Bolaji Campbell
Bolaji Campbell is Professor of African and African Diaspora Art in the Department of Theory and History of Art and Design at RISD. Campbell holds a PhD in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and MFA and BA degrees in fine arts from the Obafemi Awolowo University (formerly University of Ife) in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He has previously taught at Obafemi Awolowo University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the College of Charleston in South Carolina. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the Sylvia and Pamela Coleman Fellowship, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Richard A. Horovitz Professional Development Fund Fellowship, Institute of International Education; and a Postdoctoral Fellowship, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture. His publications include Fabric of Immortality: Ancestral Power, Performance and Agency in Egungun Artistry (Africa World Press, 2020) Painting for the Gods: Art and Aesthetics of Yoruba Religious Murals (Africa World Press, 2008) as well as numerous essays in learned journals.
Academic areas of interest
- African Art
- Contemporary African Art
- African American Art
- African Diaspora Art
Courses
Fall 2023 Courses
THAD H476-01
CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN ART: THE NIGERIAN EXPERIENCE
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This course focuses on contemporary art in and out of Africa, with specific reference to Nigeria. Our objective is to situate Contemporary Nigerian Art within the dialectics of modernism and postmodernism beginning first with the colonial implantation of the modernist trend in Africa. We examine the impact on the artistic vision and direction of the major artists in Africa, while highlighting the careers of their counterparts operating outside the continent within the postmodernist currents of Paris, New York, London, Berlin, etc.
Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.
Elective
THAD H583-01
AFRICAN AMERICAN ART
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This course explores the diversity of form, style, and narrative content of works created by African American artists from the antebellum period to the present. Specific attention will be devoted to several underlining issues including but not limited to identity, race, class, ethnicity, representation, sexuality and aesthetic sensibilities.
Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.
Elective
THAD H705-01
YORUBA ART & AESTHETICS
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This course provides an art historical survey and thematic exploration of 9 centuries of Yoruba Art and Aesthetics and its intercession with history (including but not limited to colonialism and postcolonial impact, interventions, and discourses), religion, philosophy, and the socio-political beliefs of one of Africa's most ancient civilizations, and a visible presence in the African Diaspora.
Open to Sophomore, Junior or Senior Undergraduate Students.
Elective
Spring 2024 Courses
THAD H411-01
ART AND HISTORY OF EARLY WEST AFRICAN KINGDOMS
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This course explores the artistic traditions of early West African kingdoms and cultures, notably Nok, Igbo Ikwu, Ife, Owo, Esie, Tsoede, Sokoto, Benin, Akan, Djenne, Mande, Nabdam and the Bamileke. We examine images in stone, bronze, terracotta and iron, and also explore the built environment. Based on archaeological, art historical and ethnographic data, we critically analyze the style elements, iconography, purposes and significance of the objects, both as viable tools and as expressions of the history, philosophy, and religious and cultural ethos of the peoples who created them.
Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.
Elective
THAD H445-01
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ON THE BLACK FEMALE BODY
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This seminar focuses on the history, discourses and transformations of the black female body as contested site of sexuality, resistance, representation, agency and identity in American visual culture. Organized thematically, with examples drawn from painting, sculpture, photography, film, popular culture and mixed media installations, we examine how the deployment, manipulations and construction of the signification of the asexualized mammy complex is juxtaposed against the jezebel vixen in a shifting terrain from the antebellum era through the post-racial decade of the 21st century.
Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.
Elective
THAD H623-01
BLACK WOMEN ARTISTS IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This course examines the artistic images of black women artists in the African Diaspora. We will investigate how race, gender, sexuality and ethnicity have shaped and continues to shape black female identity and artistic productions particularly in the USA, Europe, Britain, Brazil and the Caribbean.
Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.
Elective