Pt. I. Introduction. Writing contemporary art into history, a paradox? / Amelia Jones. -- Pt. II. Decades. "America" and its discontents: art and politics 1945-60 / Gavin Butt ; The 1960s: a decade out-of-bounds / Anna Dezeuze ; "I'm sort of sliding around in place...ummm...": art in the 1970s / Sam Gathercole ; Pictures and positions in the 1980s / Howard Singerman ; 1990-2005: in the clutches of time / Henry M. Sayre. -- Pt. III. Aesthetics. Form and formless / Caroline A. Jones ; Re: Thinking the "Duchamp effect" / David Hopkins ; Regarding beauty / Margaret Morgan. -- Pt. IV. Politics. Avant-garde: a historiography of a critical concept / Johanne Lamoureux ; Facture for change: US activist art since 1950 / Jennifer González and Adrienne Posner ; "The senators were revolted": homophobia and the culture wars / Jonathan D. Katz ; Crowds and connoisseurs: art and the public sphere in America / Grant Kester. --

Pt. V. Identity/subjectivity. The writerly artist: beautiful, boring, and blue / Carol Mavor ; Diaspora: multiple practices, multiple worldviews / Steven Nelson ; Power and pleasure: feminist art practice and theory in the United States and Britain / Laura Meyer ; Queer wallpaper / Jennifer Doyle ; Implications of blackness in contemporary art / Pauline de Souza ; The paradoxical bodies of contemporary art / Christine Ross. -- Pt. VI. Methods/theories. A shadow of Marx / Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska ; Poststucturalism and contemporary art, past, present, future... / Sarah Wilson ; "Fragments of collapsing space": postcolonial theory and contemporary art / Mark Crinson ; Visual culture studies: questions of history, theory, and practice / Marquard Smith. -- Pt. VII. Technology. "That's all folks": contemporary art and popular culture / Nick Mirzoeff ; Image + text: reconsidering photography in contemporary art / Liz Kotz ; Imagine there's no image (It's easy if you try): appropriation in the age of digital reproduction / Dore Bowen ; "Life-like": historicizing process and responsiveness in digital art / Maria Fernández.

This text features a grand survey of the historical, social, and aesthetic issues relevant to the development of contemporary art since 1945.