Contemporary Artists in Conversation: Reckoning and Repair

1 Course Unit

In this project-based learning course, students will develop skills in interviewing, oral history, and podcast production by hosting a series of conversations with visiting contemporary artists including participating artists in the transformative, multi-site exhibit, "Rising Sun-Artists and an Uncertain America" (a Spring 2022 collaboration between the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and the African American Museum of Philadelphia). Following the exhibit plan, this course focuses thematically on how these contemporary artists tackle the "disquieting canonical history of the United States", and how their diverse practices speak to the "re-appraisal, reformation, reckoning, and repair necessary to find a collective way forward" at this critical social moment. This course considers contemporary art as a complementary method of scholarship to ethnography, giving students hands on-experience in exploring how conversations between art and anthropology can open up avenues for collaborative, ethical, and engaged scholarship. This course is designed to be fruitful for students with all levels of experience, including beginners with little prior podcasting/media experience. Students will be tasked with conducting ethnographic oral histories in interviews with artists, but also attending to the specific assumptions and conventions of representation that artists use, and the way they intervene into social challenges of reckoning and repair in their practice. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit