My 2012 Summer of MFA Reading List

Cover for Only Skin Deep,
edited by Coco Fusco and Brian Wallis

This is my first Summer off since graduating college 13 years ago! It's been nice to have no specific agenda each day and when I'm not busy chasing after my very active toddler, I am trying to keep up on my self-assigned Summer reading list.

While the second year of my MFA program doesn't start again until this Fall, I've assigned myself this list of books to keep my critical mind fresh and engaged.


The list is comprised of all non-fiction works: collections of essays, books on photography and fine art as well as some classics I've never read:

• Cotton, Charlotte. Words Without Pictures. 
• Touré. Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? 
• Chernick, Myrel and Jennie Klein. The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art. 
• Fusco, Coco and Wallis. Only Skin Deep. 
• Womack, Ytasha. Post Black: How a New Generation is Redefining African American Identity.
• Mavor, Anne. Strong Hearts, Inspired Minds: 21 Artists Who Are Mothers Tell Their Stories.
• Fannon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. 
• Sontag, Susan. On Photography. 
• Mercer, Kobena. Cosmopolitan Modernisms. 
• Mercer, Kobena. Exiles, Diasporas & Strangers. 
• Lippard, Lucy. Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America. 
• Bolton, Richard. The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. 
• Pinney, Christopher and Nicolas Peterson. Photography’s Other Histories. 
• Benjamin, Walter. Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

These are all paperbacks because I'm old school like that but I do have one digital book on my Nook, it's Moyra Davey's collection of essays titled Mother Reader.

Given that we're already one month into Summer break and I've only completely read two books (and parts of a few others), perhaps I won't get through this entire list :) but I thought I'd share with you anyway.

So what are YOU reading this Summer?

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