UISA 175D - Activist Art

3 credit(s) High Impact Practice: Diversity
Art has a transformative power to engage people through their emotions and senses to educate, incite action and reaction. In this course, students will examine the ways creative individuals use film, literature, music, dance and visual art to inform, engage, symbolize and mobilize in social movements, and the ways in which their audiences/viewers have been activated by their work.

Our methodology will be the careful critique and analysis of works of art and their cultural contexts, the interrogation of art practices, and the examination of audience reactions to reveal embedded messages, tropes, and emotional sensory triggers that cause works and their creators to become symbolic and inspirational in social change movements. We will focus on the artist’s historical context, documented aim for the work, and then evaluate the historical, cultural and social context for the work as an “activist” artifact.

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