DIVERSIFY YOUR PHILOSOPHY OF ART READING LIST WITH THESE 60+ BIPOC AUTHORS

If you’re prepping a syllabus for the fall, you’re probably thinking about how to make your reading list more diverse or even how to decolonize your own and your students’ thinking about aesthetics and philosophy of art.

In an effort to help people do this, I’ve compiled the below list of suggested pieces by BIPOC authors, members of racial and ethnic groups that have often been marginalized in Western, Anglo-European philosophy, especially in the analytic tradition.

When multiple pieces are available, I have selected based on topic and suitability for teaching at the undergraduate level.

I hope that this list will aid efforts to build better syllabi, as well as expand your own personal reading and research!

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June 8, 2020
by Alex King Leave a comment

AFB’S TOP 50 TERMS OF ART

toa-final

Two and a half months ago, I started the Terms of Art series. Every weekday (minus a one-week intermission), I posted a key term from aesthetics and philosophy of art, which sometimes leaned more philosophical and other times more toward the art world and art criticism.

To select the Top 50, I used a mix of crowd-sourcing (thanks to everyone who helped with this!) and personal reflection. I thought about central concepts my students have wanted to know about or been confused about. I thought about terms I remember not understanding when I first started reading art criticism and artists’ statements. I also included terms that I have continued to be confused about in other areas of aesthetics and philosophy of art. So in many ways, this series has been as much for me as for any of you. (Also it’s a quarantine project, so really it has been a LOT for me. So much the better if you all got something out of it!)

You can browse through them all here. But a quick reference, I’m including below a list of what I guess are my Top 50 Terms of Art.

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June 5, 2020
by Alex King 1 Comment

AFB’S TERMS OF ART #50: THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR

Now that increasing numbers of people are stuck at home and sheltering in place, I figured I’d do a little series. Every weekday for the duration of this intense period, I’ll post a short definition of some term in/related to aesthetics and philosophy of art. Let’s see how this goes! See them all here.

As lockdowns start to release us back into the world, this series is coming to a close. For the very last term of art, I thought it fitting to discuss a very popular but not super well understood term: