
Alison Kafer, Feminist.Queer.Crip.
Christine Kelly & Michael Orsini, Mobilizing Metaphor: Art, Culture, and Disability Activism…

Week 13: Lands

4/7 Readings:
1. Mishuana Goeman, “Land as Life: Unsettling the Logics of Containment”
2. Replace 2 with:Fugitive indigeneity: Reclaiming the terrain of decolonial struggle
through Indigenous art
3. Mary Capelli, “Standing w/ Standing Rock: Affective Alignment, Artful Resistance”
4. Jennifer Garcia Peacock, “Zeke Peña: Illustrating Chicanx Environmental Justice…”
5. Lisa Bloom, “A View from the Future…Sci-Fi to Address the Climate Crisis”
6. Jodi A. Byrd, “Beast of America: Sovereignty and the Wildness of Objects”

Oh the places we’ll go.

Recommended Readings:
Stacy Alaimo, Exposed: Environmental Politics, Pleasures in PostHuman…
Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp, “Becoming-with-Animal: Ecofeminist Performance”

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Week 14: Holds

4/14 Readings:
1. Christina Sharpe, “The Hold”
2. Fatimah Tobing Rony, “Those Who Squat and Those Who Sit”
3. Chris Vargas, “Resisting the Museum: Archiving Trans* Presence…”
4. Alexander Adams, from Artivism: The Battle for Museums…
5. Sarah Banet-Weiser, “Commodity Activism in Neoliberal Times”
6. Mark Dery, “Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, Sniping in Empire of Signs”

Check out All The Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras, 2022)

**Museum/Art Space Outing**

Week 15: Worlds

4/21 Readings:
1. José Esteban Muñoz, “Queerness as Horizon” and “Stages”
2. Megan Alrutz, “Sites of Possibility: Applied Theater & Digital Storytelling”
3. Mai Corlin Frederiksen, “Aesthetics of Reciprocity: Socially Engaged Art in China”
4. Jennifer Gauthier, “Reel/Real Resurgence: Pasifika Women Filmmakers…”
5. Kylie Thomas, “Atomized Solidarity and New Shapes of Resistance…”

**Final Projects due on 4/28**

NOTE: With advanced warning, this syllabus is subject to update and revision.