Pamela I. Sneed

How is writing art? How is writing art connected to writing about art? How do various theories of poetics shape writing as art? This online course addresses the craft of writing in view of urgent issues of contemporary art. Students will develop and manage their own blogs and participate in continuing online discussions. The final requirement will be a finished body of writing. Poetry and Protest, Writing for Performance is a course designed to explore a multiplicity of ways of writing for page, stage and gallery with a focus on performance writing . One need not have experience writing but more openness and interest. Through assigned texts, prompts and viewing video performances, we will experiment with ways to write and to take the personal story, experiences and shape them into non-traditional texts used for solo performance. We will examine many forms of the personal monologue: autobiographical, fictional, topical and character driven, as well as poetry, the poetic series and rendering poetry visually. There will be a particular emphasis in this class on the language of protest woven with the autobiographical and historical: the interface of the personal and political. We will write and also examine writing for performance through the lens of culture, current events, race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. The goal of the course is for students to further develop voice, work on form and content and to create a body of text that reflects them uniquely. Ultimately the body of text created could be foundations of a performance or gallery project which could also involve technology, visual art, dance, and music. Some of the artists surveyed will be James Baldwin, Sekou Sundiata, Amiri Baraka, Dorothy Allison, Audre Lorde, Ocean Vuong, Ntozake Shange, Robin Coste Lewis, Fred Moten, Layli Longsoldier, Chimamanda Adichie, myself and more. Students should be prepared to write, experiment, share with the group, read, record and present their work to others. Students will develop and manage their own online blogs and participate in online discussion.. There will be bi-weekly writing assignments and viewing prompts The final project will be 10-12 page creative writing assignment.

Human Rights and Art: A Study of Social Movements is a course about art, activism, and writing about art in relationship to history, philosophy, social studies, literature, film, and ideas of the human. We will investigate ways artists in a variety of cultures articulate and express human rights, acting as conduits and catalysts who respond locally and globally to its abuses. In particular, we will investigate the uses of poetry, performance, theater, and visual arts. Through writing prompts, essays, and online discussions we will examine art produced by and not limited to AIDS activism of the early 90s, feminism, the LGBTQ liberation struggle, the South African anti-apartheid struggle, liberation struggles in Egypt and the Middle East, and the current Black Lives Matter movement. Also, we will examine the current resurgence in political art. We will look at many philosophers, historians, and essayists including Hannah Arendt, Kevin Bales, along with artists such as Pussy Riot, Simone Leigh, Carlos Martiel, Karen Finley, Kara Walker, and Ai WeiWei.