Art and Artists in Society: The Subversi

This interdisciplinary graduate seminar is designed to bring together students from multiple disciplines within the School of the Arts working in different forms as well as students from other graduate programs in the university who are interested in examining the subversive nature of art and artists in society.

Readings and visual material will cover diverse ways of thinking about how art and artists are catalysts for social change from the point of view of artists and their audiences. How do artists cultivate their imaginations? How do these imaginings disrupt society? Readings will be taken from texts such as: C.J. Jung Active Imagination, Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi Flow, Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism, Jack Halberstam Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire, William Blake The Book of Urizen, James Baldwin The Fire Next Time, Guy Debord The Society of the Spectacle, Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, Jacques Rancière The Emancipated Spectator, Augusto Boal Theatre of the Oppressed.

These readings will help establish a common discourse with which to discuss how art and artists subvert society and also allow us to reflect on how artists prepare and sustain themselves to actualize the messages they seek to convey.