Visualization of cited authors (circles) and their citing papers (squares)
Controls
Legend
Paper
Author (1-2 citations)
Author (3-4 citations)
Author (5-6 citations)
Author (7+ citations)
Statistics
Authors: 0
Papers: 0
Connections: 0
Most Cited Author: -
Node Details
Works:
Cited in Papers:
Cited Authors:
Database
Black Art Study — a Black Canadian Art History Scholarship Database
A decentralized, citation-driven database of Black Canadian art scholarship.
The black Canadian art history scholarship database is one part of a four-part portfolio dissertation by Yaniya Lee Lacharite titled “Black Art Study: Methods and Methodologies for a Black Studies Approach to Canadian Art History,” submitted to the Graduate Program in Gender Studies at Queen's University.
The black Canadian art history scholarship database is one part of a four-part portfolio dissertation by Yaniya Lee Lacharite titled “Black Art Study: Methods and Methodologies for a Black Studies Approach to Canadian Art History,” submitted to the Graduate Program in Gender Studies at Queen's University.
“Footnotes (Books and Papers Scattered about the Floor),” Dr. Katherine McKittrick posits citation as integral to the discipline of black studies: “The works cited untangle systems of oppression and talk about resisting racist violence. The works cited are many and various divergent and overlapping texts, images, songs, and ideas that may not normally be read together. The works cited, all of them, when understood as in conversation with each other, demonstrate an interconnected story that resists oppression.”
The black Canadian art history scholarship database is a resource list of existing scholarship on the subject of black Canadian art. It emphasizes relation and citation, a connection through references that features theorists and scholars who work towards liberation. Two interactive graphs comprise this relational approach to presenting black Canadian art history scholarship. Theses and dissertations are the nodal points through which artists, curators and art workers working can search. The asterix in the page opens an information bar, and an arrow allows for navigation between the two graphs. Each entry stub page contains an abstract, acknowledgements, a bibliography and a link to the complete dissertation or thesis. Here, the scholars' research is brought together beyond and outside the tidy disciplines of art history, searchable only through shared references.
The citational and relational way of organizing and presenting the scholarship on this database was formed in answer to the following question: How do we build a database that honours black Canadian art history scholarship without reifying a classificatory system that is irreconcilable with black liberation?
Lee wanted to depart from the categorizations and classifications that discipline and reproduce canonical art history. Recognizing the interdisciplinarity of black studies, Lee knew that to find and collect existing academic scholarship on the subject of black Canadian art, she would have to search across all academic disciplines, not just within Canadian art history. In university databases and on the Library and Archives Canada website, she searched different terms and combinations of terms. She tried every combination: black Canadian art, African Canadian, black Canadian, diaspora artist, creative practice, fine art, art, art history, and so on. Each term, and combination of terms, yielded different results, and every new search brought forth hundreds of abstracts to assess for relevance. This experimental database brings together her findings.