Krista A Thompson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3596489 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Krista A Thompson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Krista A |
| FAMILY NAME | Thompson |
| SIGNATURE | THOMPSON K A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northwestern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8597-1409 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
An Eye for the Tropics
Images of Jamaica and the Bahamas as tropical paradises full of palm trees, white sandy beaches, and inviting warm water seem timeless. Surprisingly, the origins of those images can be traced back to the roots of the islands' tourism industry in the 1880s. As Krista A. Thompson explains, in the late nineteenth century, tourism promoters, backed by British colonial administrators, began to market Jamaica and the Bahamas as picturesque "tropical" p…
L’histoire de l’art à l’aune de la fiction. Pour une extension du domaine de la recherche
Depuis une cinquantaine d’années, les transformations de l’histoire de l’art l’amènent parfois à se définir dans une rhétorique entérinant son infériorité disciplinaire et la conduisent, en conséquence, à s’approprier les outils et l’horizon de disciplines considérées plus surplombantes, plus englobantes, à l’instar de la sociologie, de l’histoire, et surtout – plus récemment – de l’anthropologie. Cette quête de fins ambitieuses qui n’appartiendr…
Afrotropes
The term afrotropes is a neologism referring to those recurrent visual forms that have emerged within and become central to the formation of African diasporic culture and identity, whether the slav
Shine
In Jamaican dancehalls competition for the video camera's light is stiff, so much so that dancers sometimes bleach their skin to enhance their visibility. In the Bahamas, tuxedoed students roll into prom in tricked-out sedans, staging grand red-carpet entrances that are designed to ensure they are seen being photographed. Throughout the United States and Jamaica friends pose in front of hand-painted backgrounds of Tupac, flashy cars, or brand-nam…
“I Am Rendered Speechless by Your Idea of Beauty”
Ivan Karp (1943–2011)
June 01 2012 Ivan Karp (1943–2011) Mary Jo Arnoldi, Mary Jo Arnoldi Curator for Africa and chair of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Howard Morphy, Howard Morphy Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Research School of the Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University. [email protected]…
Youth Culture, Diasporic Aesthetics, and the Art of Being Seen in the Bahamas
Perpetual Returns
In this introduction to the special issue New World Slavery and the Matter of the Visual, Huey Copeland and Krista Thompson not only frame the scholarly essays and artists' portfolios collected in the volume but also argue for a reorientation of both art history and black studies in light of the ongoing specular effects of racial bondage. In so doing, they underline the importance of the visual to the rewiring of slavery's imaginary by examining …
The Evidence of Things Not Photographed
Slavery and apprenticeship came to an end in the British West Indies in 1838, the year photography was developed as a fixed representational process. No photographs of slavery in the region exist or have been found. Despite this visual lacuna, some recent historical accounts of slavery reproduce photographs that seem to present the period in photographic form. Typically these images date to the late nineteenth century. Rather than see such uses o…
“Call the Police. Call the Army. Call God. And Let's Have One Helluva Big Story”
“Call the Police. Call the Army. Call God. And Let's Have One Helluva Big Story”
Are there intrinsic and unique ways of representing the “visual atmospherics” of the Caribbean? Might phenomenological studies of embodied perception offer insight into distinct forms of Caribbean visuality? How would contrapuntal interpretations of colonial archives result in a decolonizing art history? What are the larger stakes of these ways of reading Caribbean visual cultures, and what might they leave unseen? This article points to the need…
Beyond Tarzan and National Geographic
At the Festival of American Folklife, presenters are key mediators between culture bearers and festival visitors, fostering, in theory, dialogic cultural exchange. Examining the African Immigrant Folklife Program (1997), I evaluate the successes and failures of the presenter's position and the specific challenges of presenting African diasporic cultures at the festival. This first scholarly investigation of this key role concludes that many visit…
Preoccupied with Haiti
Haiti was on mind and in the imagination of many African American artists throughout the 1920s and 1930s, a period that coincided with the U.S. occupation of the island. At this time many African American artists working in the United States represented the first black Republic through symbols of the Haitian revolution and its leaders. Their work was central in forging diasporic links between African American and Haitian contemporaries and inspir…
Performing Visibility
During the late 1990s, participants in Freaknic, the annual black college spring break gathering, were greeted by the Atlanta police in riot gear. Defying the police, women gave impromptu performances, sometimes stripping for participants' cameras. Thompson shows how these performances were a response not only to the city's treatment of Freaknic but also to Atlanta's long history of using force to control race, gender, and class
No Abstract Art Here
Some critics contend that the visual language of abstraction or conceptual art cannot translate “Caribbeanness.” This essay considers the work of several contemporary Caribbean artists who highlight how the “picturesque” paintings so favored by detractors were historically constructed to erase the multiple realities and visual imaginaries of the islands
An Eye for the Tropics
Document
Introduction
Black Skin, Blue Eyes
the little girl] knew what her mother and grandmother looked like but she also knew that she was supposed to be making a picture!"As an artist working in colonial Jamaica, Manley would have to reconstruct fundamentally who and what constituted the subject of art.She and her contemporaries not only introduced black subject matter into art but also had to encourage the local populations, particularly the island's black majority, to learn to see the…
The Evidence of Things Not Photographed
Slavery and apprenticeship came to an end in the British West Indies in 1838, the year photography was developed as a fixed representational process. No photographs of slavery in the region exist or have been found. Despite this visual lacuna, some recent historical accounts of slavery reproduce photographs that seem to present the period in photographic form. Typically these images date to the late nineteenth century. Rather than see such uses o…
Beyond Tarzan and National Geographic
At the Festival of American Folklife, presenters are key mediators between culture bearers and festival visitors, fostering, in theory, dialogic cultural exchange. Examining the African Immigrant Folklife Program (1997), I evaluate the successes and failures of the presenter's position and the specific challenges of presenting African diasporic cultures at the festival. This first scholarly investigation of this key role concludes that many visit…
Youth Culture, Diasporic Aesthetics, and the Art of Being Seen in the Bahamas
Afrotropes
The term afrotropes is a neologism referring to those recurrent visual forms that have emerged within and become central to the formation of African diasporic culture and identity, whether the slav
Perpetual Returns
In this introduction to the special issue New World Slavery and the Matter of the Visual, Huey Copeland and Krista Thompson not only frame the scholarly essays and artists' portfolios collected in the volume but also argue for a reorientation of both art history and black studies in light of the ongoing specular effects of racial bondage. In so doing, they underline the importance of the visual to the rewiring of slavery's imaginary by examining …
Introduction
Black Skin, Blue Eyes
the little girl] knew what her mother and grandmother looked like but she also knew that she was supposed to be making a picture!"As an artist working in colonial Jamaica, Manley would have to reconstruct fundamentally who and what constituted the subject of art.She and her contemporaries not only introduced black subject matter into art but also had to encourage the local populations, particularly the island's black majority, to learn to see the…
An Eye for the Tropics
Document
Preoccupied with Haiti
Haiti was on mind and in the imagination of many African American artists throughout the 1920s and 1930s, a period that coincided with the U.S. occupation of the island. At this time many African American artists working in the United States represented the first black Republic through symbols of the Haitian revolution and its leaders. Their work was central in forging diasporic links between African American and Haitian contemporaries and inspir…
Performing Visibility
During the late 1990s, participants in Freaknic, the annual black college spring break gathering, were greeted by the Atlanta police in riot gear. Defying the police, women gave impromptu performances, sometimes stripping for participants' cameras. Thompson shows how these performances were a response not only to the city's treatment of Freaknic but also to Atlanta's long history of using force to control race, gender, and class
No Abstract Art Here
Some critics contend that the visual language of abstraction or conceptual art cannot translate “Caribbeanness.” This essay considers the work of several contemporary Caribbean artists who highlight how the “picturesque” paintings so favored by detractors were historically constructed to erase the multiple realities and visual imaginaries of the islands
“Call the Police. Call the Army. Call God. And Let's Have One Helluva Big Story”
“Call the Police. Call the Army. Call God. And Let's Have One Helluva Big Story”
Are there intrinsic and unique ways of representing the “visual atmospherics” of the Caribbean? Might phenomenological studies of embodied perception offer insight into distinct forms of Caribbean visuality? How would contrapuntal interpretations of colonial archives result in a decolonizing art history? What are the larger stakes of these ways of reading Caribbean visual cultures, and what might they leave unseen? This article points to the need…
Beyond Tarzan and National Geographic
At the Festival of American Folklife, presenters are key mediators between culture bearers and festival visitors, fostering, in theory, dialogic cultural exchange. Examining the African Immigrant Folklife Program (1997), I evaluate the successes and failures of the presenter's position and the specific challenges of presenting African diasporic cultures at the festival. This first scholarly investigation of this key role concludes that many visit…
Youth Culture, Diasporic Aesthetics, and the Art of Being Seen in the Bahamas
Perpetual Returns
In this introduction to the special issue New World Slavery and the Matter of the Visual, Huey Copeland and Krista Thompson not only frame the scholarly essays and artists' portfolios collected in the volume but also argue for a reorientation of both art history and black studies in light of the ongoing specular effects of racial bondage. In so doing, they underline the importance of the visual to the rewiring of slavery's imaginary by examining …
The Evidence of Things Not Photographed
Slavery and apprenticeship came to an end in the British West Indies in 1838, the year photography was developed as a fixed representational process. No photographs of slavery in the region exist or have been found. Despite this visual lacuna, some recent historical accounts of slavery reproduce photographs that seem to present the period in photographic form. Typically these images date to the late nineteenth century. Rather than see such uses o…
Ivan Karp (1943–2011)
June 01 2012 Ivan Karp (1943–2011) Mary Jo Arnoldi, Mary Jo Arnoldi Curator for Africa and chair of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Howard Morphy, Howard Morphy Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Research School of the Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University. [email protected]…
“I Am Rendered Speechless by Your Idea of Beauty”
Shine
In Jamaican dancehalls competition for the video camera's light is stiff, so much so that dancers sometimes bleach their skin to enhance their visibility. In the Bahamas, tuxedoed students roll into prom in tricked-out sedans, staging grand red-carpet entrances that are designed to ensure they are seen being photographed. Throughout the United States and Jamaica friends pose in front of hand-painted backgrounds of Tupac, flashy cars, or brand-nam…
L’histoire de l’art à l’aune de la fiction. Pour une extension du domaine de la recherche
Depuis une cinquantaine d’années, les transformations de l’histoire de l’art l’amènent parfois à se définir dans une rhétorique entérinant son infériorité disciplinaire et la conduisent, en conséquence, à s’approprier les outils et l’horizon de disciplines considérées plus surplombantes, plus englobantes, à l’instar de la sociologie, de l’histoire, et surtout – plus récemment – de l’anthropologie. Cette quête de fins ambitieuses qui n’appartiendr…
Afrotropes
The term afrotropes is a neologism referring to those recurrent visual forms that have emerged within and become central to the formation of African diasporic culture and identity, whether the slav
An Eye for the Tropics
Images of Jamaica and the Bahamas as tropical paradises full of palm trees, white sandy beaches, and inviting warm water seem timeless. Surprisingly, the origins of those images can be traced back to the roots of the islands' tourism industry in the 1880s. As Krista A. Thompson explains, in the late nineteenth century, tourism promoters, backed by British colonial administrators, began to market Jamaica and the Bahamas as picturesque "tropical" p…
Art (13 works) · History (10 works) · Caribbean history, culture, and politics (8 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Visual arts (8 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Archaeology (5 works) · Art history (5 works)