The Inseparability of Politics and Art as a Tool for Political Change

Basic Info/Requirements
• 15% of the total grade.
• Outlines the main thesis of your final project and the way in which it will engage with the themes/history/concepts and research it uses. Provides a bibliography of potential research.
• Outline: ~ 400-600 words.
• Bibliography of sources:
o 5 or more sources, minimum 3 external research sources
o Formatted according to either MLA or Chicago Manual of Style
Outline
The final project should engage directly with at least one, and preferably two of our course text in developing a final topic. The outline of the final topic should elaborate the ostensive subject of your final project and your approach to that paper and should include a synopsis of how the course text(s) and external scholarly sources may be used. It should include a thesis statement: that is, a concrete claim that you make about the subject and that you intend to argue for in the final writing. There are many approaches one can take to the subject, which can be strictly theorical and/or analytical, or it can take a more historical form or art critical. Use of specific artworks to analyze or exemplify your ideas is encouraged, but not necessary. The outline should include these three elements in some form: the topic, the approach, and the thesis. For example, a topic could be: Universal vs. Singular notions of aesthetic experience. An approach could be: to compare Kant’s transcendental understanding with Richard William Hill’s contextual/culturally specific Indigenous understanding of aesthetic experience. A thesis could be: Kant’s understanding of aesthetics as universal actually universalizes his own cultural specificity, relying on convert and unmarked particulars of historical white experience, around which practices of othering have accumulated into hegemonic categories used in the subjugation of non-white, non-European, or non-settler perspectives on the nature of art. Dr. Hill provides us with a means of extracting what may be of use in European and other non-Indigenous theories for making or understanding Indigenous art, without privileging hegemonic, white historical perspectives on artistic experience. This will be shown by analyzing specific parts of Kant universals, and then problematizing them through Hill’s work. Specific works of Canadian artist Kent Monkman will also be employed to exemplify one possible fruitful relationship of crosscultural artistic activity in Hill’s terms.
HUMN2001 – Bibliography/Outline (Fall 2021)
Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

Plato and Aristotle on mimesis or form;
Western vs. Non-western aesthetics; Politics and art;

Language and art, art and theories of signs/symbols

What is the relationship between art and knowledge?;

Art under capitalism;
Aesthetics and race;

Indigeneity and aesthetics;

Kant on the difference between the
transcendental aesthetic vs. reflective aesthetic judgements;

Is art a universal human activity?;

art and the body;

Does art have a historical essence?;

What is the difference between natural beauty;
and artistic beauty in Kant or others?;

What is Benjamin’s concept of aura?;

How does morality relate to aesthetics in the Chinese, Islamic, or German theoretical traditions?;

Is there an Ideal of artistic achievement in contemporary art (using Plato or Kant or Hegel)?;

Is art free to express whatever it wants or is it determined by its material, historical, economic conditions, etc. (using Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer, etc.)? Is art more than its commodity value? Does our aesthetics/art help construct or express our metaphysics/ontology? Can/should contemporary art still relate to the Absolute? (using Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Tu, Benjamin, Erzen, etc.)?
Further Resources on Citation and Style:
MLA Style Guide:
https://owl(dot)purdue(dot)edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html
Chicago Style Guide:
https://owl(dot)purdue(dot)edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/chicago_manual_of_style_17th_edition.html