“Deconstruction [is] constantly breaking through the walls of our own perceptions and notions of what art museums are, in order to re-envision what they can be.” -Swarupa Anila, Association of Art Museum Interpretation President, 2019. Art museums are considered to be trusted protectors of cultural heritage and historical knowledge. Members of the public often detach exhibitions from the identities of their curators, resulting in the idea of a neutral institutional author, or an “institutional voice.” However, this is simply not the case. Due to this perceived neutrality, museums often insidiously perpetuate their colonial roots and obscure the ethical implications of showcasing looted artworks. While many museums are beginning to consciously address their colonial roots, the problem still persists. With constant and rapid technological innovation, however, mobile phone applications offer an opportunity to further decolonial efforts and tell new stories. By retelling history through the lens of historically marginalized groups and implementing augmented reality features, mobile applications, whether internally or externally sponsored, have the potential to decenter whiteness within art historical knowledge and take part in the process of decolonizing the museum all while fostering a new mode of visitor engagement. Before smartphones and interactive applications were at most people’s fingertips, a group of artists in New York City distributed free cassette tapes with what they called a “democratic alternative” to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s audio tours (Collins 1991). The effort of “Masterpieces Without the Director” was to guide the visitor through the museum in a relevant and engaging way in which visitors could hear themselves represented. The producers of the tapes pieced together clips of interviews that were conducted on the Met’s famous entry steps, featuring a range of commentary. From declarative observations about an artwork’s quality to credible art historical statements, the tapes displayed a myriad of relationships with art. “Masterpieces Without the Director” serves as an early example of how personal media could be used to demystify the museum. Efforts to “democratize” rather than “decolonize” were likely more palatable to the general public at that time, as the idea of democracy directly connotes American values. This effort to expand the conversation about art beyond the traditional points of authority has developed over time, now taking place on downloadable mobile apps which have unique leverage in galvanizing the decolonial movement and making museums generally more accessible. The potential of personal technology to have an impact on this process remains largely unrealized, but frontier programmers are paving the way with augmented reality features. “Augmented Reality offers agency and power, removing power from the curator in nominating the narrative and short-circuits narratives of victimhood.” - Rao and Middleton, 2019. Augmented Reality (AR) is gaining momentum as an addition to mobile devices, and it can serve as a decolonial tool. AR is a broad term, but within mobile apps, it typically adds virtually imposed images to the physical space which can be viewed through a phone’s camera lens. Sound and interactive elements may also be incorporated into the design for a more immersive experience. With 81% of Americans now owning a smartphone (Pew Research, 2019), there is no avoiding their use in museum galleries. The challenge is to implement technology that will engage visitors with the artworks rather than distract people from them. AR encourages intimate observation, engagement, and play, which fosters an emotional investment in the images (Rao and Middleton, 2019). Researchers have investigated the potential for using Augmented or Virtual Reality to cultivate empathetic skills from the perspective of dismantling cultural biases (Bertrand, et al.). Apps that implement AR can capitalize on this potential to decenter the colonial narrative in museums in a way that is approachable and accessible to the majority of their visitors. AR also holds immense potential for broadening the scope of voices that are heard in the museum. “The internet represents the greatest democratization of knowledge and information in our history.” -Creators of MoMAR Gallery App At the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, artists and coders have co-opted the Estée and Joseph Lauder Gallery with their app, MoMAR Gallery. Using AR technology to overlay digital artworks onto Jackson Pollock paintings, the app’s creators clearly aim to counter the prevalence of white male voices in art and appropriate the galleries for themselves. Upon entering the gallery in real life, users can open the app and use their camera to visually navigate through the space, investigating digital artworks as they go along. The exhibition titled, “Hello, We’re From the Internet” features works by several underrepresented digital artists (Bailey, 2019). When a viewer points their camera at Pollock's painting, “One: Number 31, 1950”, the work gets obscured by the digital installation of “One: Number 1281912112811950” by the artist Damjanski. “One: Number 1281912112811950” overlays Pollock’s work with a black and white photograph of a man with a cigarette hanging on his lips on the left half, and a multidimensional AR room on the right half of the painting. The viewer can move their phone around to explore this virtual space which looks like a room, possibly meant to be a museum gallery, filled with images of illuminati symbols, political posters, Greek columns, fantastical creatures, flying drones, and abstract sculpture. The top right corner provides a question mark button where users can access more information about the work, and for “One: Number 1281912112811950”, the caption is composed of short, cryptic messages such as: “The world is not how you view it. Trust the plan. We are winning. Arrests will come,” and so on (MoMAR- AR Art Gallery app). This AR app challenges art historical knowledge and the institutional voice in two critical ways. Most obviously, it weakens Jackson Pollock’s impact on viewers by obscuring his work and redirecting visitors’ attention to the virtual artists. Secondly, the app challenges what it means to interpret and have knowledge of an artwork by writing vague or cryptic captions of the digital works. The app’s creators stated on their website that they aim to “democratize physical exhibition spaces, museums, and the curation of art within them,” (MoMAR.com). This aligns with the initial goal of “Masterpieces Without the Director”, which was the beginning of using personal media to fundamentally alter visitor’s perceptions of the museum. However, MoMAR takes the next step in challenging the curator’s viewpoint with their unauthorized appropriation of space. Imagine using an app like MoMAR to subvert the presence of white figures in Western portraiture, instead investigating the stories of the marginalized figures who stand beside them. Augmented Reality has also been used to virtually replace missing artworks at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. Brendan Ciecko and Dan Sullivan, CEO and head of partnerships and growth at a museum-centered technology startup called “Cuseum'', used an AR Kit to replace 13 artworks that were stolen from the museum in 1990 and have not yet been recovered (Katz, 2018). The “Cuseum'' project called “Hacking the Heist'' uses AR technology to virtually replace the paintings in their original frames, which remain hanging empty as, “as symbols of hope awaiting their return,” (gardnermuseum.org). Many countries around the world are patiently awaiting the return of their stolen works, as well. The Acropolis Museum in Greece was built in part for the purpose of receiving their beloved Parthenon marbles, which are currently housed in the British Museum who claimed that Greece did not have a proper place to display the sculptures. Is there a future for repatriation using AR technology? If “Cuseum” can virtually replace stolen works in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, perhaps there is a way to digitally restore dismembered sculptures or display missing works in the museums of their origin country. This may not be the perfect or permanent solution, but in the meantime, it would be able to restore some aspects of a country’s cultural heritage. However, this possibility does have limitations, as the legality surrounding digital property is unclearly defined. “Museums are not neutral.” -La Tanya S. Autry and Mike Murawski, 2017 If art museums and art history more broadly are to foster a public engagement with visual culture and world heritages, the discipline and its subsequent institutions must be changed. Augmented reality, virtual reality, and other mobile applications can redefine allyship and activism within museum spaces and the broader world context of art, architecture, and visual culture. By blending the physical world with the virtual world, apps can draw users into learning about history from a medium that fits modern interests and needs, offering a creative mode of decentering whiteness. Although there is some hesitation to allow this technology to become mainstream due to the uncertainty about legal restrictions, mobile apps developers are still taking risks to define these boundaries-- and push them in the meantime. Works Cited Anila, Swarupa. “A Message from AAMI President.” Association for Art Museum Interpretation, 24 Jan. 2020, artmuseuminterp.org/a-message-from-aami-president/. Bailey, Jason. “Artists Hijack MoMA with AR Art Exhibition.” Artnome, Artnome, 25 Oct. 2019, www.artnome.com/news/2019/10/25/artists-hijack-moma-with-ar-art-exhibition. Bertrand, Philippe, et al. “Learning Empathy Through Virtual Reality: Multiple Strategies for Training Empathy-Related Abilities Using Body Ownership Illusions in Embodied Virtual Reality.” Frontiers, 22 Mar. 2018. Robotics and AI, www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2018.00026/full. Coates, Charlotte. “How Museums Are Using Augmented Reality.” MuseumNext, 7 Dec. 2020, www.museumnext.com/article/how-museums-are-using-augmented-reality. Collins, Glenn. “Making an Art of the Met Tour.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Sept. 1991, www.nytimes.com/1991/09/26/arts/making-an-art-of-the-met-tour.html. Cuseum. Hacking the Heist, www.hackingtheheist.com/. “Demographics of Mobile Device Ownership and Adoption in the United States.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, Pew Research Center, 12 June 2019, www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/. Houston, Kerr. “How Mining the Museum Changed the Art World.” BmoreArt, 3 Mar. 2020, bmoreart.com/2017/05/how-mining-the-museum-changed-the-art-world.html. Katz, Miranda. “Augmented Reality Is Transforming Museums.” Wired, Conde Nast, 23 Apr. 2018, www.wired.com/story/augmented-reality-art-museums/. Lobser, David, et al. “About.” MoMAR, momar.gallery/about.html. MoMAR. 2018. MoMAR- AR Art Gallery (version 1.3). [Mobile app]. [Accessed 07 December 2020]. Museums Are Not Neutral, www.museumsarenotneutral.com/. PBSNewsHour. “Rescued or Seized? Greece's Long Fight with UK over Parthenon Marbles.” YouTube, YouTube, 22 Sept. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q_anSjKpIM. Rao, Seema, and Margaret Middleton. “Illuminating Colonization Through Augmented Reality – MW19: Boston.” MW19, 2 Apr. 2019, mw19.mwconf.org/paper/illuminating-colonization-through-augmented-reality/. “The Theft.” Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, www.gardnermuseum.org/about/theft-story. Contributor: Sapphire Srigley Portrait Statue Bust of Julia Domna, 211-217 CE, Vatican Museums A Note on this Post: Since writing this article in December of 2019, I've come to realize there is much more to be said about how Cassius Dio characterizes, or in other words "slut-shames", Julia Domna. Although excluded from this version, I intend on posting a second edition of this article in the next few months with an updated discussion of this source. Click the PDF icon to read. Contributor: Ryan Abramowitz
European Jews were affected by the outbreak of war and Nazi occupation in a multitude of ultimately catastrophic ways. Where one lived at the time of German invasion, their age, gender, and socioeconomic status all played a role in determining how long one was able to prolong the inevitable: deportation and dehumanization. The introduction of the Nuremberg laws in 1935 codified and legalized discrimination against Jews, which for some had already been a lifelong endeavor. Despite already being an historical scapegoat, this legislation had officially marginalized Europe’s Jewry. Children, however, experienced this marginalization differently than their older Jewish counterparts. This paper will discuss the intersectionality of location, class, gender, and age prior to deportation. Through this approach we may begin to offer both nuance and utterance to the soft voices of children who previously have been deprived of thorough historical analysis.
Between marginal identities a magnetism exists, drawing those identities previously believed to lay peripherally, radially together. This concept is often referred to now as, intersectionality. In his recent monograph Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages, Roland Betancourt, drawing off Kimberle Crenshaw’s original definition of intersectionality, defined this methodological strategy as the act of acknowledging that marginalized identities intersect and, “...overlap with one another - not as distinct identities but as enmeshed conditions that radically alter the lives of figures, both real and imagined.”[i] Though this approach has more recently been employed within the context of scholarship on antiquity, it may too be beneficial to view the subjects of Holocaust and Genocide Studies under this lens. Being that children were a minority among those persecuted during the Holocaust, in this light, we may begin to complicate the lived experiences of children in the Holocaust by considering the full scope of their marginality. The diary of Dawid Rubinowicz in Alexandra Zapruder’s, Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, is a good starting point for further exploration. Dawid was born on July 27, 1927 and lived with his mother, father, and two siblings in the village of Krajno, Poland. His diary begins seven months after the 1939 German invasion of Poland.[ii] Immediately though, there is something striking about Dawid’s family life. Dawid grew up the child of poor dairy farmers in rural Poland.[iii] The circumstances of his socioeconomic status and his residence in Poland, when viewed in tandem, alter Dawid’s identity. He no longer lived only as a religious minority, but also as a minority within the broader spectrum of European Jews. For starters, despite the fact that a majority of Jews lived in Poland in 1939, Dawid’s family was one of few Jewish families in Krajno.[iv] In his diary we learn of at least three groups who hold power over Jews in and around Krajno: the Nazi Gendarmes (rural police force), the local Polish police who are subordinate to the Nazis, and the Gentile civilian Poles themselves, though minimally. While it was fairly common for local police and populations to side with the Nazis, the compounding forces of surveillance and conflicting attitudes of Gentiles towards Nazi occupation would have transformed “home” into an ambiguous and volatile living environment. Initially, Dawid, as most young boys might be, was amused by the sight of Germans soldiers marching through his village, however, it was not long before he realized the effect of their presence on his life.[v] Dawid chronicled the random raids, arrests, and quartering of soldiers in his home. One afternoon, Gendarmes, by surprise, entered Dawid’s house and nearly immediately began searching the residence. Before finally leaving, the German soldiers informed Dawid’s father, Josek, that he was to come with them in two days’ time.[vi] While the reason for the search and his father’s forewarned arrest is still unclear, certainly, we can see why Dawid would later remark, “Nowadays a person can be arrested for any trifle.”[vii] At another point in the journal, he writes that his family was warned that the Gendarmes were returning to the village to sequester livestock and any villager who had yet to pay and deliver their quotas.[viii] Additionally, Dawid writes about a Gendarme who unexpectedly came into his house to “warm up” and suggestively stated that the Jews should all buy sheepskin and make him a fur coat.[ix] Living constantly in both fear and close contact with the Gendarmes, the threat of arrest or murder was heightened for Jews living in the highly militarized provinces of Poland. Interactions with the local Polish police force could be equally as fear inducing as they were ambiguous. Conscripted to serve under the command of the Gendarmes, the local police force was turned against its own citizens in order to operate the Nazi machine of death most efficiently. Pre-existing prejudices against Jews, increased levels of power, and fear of Nazi overseers, among other factors, contributed to the Polish extortion and brutalization of both Gentile and Jewish Poles. Dawid records a particularly striking example of the violence and ambiguity of local force. After discovering that two men had slaughtered a pig, the local police confiscated the meat and surrendered it to the gendarmerie, informing both men that they were to report to the police station the next day.[x] When only one of the men reported, the police went to the house of the second man, found him getting dressed, and entered into a foot chase to capture him. Realizing that they would not be able to catch him, the officers opened fire and struck the man on the right side, wounding, but not killing him. The policeman then called for “a taxi” to bring the man to the hospital.[xi] Dawid wrote, “While telephoning, the policeman tore his hair, he was so sorry at what he’d done.”[xii] This passage is indicative of the effect Nazi occupation had on those who participated unwillingly in the systematic destruction of the Jews. Regardless of the policeman’s mournful reaction, the local police force still enforced Nazi rule. This excerpt too may serve as evidence for the Nazi’s decision to murder Jews in gas chambers and vans since foot soldiers frequently experienced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Some local police officers, however, acted decidedly cruel against Jewish children, shooting them without reason, forcing them and others to lay bricks or shovel snow from sunrise to sunset in blizzard conditions, or randomly appearing at their doorstep with fabricated charges demanding to be paid hundreds of Zlotys or face arrest.[xiii] Within this group of authorities, two paradigms emerge: those who acted violently and mourned retroactively and those who acted unflinchingly. In either paradigm the infliction of brute force remains a constant parallel. Polish-Jewish children also needed to navigate the power differential between themselves and their marginally superior neighbors. Although Gentile Poles too suffered under wartime conditions and Nazi occupation, some Poles willingly took advantage of whatever degree of power they held over Jews.[xiv] For example, Dawid was forced by the town constable to shovel the snow that accumulated behind his former schoolhouse despite the fact that Dawid, along with the other Jewish children, were no longer allowed to attend classes there.[xv] Dawid, additionally, recorded in his diary the day propaganda flyers containing a monstrous caricature of Jews mincing rat meat and pouring dirty water into a bucket of milk were posted in his village.[xvi] At the top of the flyer a slogan read, “The Jew is a Cheat, Your Only Enemy.”[xvii] This was then followed by a short poem that both explained the caricature and took the opportunity to further ridicule Jews, saying that they trod on their bread doughs with worm infested feet and then sell those insect-riddled baked goods to non-Jews.[xviii] A small group of people gathered around the flyer and erupted with laughter. Dawid recounted this formative experience in his diary, saying that, “...their laughter gave me a headache from the shame that the Jews suffer nowadays. God give that this shame may cease soon.”[xix] Humiliated and exploited by his peers and neighbors, these two passages from Dawid’s diary summarize some of the ways in which Poles exercised prejudice against their Jewish neighbors prior to their deportation. By looking critically at the diary of Dawid Rubinowicz we can begin to make sense of how his identity not just as a Jew, but as a Polish-Jewish child adds volume to his young life. By employing an intersectional approach, we see that the lived experience of non-Jewish Poles, albeit trying at times, is vastly different from that of Polish-Jews, which, in part, is why making this determination is all the more important. In fact, Dawid’s life as a Polish-Jew under Nazi occupation was different even from a Jew from France, for instance. Jewish-Poles were exposed to the Nazi machine of death at considerably higher rates than Jews living in other regions of Europe since many of the largest and most efficient extermination centers and work camps were located within Poland. For Jewish children living in Poland this substantially decreased their chances at survival. As previously mentioned, Dawid was prohibited from going to school with his other non-Jewish classmates.[xx] Noted Holocaust historian, Deborah Dwork wrote, “To go to school was the absolute social norm of childhood…”[xxi] What followed Jewish children’s’ expulsion from school was ostracization and the collapse and in turn, redefinition of normativity.[xxii] Other anti-Jewish laws enabled social rifting between Jewish and Gentile children to grow larger. For example, as a Polish-Jewish child, Dawid was not allowed to ride any kind of vehicle, including a bicycle, from 1939 and onwards.[xxiii] Though not mentioned in his diary, if we were to imagine how a twelve-year-old boy might respond to not being allowed to ride bicycles and to being “othered” by his friends, we get, for a moment, a glimpse into Dawid’s interrupted childhood. There too is the additional burden of fear placed on the narrow, though evidently staunch shoulders of Jewish children. Dawid expressed several times in his diary how fearful he was of being deported and sent to the Jewish Quarter. Most of what he knows about deportation, however, is from conversations he has overheard between his father and uncle, and his father and the mayor.[xxiv] We might imagine young Dawid eavesdropping on conversations after dark from an inconspicuous place in his house. This is not all to say that non-Jewish Polish children did not also fear the Nazis, local police officers, or deportation; they too could have found themselves or their family members arrested or shot if they did not obey the rules, however, deportation and death for Gentiles, was considerably more avoidable than it was Jews, for which it was inevitable. Gender is another place in which we can complicate the identity of Jewish children in the Holocaust. Boys and men, for example, were constantly at risk of being seized and sent to do forced labor.[xxv] Dawid occasionally makes remarks about Gendarmes searching for men to perform manual labor. One night, during a holiday gathering, German soldiers broke up their meager festivities and requested that all of the men follow them and report for work. Fearing what this work detail might entail, some of the men ran and hid.[xxvi] Although it is unclear whether Dawid was among those who chose to hide on this particular occasion, he does mention in another entry that he was selected for work, passing bricks to a bricklayer, which he described as being more tedious than it was arduous.[xxvii] After being evacuated to Bodzentyn, Dawid writes about the pervasive terror that swept through the ghetto on days when raids were rumored to occur. On one particular raid, when Germans were looking for 120 men, the ghetto streets were deserted. Dawid reported in his journal that the men all hid in their homes until seeing or hearing the Germans approach their tenement building, after which, they took off into the woods, seeking whatever cover they could find.[xxviii] Dawid’s aunt, worried the Germans would select him for work duty, arranged a temporary hiding place for him at her neighbor’s house.[xxix] Dawid alternatively writes that the Gendarmes shot and killed a woman who refused to stop running across the yard.[xxx] Despite the fact that gender influenced some of the ways in which children navigated the daily terrors of their existence, nothing interfered with the Nazi machine: destruction was always at the core of the Germans’ plans for the Jews. The act of hiding from work detachments, however, was an ill-informed choice that men made, hoping at best, that it would increase the chances of survival. It is decisions like these that Dwork (influenced by Lawrence Langer) refers to as “choiceless choices”.[xxxi] Even choices made with the best of intentions could be potentially fatal. Dwork relates the story of Jack Rubinfeld who volunteered for a work detail thinking it would be safer for his sister and niece. Rubinfeld’s friend tried also to push himself into the work group and had his head “cracked open for his pains.”[xxxii] Those from this same account who chose not to work were transported to Belzec, one of the Operation Reinhard camps, constructed specifically with the intention of exterminating Poland’s Jewish population.[xxxiii] Unknowing of just how arbitrary these choices were, Dawid’s father advises him to remain hidden.[xxxiv] In a rather striking letter, his father even goes so far as to advise him to dress as a girl.[xxxv] This paternal recommendation is suggestive of the fact that boys were targeted by the Nazis in ways that girls were not. Although the final destination for most Jews were the killing centers, the events that transpired between deportation and extermination (liberation only rarely), were shaped, in part, by the circumstances of one’s identity. In this case, Dawid Rubinowicz, a Polish-Jewish-boy was subjected to the dangers of work detail and the death machinery of the Operation Reinhard camps. Prior to being stripped of all assets and valuables, one’s socioeconomic status affected how long one was able to delay the inevitable grip of the Nazis. In other words, however long one was able to pay illegitimate fines and bribes factored into how long they could prolong arrest or deportation. Coming from a poor family of dairy farmers, money, even prior to the war, was scarce for the Rubinowicz’s. Dawid, thus, writes ubiquitously about the number of fines levied on them by the local police force and Gendarmes in both Krajno and after being deported to Bodzentyn. Not long after arriving in Bodzentyn a police officer informs Dawid’s mother that they will need to pay 150 zlotys or be detained for eighteen days for a corn grinding violation they committed while still in Krajno. Unwillingly, Dawid’s mother pays the inordinate price of the fine, prompting Dawid to write, “We’ve paid the fine; now we’re done for...you have to pay hundreds for every trifle.”[xxxvi] Another slew of unexpected fines befell them when Dawid’s father was caught in Krajno.[xxxvii] Dawid’s father writes to them requesting that they sell off household items and borrow money in order to raise the 500 zlotys needed to secure his release.[xxxviii] Despite having brought the money to an acquaintance who knew how to have him released, Dawid’s father remained on work detail. The Jewish Council in the ghetto was just as corrupt as the Nazis and was practically useless. Even Dawid, a child, noted, “These people are in no hurry, they’re not bothered; why should they put themselves out? If you were suddenly to give them several hundred zlotys, then they’d soon be interested. But where from?...You’d have to sell the clothes off your back.”[xxxix] After almost a month of maneuvering through the bureaucracy of the Jewish Council and paying hundreds of zlotys in bribes, Dawid’s father was released.[xl] Bribes and fabricated fines were simply another way for the Nazis to exploit Jews and fund their war machine. In the case of Dawid Rubinowicz, his family barely escaped detainment and were able to secure the release of their father, despite being poor, by borrowing money from others and selling away the few household possessions they carried on their backs from Krajno. Class also partially governed how one managed to pay exorbitant prices for food in the ghetto. Although even formerly wealthy Jews entered the ghettos impoverished, there still seems to have been a class hierarchy in which some fared better, even if only fractionally, than others. In fact, in one diary entry, Dawid expresses great concern over how “poorer people” will survive if the prices of food continue to rise at such an alarming rate.[xli] It may safely be argued then that a) a quasi-caste system existed in the Bodzentyn ghetto; and b) from his use of the word “poorer” to describe relation or comparison, Dawid does not perceive his family to be in the lowest social class. However, it is clear that Dawid was aware of inflating prices and the financial hardships his family experienced. He notes in his journal that the price for one tablet of saccharine (a zero-calorie sweetener) increased in price by over 1300% since the start of the war.[xlii] Moreover, in a rather poignant entry from April 24, 1942, Dawid lamented, “Can anyone earn enough to cover anything? How long can we go on selling household possessions? O God make this war end as quickly as possible. If it goes on much longer, no one will survive this terrible war and these terrible times.”[xliii] Although Dawid does not complain of constantly being hungry, as in the case of the Anonymous Girl, he certainly is fixated on the prices of food, how they will soon afford to buy food, and how others in Bodzentyn are faring in comparison.[xliv] As previously emphasized, regardless of all these efforts, Dawid and his family still could not stop the gears of systematic extermination, no sum of money could, it merely was a distraction from the inevitability of it all. In employing an intersectional approach to studying the lives of children in the Holocaust, we see how viewing Dawid Rubinowicz not just as Jewish, but as a poor Polish-Jewish boy complicates his identity and adds nuance to his life and the lives of others with similar identities whose words and being no longer remain extant. One thing that need not be viewed intersectionally, however, is that ultimately, all Jewish children and adults were dehumanized by the Nazis and millions were subsequently murdered. It is for this reason that the focus of this paper lay primarily on the lives of Jewish children prior to deportation, or in other words, prior to dehumanization. Since many Jewish children have been excluded from Holocaust historiography and unfortunately met the same untimely end, offering them their humanity back and capacious, nuanced biographies of their life prior to deportation is imperative, lest we let their stories and voices be stubbed out forever. Bibliography: “Anti-Jewish Decrees: Learning Voices of the Holocaust.” In The British Library. The British Library, n.d. https://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/voices/info/decrees/decrees.html. Betancourt, Roland. Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender and Race in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989): 139–67. Dwork, Debórah. Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Zapruder, Alexandra. Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust. Second. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015. Notes: [i] Roland Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender and Race in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), 2; Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989): 139–67. [ii] Alexandra Zapruder, Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, Second (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 271. [iii] Zapruder, 271. [iv] Zapruder, 271. [v] Zapruder, 277. [vi] Zapruder, 279. [vii] Zapruder, 283. [viii] Zapruder, 281. [ix] Zapruder, 281. [x] Zapruder, 281. [xi] Zapruder, 281. [xii] Zapruder, 281. [xiii] Zapruder, 280–82, 286–87. [xiv] Zapruder, 273. [xv] Zapruder, 288. [xvi] Zapruder, 288. [xvii] Zapruder, 288. [xviii] Zapruder, 288. [xix] Zapruder, 288. [xx] Zapruder, 277. [xxi] Debórah Dwork, Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 15. [xxii] Dwork, 15. [xxiii] Zapruder, Salvaged Pages, 275; “Anti-Jewish Decrees: Learning Voices of the Holocaust,” in The British Library (The British Library, n.d.),https://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/voices/info/decrees/decrees.html. [xxiv] Zapruder, Salvaged Pages, 277, 286. [xxv] Zapruder, 273. [xxvi] Zapruder, 281. [xxvii] Zapruder, 281. [xxviii] Zapruder, Salvaged Pages, 295. [xxix] Zapruder, 296. [xxx] Zapruder, 299. [xxxi] Dwork, Children with a Star, 257. [xxxii] Dwork, 242. [xxxiii] Dwork, 241. [xxxiv] Zapruder, Salvaged Pages, 296. [xxxv] Zapruder, 297. [xxxvi] Zapruder, 292. [xxxvii] Zapruder, 294. [xxxviii] Zapruder, 296–97. [xxxix] Zapruder, 296. [xl] Zapruder, 299. [xli] Zapruder, 291. [xlii] Zapruder, 292. [xliii] Zapruder, 292–93. [xliv] Zapruder, 226–43. Contributor: Ryan Abramowitz In the past few decades scholars have learned more about the ancient world than previously thought possible. This, in part, is due to new technologies and the codification and implementation of systematic research and archaeological methods. Art Historians, for example, can team up with geologists to explain the disappearance of ancient lakes and harbors, date the age of rocks, determine when natural disasters have occurred in the geological record, etc. A great deal of research too has been conducted on the people themselves who populated the ancient societies in our studies. Many scholars have grappled with questions concerning constructions and perceptions of gender, race, and sexuality in antiquity and how these infrastructures might be understood in comparison to our own conceptions of the aforementioned identities including Natalie Kampen, Eve D’Ambra, Sue Blundell, and of course Michel Foucault, whose History of Sexuality is in all likelihood as widely known as it is critiqued. No other author to my knowledge, however, has discussed the intersectionality of these marginalized identities and treated the subjects of their work with such a high degree of respect and nuance than Roland Betancourt in Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages.[i]
In this rather ground-breaking approach to writing late antique history, Betancourt stresses the magnetism between marginalized identities. Rather than perceiving peripheral identities and social groups as acting in a way that is autonomous from one another yet simultaneously divergent from the stage directions prescribed by contemporary monolithic institutions, we should instead focus on drawing radial connections between these identities that previously lay isolated on the circumference of defined normativity.[ii] The main thrust of Betancourt’s argument is that marginalized identities intersect and, “...overlap with another - not as distinct identities but as enmeshed conditions that radically alter the lives of figures, both real and imagined.”[iii] In this approach he seeks to confer reality on subjects who so frequently are denied it and subjected to violence instead.[iv] In considering the intersectionality of those pushed to the margins by predominantly late antique male authors and artists we may begin to re-present (as Donald Preziosi puts it) late antique personalities, and historical figures more generally, in a way that is both critical and nuanced.[v] Roland Betancourt is a Professor of Art History and Director of Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Betancourt has written extensively on gender and sexuality in the Middle Ages in addition to the workings of the imagination in the perception Byzantine art. He also has researched and written on the role of Byzantium in modern/contemporary art and theme parks. Byzantine Intersectionality by all means and purposes is a significant contribution to the field at large. Drawing from decades of earlier scholarship, Betancourt has sewn together identities previously viewed as piecemeal into a complicated and colorful patchwork of lived experiences knit and bound together literally by their margins and theoretically by their marginality and subsequent demarginalization. The first chapter of Byzantine Intersectionality discusses sexual consent in visual and textual sources depicting the Annunciation - the moment when the Archangel Gabriel delivers to Mary news that she will bear the son of God. The next few sentences may be triggering for some readers as they include descriptions of sexual assault in artistic portrayals of the Annunciation. Betancourt navigates the reader through capacious late antique legal codes and theological thought on rape and also elaborates on the iconography of rape in scenes of the Annunciation. In such scenes we often see a frightened and contorted Mary, reacting to the Archangel’s sudden and miraculous intrusion.[vi] The primary concerns of this chapter revolve around how texts and works of art depict an interest, even struggle, in Byzantine thought on the issuance of consent; even God had to receive Mary’s approval.[vii] The second chapter of this book provides an analysis of Procopius’ Secret History, a vehement and vicious attack against the Empress Theodora’s reputation. In his discussion of Procopius' slut-shaming Betancourt remarks on women’s, especially midwives’, knowledge of contraceptives and abortive (self) procedures in antiquity.[viii] Throughout the chapter the reader is exposed to the many moving parts of Byzantine legal (imperial) and religious sentiment towards abortion. Within these dialogic writings we also discover that class is a particularly important determinant for attempting to answer what kinds of stigmas, if any, were attached to having an abortion and who had access to the most effective remedies.[ix] Ultimately though, late antique medical texts reveal that while Byzantine physicians were familiar with abortive procedures they were incredibly dangerous and often resulted in the woman’s death.[x] Additionally, Betancourt places authority into the hands of late antique women in disclosing that male authors, at times, deferred to midwives when writing gynecological texts.[xi] This focus of this chapter is on revealing the different experiences women of different social classes had in dealing with sexual stigmas, the type of care they received for abortive procedures, and that despite varying religious and imperial views, the choice to give birth or have an abortion “seems to rest solely in the woman’s hands.”[xii] Chapter three pertains to the lives of transgender monks and others living in the late antique east. This chapter is arguably one of the most beautiful scholarly articles I’ve yet read. Betancourt treats the people in his study with the same degree of reverence that they were held to in their own time. He also addresses people by the pronouns they identified with, i.e., referring to the Emperor Elagabalus, quite radically, as she/her.[xiii] There are, moreover, commentaries on eunuchs as non-binary, trans figures in late antiquity, the correlation between transmasculine women and blackness, and Byzantine physicians’ knowledge of gender affirming surgical procedures. In this chapter, rather than trying to prove or disprove hagiographical texts, Betancourt takes the step to simply make room for the possibility that these stories, at the very least, represented and supplied models for a transgender viewership to express their own identities.[xiv] The fourth chapter of Betancourt’s monograph details queerness in a way that presents LGBTQIA+ relationships as an entity in late antiquity that exists beyond typical ascriptions of “deviance” or carnal desire. Throughout this process of recovery, Betancourt also shows how modern authors who, repulsed by Byzantium’s “queerness”, privileged certain sources that communicate only one facet of late antique attitudes towards same-sex, same-gender relationships.[xv] The two main articles of evidence presented in this chapter concern monasticism as an inextricably queer practice and homoeroticism in artistic and literary depictions of the Doubting Thomas scene. In his commentary on queer relationships Betancourt states, “...Queer desire and intimacy need not be affirmed or confirmed via sexual intercourse. In this way we can also count, demisexual, asexual, aromantic, and antisexual subjectivities.”[xvi] Just in typing this statement Betancourt enables these omitted identities to hold space and ontology, even if just momentarily. The last chapter of the book is devoted to an artistic rendering of an Ethiopian eunuch on the Menologion of Basil II, c. 1000 CE. Betancourt critically analyzes Byzantine conceptions of racial and ethnic differences in art and literature in comparison to conceptions of contemporary westerners and also reserves space for an examination of iconographically black demons.What appears in the literature and in art is that the eunuch, regardless of the fact that our modern eyes are attracted primarily to their blackness, is depicted with many of the archetypal traits of a eunuch.[xvii] Byzantine viewers, in all likelihood, would have understood the figure to be a eunuch before racializing them (if they did at all). In fact, Betancourt explains that Byzantine authors were particularly proud of how ethnically and racially diverse Constantinople and the empire as a whole were.[xviii] White Europeans, in contrast, frequently racially other Byzantines and black people more generally.[xix] Betancourt’s choice to conclude the book with a methodical interpretation of a eunuch is really quite clever. The eunuch, with their many identities, appears to be the personification of intersectionality, and so a final, weighty discussion, therefore, is clearly warranted. Betancourt’s book is radically different from most other publications on late antiquity. He competently validates and gives utterance to voices and people who historically have been brutalized, silenced, and written out of existence. There is a passage in chapter four, “Queer Sensations”, that captures what it means to live at the margins of society and in the heart of intersectionality’s web. Betancourt articulately states, “This is the practice of queerness: to find refuge amid likeness; to seek, uncover, encounter those who, like you, have been marginalized and oppressed, and to set out together to construct space for the inclusion of others who are placed in opposition to the normative forces of a monolithic, political, religious, social or sexual majority.”[xx] There was one concern, however, that came up in my reading of Byzantine Intersectionality but before I continue I would like to make note of the fact that I am currently a Senior Art History undergraduate. Being fully aware of the knowledge and power differentials between myself, my readers, the author, and of course the impact that book reviews can have on the trajectory of a young academic’s career, I felt compelled to make the point clear that there is much I do not know and, therefore, as a reviewer, I have my shortcomings, this being one of the reasons I opted out of any discussion on Betancourt’s choice of sources and selection of Greek-English translations. While reading the chapter, “Transgender Lives”, I began to wonder if we, in sharing and using these hagiographical accounts as evidence, truly were doing justice to those who explicitly stated in their last wishes that their birth assigned sex not be revealed after they died.[xxi] In this case, are we honoring Anastasius’ wishes by outing him to modern audiences when he adamantly wished not to be revealed even to his other monastic brothers (apart from Daniel of Sketis)? Should we, as modern historians, be allowed to freely absolve ourselves of betraying the wishes of the figures in our studies for the good of scholarly output or modern audiences? If not, who then has the authority to make these decisions? Clearly, the outing of historical subjects who chose or “felt compelled” in their own time to not disclose their identities and/or sexualities is a particularly difficult path to navigate.[xxii] Considering that a later author most likely “outed” Anastasius, Betancourt cannot and should not be blamed for this, however, he as writer, and we, as readers (myself included), certainly have played a role in disseminating further the one thing Anastasius wished for us not to know.[xxiii] Roland Betancourt’s Byzantine Intersectionality is pioneering both in its scope and methodology. This book is deserving of further review, discussion, and use in any undergraduate course pertaining to late antiquity. In recognizing the monumentality hidden within marginality, we may begin, starting with Betancourt, to draw nearer to a more nuanced and capacious Art History. Notes: [i] Roland Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender and Race in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020). [ii] Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989): 139–67; Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality, 207. [iii] Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality, 2. [iv] Betancourt, 17. [v] Donald Preziosi, “The Art of Art History,” in The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, ed. Donald Preziosi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 507. [vi] Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality, 44–46. [vii] Betancourt, 30. [viii] Betancourt, 64. [ix] Betancourt, 75,79. [x] Betancourt, 66. [xi] Betancourt, 69–70. [xii] Betancourt, 80. [xiii] Betancourt, 106. [xiv] Betancourt, 120. [xv] Betancourt, 122–23. [xvi] Betancourt, 130. [xvii] Betancourt, 164. [xviii] Betancourt, 173. [xix] Betancourt, 175–76. [xx] Betancourt, 159. [xxi] Betancourt, 103. [xxii] Anne D’Alleva, Methods & Theories of Art History, Second (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2012), 72. [xxiii] Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality, 103–4. Bibliography: Betancourt, Roland. Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender and Race in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989): 139–67. D’Alleva, Anne. Methods & Theories of Art History. Second. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2012. Preziosi, Donald. “The Art of Art History.” In The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, edited by Donald Preziosi, 507–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Contributor: Ryan Abramowitz I hate Art History. Okay, maybe that’s not wholly true, but I do hate things about Art History. I hate the elitists yet wish to go to their universities. I hate the racists, the misogynists, and homophobes, yet I go to their institutions. I hate the barriers...so many barriers: multiple language requirements, professional experience, exemplary knowledge of a particular field, all narrowed down to a few applicants per program per school. However, where there is hate, there too is love. If we were to only love and never acknowledge the hate, or rather what we hate about our field or education, we would never reflect on or try to amend academic wrongdoings. Although I am proud to be an Art History major and owe a large debt of gratitude to the outstanding professors in my school’s (The College of New Jersey) department, there are of course, internal steps we should consider taking if truly we are committed to working towards a more accessible Art History. I hesitate to use the word “ethical'' though, as this conjures subjective definitions of “ethics” and what’s considered ethical to who. For this short essay I will continue to use “accessible” as I believe this term presents a more grounded approach to scholarship. And so, in the following paragraphs I will try to describe my hate and equal passion for this discipline, pose a few potential revisions to current pedagogical approaches to teaching Art History in higher education, all with the hope of showing that performative expressions of discontent (physically or on social media) are not enough. We need to incorporate nuance into our discussions, we need to deconstruct...and maybe even dissent. Proposal #1: Recommendation vs. Requirement - Studying Abroad & Internships For starters, one requirement for Art History majors at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) is that we either a) study abroad or b) get an internship. Both of these options, however, pose their own set of challenges. Studying abroad, for example, is a privilege, particularly so at a smaller state university with little funding to subsidize students’ education and travel costs, more on that in a later post. Furthermore, studying abroad is an experience that not all students can fit into their schedule or necessarily feel comfortable doing, and can, furthermore, perpetuate a western-centric idea of art history via the available locations of study and countries students choose to study in. Internships, contrarily, offer undergraduates opportunities to gain unique field experiences in their respective disciplines domestically while also receiving class credit and/or pay. The predicament faced by most undergraduate Art History majors however, is that the programs most beneficial to them are highly competitive and frequently unpaid. For instance, the Frick Collection in New York City, often accepts into their summer program, a mere one to two interns, of which usually do not receive a stipend, but instead receive two unlimited MetroCards (which equates to about $264 for two one-month cards) to “help ease the concerns about living in NYC while participating in an unpaid internship”, discounts at the museum store and cafeteria, and free or discounted admission to “New York’s finest museums”. We therefore are left with a few takeaways. The Frick Collection, a highly prestigious private museum which, according to their 2018-19 annual report, was worth over $401 million in 2019, either cannot set aside funds to pay under 10 interns per year minimum wage or simply chooses not to. Whatever the reason, Art History undergraduates are left to choose whether to “suck it up” and accept an unpaid internship (or volunteer, an alternative and unglorified synonym) from the prestigious Frick Collection with the hopes of benefitting from the museum’s status later in their career or to settle for a job that pays now. My use of the Frick Collection as a single case study is neither to ridicule nor to say they are anomalous, there are plenty of examples out there, one needs just to poke around. See for example: The United Nations, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Art and Design. In my own experience, I began to apply for internships in my sophomore year of college. After receiving several rejections, finally a door opened, I was offered an internship at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. I was told I would have to work 30-35 hours per week, unpaid, and without reimbursement for travel. Though frustrated, I politely declined. Although I knew this internship was unpaid, I of course still applied, thinking, however, I’d maybe be accepted into a program that did pay interns, or that I’d still have time to work outside of the museum. Working unpaid, 30-35 hours per week though is essentially a full-time job, albeit with none of the benefits, besides experience - a word that describes the elitist system that is professional Art History wherein an institution replaces fair payment with status and interns “cash in” years later without or with little expense to the institution they worked for as a college student. The fact of the matter is unfortunately that one needs to come from a place of financial privilege in order to afford the commute and time away from work despite how great of an experience the program they were accepted into may have been. Perhaps then, universities with similar requirements as my own school’s academic program might consider changing their current study abroad and internship requirements into recommendations. Alternatively, universities might be able to provide their own opportunities to students. Although most small liberal arts colleges, my own included, frequently boast that they don’t have Teaching Assistants (TAs), these types of positions can be incredibly valuable to students trying to develop a career in Art History and/or academia. These positions could be paid or treated as an independent study in which the student receives class credit without having to delay other courses or overload, the opportunity is thus built into their transcript. In terms of knowledge assessment, lesson design and creation is the peak of Bloom's taxonomy, therefore the supervising faculty member could assess their undergraduate TA(s) through their lesson plans and their comprehension of their major in turn. Goucher College, a small private university, and Rutgers University, a large state university, employ similar models for their first year students most frequently, who learn from upperclassmen TAs in a sort of “College 101” or Freshmen seminar class. Certainly, these amendments do not address the bigger issue, that being the museums/institutions themselves not paying interns, however this is one step universities can take to protect their students from being exploited by elitist institutions. Proposal #2: The Dunning-Kruger Effect & Art History Surveys There’s an interesting concept in psychology known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Essentially, the Dunning-Kruger effect states that a person who knows little about a topic, practice, or field, has greater levels of confidence and perceptions of mastery than a professional or expert in the same field because the expert has an awareness of how much they still don’t know, and may never know, whereas the novice remains blissfully ignorant in their own naïveté. The image below, from [Better than Yesterday’s] Youtube video on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, depicts a simplified explanation of this concept. Let’s imagine the one on the left, next to the green square, is an amateur photographer and the one on the right, next to the red square, is a professional photographer. Each square symbolizes the photographers’ perceived mastery of the discipline. The one on the left, therefore, perceives themself to be closer to completely mastering photography since the scope of their knowledge of the practice is sparse in comparison to the professional photographer’s. The figure on the right has a much greater understanding of how much they have yet to learn and therefore presents themself as less knowledgeable or confident than the amateur presents themself. Thinking about this phenomenon and the impression Art History surveys may leave on non-majors, I worry that that students walk away from the course thinking the rough sketch they’ve received is all there is to know, especially because traditional Art History surveys are particularly Eurocentric. I wonder then if adopting a guest lecturer approach is a better alternative. Rather than having one professor, in this model, students would be exposed to a variety of guest lecturers (faculty or non-faculty members). Through this approach students would learn from an expert of an particular figure, subject, geographical area and/or time period who could best contextualize their research, and, via the amount of scholars and the specificity of their work, students would hopefully end up in in the latter half of the dunning-Kruger effect, understanding the wide scope of art historical research and its implications. This pedagogical strategy has seen success at Princeton University and the University of Cambridge, however in the latter system students also meet once per week in small cohorts, with a supervisor/professor to discuss the week’s lecture and readings and receive feedback on their weekly paper. Proposal #3: Conference Information Since seeking experience in the field can be a frustrating and frequently fruitless task Art History majors should be prepared to think creatively in order to create their own experiences for their resumes and professional development goals. One way universities, specifically Art History departments though, can help their students to “get their name out” and obtain research experience is to broadcast major and minor conferences with active calls for papers (CFPs). Presenting at conferences looks great both for students, on their resumes and in turn the university they are affiliated with. Additionally, by encouraging students to apply to conferences, may indirectly incentivize and catalyze greater faculty/student collaboration on research projects. Proposal #4: Language Learning Subscriptions An additional way universities and departments can support their students is to offer free subscriptions to language learning applications like Babbel, Rosetta Stone, Duolingo Premium, etc. In order to pursue advanced degrees in Art History nearly all graduate programs want to see that applicants have a strong foundation in German and/or French in addition to the ancient and modern languages needed to conduct their proposed research. If the department offered free subscriptions to apps this would better prepare students applying to graduate school who can’t fit all so many language classes into their schedule. Furthermore this could function as a potential solution to the persistent issue that Classical Studies too has faced. Students from more privileged backgrounds i.e. private schools or classical educations/tutoring, are better prepared and thus are favored during application reviews. By making quality language learning apps accessible to students, we can begin to level the playing field and work towards opening doors to students who typically are underrepresented in Art History and Classical Studies programs. Proposal #5: Create a Departmental Blog My final and last recommendation (for the time being) is that more Art History departments consider creating departmental blogs. This proposal, in fact, was the inspiration for this very blog. News and media are constantly being shared and consumed, therefore the current events projects we knew from grade school, neither match our contemporary lived experience nor does it acknowledge the notion of “the media” as a misleading, conspiring, illuminati-esque entity. And so, there’s a current and growing need for public scholarship. Official scholarly work (i.e journal articles and books) can take years to write and may never even be published. There needs to be a faster outlet to communicate ideas that are very much a part of the moment and a part of the movement. From the viewpoint of professional development, writing in a blog-like space would be a great resume builder for students who choose to be involved. More importantly though, a peer-reviewed blog, would provide students and faculty members, especially Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and other students and faculty of color, with a virtual platform to talk about Art History in an academic setting while also reaching a greater audience within and beyond predominantly academic circles. For university purposes, this space would primarily be used by Art History majors and minors as a platform for students to share their research, discuss current and long-standing art historical issues, and bring scholars (undergraduates included) into the forefront of academic discourse under the protection of a university. This component of the blog, university protection, is particularly important and equally challenging. Sarah Bond, Associate Professor of History at the University of Iowa was met with death threats and countless verbal attacks from white supremacists after publishing an article in her column in Forbes about whitewashing and the use of color in Greco-Roman statuary and architecture. In order to protect both academic freedom and the freedoms of speech and press, universities need to be willing to both not shy away from holding critical conversations and to stand behind their students and faculty, within reason. Conclusion: Clearly then, I don’t actually hate Art History, but rather would hate to see the profession and its pedagogical approaches stagnate, or worse, regress. I hope this essay proposed several viable revisions that universities and Art History departments can consider incorporating as they continue to evolve. Further Reading: Ten Proposals for a More Ethical Art History: an undergraduate perspective by Emily Clark History is not a plant: Some thoughts on high school and undergraduate (ancient) history curricula by Sarah Bond Report: White Supremacy and the Past and Future of Classics Roundtable Towards the Ethical Practice of Art History by Karen Overbey Contributor: Ryan Abramowitz The disparity between the rich and poor catalyzed a rift between the various strata of France’s socioeconomic classes. In the mid 20th century France experienced a surge in the economy that was distributed evenly across social classes- although the rich grew richer, the middle and working classes did as well. This period, referred to as the Thirty Glorious Years, spans from 1950–1983. In a collaborative article, “Income inequality in France: Economic growth and the gender gap”, Bertrand Garbinti, Jonathan Goupille-Lebret, and Thomas Piketty, collected data to assess the post-Thirty Glorious Years (TGY) era and the changing rate of net salaries by social class in France. The researchers found that during the TGY era, individual salaries rose by around 4% per year, excluding the upper extremities, whose salaries rose by 1.5% per year.[1] From the end of the TGY era to the present day, the opposite effect has been occurring, reversing the benefits of the TGY with the scales tipped in favor of the rich, especially rich men. From 1983–2014 the majority of salaries changed via a 1% net increase per year. The top percentile received a 3% net salary increase per year.[2] Though these percentages are relatively close to one another, there is still an issue at hand: the elite have amassed an unproportional concentration of wealth. While there are many factors that contribute to the pay gap, economists have speculated that, “…institutional factors governing pay setting processes for top managerial compensation, including corporate governance, the decline of unions and collective bargaining processes, and the drop in top income tax rates,” have been conducive to the socioeconomic fissure dividing France.[3] The increase of wages for the top 1% and stagnation of wages for the middle to lower classes has created a pronounced disparity between the rich and poor.
The difference in wages is subcategorized by gender, in addition to social class. Statistics from 1970 revealed that between the ages of 30–55, men earned 3.5–4 times more than women. Jumping ahead to 2012, at 25 years old, men were recorded to be earning 1.25 times more than woman. This amount increases to 1.64 times as much when 65 years old.[4] While the numbers from 2012 indicate strides in the right direction towards shrinking the pay gap, women still must face the many challenges of gender discrimination in the workplace- low probabilities of promotion and obtaining high-paying jobs: only 16% of the nation’s top 1% are female.[5] The effects wreaked by the disparity in wages between the rich and the poor are amplified when gender discrimination enters the equation. Protests have ignited across France with reactionaries objecting to President Emmanuel Macron’s new fuel tax. Combining the effects of the disparity in wages between the rich and the poor with the introduction of an environmentalist fuel tax, the angered middle and working classes banded together to form a leaderless, workers coalition, the Yellow Vests, named after the safety vests all French motorists are required to keep in their cars. In his NPR article, “Who Are France’s Yellow Vest Protesters, And What Do They Want?”, Jake Cigainero investigates the factors that have contributed to the birth of the movement and the effects the nation has thus seen since their formation. The Yellow Vests’ main focus is Macron and their frustration with the unbalanced ratio between earnings and living conditions. Arguing that Macron is a president for the rich- loosened labor laws, lowered taxes on the wealthy, and added the fuel tax- the people have, in appropriate French fashion, taken to the streets and barricades to fight on behalf of the working class.[6] Another aspect the Yellow Vest movement highlights is that the wages working class people are earning are too high to make them eligible to receive welfare benefits, but too low to support themselves without the former.[7] Starting in the provinces and rapidly moving into the cities, the Yellow Vests have protested on Saturdays for twenty-five consecutive weeks in numbers nearing 6,700 protestors in Paris alone.[8] Standing on the shoulders of giants, the movement continues the tradition of workers’ protest in this centuries old quest for livable wages for all. The devastating fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris sparked debate amongst Parisians and the French people as to where the government’s and the wealthiest one percent’s best interests lie. In the wake of destruction and the ebb of excitement, solidarity settled in the Îl de la Cité. In the next several days, pledges, equating to more than one billion euros, for the reconstruction of Notre Dame reignited the fervor of the Yellow Vests. The leaderless group condemned the contributions and urged the French elite to reconsider their priorities and to put the people before a building.[9] While the beginning of the Yellow Vest movement started peacefully, many demonstrations have since turned violent, resulting in looting, rioting, and the detainment of many protestors. Worried about the outbreak of violence, the protestors were prohibited from demonstrating around Notre Dame.[10] Though the movement has taken on a wing of radicalized activists, a recent poll conducted by Harris Interactive revealed that “…72 percent of French people support the yellow vests, even after Saturday’s [December 1, 2018] riots. But 85 percent responded they are against the violence.”[11] Certainly there are issues with the conduct of the protestors, the movement is not unflawed. Recent clashes with police and rioting has discredited the original purpose of the movement, the right to earn a livable wage. The fire at Notre Dame serves as the movement’s key testimonial to the hypocrisy and socially regressive interests of government and the elite, and the timeless hegemonic tale of the rich subjugating the poor. End Notes: [1] Bertrand Garbinti, Jonathan Goupille-Lebret, and Thomas Piketty, “Income Inequality in France.” Income Inequality in France | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal. September 5, 2018. Accessed May 07, 2019. https://voxeu.org/article/income-inequality-france, 3. [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid., 4. [4] Ibid; Based on a 2012 statistic. [5] Ibid. [6] Jake Cigainero, “Who Are France’s Yellow Vest Protesters, And What Do They Want?” NPR. December 03, 2018. Accessed May 07, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2018/12/03/672862353/who-are-frances-yellow-vest-protesters-and-what-do-they-want, 2. [7] Ibid. [8] Samantha Raphelson, “Yellow Vest Protesters Fueled By Anger Over Notre Dame Funds March In Paris.” NPR. April 20, 2019. Accessed May 07, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/20/715470174/yellow-vest-protesters-fueled-by-anger-over-notre-dame-funds-march-in-paris, 2. [9] Palko Karasz, “Barred From Rallying Near a Scorched Notre-Dame, ‘Yellow Vest’ Protesters March On.” The New York Times. April 20, 2019. Accessed May 07, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/world/europe/yellow-vest-notre-dame.html, 3. [10] Ibid., 2. [11] Jake Cigainero, “Who Are France’s Yellow Vest Protesters, And What Do They Want?” NPR. December 03, 2018, 4. Works Cited: Cigainero, Jake. “Who Are France’s Yellow Vest Protesters, And What Do They Want?” NPR. December 03, 2018. Accessed May 07, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2018/12/03/672862353/who-are-frances-yellow-vest-protesters-and-what-do-they-want. Garbinti, Bertrand, Jonathan Goupille-Lebret, and Thomas Piketty. “Income Inequality in France.” Income Inequality in France | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal. September 5, 2018. Accessed May 07, 2019. https://voxeu.org/article/income-inequality-france. Karasz, Palko. “Barred From Rallying Near a Scorched Notre-Dame, ‘Yellow Vest’ Protesters March On.” The New York Times. April 20, 2019. Accessed May 07, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/world/europe/yellow-vest-notre-dame.html. Press, Associated. “Yellow Vest Protests Land at Paris Airport in 25th Week.” The Washington Post. May 04, 2019. Accessed May 07, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/paris-airport-a-yellow-vest-site-in-25th-week-of-protests/2019/05/04/f56b8772-6e6e-11e9-bbe7-1c798fb80536_story.html. Raphelson, Samantha. “Yellow Vest Protesters Fueled By Anger Over Notre Dame Funds March In Paris.” NPR. April 20, 2019. Accessed May 07, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/20/715470174/yellow-vest-protesters-fueled-by-anger-over-notre-dame-funds-march-in-paris. |
Contributors:Ryan Abramowitz, Senior Art History Major at The College of New Jersey |