Cultural Front

Friday, April 19, 2024

A photo-review of the Language Arts Conference

On April 18, we hosted our Language Arts conference for high school Black boys.

Related:

• Language Arts Conference, Spring 2024

Assembling and toppling dominos

One of the highlights of our Language Arts conference had to be our session assembling and toppling dominos. A few weeks back, I had some of my undergraduates join my graduate student and me setting up and toppling Black books in domino style.

For yesterday's conference, the high school students worked in teams, assisted by my undergraduates, to assemble various domino designs. They had a good time trying to assemble within the time limits that I kept setting.

Related:

• Language Arts Conference, Spring 2024

A photo-review of Artbook Browsing sessions

A few photos of students browsing artbooks and sketching images during our Language Arts conference.

Related:

• Language Arts Conference, Spring 2024

Browsing Artbooks & Sketching Images

During our Language Arts conference for high school Black boys, the guys browsed my collection of artbooks and chose images to sketch. I did a version of this session for a different group of guys last fall.

For many years now, I've tried to think of ways to share aspects of my book collections with students. Starting in Back in 2009, I started hosting "browsing sessions" to share the many volumes of poetry I collected with students. Later, I hosted browsing sessions focusing on comic books, and then more recently, I acquired enough artbooks to feature those.

The artbooks gave me a chance to add a new dimension to the project. In 2022, I worked with one of my former professors, William Harris, on a project. I always knew he frequently visited museums to view art. What I learned, though, was that he often took a notebook to the shows and produced sketches of what he saw.

Thinking about what he did led me to create browsing and sketching sessions. The students viewed African artbooks as well as books featuring art by Jacob Lawrence, Kehinde Wiley, Amy Sherald, Kerry James Marshall, and Bisa Butler.

Browsing exposed the students to a variety of ideas, and drawing gave them an opportunity to participate in a hands-on activity. Early on, the guys are really talkative, but after a while, the room gets quiet as they get really serious about sketching images.

Related:

• Language Arts Conference, Spring 2024

• A photo-review of Artbook Browsing sessions

The Language Arts Conference, Spring 2024

On April 18, we coordinated our Language Arts conference for 15 high school students. Students from East St. Louis and Belleville participated. The gathering included a book browsing and sketching activity, making collages and vision boards, and assembling and toppling dominos. As always, we gave away free books.

This conference, like our past ones, gave us chances to involve Black boys in arts and humanities activities.

Notes on the conference:

• A photo-review of the Language Arts Conference

• Browsing Artbooks & Sketching Images

• A photo-review of Artbook Browsing sessions

• Assembling and toppling dominos

Past conferences:

• Language Arts Conferences

Thursday, April 18, 2024

Casting Viola Davis (whiteboard animation)

Here's a short whiteboard animation on Viola Davis that briefly considers ongoing struggles related to representations. This short piece is an excerpt of a longer podcast episode.