CI1032: Creating Identities: Learning In and Through the Arts

“Creating Identities: Learning In and Through the Arts” gives you opportunities to create art in different mediums including storytelling, photomontage, movement, as well as a creative medium of your choice in order to reflect your understanding of a social justice issue. In CI 1032 you join a learning community for discussing, analyzing, and making meaning of this artistic production. No prior experience is needed; come with an open mind and imagination as well as a willingness to experiment. An important emphasis in the class will be on finding your own ways to transform ordinary materials. We will introduce you to specific artistic techniques and in turn you will learn to take creative risks, think metaphorically, explore the unknown, improvise, brainstorm, and invent your own methods of working. Each of you bring to the class different kinds of knowledge and abilities. To be successful in this course you need to be willing to work hard, to explore territory that may not be familiar to you, to be reflective about what you are doing, and to learn from your diverse classmates and in turn help them achieve the same goals. The instructors of “Creating Identities: Learning In and Through the Arts” shape the course with the assumption that identity is at the heart of educational experiences and that the habits of mind associated with the artistic production are primary vehicles for multimodal learning. We will experience how arts-based learning engenders higher order thinking, the creative process, reflection and perseverance. This course gives you the opportunity to both produce as well as analyze art in order to experience how creative expressions reveal aspects of our personal and social identities that have an impact on how we learn. Through mediums including photography, film, performance, music, painting and sculpture, we will explore how artists are influenced by cultural elements such as the built and natural environments, gender, religion, nationality, and socioeconomic status, and how artists, in turn, shape our perceptions of culture and identity. Through writing and discussion, we will consider how the arts can both reflect and impact our perceptions of identity and our reflections of ourselves as learners. As you move further into your academic studies and your career, you will intersect with people from differing cultures and places. The work in this class will help you become more comfortable with and welcome the benefits that come with intercultural learning. Interactions with classmates and cultural production of indigenous, immigrant, international and Western artists, allows you to have a greater understanding of, appreciation for and acceptance of the ways of knowing a variety of cultures can provide, and the confidence that you can reciprocate in kind.

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