Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Examines various art forms and aesthetic expressions of select Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Reviews techniques and protocols for the gathering and preparation of materials and the use of ethnographic materials, and provides learning through hands-on practice. Students with credit for FNST 322 under the topic 'Indigenous Expressive Arts' with a focus in crafts may not take this course for further credit.

COURSE DETAILS:

For Summer 2017: FNST 383 is offered as  A SPECIAL CANADA 150 COURSE TOPIC

FNST 383: Weave it Back Together (Canada 150) Resource Exploitations and Species Extinctions
Indigenous craft, technologies, bioregionalisms (being in HomeLand Place), have been and remain viable avenues for intellectual discourse, eco-logical practice, involvement in a calendar round, among others, in order to create and maintain viable and sustainable community practices and securities. To live in the time of the last of every living thing, and its associated politics of hopelessness, disappointment and longing, in an Indigenous sense, may be met with community engagement, sense of personal purpose and affect, acts of reconciliation and remediation.

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The class is made up of lectures, readings, class discussions, and studio-based practice (participation in activities such as making (technology), storytelling, dance, song, discussions, lectures, readings, and examination of and practice) of techniques and sustainable technologies of Indigenous peoples.  Students will examine, observe, and create items demonstrating understanding of technologies that are sustainable in the Indigenous world, review the arts' ancestral line, protocols, reasons for existing, purpose, and contemporary forms.  Project possibilities include wool/bark textile weaving, wood/stone carving, bark/root/fiber basket weaving, bead/quillwork, ribbon/appliqué, patchwork, leatherwork, and/or other art/craft/technologies.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Class and Studio work are intended to introduce a diversity of art-making techniques as well as their associated rights, privileges, protocols, symbology (use of iconographic elements), canons (rules and cultural expectations), and meanings.  The hands-on activities will facilitate your awareness of traditional art practice, in a modern context.  The readings assist in defining techniques, meanings, and illustrate art styles.  You are expected to make things reflecting your own cultural and personal mores and ideas; this is not a class on replication of objects. Each project will be discussed in detail and relevant material will be announced at the appropriate time.  You will be graded on your synthesis of information and application of knowledge as shown in your discussions and projects.  The assignments are intended to introduce techniques and meanings, from an Indigenous perspective.  You will be asked to place this information in relevant context to the contemporary world. At midterm and final critique and discussion, you are expected to report on your findings, present your projects, and involve yourself in the discussions about other students’ works.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

Readings are free and available via the SFU Library webpage. 

Please be informed that this course necessitates a supply fee of approximately $60 to $120.00 per student. 
The money will be spent over the course of the semester for supplies as the need arises and/or travel funds to make modest field trips.  Students are responsible to gather all of their studio materials.  Instructor will give details in class.

REQUIRED READING:

RECOMMENDED READING: