Over the years, my teaching has taking me to non-profit organizations, after-schools, colleges and universities, museums, and, on occasion, within school settings. Full-blown classes, day-long workshops, multi-day ‘partage’, short workshops (‘wrkshp’) and a panoply of formats. And yes, I do like to design new types of teaching approaches, systems, environments, and… name them! Lessons, insights, curricula, gallery learning experiences, entire category of classes, syllabi: the tools, documents, frameworks of learning and teaching have also been of interest, with innovations brought forth when I’ve had the opportunity. And from the cureducator to the curator of individualized studies, from a founding director to the site-specific performer, I’ve also imagined and actually implemented visions for new types of ‘teachers’ and learning guides, naming them along the way in order to change the perception of who the teacher can be, and how the relationships can change. I’ve always been interested in these dynamics: entering into critical and creative engagement with a host of traditions and visions of teaching and learning from many different cultures, time periods and geographic regions. I’ve worked with students from various ethnic, linguistic, and economic backgrounds, from different age-groups and geographic regions (from toddlers to senior, Queens to Mumbai), in various settings: schools to senior centers, from professionals to colleagues.
My research in literature, art, design, is often embodied within the works themselves: I think of it as a praxis, since research/practice can only be fused, given that the research is also on form, style, and other parameters of the work at hand. A separate thread of research is less a praxis, but more action-based and, on occasion, research that allows articulation of a practice or a theory that then gets implemented (even there, I always leave the door open to the findings of action-based research and praxis).
I’ve truly had a grand time teaching and learning.
Since most of my teaching and research is now at the university level, first: a fun dive into what I’ve been doing the past few years:
Current and Past teaching affiliations with Prat Institute: a/Writing (mostly MFA and mentoring); b/Pratt Integrative Courses; c/Art and Design Education (museum education); d/Critical/Visual Studies (Connection of literature and art through various courses). Rank: Associate Professor. I’ve contributed in a variety of ways to all these departments: reviewing student applications, leading committees, mentoring of students and peers, creating professional development opportunities (PIC faculty), overseeing independent studies, fashioning partnerships (the MFA Writing residency program at Marble House).
An in-depth reading and analysis of literary works by writers from different regions and languages who end up writing in two languages (at least), more specifically those who write in a second later-acquired language. Prose, poetry, plays, essays, new genres and forms. Authors included Nabokov, Beckett, Parsa, Cioran, Chinese writers writing in Japanese (and vice-versa), and many more. Works were analyzed in the original languages. (Although this was an Ind Study, it is a topic of immense interest and relevance in our very ‘globalized’ world. The student and I both did an extensive amount of research, readings and discussions.) {Grace Zhang proposed this Ind Study–shout out to Grace…}
A required course for incoming and continuing MFA writing students. This course provides guided reading and writing, in conjunction with the mentored student’s navigation and progress in the other courses and program overall. Written pieces are assigned and reviewed, and student is guided to explore and strengthen their own poetics, aesthetics and direction in their writing practice.
This course invites students to shake up their work, create new genres and forms, fuse disciplines, take aesthetic and stylistic risks, and balance individual work with collaborations and political interventions. Through the study and making of avant-garde pieces, the questioning of canons, the cultivation of idleness (that’s right, doing nothing) and other radical actions, the class guides students to envision innovative paths for their future studies and projects. Go rogue. Be bold. And create groundbreaking work!
Fall/Spring semesters, 2014, 2015, 2016; upper level undergraduate students and graduate students; art and Design Education department (School of Art)
These two classes provide an in-depth theoretical and practical understanding of the growing field of museum education—one I dubbed ‘Museum Educatics’. They include an examination of the changes occurring in art and design educational paradigms within the museum world, the evolving nature of museums as institutions with educational missions, along with learning and interpretive theories unique to the museum context. The classes provide an extensive hands-on component devoted to the special methods, practices and skills associated with teaching with artworks, and in designing educational projects, programs and innovative learning experiences within the art and design museum settings. The courses also explore critical issues facing the field through theory, practice and the analysis of case studies, including audience diversity, collaboration with schools and communities, the rethinking of museum missions and practices, and the use of new technologies. Avant-Garde Museum Education further mines the new frontiers of museum educatics and provides opportunities for reflection, research and critical practice at various levels of innovation in the field.
Students examine the nature of various forces at play in the arenas of artistic and cultural production. The course addresses the dynamics of the evolving forms and functions of art in society and traces the cultural forces that bear upon the organization of creative activity. Various art-forms, artworks, cultural entities, and practices are studied as well as the historical development of ideas and institutions. The course will draw from theoretical and practical material, as well as illustrative case-studies from different regions of the world and different time-periods. Students will also have opportunities to visit museums and galleries and meet with professionals in the field. Classroom lectures on the Brooklyn campus will be supplemented with mandatory off-site assignments.
This course examines the varieties of interactions between literature and art from the 1870’s to World War II. The course delves into how theories and practices of poets and philosophers affected the works of visual artists, how schools of thought and action were formed around certain ideas that eradicated traditional divisions between the arts, and how groups of artists and literary figures devised visions that transcended existing categories, often radically defying boundaries, and putting into questions established conventions along with the very definitions of art.
This course provides an insider’s view of contemporary museum practice within the artworld, concentrating on several key areas, including exhibitions, conservation and education. We examine the changing role of museums in the arena of artistic and cultural production. Once associated only with warehousing cultural patrimony, contemporary museum practice is vibrant, diverse and at times controversial. The goal of the course is to provide a nuanced understanding of the theories underlying museum practice and how museums function within the context of the art world, and also within the broader context of the city. Classroom lectures on the Brooklyn campus will be supplemented with mandatory lectures and tours at MoMA.
In the museum world, at The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum and the Queens Museum (not all of these at all of them, but overall…), I
In partnerships, I:
And in afterschool and summer settings… Yes, we’re going way back, but it truly is relevant…