Histories of Art, Race and Empire: 1492-1865

Introduction

“The people made a kingdom out of nothing. They were the people that didn’t make it across the water. They sat down right there. They say, ‘Let’s make a kingdom. Let’s make a city of bones’” ¹.

In August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, Aunt Ester educates Citizen Barlow about the City of Bones. The city is Wilson’s literary representation of the afterlife of the Africans who died through the Middle Passage, and it is the place Citizen must visit to understand his ancestry’s painful past, atone for his present sins, and become a leader who will help his people. Although the International Baccalaureate’s works in translation requirement gives my literature course more of a world literature focus, this play by Pittsburgh’s home-grown August Wilson has been a part of the curriculum since before I started teaching the course several years ago. Wilson’s rich, poetic use of African American Vernacular English paired with his story of transformation that addresses topics, such as the necessity of living in authenticity, understanding one’s heritage and history, and challenging injustice, makes Wilson’s play one that my students relate to, appreciate, and learn from. Gem of the Ocean, which begins Wilson’s Century Cycle chronicling the African American experience through each decade of the 20^th century, is one example of an African American artist telling the history of his people in a way that reclaims the power and dignity taken away from this group. Wilson says of his body of work, “I write about the black experience in America. And contained within that experience, because it is a human experience, are all the universalities.” My students can appreciate the play with minimal background knowledge. However, every year that I teach the play, I find myself wishing that my students and I had gone deeper, that we had spent more time elucidating Wilson’s artful use of history, African culture, imagery, and symbolism. My students often find themselves with “a feeling” that certain objects within the play are significant, but they fall short of realizing the full weight of these moments.

As powerful as the written word is, images can expedite an idea, an emotion, or an understanding of a history. Through pairing a variety of images and artwork—ranging from historic to contemporary--with Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, I will help students better understand this play’s deep historical and cultural context, as well as how artists and writers represent African diaspora culture to achieve a variety of ends. By comparing 19^th and early-20^th century abolitionist art to more contemporary art created by Black artists, such as Romare Bearden, Kerry James Marshall, and Kehinde Wiley, students will gain a richer understanding of the significance of Wilson’s work and the work of all artists who use their craft to challenge the forces of an unjust empire.

This unit’s content will begin with a pre-reading section that explains how I will use images to help students gain thematic and cultural background information before they begin reading the text. In addition to using images to help students begin discussing relevant thematic and cultural background topics, the activities in this section will also help students strengthen their close-reading skills—both of images and literary text. I will model the close-reading process first in the whole-class space as guided discussion. When they are ready for more independent viewing, students will progress into small group and gallery walk activities in which they examine images and bring their observations into whole-class discussions. The content and activities within that section should require three to five 42-minute class periods. Then, in the reading section, I provide several opportunities to help elucidate students' understanding of Gem of the Ocean as they read the play over a two-week period. For each section, I suggest when in the reading of the play to place the content and suggested activities. Some activities involve using images to introduce ideas that will help students understand allusions, imagery, or symbolism they will encounter later in their reading. Other activities will follow given sections of reading, requiring students to use their reading of the literature to evaluate the images. I explain techniques and more detailed activities to help convey the content to students in the Teaching Strategies and Classroom Activities sections. The unit ends with a culminating activity in which students create a museum exhibit entry that pairs a work of visual art with a passage from the play—both selected by the student. The students’ exhibit entries will include their analysis of the art, the literary passage, and how the two connect with one another. I anticipate the unit will require four to five weeks of class time in a traditional (42-minute class period) schedule.