The Municipal Market, or as it's more well known, the Sweet Auburn Curb Market, is located on Auburn Street in Downtown Atlanta. It was built following the Great Atlanta Fire in 1917; originally the market took place in an open-air tent with farmers and vendors selling their stock directly to customers who lived in the area affected by the fire. Due to the market's success, funds were raised and an official building was built - made out of brick to be fireproof.
Taylor Davis, Buckhead Skyline from Vinings. 6 Oct 2007. This image is free to use with attribution under Creative Commons license Attribution 2.0 Generic.
This week we discussed Pamela Colman Smith’s Annancy Stories which I had slight knowledge on based on our presentations in the early weeks of this class. However, after today's presentation and discussion on the text, I gained a much more clear perspective on the text as a whole including its illustrations. Specifically, I enjoyed Professor Kooistra's comments on the folklore tropes which are apparent in the text such as Toad's transformation illustrated through his change of clothing.
I think Undisciplining Victorian Studies is an important but difficult task. The push to decolonize Academia has been ongoing for much longer than this year’s BLM movement. My experience in Ryerson English has been tinged by an attempt at decolonization. Many of my profs have made a strong effort to incorporate postcolonial, Indigenous, and subaltern writers and artists into their syllabi. I have read much less of the American and British classics than I’m sure I would have read at UofT. But there is always more work to be done.
This week's seminar focused on Pamela Colman Smith's Annancy Stories, a series of African/Jamaican folktales published in 1899. Pamela Colman Smith was an author, illustrator, and publisher born to an American father and Jamaican mother. The Annancy stories is a transatlantic text unlike the other texts from previous weeks focuses on stories that originate outside of Britain. The Annancy stories originated in West Africa and were brought to Jamaica by enslaved Africans through the British slave trade.
I found this week's class very interesting on The Annancy Stories and Pamela Colman Smith as a probable mixed-race, female illustrator and storyteller. Now more than ever, it is important to decolonize Victorian studies that are conventionally white-eurocentric based and study texts that were also created during the Victoria 'era' albeit, outside of England. I enjoyed Professor Kooistra's mini-presentation on Pamela Colman Smith and her contribution to the Celtic Revival in Ireland and her work in illustrating folk tales.
Through our discussion of the Annancy Stories by Pamela Colman Smith, I found the text to be a perfect example of how an image, although potentially a direct reflection of its text, can add so much significant meaning that the words lone never would have brought out.
