History Should Make You Uncomfortable: A Symposium Recap
MaryKate Smolenski
Citation: Smolenski, MaryKate. “History Should Make You Uncomfortable: A Symposium Recap.” The Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture, December 4, 2020.
Keywords: Discomfort, Humanities, History, Education, Classroom teaching, Learning
On November 21, 2020, CMSMC hosted our first ever symposium. Our theme, which has been written about previously, was “History Should Make You Uncomfortable.”
We had ten fantastic speakers and over 140 attendees. Thank you to all who participated, we truly appreciate it. For those who could not attend, here is a short recap of this wonderful event!
Our first panel was [Re]Writing the Narrative: Challenging Historical Authority. It began with Safiyah Cheatam. Cheatam is a teaching artist, podcast host, and designer currently earning her MFA in Intermedia & Digital Arts at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She earned her BS in Electronic Media and Film from Towson University. She spoke about W.E.B. Du Bois as a Proto-Afrofuturist. Afrofuturism, coined by Mark Dery in 1993, is “speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th century technoculture — and, more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future.” Cheatam argued that Du Bois’s data visualizations in his sociological work constituted Mundane Afrofuturism, while his fiction works, such as The Comet and The Princess Steel, demonstrate his Fantastical Afrofuturism.
Following Cheatam, Alexandra Harter presented on consumerism, colonialism, and nationalism through the analysis of an Egyptian scarab beetle souvenir. The scarab beetle is representative of Egyptian culture, but is also part of an Egyptian nationalist response of manufacturing souvenirs for Western consumption. Egyptians were producing them as both souvenirs for other’s consumption and for nationalist pride. Harter argued that the scarab beetle shows how the material culture of Egypt reflects the conflict between colonialist and nationalist narratives. She is earning her MA in History and Museum Studies at Tufts University and received her BA in History from the University of Richmond.
Next Rachel Trusty discussed the concepts of queer failure and queer abstraction through an analysis of Felix Gonzalez-Torres' Untitled (Placebo-Landscape-for-Roni) (1993). Trusty is an artist, art educator, and independent curator currently attending a Ph.D. program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas. She obtained her MFA in studio art from Lesley College in 2011. Trusty concluded visitors did not interpret the queer or relational content of Untitled on their own, but many visitors did complete the work through taking the candy and understood how it subverted museum protocol. She discussed how the piece connects to the action of refusal in queer failure. Furthermore, queer abstraction can be read as elimination or absence of the queer body. However, the artist saw Untitled differently; the candy, a metaphorical body cannot be owned, censored, or regulated. Thus, Trusty argued that through abstraction and interaction, Untitled can indeed offer opportunities for survival and possibilities.
Delfin Ogutogullari then presented on a painting by the Safavid artist Riza-i Abbasi called “Reclining Nude” (ca. 1590).” She argued that the theme of a female nude with long dark hair near a small brook has its origins in Persian poetry through the heorine Shirin, and is not derived from a European prototype such as Cleopatra. Ogutogullari shared several examples in literature and art, including Nizami Ganjavi’s 12th-century poem, and demonstrated that the story of Shirin was a popular one. Thus, Shirin’s long, dark hair covering her breasts became a familiar icon in the Persian tradition and was not inspired by a European example. Ogutogullari is an art history graduate student at George Washington University in the BA/MA Program. She moved to America for her undergraduate studies in 2016 from Istanbul, Turkey and currently works as an Intern for Docent Programs at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington D.C.
Our first panel concluded with our keynote speaker, Alice Procter. Procter is the creator of “Uncomfortable Art Tours” which takes museum goers on an honest look behind the art at 6 different museums in London. She is the author of “The Whole Picture: The Colonial Story of the Art in our Museums” and currently hosts the new podcast, Historical Friction, which discusses pop culture, the past, and how the two interact in the best and worst ways. Procter holds a BA in Art History and an MA in Anthropology, both from University College London. Her presentation entitled “What is Discomfort?” examined the value of comfort and discomfort in the museum space. Procter discussed the presence of bodies and human remains in museum displays along with their ties to repatriation, tragedy, and spectacle.
The first panel then came together for a Q&A session where they discussed what “history should make you uncomfortable” meant to them and their work as well answered questions from the audience. The conversation explored authority and privilege as well as orientalism and othering. Alice Procter was included in this panel and she addressed questions about how her tours run; she is not employed by museums but uses museum spaces for her tours. Her relationships with the institutions are precarious but her work has received enough media attention that she is allowed to continue.
After an hour break, we reconvened for our second panel that centered around the theme of Silence[d]: Absence, Presence, and Visibility in the Historical Record.
Our first speaker was Isabelle Bucklow who is earning her MA in Anthropology, Material and Visual Culture from University College London, where she also earned her BA in the History of Art. Bucklow spoke about dance as material culture and how the absence of dance in museum spaces reflects the systemic bias towards particular bodies and what histories their presence might expose. She discussed the dance practices of Katherine Dunham and Okwui Okpokwasili and how institutions and disciplines have responded to their embodied research practices, focusing on three main points: dance as anthropology, dance in the museum space, and possession as paradigm. Bucklow argued that dance should not be seen as exploitation or entertainment, but should be considered a serious contribution to the material fabric of museums. She ended with a connection to current issues of museum’s undervaluing and erasing bodies through recent layoffs, “removing people, not objects, from their care.”
Next, Marina Avia Estrada presented on the idea of memory and some of the ways Mexican artists subvert structural processes that commodify Mexican women’s bodies. Currently, Estrada is earning her MA in Modern Art, Critical and Curatorial Studies from Columbia University. Previously, she earned her MA in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture from Museo Reina Sofia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid- UCM, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid-UAM and her BA in History from la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid- UAM. Estrada’s presentation focused on violence, feminicides, and absence in Ciudad Juárez, a border city in Northern Mexico. She explored how artists such as Teresa Margolles, Elina Chauvet (Zapatos Rojos “Red Shoes”), and Mayra Martell (Ensayo de la identidad “Identity essay”) use their works to restore dignity to the memory of victims, rather than sexualizing or fetishizing their bodies like the mass media. The artists recreate the absence and emptiness of those who are gone.
Following Estrada, Christine Staton discussed the history of Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi and why architecture matters in the context of material culture. Staton argued that when the Palazzo Strozzi was established as a cultural heritage site, parts of its history (such as its ties to fascism) were omitted to create an attractive narrative that would assist in producing heritage value. She shared a brief history of the building, including Hitler’s May 1938 visit and its first art exhibition Cinquecento in Tuscany during the fascist regime. Staton argued that the Palazzo rejected the modern/degenerate history and focused on earlier history to create heritage value in an uncontested and appealing way. She is earning her MA in Italian Renaissance Art History from Syracuse University’s College of Art and Sciences, Florence Program. She also earned her BA in Art History and Italian Studies from Rutgers University, where she also earned her Certificate in Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies.
Logan Ward presented next. He argued that representations of Korean material culture at the Cleveland Museum of Art can be understood as a double orientalized representation of Korea. Ward examined Langdon and Lorraine Warner’s writings about Korean artifacts at the Cleveland Museum of Art and concluded that the Warners implied that Japanese colonialism was beneficial for Korea (promoting the theory of Joseon stagnation) and beneficial for the West as well. The Warners orientalized a version of Korea that had already been orientalized by Japanese colonialism. Ward is earning his MA in Interdisciplinary East Asian Studies, with a Concentration in Korea from The Ohio State University, where he also earned his BA in Arts Management with a minor in Korean.
Finally, Katie Guttman shared a case study about archaeology in present-day Michigan’s Fort Michilimackinac. She earned her MA in Historical Archaeology from Cornell University and her BA in Anthropology from New York University. Guttman discussed the interpretation of the historic site, which is lacking recognition of Indigenous presence at the Fort, and how the archaeological record can be utilized to rectify this. She explored how Indigenous presence was silenced: through 1. what residents of the Fort selected to record, 2. what artifacts remained in the archaeological record, 3. the creation of an archive and what records were saved, and 4. what archaeologists choose to excavate. These silences were further enforced with the interpretation of the site. Guttman’s archaeological research and analysis suggests the presence of Indigenous people, such as the presence of Indigenous-made objects or faunal remains that suggest a diet aligned more with a French-Canadian, Metis, or Indigenous person’s diet than a British one. She concluded by urging the Fort, and other sites, to consider their interpretation and to include previously erased voices.
Our second panel speakers then regrouped for a discussion and Q&A. The panelists reflected on the inflection of “history should make you uncomfortable.” They pondered and interpreted the phrase differently, some emphasizing should and others you. Discussion also centered around the power of absence and the power of presence. Another question raised was how do we define heritage alongside discomfort and the notion of familiarity and nostalgia surrounding heritage.
Special thanks to our Symposium Committee: Peri Buch, Victoria Moore, and Sarah Henzlik.