Book List

First, a joke (read it out loud):

A chicken walks into a library, up to the front desk, and looks at the librarian on staff and says “Book book!” Puzzled, the librarian hands him a book, and he walks out the door. About ten minutes later, the chicken returns and again says “book book!” and the process repeats itself. This happens a few times, and the librarian gets curious. So, the next time the chicken comes in… “Book book!” the librarian hands him a book, and then follows him out the door.

The chicken strolls down the bike path, book in hand, and slowly wanders toward to the lakefront, where he stops. The librarian hides behind a tree, and peeks around to watch the chicken. The chicken gets right up to the water front, next to a large pile of books, which the librarian recognizes from the morning’s shenanigans. There is a large frog sitting next to the pile. The chicken drops the book, and says to the frog, “book book!” to which the frog drolly replies, “Read it!”

—

I’m a terrible joke teller, by the way. It’s a good thing that I’m planning a different career, because I’d be unemployed as a comedian. As luck would have it though, I am working on something completely different. I’m a full time graduate student in Art History, and have completed the first year of classes. Thanks to some wise planning on my part, I only need 1 more class, my comprehensive exams, my language exam, and my thesis, all which will take place in the next two semesters. Since I am also a Teaching Assistant, and receive a tuition waiver for that work, I actually have to take 2 classes next semester, despite only 1 being required. It’s free, so it’s not that big a deal.

In the meantime, I have to read for my comprehensive exams, which come around in October. As it currently stands, I have approximately 60 books to read, so I thought I’d list them here, to keep track of my own accomplishment in completing the list. I might do individual reading reports, but then again, maybe not. The nice thing is that this reading is my job for the summer. I’m literally supposed to stay home (or go to a coffee shop) and read. It’s a bit luxurious, and I know how lucky I am to have a boyfriend that is so supportive of the process that we have a cleaning lady to avoid the oh-so-common procrastination of “but I need to scrub the baseboards!” (This is a common habit of graduate students: clean when avoiding grading, writing papers, reading, etc.)

So. In the meantime…the list. I’ve italicized those books that I’ve completed already, and I do have one I’ve marked off the list as not working. There are additional books I’ve picked up that are not yet on the list as well, so this is an evolving list. I’ll be editing this page throughout the summer as I work through the reading. If you are interested in this subject area at all, and have comments, recommendations, or thoughts on this list and this topic, I’d love to hear it!

Major Area:
Memory & Memorials
1. Places of Public Memory – Dickinson, Blair, and Ott, eds.
2. War Memorials as Political Landscape – Mayo, James
3. Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities – Williams, Paul
4. Grassroots Memorials: The Politics of Memorializing Traumatic Death – Margry and Sámchez-Carretero
5. Making Memory Matter – Saltzman, Lisa
6. Memory, Mourning, Landscape – Anderson, Maddrell, McLoughlin, and Vincent
7. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning – Young, James
8. Memorial Mania – Doss, Erika
9. The Book of Memory – Carruthers, Mary
10. Memory in Culture – Eril, Astrid

Theory
11. Publics and Counterpublics – Warner, Michael
12. Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – Habermas, Jürgen
13. Sites of the Unanny: Paul Celan, Specularity, and the Visual Arts – Kligerman, Eric
14. Clobalizing Critical Theory – Pensky, Max
15. Art Power – Groys, Boris

War & Terror/The Subaltern
16. Crimes of Art & Terror – Lentricchia, Frank & McAuliffe, Jody
17. On Art & War & Terror – Danchev, Alex
18. What is Radical Politics Today? – Pugh, Jonathan (specific essays)
19. Writing and Filming the Genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda: Dismembering and Remembering Traumatic History – Dauge-Roth, Alexandre
20. Genodice by the Oppressed: Subaltern Genocide in Theory and Practice – Robins and Jones
21. Reflections on the History of an Idea: Can the Subaltern Speak? – Morris, Rosalind
22. Terror and the Sublime in Art & Critical Theory: From Auschwitz to Hiroshima to September 11 – Ray, Gene

Holocaust & History
23. Remnants of Auschwitz – Agamben, Giorgio
24. Beautiful Democracy – Castronovo, Russ
25. Fantasies of Witnessing: Postwar efforts to Experience the Holocaust – Weissman, Gary
26. Memory, Oblivion and Jewish Culture in Latin America – Agosín, Marjorie
27. After Auschwitz: Responses to the Holocaust in Contemporary Art – Bohm-Duchen, Monica
28. Memory Effects: The Holocaust and the Art of Secondary Witnessing – Apel, Dora
29. At Memory’s Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art & Architecture – Young, James
30. Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum – Linenthal, Edward

Minor Area:
Heavy Lifting
1. Kant – Critique of Judgment
2. Hegel – Philosophy of Fine Art
3. Baxandall – Patterns of Intention
4. Wölfflin – Principles of Art History
5. Warburg – The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity
6. Panofsky – Meaning in the Visual Arts
7. Reigl –

New Thinking
8. Blind Spots: Critical Theory and the History of Art in Twentieth-century Germany – Frederic J. Schwartz
9. The Social Life of Things – Arjun Appadurai
10. Understanding Material Culture – Ian Woodward
11. What Do Pictures Want: The Lives and Loves of Images – W.J.T. Mitchell
12. We Have Never Been Modern – Bruno Latour
13. Materiality – Daniel Miller
14. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory – Alfred Gell
15. The Museological Unconscious: Communal (Post) Modernism in Russia – Victor Tupitsyn
16. The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time – Peter D. Fenves
17. The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive – Mary Ann Doane
18. Orientalism – Edward Said
19. Homi K.Bhabha, The location of culture, London, 1994
20. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990
21. Eleanor Hight and Gary Sampson (eds), Colonialist Photography: Imagining Race and Place, 2002
22. TJ Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers, 1984
23. David Batchelor, Chromophobia, Reaktion, 2000
24. Panofsky, E, ‘Iconography and Iconology: An introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art’, in Meaning in the Visual Arts, Harmondsworth, 1970, pp 51-81
25. Duff, D (ed.), Modern Genre Theory, Pearson Education
26. Tilley, Chris, A Phenomenology of Landscape: Paths, Places, Monuments (Oxford: Berg, 1990).
27. Richard Bolton ed., The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, 1989
28. James Meyer, Minimalism, Yale University Press, 2000

Primers
28. Methods and Theories of Art History – Anne D’Alleva (selections)
29. Art of Art History – Donald Preziosi (selections)
30. Vision and Difference – Griselda Pollock
31. Visual Culture – Richard Howells
32. Theory for Art History – Jae Emerling