Decolonizing Through STEAM: Arts as Social Justice in a STEM Paradigm
Location
DeSantis Room 1054
Format Type
Plenary
Format Type
Paper
Start Date
17-1-2020 9:45 AM
End Date
17-1-2020 10:05 AM
Abstract
The STEAM movement (adding an A into the STEM acronym) is slowly gaining..well, slowly gaining steam in the United States. The acronym was introduced by former president of Rhode Island School of Design John Maeda in 2011. However, adding a letter does not take into account the interdisciplinary nature of the arts. In addition, art itself (as a vehicle of power) has its own histories of colonization and its use in a purely esthetic context runs the danger of amplifying western imperialism. So how can we integrate the arts into STEM in a social justice context? I suggest performance art, and interventionist humor to draw attention to the colonial metaphors with in STEM. I will show concrete examples of qualitative arts based weedy interventions into “invasion biology”.
Keywords
STEM, STEAM, postcolonialism, STS, performance studies
Decolonizing Through STEAM: Arts as Social Justice in a STEM Paradigm
DeSantis Room 1054
The STEAM movement (adding an A into the STEM acronym) is slowly gaining..well, slowly gaining steam in the United States. The acronym was introduced by former president of Rhode Island School of Design John Maeda in 2011. However, adding a letter does not take into account the interdisciplinary nature of the arts. In addition, art itself (as a vehicle of power) has its own histories of colonization and its use in a purely esthetic context runs the danger of amplifying western imperialism. So how can we integrate the arts into STEM in a social justice context? I suggest performance art, and interventionist humor to draw attention to the colonial metaphors with in STEM. I will show concrete examples of qualitative arts based weedy interventions into “invasion biology”.
Comments
Very loosely based on my work in invasive and introduced species, so it's new work but riffing off my previous.