IN-PERSON: Learning. Life. Work

Abstract

Large lecture classes come in for necessary criticism, particularly in art and design contexts where small studio classes are highly valued. As faculty delivering curriculum to the entire first year student body, we present our story of collaboratively creating a large lecture class that feels more like a hybrid of the two. Our methods are multiple and responsive, but include a concerted effort to build in vulnerability and kindness, to focus on conversational style, and to approach a conventional art historical timeline in a self-reflexive way through a linked curriculum model that takes into account the labour conditions of a small university. As a result, the course has become a space to incite curiosity as well as a site for transformative justice where we co-author group agreements with students to create reciprocity and highlight instructor vulnerability to reveal the impossibility of intellectual scope. We issue invitations to learn alongside, not from instructors. We talk about how we create an anti-imperial critique through contemporary art examples, cultural studies analyses, and diverse literary texts that challenge Eurocentric structures, but also explain our decision to adhere to a conventional timeline out of a commitment to distributive justice. Our approach undoes the expert model, focuses on conversation and collaboration, uses writing as a process-based, iterative, experiment-driven activity to develop critical literacy and prepare students for their lived realities, and to undo the vocationalization of art school education.