|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
African/African DiasporaCYNTHIA BECKER725 Commonwealth Ave, Rm 305B Assistant Professor; African Art. BA, University of New Orleans; MA, PhD University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Cynthia Becker is a scholar of African arts specializing in the arts of the Imazighen (Berbers) in northwestern Africa, specifically Morocco, Algeria, and Niger. Her research has been supported by a Fulbright grant and several grants from the American Institute of Maghreb Studies. Professor Becker has served as a consultant for numerous museum exhibitions and published articles on the visual and performing arts of the Imazighen as well as the trans-Saharan slave trade. Her book Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity was published by the University of Texas Press in July of 2006. She is currently working on a book about the Afro-Islamic aesthetics and ceremonial practices of the Gnawa that considers the history of the trans-Saharan slave trade and its implications on material culture in both western and northern Africa. Other projects include the visual expression of Amazigh consciousness by contemporary painters/activists, the influence of Sufism on contemporary Moroccan art, and the visual culture and history of the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans (her hometown). PATRICIA HILLS725 Commonwealth Ave, Rm 301B Professor; American Art. B.A., Stanford University; M.A., City University of New York, Hunter College; Ph.D., New York University Professor Hills teaches courses on American art and visual culture, and is a specialist in the history of American painting, African American art, and art and politics. Major books and catalogues for exhibitions she organized include: Stuart Davis (1996), John Singer Sargent (1986), Alice Neel (1983), Social Concern and Urban Realism: American Painting of the 1930s (1983), The Figurative Tradition and The Whitney Museum of American Art: Paintings and Sculpture from the Permanent Collection (1980), Turn-of-the-Century America: Paintings, Graphics, Photographs, 1890-1910 (1977), The Painters' America: Rural and Urban Life, 1810-1910 (1974), The American Frontier: Images and Myths (1973), Eastman Johnson (1972). She has also contributed essays to catalogues of major exhibitions, such as Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series (1993), Breaking the Rules: Audrey Flack, a Retrospective 1950-1990 (1992), The West as America (1991), Eastman Johnson: The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket (1990). Her articles have appeared in American Art, Oxford Art Journal, Prospects, Archives of American Art Journal, Dictionary of Women Artist, The Encyclopedia of New York City, American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts Vol. 2, Art in Bourgeois Society, 1790-1850 (1998), and Redefining American History Painting (1995). Eastman Johnson: Painting America (1999), which she co-curated with Brooklyn Museum of Art curator Teresa A. Carbone, won the Henry Allen Moe Prize for most outstanding exhibition catalogue in the State of New York for the year 1999. She has held both Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, and has been a fellow at the Charles Warren Center and the W. E. B. Du Bois Center, both of Harvard University. Her textbook/anthology, Modern Art in the USA: Issues and Controversies of the 20th Century, was published by Prentice Hall in 2001. She is currently writing a book on Jacob Lawrence. |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Boston University Department of Art History | August 17, 2007 |