HNRS 304G: The Arts Respond to 2019-22

This unique book of monologues collates responses to the global pandemic in dramatic fashion, making for an anthology of work that is timely, moving, irreverent and at its best, transcendent. With over 50 monologues from the first three weeks of the project, edited by Howard Sherman, this is an important collection that documents an unprecedented moment in history whilst also offering practical resource for actors and performers.

Scholars from the fields of communication, theater, queer studies, media studies, performance studies, dance, visual arts, and fashion design, to name a few, collectively ask: What are the connections between African American arts, the work of social justice, and creative processes? If we conceive the arts as critical to the legacy of Black activism in the United States, how can we use that construct to inform our understanding of the complicated intersections of African American activism and aesthetics? How might we as scholars and creative thinkers further employ the arts to envision and shape a verdant society?

A timely and kaleidoscopic reflection on the importance of the arts in our society In the midst of a devastating pandemic, as theaters, art galleries and museums, dance stages and concert halls shuttered their doors indefinitely and institutional funding for entertainment and culture evaporated almost overnight, a cohort of highly acclaimed scholars, artists, cultural critics, and a journalist sat down to ponder an urgent question: Are the arts essential? Across twenty-five highly engaging essays, these luminaries join together to address this question and to share their own ideas, experiences, and ambitions for the arts.

In these incisive essays, art critic Ben Davis makes sense of our extreme present as an emerging "after-culture"--a culture whose forms and functions are being radically reshaped by cataclysmic events. In the face of catastrophe, he holds out hope that reckoning with the new realities of art, technology, activism, and the media, can help us weather the super-storms of the future.

Music is powerful and transformational, but can it spur actual social change? A strong collection of essays, At the Crossroads of Music and Social Justice studies the meaning of music within a community to investigate the intersections of sound and race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and differing abilities.

While science made the headlines, the arts and humanities were critical in people's daily lives. As the world went into lockdown, literature, music, and media became crucial means of connection, and historians reminded us of the resonance of the past as many of us heard for the first time about the 1918 influenza pandemic. As the twindemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice tore through the United States, a contested presidential race unfolded, which one candidate described as "a battle for the soul of the nation." Being Human during COVID documents the first year of the pandemic in real time, bringing together humanities scholars to address what it feels like to be human during the COVID-19 crisis.

A visual journey through 100 years of protest art, which is more relevant than ever in our digital, visually rich, and social-media driven age. Art has always declared its dissatisfaction against the status quo. Throughout history artists have used their art to criticize and protest a range of injustices and inequalities, oppression, and violence. Their art is an act of defiance, but more importantly it has given a voice to the voiceless and the marginalized.

Censored Art Today is an accessible, informed analysis of the debates raging around censorship of art and so-called 'cancel culture,' focusing on who the censors are and why they are clamping down on forms of artistic expression worldwide. Art censorship is a centuries-old issue which appears to be on the rise in the 21st century--why is this the case? Gareth Harris expertly analyses the different contexts in which artists, museums, and curators face restrictions today, investigating political censorship in China, Cuba, and the Middle East; the suppression of LGBTQ+ artists in 'illiberal democracies'; the algorithms policing art online; Western museums and 'cancel culture'; and the narratives around 'problematic' monuments.

In Conflict Graffiti, John Lennon dives into the many permutations of graffiti in conflict zones--ranging from the protest graffiti of the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson and the Tahrir Square demonstrations in Egypt, to the tourist-attraction murals on the Israeli Separation Wall and the street art that has rebranded Detroit and post-Katrina New Orleans. Graffiti has played a crucial role in the revolutionary movements of these locales, but as the conflict subsides a new graffiti and street art scene emerges--often one that ushers in postconflict consumerism, gentrification, militarization, and anesthetized forgetting. Graffiti has an unstable afterlife, fated to be added to, transformed, overlaid, photographed, reinterpreted, or painted over. But as Lennon concludes, when protest movements change and adapt, graffiti is also uniquely suited to shapeshift with them.

This study focuses on dance as an activist practice in and of itself, across geographical locations and over the course of a century, from 1920 to 2020. Through doing so, it considers how dance has been an empowering agent for political action throughout civilisation. Dance and Activism offers a glimpse of different strategies of mobilizing the human body for good and justice for all, and captures the increasing political activism epitomized by bodies moving on the streets in some of the most turbulent political situations.

Recent years have proven rife with revelations about the misdeeds, objectional views, and, in some instances, crimes of popular artists. Spurred in part by the #metoo movement, and given more access than ever thanks to social media and the internet in general, the public has turned an alert and critical eye upon the once-hidden lives of previously cherished entertainers. Is it possible to disentangle the deeply unsettled feelings we have toward an artist from how we respond to the art they produced? As consumers of art, we have a host of tricky moral question to navigate.

A collection of creative writing and art about COVID-19 at the onset of the pandemic by people from vulnerable populations.

By March 2020, the spread of COVID-19 had reached pandemic proportions, forcing widespread shutdowns across industries, including Hollywood. Studios, networks and production companies, and the thousands of workers who make film and television possible, were forced to adjust their time-honored business and labor practices. This title examines how the COVID-19 pandemic affected film and television production, influenced trends in distribution, reshaped theatrical exhibition, and altered labor practices.

A book of poems speaking out against sexual assault, written by poets from Kansas, Kansas City, or those who are Kansas-connected.

A penetrating survey of contemporary art from Puerto Rico and the diaspora created since Hurricane Maria. Centering on works made by nearly twenty multigenerational artists from Puerto Rico and the diaspora, this volume responds to numerous contemporary issues affecting Puerto Rico, including Hurricane Maria and its devastation, as well as austerity measures, political unrest, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Included are works across mediums, including painting, video, installation art, performance, and poetry, made between 2017 and 2022.

Performance Studies: The Basics offers an overview of the multiple, often overlapping definitions of performance, from performance art, performance as everyday life, and rituals, to the performative dimensions of identity, such as gender, race and sexuality. Note: there is a chapter on Performance Activism.

In this urgent outpouring of American voices, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives.