News
Posted on July 29, 2021 at: 2:59 pm
Project title: Art and Positive Change: Using the Arts for Antiracism, Cultural Diversity, and Social Justice.
In Spring 2021, the Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) subcommittee implemented a multiphase project that included:
• two student workshops, facilitated by performing artists Idris Goodwin and Lela Aisha Jones
• a call for students to submit creative work related to the theme of Art and Positive Change, and
• the development of the VPA Creative Gallery , a virtual space where students creative submissions can be accessed and viewed by the broader public.
The workshop facilitators shared how they address anti-racism and social justice through their respective art forms, encouraging participants to take stock of the multicultural diversity in their lives and explore ways to express this creatively.
The Creative Gallery includes different artistic categories (i.e. music, visual art, digital art, poetry) and is intended as resource that advances access to diverse perspectives and affects positive change.
Adjacent is an example of a work submitted by UD student Brandan Henry, entitled But Whos Counting (charcoal on paper)
Posted on July 26, 2021 at: 1:39 pm
We spent the spring collectively analyzing State k-12 history standards from all 50 states, plus Washington DC, in order to identify a core group of model State approaches to encouraging inclusive and diverse curriculum and teaching through their standards. Carol Wong and Tamar Levy are currently coding the data that we have collected from this core group of identified State history Standards. We will also code the Delaware State History Standards.
We plan to share our results both at UD and nationally.
Posted on July 22, 2021 at: 11:45 am
Prison Education: First State, Second Chance
Associates in Art Program(AAP)
Center for the Study and Prevention of Gender Based Violence
Grant report
7/19 /2021
Pathways to Education for Incarcerated People
In Spring 2021, eleven incarcerated students enrolled for credit in courses that will count towards the Associate in Arts degree. This is a significant expansion from the handful of students who have received credit for Inside Out courses in the past and provides a meaningful step forward towards our goal of creating a degree pathway that will include Inside Out, online and in person courses.
This semester, tuition for these 11 students was covered thanks to the generosity of the UDARI committee, Professional and Continuing Studies and the members of our subcommittee. Instructors taught as volunteers. Members of the subcommittee have been working with internal and external stakeholders to build this capacity into a sustainable program that can serve students’ needs for degrees and certificates that facilitate their full employment. The Center for the Study and Prevention of Gender Based Violence has agreed to house First State First Chance going forward, in continued collaboration with the Associate in Arts Program and Professional and Continuing Studies, and is exploring how best to offer certificates for incarcerated students. Undergraduate researcher Jules Lowman interviewed colleagues across the country to learn how other universities provide education to incarcerated students, the subcommittee as a whole remained active and engaged, and has now turned towards finding ways to staff future courses for incarcerated students and to resources the program.
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Posted on at: 11:40 am
With the support of the University of Delaware’s Anti-Racism Initiative (UDARI), we were able to organize a series of programs in the Department of Art History in the spring of 2021 that centered the goal of developing anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-oppressive methods of pedagogy. The award of $2,000.00 allowed us to invite leading scholars, from Art History and beyond, to engage with graduate students and faculty on these issues. This series of programs provided the graduate students in Art History with critical training in new approaches to pedagogy and antiracism practices in both academic spaces and the art museum. We then drew upon the lessons offered by our guest speakers in a pedagogical workshop with Dr. Adam Foley, Associate Director of Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Delaware. These events represented a first step toward addressing an identified need for better pedagogical training for graduate students in Art History, and were the culmination of a year-long, graduate student-led antiracism effort in the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware.
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Posted on at: 11:35 am
Below is a short paragraph/abstract of the project/publication. For reference, among other things, I will touch on the “Chemistry of Dyeing” online workshop, and two other workshops part of a DE Humanities grant. (The First People of the First State: Restoring our Ancestral Knowledge). The publication is going to the Journal of Chemical Education, which is preparing a special issue on Diversity and Inclusion.
I’ll continue working on the white paper on the air. Is white paper because it is so general that you can scribble on the blank/white page? Were they submitted back in the day in the whitest paper? Hypotheses…
Dyed archaeological textiles. Herbal remedies. Improvement of food’s nutritional properties. These are only three examples that were discovered and exploited by Indigenous communities around the globe, many of which still exist today. The scientific method starts with an observation, followed by steps that include a testable hypothesis and experimentation. The three examples provided exemplify that the earliest scientists are of Indigenous origin, as dyed textiles still show their vibrant colors (discovered how chromophores bond); quinone remains used to treat malaria (treated stomach maladies with Cinchona officinalis); and nixtamalized corn continues to feed millions (made readily available niacin, increasing maize’s nutritional value). Indigenous communities tend to live below the poverty threshold and are frequently discriminated and undermined, so this work presents selected discoveries and contributions made by Indigenous peoples as an ally strategy. The work and teaching idea has two main objectives: (1) to showcase “the earliest scientists” by connecting historical background with scientific discovery, and (2) to attract and retain people to STEM fields, using Indigenous knowledge.
