Currently reading:
Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture by Patricia A. Turner
On Photography by Susan Sontag
The Black Atlantic by Paul Gilroy
Sound Design and Science Fiction by William Whittington

Beyond my own continuous curiosity, looking for those bits of writing which
might be appropriate to foundation-level readers, containing abstraction while rooted in the particular. Writing which considers the way objects and images operate, asking important questions about the authority of the voice, the use of media in the production of ideology, the responsibility of the image-maker, the impact of reproduction... unpacking, through a multitude of specific examples. That's the goal for the next semester - an omnivorous interest in cultural artifacts of any variety, whether it's a blockbuster movie, an abstract painting, a glossy advertisement, a documentary photograph, a racist ceramic cookie jar, a font, a newscast, a building, a public park. Not to equalize these "objects" but to observe them in all their specificity. I want to move away from art-world specific considerations and to view any object as potentially fascinating, any object as a carrier of layered meanings.
Any suggestions?