496G Arts and Literacy

Art and Literacy: Study Away to Los Angeles

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Course Description 

Language is an act of imagination, literate or visual. Visual arts, language arts, and other forms of expressive arts (i.e. music, dance, drama) incorporate their unique systems of expressive elements in a narrative, expository, and persuasive manner. ART 496/496G: Art and Literacy is designed to help visual art, elementary, and arts & humanities pre-service teachers by direct hands on experience of “Living through” the arts infused, cross disciplinary instruction, featuring two or more subject areas addressing a common theme, concept, or problem.

We will explore strategies of arts and literacy infused model by studying parallel relationships between the arts and literacy, styles, and expressive characteristics as they relate to P-12 school curriculum and instruction. Brief survey of workshops in drama, dance, and visual arts will be planned for the first week of this class.

Two art images will be introduced for study; School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino and Scramble for Africa by Yinka Shonibare, MBE. We begin with art criticism process focusing on interpretative process for each image followed by artist research, character development, group role-play, art making extension activities, and creation of stage props. Drama, dance, music, and KET tool kit workshops are planned provided by various content specialists.

Much of the class sessions will be devoted to the dramatic art interpretation process, stage and technical coordination, dress rehearsal, and the final stage performance.  Through the aesthetic and dramatic process, we will choose characters in the images, act out in an interpretative manner, and speak from the voices of those select characters.  The dramatic interactions among differing aesthetic viewpoints will create meaningful dialogues and help understand ways fabrics have been interweaved for unique cultural experiences, perspectives, and artistic achievements.

The final stage performance will be scheduled at Russell Miller Theatre on May 25, Friday as a conclusion of the course prior to LA trip.

For the second week, the class then will travel to L.A. We will visit J. P. Getty Center of Los Angeles Getty Museum, http://www.getty.edu/index.html, the Autry National Center of the American West, http://theautry.org for a guided tour and Native American story telling workshop with Geri Keams, Navajo Storyteller, Actress, and Author born and raised in the Painted Desert of Arizona, http://gerikeams.com

Then, we will visit “Hobart Shakespeareans” of Hobart Boulevard Elementary School, http://www.hobartshakespeareans.org to experience the successful model of language, visual, dramatic arts, and music by inner-city Los Angeles school teacher Rafe Esquith. Rafe visited WKU campus in November 2011 sponsored by the Mary E. Hensley Lecture Series.