ASEM 644/B (Fall 2024): TOPICS IN ART & IDEOLOGY: UNLEARNING THINGS
The seminar gathers the work of artists and scholars from multiple domains to explore how one might go about unlearning the ingrained, unconscious habits of thought and mind that support and extend present structures of power and dominance, however unwittingly. How might we disengage from the imperialist, growth-oriented logic that defines both capitalism and culture? Can we imagine our social relations, the public sphere and the commons differently? How can we reorient ourselves to the natural world and live more consciously within the Anthropocene? What will it take to coexist more harmoniously with our neighbours and kin, other peoples, other species, other things? How can we unlearn/relearn our relations with things?
The course is designed as a reading/research course providing the student with the opportunity to acquaint themselves with current artistic and scholarly works responding to pressing social and cultural concerns. Students will conceive and develop research projects that bridge the issues taken up in the seminar with those driving their own practices and/or that are prominent in their fields. The first few seminars are meant to establish a historical and theoretical foundation for subsequent conversations whose orientations will be defined by the students’ research interests.
- Teacher: CHERYL SIMON