War Culture and the Contest of Images

Acknowledgments

xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For generous funding of this project I thank Wayne State University for the Research Enhancement Awards in the Arts and the Career Development Chair; Walter Edwards and the Humanities Center; the University Faculty Fellowship and the Dean’s Creative/ Research Award. I also thank my department chair, John Richardson, for his support, and Marie Persha, Terry Kerby, Ian Chapp, and Ted Duenas for their assistance. I thank my superb research assistant, Jonathan Salvati, and the students in my courses on Imagery of War from Goya to Iraq and the seminars Trauma, Memory, and Visual Culture, and Trauma, War, and Photography. I thank all of the artists, and their galleries, who generously shared their work and images, as well as the director of exhibitions, Brian Wallis, at the International Center for Photography in New York and Director Raphie Etgar at the Museum on the Seam in Jerusalem for meeting with me to discuss exhibitions they sponsored and to share materials. I thank Ruth Weinstein for her warm hospitality while I conducted research in Israel/ Palestine, and the artists who met with me there, including Rana Bishara, Yael Bartana, and Boaz Arad. I also thank David Cotterrell, Shai Kremer, An-My Lê, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Ewa Harabasz, Martha Rosler, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Violeta Luna for meeting with me in New York, Detroit, at Art Basel Miami, or elsewhere. Many of the ideas in these chapters began as conference presentations . I thank all those who invited me to present my research on war images, including James Elkins and Maria-Pia di Bella, who organized the conference on “The Representation of Pain” at University College Cork in Ireland; Ewa Harabasz and Buzz Spector, who invited me to speak to the Department of Art at Cornell University ; Lisa Langlois and Artswego at the State University of New York at Oswego, who invited me to speak to the Department of Art and the International Studies Program; Sally Schluter-Tardella and the Honor Society at Oakland University in Rochester , Michigan, who invited me to speak to the Honors College; Corinne Granof at the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University who organized the symposium “Visual and Literary Culture in Germany between the Wars”; Eric J. Sundquist, who organized the conference on “Aesthetics after the Holocaust” for the UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American and World Culture; Walter Edwards, who organized the Humanities Center conferences on “The Environment” and “Questioning Foundations and Methods in the Humanities and Arts” for Faculty Fellows at Wayne State University; Juergen Martschukat, Silvan Niedermeier, and xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Michael Wildt, who organized the conference on “Violence and Visibility : Historical, Cultural, and Political Perspectives from the 19th Century to the Present” at Humboldt University in Berlin; and Sarah Rogers and Noah Simblest, who organized the session panel “Interdependent Identity: Paradigm and Paradox in Contemporary Israeli and Palestinian Art” at the College Art Association Conference in New York City. I also thank the colleagues and audiences before whom I presented these papers. Chapter 1 on Krzysztof Wodiczko is an updated and extended version of an essay originally published in Oxford Art Journal 31:2 (July 2008), and reprinted in Krzysztof Wodiczko, edited by Duncan McCorquodale (Black Dog Publishing, 2011). Versions of the text on Martha Rosler’s work Invasion (chapter 4), Wodiczko’s work Veteran Vehicle Project (chapter 1), and the Iraq Veterans against the War project Operation First Casualty (chapter 2) were first published as “Iraq, Trauma and Dissent in Visual Culture,” in What Is Radical Politics Today?, edited by Jonathan Pugh (Palgrave Macmillan , 2009). At Rutgers University Press, I am grateful to the marvelous editor-inchief , Leslie Mitchner, and series editor Patrice Petro. One couldn’t ask for better or more supportive editors with whom to work. I thank all those associated with the press who helped shepherd this book to completion. I am also grateful to my friends, colleagues and family for their encouragement and support, which has greatly contributed to the writing of this book in ways large and small. Enormous gratitude is especially due my husband, Gregory Wittkopp, who is always on the lookout for research material, ever willing to read my drafts, and never holds back from pointing out their weaknesses . He has gamely shared my life through continuing research on lugubrious topics and never (hardly ever) complains about not having sabbaticals or summers for research and writing . I also thank my daughter, Rachel Apel Wittkopp, whose high sense of justice makes a mother...