Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Course Outlines

Fall 2020 - EDUC 848 G001

Ideas and Issues in Aesthetic Education (5)

Class Number: 2690

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    Sep 9 – Dec 8, 2020: Tue, 4:30–9:20 p.m.
    Burnaby

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

This course relates critical ideas in aesthetics to questions concerning the nature, purpose, and provision of the arts (visual art, music, drama, dance, literature) in education.

COURSE DETAILS:

What is your aesthetic signature? This course relates critical ideas and practices in aesthetics to questions concerning the nature, purpose, and provision of the arts (visual art, music, drama, dance, literature) in education and life.

Reality check! This on-line course and all participating will tenderly embrace the challenges, possibilities, and downfalls that will inevitably arrive as we co-navigate Zoom and Canvas. Forgiveness, patience, resilience, and a spirit of adventure and commraderie will guide us through the semester. 

Details:
This course critically explores aesthetics and aesthetic education and living aesthetically in the context of arts education and everyday aesthetics. The course will address the key questions: What is the experience of aesthetics? What are its key concepts, purposes and methods? How might an understanding of aesthetics contribute to arts and aesthetic education? How might a philosophical understanding of aesthetics guide both inquiry and a teaching practice? What are the relationships between culture, urban environments, ecology, and identity and arts?

Participants will be encouraged to develop and articulate their own aesthetic signature and philosophy of aesthetics as it relates to their teaching and artistic practice. Particular emphasis will be on the aesthetics of place, object, and relationship as a contemporary issue in aesthetic education.

ZOOM CLASS DATES: Sept 15, 22, 29; Oct 6, Oct 20, Oct 27, Nov 3, Nov 17, Nov 24, Dec 1, Dec 8

CANVAS CLASS DATES: Oct 13, Nov 11

Lynn available for Zoom consultation upon request

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

  • Participants will be able to more clearly conceptualize and articulate their own aesthetic signature and understanding of aesthetics and how one’s aesthetic signature connects to their inquiry, research, art making, curriculum and teaching.
  • A broader understanding of what aesthetics is philosophically, socially, culturally, autobiographically, and the interconnection between these realms.
  • A deeper appreciation and phenomenological understanding to what it means to “live aesthetically.” Make the connections between aesthetics and inquiry, including the pedagogy of place, object, body, and relationship in the context of a variety of forms of art/performance within a digital space.
  • Participants will create a variety of aesthetic artefacts that will embody key artistic concepts and practices, and begin to create or further develop their aesthetic signature in a digital space.

Guest Speakers:

Kathryn Ricketts, Video Coat Flying
Celeste Snowber, place-based practice
Tetsuro Shigematsu, Family Story, Aesthetic Signature

Grading

  • Module 1: Creating Community. This is a Zoom event! 0%
  • Module 2: Objects that Matter. Canvas Sharing 0%
  • Module 3: Photo Voice. Through my window. Canvas Sharing 0%
  • Module 4: Place and Aesthetics: A digital arts-based project with presentation. Canvas and Zoom 50%
  • Module 5: Artist Statement on "A personal philosophy of aesthetics". Canvas sharing 50%
  • Module 6: Reading Club. Zoom Event 0%
  • Module 7: Aesthetic Zoom Moment! Zoom Event 0%

NOTES:

Completion of all assignments, readings and active participation and sharing are required.

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

There may be a cost in order to engage in your chosen aesthetic practice of noticing place. There will be a cost in securing a website and domaine name where you will be depositing your artefacts in anticipation of the digital portfolio that you will be creating throughout the two years of the Master of Arts Education program. This on-line website must be password protected. We will have a workshop to help you with the establishment of your aesthetic digital signature.

REQUIRED READING:

Fels, L. (2015). Woman Overboard: Pedagogical Moments of Performative Inquiry. In Susan Walsh, Barbara Bickel, and Carl Leggo, (Eds.) Arts-based and contemplative practices in research and teaching: Honoring presences. New York, N.Y.: Routledge.
(article will be available on Canvsas)


Lynn’s website:

http://performativeinquiry.ca


Celeste’s site-specific website: see specifically ReKnitting a Life

https://www.sfu.ca/education/faculty-profiles/csnowber/artistic-works/site-specific-performances.html

BC teenager photographs personal experiences of people around the world  “Creativity cannot be quarantined”

https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/b-c-teenager-photographs-personal-experiences-of-people-around-the-world

Need More than Netflix? These 15 Short Films are worth your time, See specifically, ‘Notes on Blindness’

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/opinion/coronavirus-documentaries-streaming.html


From The New York Times:
This Profile of Charlie Kaufman Has Changed
How do you write about Hollywood’s most self-referential screenwriter at a destabilizing moment in history? It takes more than one draft.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/magazine/charlie-kaufman.html?smid=em-share 


Leonard Cohen Suzanne (rare footage) BCC uploaded Jan 18, 2011
(no date)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIssqxixYp0


Leonard Cohen’s Muse Suzanne Verdal (2016)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY80R2Pb7LE

Leonard Cohen Sings Anthem (London, England, 2019) YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-BT6y_wYg

Aesthetic book or article of your choice. Fiction. Non-fiction. Poetry. Art book. Indulge. To be shared with break out group or whole class. (share, read aloud, your favourite passage, image, and why).


RECOMMENDED READING:

Arts-based and contemplative practices in research and teaching: Honouring presence.  (2015).  S. Walsh, B. Bickel, & C. Leggo (Eds.).  NY: Routledge. 978-0-4157-4387-7

Landscapes of aesthetic education.  (2011). Richmond, S. & Snowber, C. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4438-1396-9

Living artfully: Reflections from the far west coast. (2012). A. Sinner & C. Lowther, (Eds.) Toronto, ON: Key Publishing House. 9781926780146

Poetic inquiry III: Enchantments of Place (pp. 337-346). P. Sameshima, C. Leggo, K. James, & A. Fidyk, (Eds.). Wilmington, Delaware: Vernon Press.  978-1-62273-123-7

Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers . (1994)  Leonard Koren.  Berkeley, CA: Stonebridge Press.   ISBN 978-0-9814846-0-0

 

Graduate Studies Notes:

Important dates and deadlines for graduate students are found here: http://www.sfu.ca/dean-gradstudies/current/important_dates/guidelines.html. The deadline to drop a course with a 100% refund is the end of week 2. The deadline to drop with no notation on your transcript is the end of week 3.

Registrar Notes:

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS

SFU’s Academic Integrity web site http://www.sfu.ca/students/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating.  Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.

Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the University community.  Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the University. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the University. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html

TEACHING AT SFU IN FALL 2020

Teaching at SFU in fall 2020 will be conducted primarily through remote methods. There will be in-person course components in a few exceptional cases where this is fundamental to the educational goals of the course. Such course components will be clearly identified at registration, as will course components that will be “live” (synchronous) vs. at your own pace (asynchronous). Enrollment acknowledges that remote study may entail different modes of learning, interaction with your instructor, and ways of getting feedback on your work than may be the case for in-person classes. To ensure you can access all course materials, we recommend you have access to a computer with a microphone and camera, and the internet. In some cases your instructor may use Zoom or other means requiring a camera and microphone to invigilate exams. If proctoring software will be used, this will be confirmed in the first week of class.

Students with hidden or visible disabilities who believe they may need class or exam accommodations, including in the current context of remote learning, are encouraged to register with the SFU Centre for Accessible Learning (caladmin@sfu.ca or 778-782-3112).