women, art, and culture, a multiple seminar introducing women’s
studies
WMST 250 0301 0304, Fall 2014 UMD
Tuesday Everyone Seminar: 3 pm – 4:40 pm at
ARC 1101
Thursday seminars: 0301: 3 pm – 3:50 pm at TYD
2109; 0304 3 pm – 3:50 pm at KEB 1200
Professor:
Katie King
Office:
2101C Woods Hall, University of Maryland, College Park
Katie’s office hours: TBA
Office
phone: 301.405.7294 (voice mail)
Email:
katking@umd.edu
IF YOU
SUBMIT ATTACHMENTS BY EMAIL to KK DO IT ONLY
TO: katiekin@gmail.com (notice “kin” NOT “king”)
KK’s
website with info on social hours & more: http://katiekin.weebly.com/
You can follow Katie on Twitter @katkingumd
Class Website at: http://2014wmst259.blogspot.com
===
course description for multiple seminar/s: matterings, justice and
more
• themes
for this term: systems: food, climate, social change
Women's
art, art by women, feminist art, and art activism have been ways women have
analyzed and changed everyday life. Art is one of the forms of passionate
politics feminists have mobilized to make life better, for themselves and
others. In this course we will investigate how artists and activists have asked
sometimes hard, sometimes joyful questions about power, gender and sexuality,
practices of racialization, nations and languages, abilities and disabilities,
religion and meaning and more. We will examine assumptions we and others make
about women, art, culture and feminism. We will especially consider how art can
reshape possibilities and actualities for everybody. What counts as art? What
do we do with public art? What is art activism?
To create our own community of thinking and action, we want
to get to know and work with each other. Ours will be an active and ambitious
learning community, both one and many at the same time, as is feminism! Tuesday
Everyone Seminars will be 3 pm – 4:40 pm at ARC 1101, while our Thursday
break-out seminars will be 0301: 3 pm – 3:50 pm at TYD 2109; 0304 3 pm – 3:50
pm at KEB 1200 respectively. The Break-out seminars will be led by WMST
graduate students Cheyenne Stevens and Sara Haq.
We
will not be using Canvas in this class, but rather working with Blogger, a
public online site, using it for class multimedia presentations, for class
preparation and review, and maybe for other possibilities! Please bookmark our
class site: http://2014wmst259.blogspot.com
All
students please do come to office hours to just talk. The TAs
and I want to get to know each of you personally! This should be
a very fun class, demanding we hope in the most satisfying ways, and full of
comradeship and excitement. We all want to know how the
class is working for you, what touches and excites you, how your projects are
going. So please make a point of coming to office hours and opening up
conversations!
Let us know in office hours or after class when you need
help, the sooner the better. If you
have any kind of disability, whether apparent or non-apparent, learning,
emotional, physical, or cognitive, please contact Katie as appropriate to
discuss reasonable accommodations for your access needs. Folks who need time
from class to observe religious holidays, please contact Katie ASAP to make any
arrangements necessary. Please note that Thursday seminars will not meet on 25
September, for Rosh Hashanah.
===
explore our readings!
Everyone will read our “book-museum” and a work of literary art:
· Pérez. 2007. Chicana Art. Duke. 0822338688 (also on Kindle but without pictures,
which is a problem)
· Butler. 2000 [1993]. Parable of the Sower. Grand Central. 9780446675505
(also Kindle & audiobook)
Everyone will read these handbooks to art, social movements, and
feminisms:
· Freeland. 2002. But Is It Art? Oxford. 0192853678 (also
Kindle & Google ebook)
· Reed. 2005. The Art of Protest. Minnesota. 0816637717 (also Kindle and Google
ebook)
In Collaboration with
your Thursday seminar group, you will also choose ONE of these books too!
· hooks. 2000. Feminism Is for
Everybody. South End. 9780896086289
· Polletta. 2006. It Was Like a
Fever. Chicago. 9780226673769 (also Kindle)
· Paoletti. 2013. Pink and Blue.
Indiana. 9780253009852 (also Kindle)
· Keating. 2012. Transformation Now!
Illinois. 9780252079399 (also Kindle)
· Dixon. 2014. Another Politics.
California. 9780520279025 (also Kindle)
· SPECIAL ISSUE OF JOURNAL FEMINIST
STUDIES, ON FOOD & ECOLOGY: 40/2 (2014) http://www.feministstudies.org/issues/vol-40-49/40-2.html
===
All
readings are also on 24 hr. book reserve at McKeldin Library. Links for these
books' ISBN numbers online were the first things to go up on our class site. Notice that
several of the books are available on the Kindle, an ebook reader. You do not
need the Kindle device to read these, but can download an app for your
computer/laptop or smart phone or iPad to read them without one:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=sa_menu_karl3?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771
Some are available as Google eBooks. To learn how to read these on your
computer, look at:
http://books.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=185545&hl=en Usually
the price is a bit lower for each of these, some for less than $10, although
you cannot resell such books. Please ensure access to as many of our course
books as you can, bring those you have obtained or notes about them to the
first class if possible.
You are required to read
these books, not to buy them, or even to own them. All are on reserve at
McKeldin and many are available at other libraries. Share them, rent them,
borrow them, xerox them, scan them. Fair use means producing copies for your
own private research use. Of course you can help others in obtaining originals
for such fair use copying. Always be sure to locate your books long before you
need to read them, even if one or more turn out to be just coming out or even
out of print. Find what you can and read them anyway! ISBN numbers are included to make ordering them
easier if you wish to buy them.
===
how the class will be organized
This will
be a media and technology intensive course. So-called constructionist
learning and collaboration open up our analysis of women, art, and culture, and
our introduction to the field of women’s studies, as well as to activist
practices. Bring your own laptop, netbook or iPad if you can, to connect across
media, to become increasingly savvy about web resources, and to use data
visualizations and virtual environments for cognition and collaboration.
Throughout the course we will share resources for all these.
The course will involve both taking things in, absorbing
them and learning to put them in context; and also actively using what we come
to know, sharing it others, thinking on one's feet, brainstorming and
speculating, figuring out how it all fits together. Both require careful preparation before class and keeping up with the
reading. Some educators call these forms passive and active learning. One
can take in and absorb more complicated stuff than one can work with and work
out, at least at first. We do both in the class, but we also realize that
active learning requires patience and imagination, a bit of courage to try
things out without knowing something for sure yet, and a willingness to play
around with being right and wrong, guessing and a lot of redoing.
The website for our entire class is located at: http://2014wmst259.blogspot.com
This is where graphics, mini-lecture materials and notes,
communications and assignment help, and other vital class information and
presentations are displayed. You can
complete your assignments properly only if you stay very familiar with this
website. Bookmark it immediately! Plan on visiting our class site and
reading email every couple of days, and not just a few minutes before class.
These are class requirements. If you have any difficulties getting access to
these resources come and talk to us as soon as possible. Any announcements about cancellations due to weather or other
considerations, and general class requirements will be sent out on coursemail and
put up on the website and you need to see them quickly. To get help go to
OIT's Help Desk at the Computer and Space Sciences Building, Rm. 1400, or
checkout the help desk webpage at: http://www.helpdesk.umd.edu/
Get to
know as many people in the class as you can, especially those in your Thursday
seminar group, share contact information with these folks and if in
emergencies anyone must be absent, support each other with class notes and
discussion. Everyone should also have several class buddies to rely on. We will
introduce ourselves early in the semester, and buddies can help each other
brainstorm projects, edit each others’ work, provide feedback before assignments
are due, and help each other work in drafts, starting projects early and
completing them in good time.
===
graded assignments: individual museum paper, group flyer and event,
individual or partner curation project, individual learning analysis, logbook
Five
kinds of assignments are required in this class: • an
individual essay about your museum visits & how you know something is
feminist, • a group (your section) project in which together you create a
feminist event, real or fictional, a flyer to let folks know about it, and a
collective definition of the term “feminist,” included on the flyer as an
important feature of event; all presented by group in class (presentation
participation is required to receive a grade) • an individual or partner
curation project linking intersectional identities and feminist art activisms
(a presentation of this work is also part of its grade) • a final learning
analysis (a presentation of which will also be part of its grade) • a running
cumulative logbook, turned in with each assignment, showing exactly which
graded assignments you have done so far and what there is still to do. LOOK AT
CLASS WEBSITE TO DOWNLOAD ADDITIONAL GUIDELINES FOR EACH ASSIGNMENT AS THEY ARE
AVAILABLE!
The
logbook will help you organize your projects. It also allows your TAs
and Katie to know how you are progressing in the class and keeps open our lines
of communication about assignments, attendance, and concerns. It is turned in four
times during the semester, each time you get credit for that particular
assignment only as accompanied by the logbook, and credit for all the
assignments of the course requires the final cumulative version turned in on
the last day of class with the final version of the learning analysis. Together
the museum paper and the group feminism project count for 1/3 of your grade, the
curation project for another 1/3, and the learning analysis, info sheet, and all
logbooks together count for the final 1/3.
Notice
that presentations are an essential part of most assignments,
necessary in order to receive credit for the assignment. That means you must
build into your understanding of each one the idea that anything written is not
all that is necessary to complete your work and to get credit for it. If an
emergency or illness kept you from participation in presentations, to get full
credit you will have to meet with three other students to share your work and
their work outside class, and write up the experience and what you learned from
it to complete the presentation portion and to get your grade.
Obviously attending class faithfully and taking good notes
will make all this work a lot easier. Lecture materials are displayed on the
class website, to be reviewed at any time. In
college courses ALWAYS use your projects to demonstrate how you uniquely put
together, or synthesize, class readings, lectures and discussion. Make a point
of displaying that you are doing all the reading and attending all the classes.
Doing this clearly and carefully will demonstrate that this is your own work,
and ensure your credit for honesty and for real engagement with the course.
Wondering how grades are determined? What they mean?
v A work is
excellent, unusually creative and/or
analytically striking
v B is fine work of high quality, though not as
skilled, ambitious, or carefully presented as A
v C is average or usual work fulfilling the
assignment; should not be hasty, or insufficiently collaborated
v D work is
below average or incomplete; shows many
difficulties or cannot follow instructions
v F work is
not sufficient to pass; unwillingness
to do the work, or so many difficulties unable to complete
Remember, you can always talk to Katie and / or your TA
about grades and your evaluation concerns during office hours anytime. Feedback is always available, be sure to ask for it when you are
concerned about it and note that grades
are not the only sort of feedback either, or even the best sorts. Indeed,
try not to let the grades structure your learning experiences wholly: it is the
learning that matters most! Don’t eat the
menu (the grades) instead of the meal (learning)!
===
what to
do when you must unavoidably miss class, perhaps for illness:
· TALK TO AT LEAST TWO CLASS BUDDIES IMMEDIATELY. Before you even
come back to class, call them up or email them and find out if any thing you
need to plan for is happening the day you return, and make sure that you know
about any changes in the syllabus. Try to have done the reading and be as
prepared as possible to participate in class and with your projects when you
return.
· MAKE A DATE TO MEET WITH CLASS BUDDY TO GET NOTES AND DISCUSS WHAT
WENT ON IN CLASS WHILE YOU WERE GONE. You
are responsible for what happened in class while you were gone. As soon as
possible, get caught up with notes, with discussions with buddies and finally
with all the readings and assignments. Always talk with class buddies first. This is the most important way to know what
went on when you were gone and what you should do.
· AFTER YOU HAVE GOTTEN CLASS NOTES AND TALKED ABOUT WHAT WENT ON IN
CLASS WITH BUDDIES, THEN MAKE APPOINTMENT TO SEE YOUR TA. If you just miss one
class, getting the notes and such should be enough. But if you've been absent
for more than a week, be sure you make an appointment with your TA and possible
with Katie, and come in and discuss what is going on. We all want to know how
you are doing and how we can help. Or, while you are out, if it's as long as a
week, send your TA or Katie email (Katie at katking@umd.edu) and let us know
what is happening with you, so we can figure out what sort of help is needed.
You may need to contact section members or class buddies as well.
· IF YOU ARE OUT FOR ANY EXTENDED TIME be sure you contact Katie as
well as your TA. Keep all of us up to date on what is happening, so that any
arrangements necessary can be made. If you miss too much class you will have to
retake the course at another time. But if you keep in contact, depending on the
situation, perhaps accommodations can be made. Since attendance is crucial for
the process of this special course and thus for your final grade LET KATIE AND
TA KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING so that we can help as much and as soon as possible.
· THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN EXCUSED ABSENCE AND ANYTHING ELSE:
generally speaking you are only allowed to make up work you missed if you have
an excused absence. That the absence is
excused does not mean you are excused from doing the work you missed, but that
you allowed to make it up. Katie usually permits people to make up any work
they miss, and does not generally require documentation for absences. Be sure
to give explanations in your logbook and do
make up all work you have missed.
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