A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.

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Melissa Raman Molitor

Associate Professor, Adjunct

Contact

Bio

Melissa teaches in both the Art Education and Art Therapy departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Education: BFA & BA Psychology, 1997, University of Michigan; MA Art Therapy, 1999, SAIC. Credentials: Registered, Board Certified Art Therapist; Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. Concurrent Position: Founding Director, Evanston ASPA; Evanston City Arts Council, Chair. Exhibitions: SAIC Galleries, Chicago; Evanston Art Center, Evanston; Gallery 901, Evanston. Professional Presentations: Northwestern University; YWCA; American Art Therapy Association; Illinois Art Therapy Association; Mount Mary College, WI. Professional Service: Evanston Public Library Racial Equity Task Force Member; Evanston Made, Board of Directors; Connection Arts Chicago, Board of Directors; Illinois Art Therapy Association, Board of Directors. Awards: Evanston Art Center Curatorial Fellowship; Illinois Arts Council Individual Artist Grant; Evanston Arts Council Cultural Fund Grant; Evanston Community Foundation E-Town Innovation Grant; Northwestern University Racial Equity and Community Partnership Grant.

Melissa’s art and professional practices coalesce in the creation of liminal spaces that employ art as a form of critical consciousness. Her art making involves the exploration of personal and collective identity through fibers, assemblage and installation. Informed by traditional art and ritual practices, her work explores the mapping of cross-cultural journeys and the process of creative placemaking. Her therapeutic work draws on the power of art in fostering human connection and community care, and employing multimedia to engage people in discourse and action towards racial equity and social justice.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course explores the use of ritual and art making for personal and social practice. Students reflect on ritual as part of daily life, familial rituals, cultural rituals, and life-cycle rituals, and examine the process by which art embodies, represents, and transforms them. The exploration of ritual and making as a form of engagement, participation, and collaboration provides context for class discussion, group projects, and individual work. The role that ritual and making play in encouraging personal well-being, and fostering community is discussed and explored both in class and through off-campus visits.

Class Number

1252

Credits

3

Description

In the work of becoming and being an educator, it is necessary and important to comprehend the evolving ways human development is understood, engaged, and implicated in the teaching of children, adolescents and adults. Humans are, to put it simply, different. And it is these differences that present opportunities and challenges in teaching and learning. This course offers an interdisciplinary investigation into evolving conceptions of human development, including, but not limited to, psychological, legal, historical, and sociological frameworks. Additionally, students will explore the histories of childhood as they impact and have impacted the material culture of schools and school design.

Investigating evolving conceptions of human development will provide teacher candidates with interdisciplinary perspectives to build their own understanding of students as subjects in formation. This includes gaining theoretical, historical, and pedagogical knowledge on a range of developmental issues in education. Readings include works by John Dewey, W.E.B. DuBois, Tom Shakespeare, Cris Mayo, Deborah Britzman, Stephen Vassallo, Alexandra Lange, Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, and Maria Montessori as well as overviews of Disability, Race Conscious, and Queer Theories in education.

Course work includes an essay questioning & responding to human development, an analysis of childhood development as illustrated in children's literature, an interpretation of adolescence as represented through short films, along with a midterm and final project documenting the work of learning throughout the semester.

Class Number

1089

Credits

3