Course Overview

Course Overview

This course examines and challenges taken-for-granted and mostly hidden histories. Some may be surprising to you. Throughout both books, we will be reading critical methods artists and writers utilize to make art and writing. We will also explore the ongoing relationships between art, people and institutions, and the resulting politics, histories, and consequences. Why are artists making art? Who got written out? Written in? What are artists making? How are they making it? What are contemporary methods of making art? The books we are reading are diverse views of critical examinations of hope and vision. Many of the chapters represent critical perspectives in making art and attempts to rethink self, what is art, her/histories, community, environment, possibilities, schooling and learning within institutions and communities; also rethinking what art making can be. I am hoping we can take that information and observe parallels in our lives, neighborhoods and jobs.

This course proposes to address the concept of a critical examination of what constitutes histories/pedagogies in art(s). For us, our examinations of these histories and possible pedagogies will be grounded in critical social theories that are about social justice, freedom, the environment, and love, ideas that may seem very foreign to you as an artist or art teacher. My intent as a facilitator is not to indulge in overly intellectualized discourses, but keep our classroom discussions in relation to our everyday lived experiences, hopes and visions as we use these two books as guideposts. Our online blog serves as a salon-style classroom or digital reality where our ideas and lived experiences ebb and flow, filling our imaginations with hope, vision and a critical clarity that purposefully de-centers controlling and abusive traditional institutional environs, where both students and facilitator/s are treated respectfully and considered seriously.