Toward a Media History of Art and Design Education

Instructional forms function surreptitiously, as actors that help determine subjectivity. Yet we rarely think about how ordinary classroom tools actually circumscribe the ideas and practices that come across to students, let alone how these tools convey ideologies or inscribe power structures. We invite proposals for papers that scrutinize the educational media of art and design instruction critically and reflect upon their social effects - from the reinforcement of patriarchy to the modeling of democracy - in a global context. Papers might approach the topic in broad strokes; how, for example, did the advent of photo-mechanical reproduction, moving images, and sound recording transform educational practices and philosophies when these media were introduced? How has the architecture of instructional spaces literally and figuratively placed students in relation to their teachers and to concepts of agency? And what of the design of the pedagogical apparatuses - like drafting tables, blackboards, and taborets - that populate the spaces of European and North American classrooms? Papers also might address the history of specific educational forms - like the wax tablet, plaster cast, squared paper, color wheel, nude model, slide presentation, visualization software, or video lecture. What forms once ubiquitous in art and design instruction have become extinct, and why? Additionally, papers could probe the origin, affordances, and ideologies of specific exercises - like copying, model making, the conceptual prompt, the group critique, or the examination in various socio-cultural contexts. We welcome all submissions, seeking as much range as possible across historical period and geographic area.

Please submit a title and an abstract of no more than 250 words for your proposed paper, as well as your name and institutional affiliation to:

Emily Ruth Capper, University of Minnesota, ercapperumn.edu
and
Jeffrey Saletnik, Indiana University Bloomington, saletnikindiana.edu

For the conference details, please visit: https://forarthistory.org.uk/conference/2023-annual-conference