Hampshire College

The School for Interdisciplinary Arts has organized its curricular offerings around three core principles that form the pedagogical foundation for the school. These are: interdisciplinarity between and among the fine and liberal arts, arts and technology, and arts and social action. IA's three pillars reflect the interests and the range of work of our faculty both inside the classroom and in our own professional pursuits.

Interdisciplinarity applies Hampshire's all-college approach to the liberal arts to the investigation of art forms and the process of art making. The school offers students and faculty opportunities to work across, as well as within, the boundaries of such art forms as theatre, sculpture, drawing, design, animation, creative writing, non-fiction writing and literature. IA is committed to exploring, "cross-, inter-, intra-, trans-, and post-disciplinarity," as these new educational concepts shift the form and context of the art making practice.

Working in the arts at Hampshire has always involved analysis and reflection, but the analysis of work in progress necessarily starts from different questions than does that of already completed work. We are, first, interested in questions about artistic intent, meaning, materials, audience, and social responsibility. While we are reminded that all art begins with a blank page or blank space we are not singular in our pursuits. All artists exist within history, politics, and society and should understand their work in relation to the world in which they live and to the work of the artists, writers, and thinkers who have come before them. We believe that working among the art forms and within the larger liberal arts context increases the scope of our investigations and the breadth of our thinking about the place of art in society.

Interdisciplinary Arts creates new opportunities for students to cross the boundaries between art forms and schools as well as to explore new genres of art making. Cross-listed courses, interdisciplinary arts courses, and a program of faculty affiliation are central to the pedagogy of our school. Our curriculum encourages collaboration among both students and faculty, and our understanding of art making is crucially informed by colleagues who have studied the historical, social and psychological dilemmas, the shifting demographics, and the global technologies that shape the sensibilities of contemporary audiences.

The nature and conditions of the arts are increasingly expanded and challenged by new technologies. The investigation of art, art making, and new technologies constitutes the second pillar in our school's curricular foundation. As an integral part of the school, the Lemelson Assistive Technology Development Center provides a way to explore those strategies between art making and new technologies. Students can apply their interests in a wide range of artistic endeavors to questions of applied design, universal design, invention, and entrepreneurship. Other areas of intersection between arts and technology are being explored by both IA faculty and students and with faculty and students in other schools of the college, including computer animation, design for adaptive technologies, web journals, industrial design and set design.

Exploring the relationship between artistic production and social action is the third pillar of our curriculum. Many Hampshire students are interested in the arts as an agent for social change. The school for interdisciplinary arts provides students with an educational experience that not only overlaps disciplines and technologies, but actually allows new forms to emerge as well. These new forms allow for artistic practice to engage questions of social responsibility and activism. Creative drama, prison literature, universal design, teaching multi-cultural art curricula, and dramatizing AIDS issues for new audiences are five current areas of investigation that embody this pedagogical principle.
 
Goals of the School for Interdisciplinary Arts

Through investigation, individual and collaborative artistic production, and critique, students and faculty in Interdisciplinary Arts:

• Approach, through the practice of art making, the critical issues central to each art form
• Address issues of social awareness and justice through the practice of reading and art making
• Develop unique methods of critical thinking and problem solving
• Explore relationships among art, design, and technology, and realize the potential for three-dimensional imagining in each area of the school
• Discover points of intersection among different art forms and learn to work across the boundaries of each other's expertise
• Study the sensory, verbal, and historical contexts that inform creativity

Dean of the School for Interdisciplinary Arts: William Brayton
Administrative Assistant: Jan Ragusa