Art and Artists in Society: Theory and P

This hybrid graduate seminar is designed to bring together students from the School of the Arts working in different forms and disciplines. Filmmakers, Theater makers, Writers, Artists will read and discuss texts examining the role of art and artists in society. They will also share their works-in-progress with each other.

After our initial two meetings, the second half of each class will be dedicated to presentations by students of their work. Conversations regarding this work will attempt to engage ideas gleaned from the assigned readings. These will include excerpts from the writings of Hannah Arendt, Jack Halberstam, Fred Moten, William Blake, James Baldwin, Meghan O’Gieblyn, Anne Bogart, myself, and others. These readings will begin to establish a common discourse with which to discuss complex contemporary issues and aid students in thinking about their own process within a societal framework.

Artists continue to engage the emotional and psychological concerns that connect the particularity of each person to the world outside, while also giving form to urgent societal issues that impact all our lives in particular ways, such as climate change, migration, race, gender, social justice, and war.

We will discuss readings by those who, at various historical moments, have theorized, poetically imagined, chronicled, or given shape to these roles and responsibilities in multiple creative forms. When possible, visiting artists from the School of the Arts’ 2024 speaker series, as well as others, will be invited to visit the seminar to talk about their own work within this societal framework.