http://hdl.handle.net/2451/29901 Sun, 12 Apr 2026 10:16:59 GMT 2026-04-12T10:16:59Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/29919 Title: Hidden Archives of Amateur Cinematic Material: Making Orphan Works Accessible to Scholars Authors: Besser, Howard Abstract: Only recently have large moving image archives recognized the value of collecting amateur material. In this Talk, Howard Besser will first lay out the value of this type of material and the increased scholarly use of it. He will then discuss the interplay between cinema studies scholarship and the works collected by archives. Finally, he will discuss recent collaborative efforts to make this hidden material more accessible. Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:23:01 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2451/29919 2011-03-17T14:23:01Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/29917 Title: Biographical Note Authors: Wosh, Peter Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:37:27 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2451/29917 2011-03-14T17:37:27Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/29916 Title: The Black Body and the Photographic Archive Authors: Willis, Deborah Abstract: Researching beauty through photographic archives is a paradox. I will discuss a variety of factors that has transformed and informed my thinking about the politics of creating and preserving an archive on black beauty. I will discuss images published in newspapers in the 1920s that began as an archival project in the black press focusing on the topic of 'exalting black womanhood.' In my research I have come to believe that a photograph of a black subject is persuasive and pervasive in determining how beauty is discussed in contemporary culture. Posing Beauty in African American Culture, the research project, will also explore the contested ways in which African and African American beauty has been represented in a historical and contemporary context through a diverse range of media including photography, film, and advertising. The images featured challenge idealized forms of beauty in art and popular culture by examining their portrayal and exploring a variety of attitudes about archiving images through topics and categories such as race, class, and gender. I will reflect upon the ambiguities of beauty in an archive, its impact on contemporary research projects, and how the display of beauty affects ways in which we see and interpret the world and ourselves. I discovered early on in this research, there is no consistent visual record of black female self-representation in early photography. I did find, however, a 'Runaway Slave wanted' notice boasting a '$50 reward,' that described the desire to have a 'rather good looking' house servant 'returned to the subscriber'--an indication of beauty and desire voiced in the public arena of slavery. A cropped carte-de-visite, pasted to the handwritten ad suggests, in my view, that this enslaved woman named 'Dolly' had been photographed for her owner, who then reproduced multiple images. My research offers a framework in which to imagine the history behind photographs housed in private and public collections and digital archives. Also central to my work is an ongoing critique that focuses on how photographs empowered and dehumanized the black body since the 1840s. I noticed in six years of teaching courses focusing on the topic of the black body and beauty, I have found that the subject is popular among both freshmen classes and graduate students. Race, class, gender and ethnicity became factors of each class discussion, as did the central question of how beauty is constructed, envied, and accepted in visual culture. Our discussions ranged from personal perceptions to society's contradictory relationships with beauty to the possibility of creating new standards for collecting photographs on the topic of beauty. Description: Conference paper presented March 25-26, 2011. Thu, 24 Feb 2011 18:10:28 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2451/29916 2011-02-24T18:10:28Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/29915 Title: The Art Historian as Ethnographer: Ananda Coomaraswamy's Photographic Archives Authors: McCauley, Anne Abstract: The difficulty of reading the extant photographic archive of any individual or institution as an intentional and consistent creation is readily apparent in the case of Ananda Coomaraswamy. A self-taught art historian with a Ph.D. in geology, Coomaraswamy has been celebrated for his contributions to the study of Indian art and civilization in the United States and his career as the first curator (and source) of the collection in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His use of photography originated with the remarkable photographs taken by his wife, Ethel, between 1903-06 that were used to illustrate his first book, 'Medieval Sinhalese Art' (1908), which undoubtedly sensitized him to the demands of printing, cropping, and masking. Like most art historians, he continued to amass commercial photographs of Indian sculpture, wall painting, and architecture, but also took up the medium himself after his divorce from Ethel in 1910, which allowed him to make copies of the prints he purchased as well as shoot his own images during subsequent travels to Asia. After characterizing the ways that Coomaraswamy's publications were indebted to his photographic archive, this talk will focus more specifically on the presence of ethnographic photographs of Indian craftsmen (taken by Ethel) and the large number of images of dancers, musicians and entertainers that distinguish the archive from those of other art historians in the early twentieth century. Coomaraswamy's belief in the racial continuities between contemporary folk practices and traditional Indian sculpture and his ideas about the sources of sculptural poses in dance informed his collection as well as his field research. Parallel to but quite different from Aby Warburg's 'Bilderatlas' and concept of 'Pathosformel', Coomaraswamy's use of popular photographs ranging from tourist postcards to dance programs become the visible equivalents of his early political support for Indian nationalism and Guild Socialism. Description: Conference paper presented March 25-26, 2011. Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:54:36 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2451/29915 2011-02-24T15:54:36Z