(Name-mce) ListServ New York chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education

[Bill Howe]

  <http://www.nysun.com/>

*January 16, 2007 Edition > Section: New
York<http://www.nysun.com/section/1>> Printer-Friendly Version
*
Art Project Adds to List of 'Isms'

BY GARY SHAPIRO - Staff Reporter of the Sun
January 16, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/46728



While racism and sexism are familiar "isms" to New Yorkers, a program at New
York University appears to be adding to the canon with beautyism, breathism,
MexiYorkism, crewism, and sentimental cyborgism.

The NYU Center for Multicultural Education and Programs runs the -ISM
Project, a competitive arts program in which six to eight students are given
up to $500 to complete projects in film, music, video, photography, texts,
installations, and performances addressing various "isms" in society. Their
works are then showcased at an annual gala.

One artist and 2005 Tisch School graduate, Alexandra Sherman, explored
nontraditional ways of looking at the practice of singing for her -ISM
Project, "Gospelism." In it, she created a video, "Call," that examined
gospel outside the context of a church. A fellow student did a project
called "Sentimental Cyborgism," which used necklaces with proximity sensors,
Ms. Sherman said.

For her project, "Classificationism," Claire Carré, who directs music
videos, said she was interested in why "isms" exist at all. Her video,
"Classify," used an ongoing narration influenced by the French filmmaker
Jean-Luc Godard to explore whether to know was to define. It showed an
8-year-old girl naming things. Ms. Carré was interested in asking: "What if
we didn't classify? How would that work?" Her video was eventually also
shown at a course on phenomenology and film at UCLA.

"Harlemism" was a project by a poet and photographer, Akintoye Moses, who
was a 2004 graduate of the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Mr. Moses
explored photographic and poetic experiences through a changing Harlem. More
recently he has been photographing gangs in East Los Angeles, but is
returning to Gotham to participate in a teaching fellows program.

The program encourages artists such as these to explore their personal
thoughts and feelings in their projects and encourages "creativity, freedom
of expression, and free thinking." But not everyone thinks programs like the
"Isms Project" are beneficial.

A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank, James
Piereson, said "to invite someone to express his/her feelings about
something is not an educational activity at all unless the person in
question has studied the subject and can offer an informed opinion or
judgment about it."

The co-publisher of the New Criterion, Roger Kimball, called it a "romper
room exercise in grievance mongering." And a sociology professor at the
University of South Carolina, Mathieu Deflem, said the program sounded well
meaning but seemed to put some more peripheral "-isms" on the same level as
racism, sexism, and xenophobia. He said that could be a distraction to the
real issues and "water down the real important discussion."
But the president of the New York chapter of the National Association for
Multicultural Education, Arcenia London, said that if Americans are going to
live successfully among various ethnic and culture groups, they need to
appreciate and understand differences. Programs like the -ISM Project can
teach students how to be more tolerant, she said.

And the assistant vice president for student diversity programs and services
at NYU, Allen McFarlane, said, "Does not awareness have a place in
education?"


-- 
Bill Howe
http://www.billhowe.org

Past-President
National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME)
http://www.nameorg.org