G.R.O.U.P. Apprenticeships Summer 2007

Sojourner Truth: I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance

Faculty Sponsor: Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby (History of Art)
Student Apprentice: Sonia Fleury

Sojourner Truth has generated a tremendous literature; she has attracted the attention of numerous biographers as well as historians of the Civil War, Reconstruction, abolition and the suffragette movement. Surprisingly, her photographs have only been the subject of one art historical article (Collins). Sojourner Truth’s cartes-de-visite are meditations by a former slave on value and authorship.

The Summer Apprentice will assist on a book-length project, researching primary sources concerning photography, the Civil War, and economic debates as well as Sojourner Truth’s life and activism among abolitionists and suffragettes; reading newspapers of the key years, for instance the New York World; and locating and ordering all extant photographs of Sojourner Truth. The Summer Apprentice will also research the Sojourner Truth papers in Michigan (Detroit, Ann Arbor, Battle Creek) and also Washington D.C.

Science On Canvas: Bioethics and the Depiction of Science
in the Fine Arts

Faculty Sponsor: David E. Winickoff (Bioethics and Society; Associate Director, Science, Technology and Society Center)
Student Apprentice: Emily Adams

Today, a clear line distinguishes artist from scientist. An archive of historical artwork that pictorially depicts scientists and their experiments will allow for the ability to chronicle certain transformations of artist as scientist (for example, Leonardo Da Vinci) to the separate spheres of artist and scientist. By analyzing artworks that depict scientists with their experiments, we are given a window on how the scientist, or science itself, is imagined through historical eras. Investigations of this kind characterize the goals of this research project, which aims to ask the question: what does artistic representation say about scientific representation? What does science as reflected in the eyes of the artist convey about the nature of knowledge, and seeking knowledge, born in a modern scientific idiom?

The student apprentice will develop a database of paintings and drawings, with a focus on the 16th through the 20th century period. S/he will also gather information on the artists and the scientists & experiments depicted, which will include looking into artists’ relevant correspondences and personal writings. The student might travel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to research in the Thomas J. Watson Library and/or to the National Academy of Art. The work gathered from the student’s research will take the form of image database and bibliography.

Photo Reportage of Sex Trafficking in Eastern Europe

Faculty Sponsors: Mimi Chakarova (Graduate School of Journalism) and Orville Schell (Dean, Graduate School of Journalism)
Student Apprentice: Justine Rivero

The U.S. State Department estimates that each year approximately 800,000 to 900,000 people are trafficked across international borders worldwide and that “no country is immune from trafficking.” Our goal in telling these complicated stories in photo reportage is to gather information truthfully, present it in a cohesive manner that would allow a multifaceted public to react in ways that encourage a democratic and international discourse.

The apprentice will research and analyze an extensive reading list, watch films related to visual culture and interpretation, attend art exhibits relevant to the topic, and compile a list of articles and academic papers that deal with visual documentation and issues of human trafficking. Some of the main questions that we will examine in our work are: How is a person in the twenty-first century sold into captivity and exploited against her will capable of recovering after such trauma to the mind, body and spirit? What are some of the primary psychological and social issues? Under what conditions is rehabilitation successful? What type of power dynamic is created when a man purchases forced sex and why?