Katherine Smith
VPS 395 Topics in Visual Practices: Building on Dana
This course will consider the past, present, and future of the Dana Fine Arts Building, including its various historical contexts: its position on the Agnes Scott campus, in the development of Decatur, in postwar urban planning in Atlanta, in postmodern architectural discourses (in spatial and symbolic dimensions) in the United States. We will look closely at the history of the building, its uses and transformations, with eyes on changes necessary to ensure greater accessibility and new technologies to best support interdisciplinarity in the Creative Arts. Students in the course will become part of a collaborative team to design and produce the exhibition about the building to open in spring 2025.
We envision a wide range of topics related to the project. Students with interests in the numerous definitions and effects of the spaces we occupy will benefit from this course, including but not limited to art, architectural history, art history, American studies, communication, digital media, history, library science and archival studies, museum studies, philosophy, physiology, psychology, public health, sociology.
We will work closely with students in Three-Dimensional Thinking and Critical Disability Studies, and we will together use the Dalton Gallery as a classroom/workshop/design lab to develop materials–historical, visual, programmatic–for the exhibition.
Nell Ruby
VPS 343 Three-Dimensional Thinking
This course practices three-dimensional art with a focus on mass, space, and light. Emphasis is on exploration of materials and conceptual development. Projects may include sculptural, environmental, time-based, sound-based, and kinetic works.
In fall 2024 his course will consider the ways that we understand and represent architecture in 3-D forms, in our building and in our neighborhood, in collaboration with students in VPS 395. Students will study details of the building and create maquettes to be included in the spring exhibition. They will also work on the plans for increased accessibility in collaboration with students in WGSS 324.
Lauran Whitworth
WS 324 Critical Disability Studies
This course surveys key concepts, themes, methods, and debates in the interdisciplinary field of Disability Studies. It is attentive to the ways that disability intersects with other categories of identity, such as gender, sexuality, and race. Possible topics include: histories of disability rights activism, theoretical approaches to disability, queerness and disability, bioethics, media representations of disability, and disability and art.
One aspect of the exhibition is the planning for future implementation of ADA standards into an historical building. This course is relevant to those plans, which will be part of the exhibition, as well as a complementary exhibition (also spring 2025) by Anna Carnes, which will show art related to accessibility, ability, accommodation.
