With an arts-research approach, this course allows students to explore and respond to contemporary issues while developing their own craft and building a creative learning community. The course surveys the roots of contemporary art and pedagogy and the shift to postmodernism, including influential figures, theories, and trends and their impact on art education. A deep-dive investigation into masks as universal but complex, culturally-embedded phenomena provides students in the course with a unique lens. Students investigate the popularity of masks in global contemporary art and the roots of these masks that speak to culture, identity, privacy, and other issues of the moment. Responding to course content by creating art, students stretch and expand their knowledge of the mask form and use it as a tool to examine pressing issues in the contemporary art classroom. The in-depth focus enriches the background, ideas, and approaches teachers can bring to mask making, a valuable but often challenging project, but also use as a model. Through e-portfolio and online discussions, students create a community of learners. A culminating project, such as a unit plan or autoethnography, synthesizes traditional research methods with arts-research insights and tackles the complexities that arise in a multi-cultural curriculum, such as appropriation, transnationalism, and ahistoricism.

Note that this information may change at any time. Please visit the MyBU Student Portal for the most up-to-date course information.