Two additional essays from Expanding, one on Mexican American art by Lisa Ouse-Hicks and a section by Hailey Franke identifying American Indian tribes by geographical area have been included. This survey will provide information about some of the economic, social and political conditions and events which impacted the lives of the four core ethnicites in the United States. The 1997 University of California Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies catalog designates these ethnicities as African, Asian, and Latino Americans and American Indians. This information is being provided to art history students in a five part reader in order that they understand the socio-politics of American history as it pertains to marginalized populations, and how that history has contributed to lack of inclusion in the canon of American art history. In Defining Art, a basic definition of fine art is given.
Art History provides background on the academic discipline itself.
In Primitive, Naive and Folk Art, concepts and categories of stylistic identification which have also been used to invalidate the art of non-white ethnicities are reconsidered. Modernism and Post Modernism is provided in order that students living in the twenty-first century understand the tremendous changes which have come about in art history from the late nineteenth century to the present day. The Global Village and the Pluralistic World defines Anglo-American ethnocentrism over against the new pluralism of Post Modernism. These forms of bias are so deeply imbedded within our social and especially our cultural institutions that they often seem invisible. The situation is similar to looking at one of those popular optical-illusion cartoons.