Course Overview

Overview of Course

This course will address how feminist theory has engaged the visual arts. We will explore the ways culture has defined art and artists in gendered terms, and be encouraged to adopt a critical perspective regarding the arts, gender, and culture. This course is largely tailored toward investigating and practicing autobiographical and autoethnographic skills, which essentially means that we will rely heavily on our stories/ autobiographies as a means to reflect on who we are, what we are interested in, what we are doing, and what we are trying to accomplish in our art and/or writing. This will be our primary task this semester: to begin to describe (autobiography) and possibly reflect/assess (autoethnography) the kinds of art or other research we are interested in creating, why this interests us, and where it may lead. Through weekly readings and blog posts, we will consider how gender is relevant to the creation and study of arts and culture, and the socio-cultural factors influencing gender and sexuality in the arts.

We will assume that art is research. (The following books thoroughly investigate that art is research: Leavy, P. (2009). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. New York: The Guilford Press; Park, C. C. (2010). Creating with reverence: Art, diversity, culture and soul. Tucson, AZ: Sotol Books; and Schneider, A. & Wright, C. (Eds.). (2010). Between art and anthropology: Contemporary ethnographic practice. New York: Berg.) We will be looking at some diverse histories of how artists have created methodological innovations in art and the impact on us as artists and community members. Many of these methods come from non-mainstream places. We will read about visual artists and other artists who are using art as research tools to explore personal, social, political, and community issues. Through these artists, hopefully we can see ourselves in their stories; see our art as relevant; and see our schools, students and communities as part of a broader visual, environmental, and global picture.