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“Art, Activism, and Popular Culture” (WGS 199) investigates how art and activism intersect to address pressing contemporary social issues concerning gender, race, and sexuality. In particular, the course focuses on how art is utilized as feminist activism, and vice versa, to address social issues such as the prison industrial complex, sexual assault, media production, institutional critique, and HIV/AIDS. The course takes on a special emphasis on how artists-activists-students have utilized art to organize and create change on the college campus. Along with rigorous reading and writing, in the Winter 2016 term, students also engaged in the topic of art and activism through constructionist learning— learning through creating—in a special lab component of the class. In collaboration with the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, students participated in a special museum activity to explore art history and the politics of institutional critique on campus. Additionally, several goes artist-activist speakers visited the course—such as performance artist Alex Luu, From the Center activists Allyse Gray and Isela Gonzalez, and new media artist micha cárdenas—modeling for us pedagogy in practice. Alongside these special workshops, students collectively created art/activist projects that addressed campus, local, or national issues through a feminist lens. Based on the course units, these student-led projects include an interactive Wordle on race and gender that was then featured in UO dorms as sites of expression, agit-prop printed statistics on media, gender, and equity that were plastered by students on campus as interventions, a provocative short documentary featuring UO student opinions on the prison industrial complex, a moving monologue that addresses theatre, abelism, and institutional critique, and an Art/AIDS project that gathered palm prints from the class members to collectively create an AIDS red ribbon, that was then featured at the UO Health Center on National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. The student-activist projects raise awareness to the pressing social issues and transform the campus in political and artistic ways. They demonstrate the importance of student led activist projects. The class concluded with a special symposium where students presented their work to the WGS department and larger campus. In the spirit of the class, we are grateful to collaborate with Sheila Rabun and Azle Malinao-Alvarez of UO’s Digital Scholarship Center, to publish Art/Act the online class magazine that features the final projects. We hope the course projects will serve as models for art-activist possibilities for other students, and demonstrate the richness, passion, and creativity of WGS student art and activism at the University of Oregon. — Margaret Rhee, Ph.D. Eugene, 2016 Special acknowledgements for their vital support, collaboration, and guidance: Class Blog:http://artactivismwgs.tumblr.com Participating Students |
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