Reports from the Field: Works in Progress in Visual Criticism

Adrienne Skye Roberts (VCS 2009), Duane Deterville (VCS 2009), and  VCS core faculty members Jeanette Roan and Tina Takemoto present new and evolving work  in the field of Visual and Critical Studies.  Adrienne Skye Roberts’s work combines the vocations of curator, critic, community organizer, social practitioner and poet. Duane Deterville’s visual art practice focuses on drawings that address the intersection between symbols and ritual in African Diasporic religions; the reach of his criticism and scholarship spans Diasporic practices from Brazil to Oakland. Jeanette Roan’s research concerns cultural transactions in and through popular genres. Her book Envisioning Asia: On Location, Travel, and the Cinematic Geography of U.S. Orientalism (2010), investigates films as a form of virtual travel and a source of knowledge about cultural difference. Tina Takemoto is an interdisciplinary scholar, theorist, and performance artist. Her film Looking for Jiro Onuma, which explores the hidden dimensions of queer sexuality during the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II, premiered at  MIX 24: New York Queer Experimental Film Festival in the fall of 2011.