SPCUNY SEMINARS

One SPCUNY Seminar is offered per semester, meeting at The Graduate Center, CUNY and in nearby community and arts spaces. Focused on the practice, theory, and history of socially engaged art, the Seminars are a key component of the fellowship year for SPCUNY Student Fellows and Actionists, who are required to take both the Fall and Spring Seminars and engage with each contrasting curriculum. Other CUNY graduate students—outside the SPCUNY student cohort—who are similarly engaged in social justice and art topics can also enroll.

Past and current SPCUNY Seminars are represented below. For more details, or if you are a CUNY graduate student interested in enrolling, contact us.

FUTURE SEMINARS: SCHEDULE

History and Theory of Socially Engaged Art

Fall 2024 (Instructor: Gregory Sholette)
Mondays, 2–5 PM
The Graduate Center, CUNY

Socially Engaged Archives: In Theory, In Practice

Spring 2025 (Instructors: Chloë Bass, Alexandra Juhasz)
Mondays, 6:30–9:30 PM
The Graduate Center, CUNY

PAST SEMINARS

SPRING 2024

History and Theory of Socially Engaged Art

ARTS 777 (Queens College) / EES 79903 (Graduate Center)

Mondays, 2–4 PM

An increasing number of artists, curators, and critics have recently turned their energies toward a new type of participatory socially engaged art making. What had previously been marginalized is now gaining more mainstream attention, with a new prominence in museums, biennials, but also on the streets and other public spaces.  Even the New York Times has hailed the emergence of this tendency as “social practice art.”  The aim of this seminar is to survey, critique and historicize the theory and practice of social practice art as well as activist, interventionist, public, participatory and community based art operating within and across fields such as performance, urban studies, environmental science and other socially engaged disciplines. The class will focus on such questions as: Why is it useful, even necessary, to understand the history and theory of social practice art? Where should we look to find the historical roots of social practice art? Are these within the history of art, or external to it, or crossing a line between two spheres of cultural interpretation and understanding? And what is the “social”? In an increasingly privatized society how do we define and operate within a concept of the public sphere? And how are both mainstream and alternative types of cultural institutions responding to the increasing interest in socially engaged art by emerging artists? Through lectures, readings, discussions and student research presentations we will seek to position socially-engaged visual culture and the shifting role of the artist within an historical, ideological, and critical framework. If possible, guest speakers and offsite visits will also be added as available.

Gregory Sholette

Gregory Sholette

SPCUNY Co-Director

FALL 2023

Socially Engaged Art through Practice and Theory

IDS 81630 (Graduate Center) / ARTS 778 (Queens College)

Mondays, 2–5 PM

How do we approach problems that we encounter in the world? How does our work connect to our immediate world and beyond? What is the relationship between our material and creative practices? How can each of these practices inform one another? Bringing together MA, MFA, and PhD students from Social Practice CUNY, Queens College, Brooklyn College, the CUNY Graduate Center and beyond, this course will look at contemporary socially engaged art through both a theoretical and a practical lens. Students can expect to apply their knowledge to their existing individual research and community-based project work (if part of the SPCUNY cohort), or to develop early ideas for research and creative work in the fields of socially engaged and community-based art making. This class provides opportunities for social practice artists to develop archives of supporting materials, experiment with different mediums and ideas and give feedback. In a supportive community of practice, we will experiment with tools, approaches and materials to strengthen our creative practice. From this work, we will develop a collective community mapping project, and, Individually, each student will create weekly zines to document their journey throughout the class. This course will include off-site visits to connect with socially engaged art practitioners and organizations throughout New York City.

Class News and Materials

On September 20th, we welcomed guest speaker, Alex Paik, Artist, Founder and Director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid, a non-profit network of artist-run spaces and organizer of Correspondence Archive, an online series of conversations between artists of color. He was recently quoted in the NY Times about the importance of alternative spaces in NYC.

Natalia Nakazawa

Natalia Nakazawa

2023–24 Social Practice Teaching Scholar-in-Residence

SPRING 2023

Socially Engaged Archives: In Theory, In Practice

ARTS 778 (Queens College) / ARTS 731 (Queens College) / PIMA 7040 (Brooklyn College) / IDS 81630 (Graduate Center)

Wednesdays, 6:30–9:50 PM

Bringing together MA, MFA, and PhD students from Social Practice CUNY, Queens College, Brooklyn College, the CUNY Graduate Center and beyond, this team-taught course invites a consideration of archives (past, present, and future) as central to the development of community-based artmaking. Students will begin the semester working closely with Professor Alexandra Juhasz’s collection of AIDS activist videotapes from the first decade of the crisis to raise and respond to questions about analogue records, the archive, research, art, AIDS (particularly as affecting women, BIPOC communities, and sexuality)community engagement, and activism. Following this initial interaction, students will then apply their knowledge to use (and/or anticipate the creation of) archives related to their own individual research and community-based project work (if part of the SPCUNY cohort), or to develop creative responses and interventions utilizing Professor Juhasz’s materials.

Student projects will build from the research, performance, art, and activism of their own existing community and/or creative partners. They will draw inspiration from student projects produced by previous iterations of this course from Brooklyn College, sourcing and using archival material to prepare for, or understand more deeply, the necessity of the archival impulse (in its various forms) with regards to socially engaged art. How can we plan for the creation and inclusion of archives in our practices? What do existing archives mean for our current work? What can we learn working interdisciplinarily across the arts and humanities and between the academy and the community?

Chloë Bass

Chloë Bass

SPCUNY Co-Director
Alexandra Juhasz

Alexandra Juhasz

2022–23 Faculty Fellow/Distinguished Professor of Film at Brooklyn College

FALL 2022

History and Theory of Socially Engaged Art

ARTS 777 (Queens College) / EES 79903 (Graduate Center)

Mondays, 2–4 PM

An increasing number of artists, curators, and critics have recently turned their energies toward a new type of participatory socially engaged art making. What had previously been marginalized is now gaining more mainstream attention, with a new prominence in museums, biennials, but also on the streets and other public spaces.  Even the New York Times has hailed the emergence of this tendency as “social practice art.”  The aim of this seminar is to survey, critique and historicize the theory and practice of social practice art as well as activist, interventionist, public, participatory and community based art operating within and across fields such as performance, urban studies, environmental science and other socially engaged disciplines. The class will focus on such questions as: Why is it useful, even necessary, to understand the history and theory of social practice art? Where should we look to find the historical roots of social practice art? Are these within the history of art, or external to it, or crossing a line between two spheres of cultural interpretation and understanding? And what is the “social”? In an increasingly privatized society how do we define and operate within a concept of the public sphere? And how are both mainstream and alternative types of cultural institutions responding to the increasing interest in socially engaged art by emerging artists? Through lectures, readings, discussions and student research presentations we will seek to position socially-engaged visual culture and the shifting role of the artist within an historical, ideological, and critical framework. If possible, guest speakers and offsite visits will also be added as available.

SYLLABUS AND MATERIALS
Gregory Sholette

Gregory Sholette

SPCUNY Co-Director

SPRING 2022

Interdisciplinary Space Time Continuum: Work, and Ways of Working

ARTS 778 (Queens College) / ARTS 731 (Queens College) / IDS 81630 (Graduate Center)

Wednesdays, 6:30–9:50 PM

This graduate seminar brings together diverse practitioners and researchers working at the intersection of art, architecture, urban planning, publics, and social justice to examine real world projects in which they are currently engaged, what work means across disciplines, and how we develop, manage, and change our ways of working. Focused on action, communication, and responses to on-hand, practical concerns, the course serves as a clinic on interdisciplinary collaboration based on direct experience. Students will be divided into project working groups to support each others’ practices in an ongoing way, bringing their varied educational, work, and cultural backgrounds to the table as a way to workshop strategies, test solutions, and deepen the community engagement of each group member’s project. Where appropriate or relevant to a project site or topic, students are also invited to collaborate. With an emphasis on group reliance, mutual aid, and resource mapping, this course attempts to move away from harmful models of labor, and towards both practical outcomes throughout the semester, and replicable, productive practices and frameworks for future work.

As background/prerequisite to the course, each student must bring to the table a project in which they’re already engaged; relevant projects can exist across creative sectors, including visual arts, architecture and urban planning, theater and performance, literary arts, and socially engaged art. The course will involve visits to students’ project sites (as is possible within the confines of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic).

SYLLABUS
Chloë Bass

Chloë Bass

SPCUNY Co-Director

FALL 2021

History and Theory of Socially Engaged Art

ARTS 777 (Queens College) / ARTH 505-310 (Queens College) / ARTH 7453 (Queens College) / EES 79903 (Graduate Center)

Mondays, 6–8 PM

An increasing number of artists, curators, and critics have recently turned their energies toward a new type of participatory socially engaged art making. What had previously been marginalized is now gaining more mainstream attention, with a new prominence in museums, biennials, but also on the streets and other public spaces. Even the New York Times has hailed the emergence of this tendency as “social practice art.” The aim of this seminar is to survey, critique and historicize the theory and practice of social practice art as well as activist, interventionist, public, participatory and community based art operating within and across fields such as performance, urban studies, environmental science and other socially engaged disciplines. The class will focus on such questions as: Why is it useful, even necessary, to understand the history and theory of social practice art? Where should we look to find the historical roots of social practice art? Are these within the history of art, or external to it, or crossing a line between two spheres of cultural interpretation and understanding? And what is the “social”? In an increasingly privatized society how do we define and operate within a concept of the public sphere? And how are both mainstream and alternative types of cultural institutions responding to the increasing interest in socially engaged art by emerging artists? Through lectures, readings, discussions and student research presentations we will seek to position socially-engaged visual culture and the shifting role of the artist within an historical, ideological, and critical framework. If possible, guest speakers and offsite visits will also be added as available.

SYLLABUS AND MATERIALS
Gregory Sholette

Gregory Sholette

SPCUNY Co-Director