Monday, April 9, 2012

How to do well in Assignment 3? DO THE READING!

WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO DO FOR ASSIGNMENT 3? THE READING! Demonstrating how course materials relate to intersectionality is number one, along with having explored this course website's links about intersectionality from the time just before and since Spring Break. Having done that makes working out the connections with art activisms clearer. Play with curations to share with us and enjoy what we have learned in fun ways. How you talk about process and why it matters is one way you demonstrate your reading and analysis, and so is your project itself. You are working in partnerships and teams, so share your understandings, pool your knowledge, collaborate with ideas, and even have some fun!

Tuesday, 10 April – Altar, Alter – Self, Other
• Look at artists in Perez, Ch 3. Pick the artwork that speaks to you most. Learn about it and tell us.
• Read Perez, Conclusion 

Self and Other, Otherings of various kinds are political and power transactions with implications for social justice. Perez is interested in how people survive oppression through art and spirit, creating culture and meaning, and “politicizing spirituality.” What are the implications for intersectionality? What feminisms are vibrant here?

Connected Learning Exercise: "The point is interaction, collaboration, and thinking about how we think, alone and in groups, and in how we learn---by rote, by hearing, or by processing, applying, explaining, defending, and mastering." (Davidson 2012)

1) Write down three things that you notice once you start paying attention to intersectionality. (How have you come to understand it?)


2) Turn to the person on your right, and together look over the six things you have listed together now. Share why you picked these, and decide together on what the single most important thing is. 
(Davidson points out that "all studies of learning show these are the minutes where the real learning happens, where you adapt what you have heard or read to your own lives, where you make it all memorable, where you understand it in new and individual and also collective ways, and you even learn from how each other learns and values what you have learned." --I've modified her words slightly.)

3) At least five groups volunteer to explain their choice of the one best answer. Some general discussion comparing those answers to what other partners came up with. Should we all come up with one best answer? With three best answers? How does that work? What do you notice about reflecting on this alone and figuring it out with others both? 
(Davidson notices "how we have to learn and respect collaboration and connection, and make the most of how we can learn from and teach one another.")

4) What does this whole process itself have to do with intersectionality as you understand it? How will doing this help you write about process for that part of Assignment 3?

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The College of Arts and Humanities presents Angela Davis in Conversation for the 2011-2012 Dean's Lecture Series. A Conversation with Angela Davis April 18th, 2012, 7:00 PM, Colony Ballroom, Adele H. Stamp Student Union. Followed by audience Q&A.
• Angela Davis' talk will be streamed LIVE at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 18th. You will need the free Silverlight plug-in to watch the stream here: http://www.arhu.umd.edu/events/deans-lecture-series-conversation-angela-davis 

"For over four decades, philosopher and writer Angela Davis has been one of most influential, controversial, and fearless activists and public intellectuals in the United States. She has been hailed as 'a courageous voice of conscience on matters of race, class, and gender in America.' Her work as an educator – both at the university level and in the larger public sphere – has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender justice. Professor Davis is a leading advocate for prison reform and abolition and the founder of 'Critical Resistance,' a grassroots organization working to abolish what she has popularized as 'the prison-industrial complex.' Currently Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Professor Davis has taught and lectured internationally on feminism, African-American studies, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons." (from the ARHU website)

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Perez 2007: 305-6: "The art of Chicana women is among the most vibrant today, and the most threatened by lack of funding, minimal acquisition, and limited exhibition and publication. Few of the more than forty women whose work is presented here are able to fully support themselves through the // sales of their artwork or writing alone, or by supplementing these sales with grants and artist's residencies. In spite of the overwhelming number of M.F.A.'s among their ranks and tenured positions in art, Chicana/o studies, and ethnic studies departments, the sobering fact is that very few of the artists studies here are employed in steady or even temporary higher education settings because of corporate-modeled university downsizing and its unwitting collusion with the cultural conservatism and neglect of many art history and art practice departments."

Perez 2007: 91: "...the altar has been a site for the socially and culturally 'alter,' or other, to express, preserve, and transmit cultural and gender-based religious and political differences." 92: "That altar-installation and related art forms have inspired Chicana artists can be more precisely connected to the search for, and expression of, alternative spiritualities and alternative art practices, particularly those that are visionary with respect to social justice and transformation."

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[above at Smithsonian America Art site]: "Image of 'An Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio' by Amalia Mesa-Bains. 1984 Amalia Mesa-Bains Born: Santa Clara, California 1943 mixed media installation including plywood, mirrors, fabric, framed items and decorative elements 96 x 72 x 48 in. (243.8 x 182.9 x 121.9 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Museum purchase through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program © 1991, Amalia Mesa-Bains 1998.161 Not currently on view." Who is Dolores del Rio and why would Mesa-Bains want to create an altar for her?

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