ACL6001: A Multiplicity of Ways: Epistemologies In the 21st Century

There are many different ways to experience and understand the world. Creative, culturally based forms of expression serve to expand on those ways. However, colonial practices, alive in academic, arts, and cultural environments globally, homogenize ways of knowing, understanding, and evaluating the world around us. These epistemologies are grounded in collecting data, building analysis, logic and theory that fits the data. Other ways of being, knowing, and seeing are equally meaningful, and are critical in efforts to understand the complex world we live in and create the possibility for transformational social change that is relevant to multiple human experiences and contexts. This course will guide students in developing a framework to better understand and act in meaningful and interdependent ways in the world. Students will explore concepts, worldviews and art and cultural practices from many points of view, challenging the concept of universality in favor of a multiplicity of ways of being, knowing, seeing, and doing. Students will be better prepared to address the pressing needs of arts and cultural organizations and social movements within a global and multicultural context.

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