SCENES OF PEDAGOGY: ART AND THE POLITICS OF POSSIBILITY

Abstract

This dissertation examines the “promises” of art and pedagogy in enacting institutional critique and possibility. This project also grows out of collective conversations within and beyond the field of art and design in the recent turn towards social equity and inclusion and responds to national reckonings on race and identitarian politics in the post-Obama era. Primarily through ethnographic research in several art and design colleges across the United States, Scenes of Pedagogy: Art and the Politics of Possibility tracks activities in the unmaking and remaking of hegemonic institutional spaces of learning. In the last decade, students across campuses in the United States and elsewhere have demanded racial, social, and climate equity, bringing institutions of higher learning to crisis under heightened media scrutiny. I examine how artists, art educators, and art schools have participated in this movement and the broader implications of such activism in a field that has historically been depoliticized and traditionalist in its adherence to Euroamerican canons and epistemes.