Contact Jennifer
Mail Code PF
Jennifer Bajorek
Jerome Liebling Center 106
413.559.5447
Jennifer Bajorek
Professor of Comparative Literature and Visual Studies
Jennifer Bajorek is a scholar, writer, and university professor working on questions at the intersection of photography, art, and poetry. She has a particular interest in the aesthetic aftermaths of colonialism in French and Francophone worlds, with a cultural and geographic focus on Africa. At Hampshire, she teaches interdisciplinary courses on literature (fiction, experimental nonfiction, and poetry); photography and film; and philosophies of the image and of liberation.
Bajorek has published and taught on a wide array of cultural texts, objects, and spaces: on African photographic archives and decolonial historiography; Francophone (European, African, Caribbean) literature and film; Marxist, post-Marxist, and postcolonial theory; as well as topics in contemporary art, African and African diaspora history, and art history, and critical museum and heritage studies. Her work also includes translation, curating, and diverse forms of collaboration.
Her research and curatorial projects have been supported by fellowships or grants from esteemed foundations and institutions including the Mellon Foundation, the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Exchange, the Clark Art Institute, and the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. She was a recipient of the Creative Capital/Arts Writers Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and won a Millard Meiss Publication Fund Award from the College Art Association, for her 2020 book, Unfixed: Photography and Decolonial Imagination in West Africa.
Her current research investigates aesthetic and political dimensions of im/migration in contemporary France. She is working particularly closely with artists, writers, and activists who draw on African migration and labor histories, undocumented workers' movements, and anti-colonial archives or who emphasize transethnic, transracial, and non-citizen solidarity in their practice.
Prior to teaching at Hampshire, Bajorek was senior lecturer in cultural studies at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London (United Kingdom). She has been a research associate in the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg (South Africa), since 2013.
Bajorek welcomes advising requests from students working in all fields of the humanities and in cultural and visual studies. She is particularly eager to support students working on literature and experimental writing in comparative and cross-cultural contexts; those working in photography, film, and visual studies; and those whose work is informed by Marxism and postcolonial theory, or African and Black studies approaches to literature, art, and visual culture. She also welcomes advising requests from artist-practitioners whose work incorporates theoretical questions or historical research, regardless of medium.
Recent and Upcoming Courses
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The desire to save our planet from imminent destruction is shared by growing numbers of people all over the world. Yet debates about climate change, environmental disaster, mass extinction, and possible solutions to them continue to be framed by ideas and discourses that have their roots in capitalist, imperialist, Western, Euro-American or Eurocentric, and patriarchal worldviews. This course examines critical and creative approaches to sustainability and extinction that challenge these frames. Through analysis of works (through exhibition documentation, catalogs, artists' books, photobooks, online archives) by contemporary artists, complemented by advanced readings in literature, philosophy, environmental humanities, and social science, we will look at histories, practices, thought systems, and imagined worlds that offer radical new possibilities for imagining what Anna Tsing calls "the promise of cohabitation," or life on earth. Our syllabus will feature work by artists working across mediums and disciplines, centering postcolonial, decolonial, Indigenous, Black, queer, and feminist perspectives. KEYWORDS:Art, Decoloniality, Sustainability, Environment, Justice
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This course examines art that engages with ecological questions through its themes, methods, or materials. Through analysis of works, exhibitions and exhibition documentation, and published portfolios of work by contemporary artists, we will explore a range of artistic approaches to sustainability, extinction, co-habitation, futurity, deep time, climate change, and climate justice. Our syllabus will include diverse perspectives and will feature work by artists working across mediums and disciplines all over the world. Visual material will be complemented by selected introductory readings and studio/site visits with Hampshire and the Five College artists. Assignments will consist of a mix of analytical and creative writing, experimental projects, and collaborative work. Students from all backgrounds are welcome. KEYWORDS:Art, Decoloniality, Sustainability, Environment, Justice
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In this course, we will look at the influence of Marx and Marxism on the interpretation of culture and cultural texts (literature, visual art, digital art) in diverse historical and political contexts. Our primary focus will be on theories illuminating the relationships of specific genres or cultural forms to specific historical, political, and economic conditions. (How is the rise of the novel related to the rise of capitalism? How do contemporary (re)framings of art as labor (i.e., in participation, collaboration) extend or transform prior definitions of the art object as commodity/fetish? Approximately half of our readings will be historical, exploring arguments that emerge in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The other half will be hyper-contemporary and will bring us into dialogue with writers, artists, and thinkers interrogating the cultural logics of contemporary capitalism. This is an introductory course designed to introduce students to key critical and theoretical texts in both Marxist and cultural theory. Keywords: Marxism, literature, art, cultural studies.
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In this course, we will explore contemporary approaches to commemorating historical violence through monuments, museum practice, and public art. Students will examine case studies from around the world, with a focus on sites of contestation and interventions in public and collective discourse from the last 50 years, including Holocaust memorials and museums; monuments to los Desaparecidos (the disappeared) in Chile and Argentina and victims of the genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia; #RhodesMustFall and other "fallist" movements to remove statues celebrating slavery, apartheid, and white supremacy; the public visual culture of #BLM; new monuments to the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade in the US, the Caribbean, and West Africa. We will read deeply in the relevant critical and theoretical literature across disciplines and look closely at decisions made by practitioners: artists, architects, curators, urban planners, and activists. Students of all backgrounds and experience levels are welcome. Keywords: Art history, museum studies, curatorial studies, genocide, slavery.
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In this introductory literature and cultural theory course, we will examine the relationships between literature and resistance in diverse historical and cultural contexts. We will explore longstanding-if often contradictory-associations between literature and revolution, fiction and freedom, poetry and democracy, and the role played in social and political movements by creative and artistic imagination. Special attention will be paid to the place of literary texts in imperial and nationalist projects as well as, in postcolonial contexts, anti-imperial and anti-colonial contestation. Multiple national and linguistic traditions will be considered, including texts by US, European, African, Caribbean, and Latin American writers. Theoretical readings will touch on censorship, performativity, creolization, and terror. (Keywords: Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Theory)
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The desire to save our planet from imminent destruction is shared by growing numbers of people all over the world. Yet debates about climate change, environmental disaster, mass extinction, and possible solutions to them continue to be framed by ideas and discourses that have their roots in capitalist, imperialist, Western, Euro-American or Eurocentric, and patriarchal worldviews. This course examines critical and creative approaches to sustainability and extinction that challenge us to go beyond these frames with a focus on contemporary visual art and visual and spatial practice. Through close looking and analysis of works and portfolios of work (exhibition catalogs and documentation, artist books, photobooks, online archives) by contemporary artists complemented by readings in contemporary literature, philosophy, environmental humanities, and social science, we will look at histories, practices, thought systems, and imagined worlds that teach us to understand the past, present, and future of the planet differently and that offer radical new possibilities for imagining what Anna Tsing calls "the promise of cohabitation," or life on earth. Our looking and reading in the course will center on postcolonial, Indigenous, Black, queer, and feminist perspectives on earth, nature, ecology human-animal relations, and non-humanist or non-human cosmologies. Specific topics might include ecofeminism, queer ecologies, and global indigeneity; climate apartheid and the climate refugee; regenerative agriculture, food justice, and food sovereignty. Keywords: Sustainability, environment, justice, philosophy, postcolonial