AP/ANTH 4010 6.00 Directed Reading - Field Course in Graffiti (SUMMER 2022 TERM ONLY)

People around the world have been writing, drawing, and creating combinations of words and figures on public surfaces for centuries. Contemporary graffiti style emerged during early 1970s in beleaguered American urban communities like New York City and Philadelphia. American graffiti quickly went global, entangling with visual cultures and existing practices of wall writing in other parts of the world. Anthropologists working on graffiti have offered insights into the lives of individuals, communities and collectives that write graffiti, including gangs and hip-hop culture; urban cartographies and strategies of spatialization grounded in graffiti writing; the commercialization and commoditization of graffiti and street art; the dialectics between graffiti and street art, and the environments in which they are created; and use of graffiti and street art to communicate, advocate, and share new ideas. For anthropologists, graffiti offers a vital optic on topics such as identity, power and resistance, urbanism, and creativity.In this course we will draw on anthropological work on graffiti as we undertake an on-the-ground exploration of graffiti and street art in Toronto. We will employ anthropological methods including interviewing, mapping, photography and participant observation to explore and document Toronto graffiti and the lives of those individuals who create and live with it. Come prepared to read deeply, explore the community, and connect with art, artists, Torontonians and others touched by this ancient human practice.

This class is open to all undergraduate anthropology students, but space is limited.