Today we’ll examine the history, present, and future of experimental colleges, intentional learning communities, fugitive schools, and other kinds of alter-academies. We’ll consider the various forms they take, their operating models, their core principles and politics, and their sustainability and scalability.
🚨🚨 We’ll meet virtually this week to accommodate our external guests!
Guests: Kameelah Janaan Rasheed, Caroline Woolard + Eli Meyerhoff
Please note: we’ll be meeting at a different time today – 1:00 to 2:30pm – to accommodate our guests. We’ll record the session for those who can’t attend!
- Optional: Read Katherine C. Reynolds, “Progressive Ideals and Experimental Higher Education: The Example of John Dewey and Black Mountain College,” Education and Culture 14:1 (1997): 1-9 [not a great article, but perhaps worth a quick skim because it identifies several early experimental colleges – from Berea (the first non-segregated college) and Bennington to Bard – and the influence of “progressive” education].
- Read Eli Meyerhoff, excerpt from the Intro and the “Experimental College: A Free University for Alternative Modes of Study” chapter in Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World (University of Minnesota Press, 2019): 13-17, 163-98 [1 hr].
- Read Shannon Mattern, “Fugitive Libraries,” Places Journal (October 2019) [30 min] You might also be interested in Jarvis Givens’ work on “fugitive pedagogy.”
- Please explore Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s website and that for her Orange Tangent Study consultancy; and read Nicole Acheampong’s “Kameelah Janan Rasheed on Learning and Unlearning,” Art in America (July 1, 2021) [1 hr].
- Optional, but Highly Recommended!: “Curatorial Close Looks: Kameelah Janan Rasheed in Conversation,” Williams College Museum of Art (January 4, 2022) [video: 1:07:34].
- Now, explore Caroline Woolard’s website, and pay particular attention to her work on Trade School; BFAMFAPhD; Making and Being; Art, Engagement & Economy (including especially Chapter 3); and skim through her teaching resources [1 hr].
- Caroline added these two additional sources on March 5: “Co-ops as the Future of Art” and “Solidarity Not Charity – Grantmaking in the Solidarity Economy” [ video: 4:05 ].
- Optional: Now, for something completely different: Pano Kanelos, “We Can’t Wait for Universities to Fix Themselves. So We’re Starting a New One,” Common Sense (November 8, 2021) and John Warner, “What the University of Austin Gets Right,” Inside Higher Education (November 9, 2021) [20 min].
- Meander through our Arena channel of “Para-/Extra-Institutional Schools,” and investigate any that pique your interests! Seriously: please look at this; it’s pretty amazing, if I may say so 🙂 [30 min+].