Visiting Artist Natalie Diaz reads to students at Pitzer’s Grove House
Unsettled Lanscapes was a long term capstone experience that brought a wealth of local and international visiting artists, writers, and critics to Pitzer’s campus. The visiting artists conducted public lectures, held exhibitions and performances, lead workshops, and engaged in collaborative projects with students. The program broadened students understanding of landscape in art from specifically a feminist and decolonial perspective, and encouraged the campus asa whole to develop a critical framework for engaging directly with challenging works of art.
Edgar Heap of Birds visits the Unsettled Landscapes course
In association with this semester long program, Professor Tarrah Krajnak taught and upper level seminar course, also entitled Unsettled Landscapes. The course examined the cultural and political conditions, and the historical narratives that inform the work of several contemporary artists, poets, filmmakers, and writers whose work engages with the landscape as both a human and natural phenomenon. The course emphasized the work of underrepresented artists, indigenous voices, and/or feminist perspectives on “landscape.” Ultimately, the goal of the course was to provide an opportunity for students to engage with creative professionals—artists, filmmakers, poets, and writers—whose work may be underrepresented and/or provides de-colonial or feminist alternative perspectives to mainstream historical models of “landscape” in art. Through this course students learned how to discuss and write about works of art with an awareness of their own positionalities.
