Resources, recordings, and other shared materials
Thank you for joining us for the 2021 Fall Forum: Pedagogies of Reparation and Rebuilding. We are grateful to all of the panelists, presenters, and participants, who contributed to this fourth annual Fall Forum. We’ve included on this page recordings and resources shared by participants from some of the panels, based on the permissions given by the presenters.
Click here to view all presenter bios, session abstracts, and the schedule of panels from the 2021 Fall Forum: Pedagogies of Reparation and Rebuilding.
This page includes resources and/or recordings from the following sessions:
- Welcome Session
- Cultivating Communities of Care in and out of the Classroom
- Preserving Activism Beyond and Between Pratt’s Gates
- Indigenous Land & Knowledge – Frameworks for Land Acknowledgement
- Gradeless Assessment
- Facilitating A Future-Building Pedagogy
- Pandemic Pedagogy – Alternative, Supplemental, and Complementary Pedagogies for Artists in an Institutional Landscape
- Four Lenses to Dismantle Oppressive Practices in the Classroom towards Freedom of Learning
Please click the icon to watch the recording of the Welcome and Introduction, including the land acknowledgement by Carlos Motta, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice, in Fine Arts; an introduction by Camille Martin Thomsen, Acting Associate Provost for Academic Affairs; opening remarks by President Frances Bronet; framing of our Forum theme by Carlos Motta and Heather Lewis; and information from Judit Török, Maura Conley, and Holly Adams about the inaugural issue of iteratio /i.te’ra:.ti.o/ – Inquiries in Teaching Art and Design, as well as logistics for the 2021 Fall Forum.
Cultivating Communities of Care in and out of the Classroom
Anahita Amirshahi, Natalie Tsui, and Kara Hearn
Session Abstract: Anahita Amirshahi, Natalie Tsui, and Kara Hearn from Pratt’s Film/Video Department will present on how students, faculty and staff have been working to build a community of care to improve student learning and retention and to address specific challenges that students have shared in annual DEI focus group meetings. The panel includes a student/activist, a faculty/staff member, and the department chair. They will each speak from a different vantage point about their interdependent efforts to spark engagement, hold space, redistribute power, and cultivate a strong community in Film/Video, before opening up to a group discussion.
Preserving Activism Beyond and Between Pratt's Gates
Rebecca Krucoff, Heather Lewis, Cristina Fontanez Rodriguez, Keena Suh, and Vicki Weiner
Session Abstract: The Preserving Activism Beyond and Between Pratt’s Gates project team conducts historical research that seeks to foster public dialogue about social justice activism on and outside the Pratt campus. This past year faculty and students worked with the Institute Archivist to examine 20th century activism at Pratt through coursework and collection of oral histories, texts, and ephemera that will become part of the Archives. The project’s digital storytelling shares how women and people of color have led the fight against inequality on and off campus. Through public engagement the project has forged connections between Pratt’s Black student activists of the 1970s and those of today.
The session will feature a collaborative, interdisciplinary faculty and student research team. The presenters will discuss their strategies for expanding students’ engagement with pedagogies that upend traditional approaches, and will demonstrate the power of welcoming students into an institutional archive as both researchers and records-creators. The presenters will share how student and faculty research has applied a critical lens to Pratt Institute’s “origin story” and 2 identity as a bastion of progressivism, and how this deepens our understanding of the school’s involvement in the struggle for social, racial, and economic equity as both an ally and, at times, an obstacle to the social justice movement
Indigenous Land & Knowledge — Frameworks for Land Acknowledgement
Amanda Huynh
Session Abstract: This session will present findings from Indigenous Land & Knowledge Workshops that were open to all members of the Pratt Institute community. The workshops brought in facilitators from The Lenape Center and aimed to create an opportunity for Pratt students, faculty, and staff to build a deeper relationship with the land and place that we occupy.
Connecting with where we are, Lenapehoking, in a generative way, will strengthen our ability to move forward as cultural producers in unknowable futures. This Fall Forum session will introduce a living document of best practices to integrate land acknowledgement, and indigenous knowledge into teaching and learning practices.
Gradless Assessment
James Lipovac and Leslie Mutchler
Session Abstract: Currently, Foundation is piloting gradeless assessment methods designed to give students more agency over their learning and progress. This conversation-based approach to assessment arises out of a need to address issues of access and a diversity of student learning.
The session will begin with a short intro (5-10 min) by Leslie Mutchler and James Lipovac about the specifics of Foundation’s gradeless project. It would then open up to small group work and collaboration. Groups will discuss their own personal approaches to grading alternatives. Focus will be placed on helping participants develop strategies for conversation based assessment and moving away from traditional forms of evaluation.
Facilitating A Future-Building Pedagogy
Alexa Pitt and Layla Zami
Session Abstract: Dr. Layla Zami (HMS) shares ideas on her decolonial approach to researching, teaching, and learning, with a special focus on the intersection of building freedom and repairing memory. Alexa Pitt presents a creative assignment realized in Zami’s class during the pandemic. The session includes a short reading and a creative activity, inspiring participants to find their own pathways towards decolonial teaching and learning.
Pandemic Pedagogy - Alternative, Supplemental, and Complementary Pedagogies for Artists in an Institutional Landscape
Chantal Feitosa, Andrew Freiband, and Sakura Kelley
Session Abstract: Pandemic Pedagogy is a project that was initiated in collaboration with fellow teaching artists outside of any conventional arts institution, to respond to the interruption of critical support systems for artists during the pandemic. In response to the depth of structural fixity of historical institutions – adhering to economic normalcy even in the face of the pandemic, which we see as standing in the way of dismantlement or reparation – we offered a selection of free (and even stipended) courses for artists most heavily impacted by the pandemic (black and brown, economically precarious) – that deal with their whole being as humans, in an effort to support their creative practice as artists.
Four Lenses to Dismantle Oppressive Practices in the Classroom towards Freedom of Learning
Ane Gonzalez Lara and Gaia Hwang
Session Abstract: This session is a collaboration between faculty across different departments and schools. The proposal is to host a workshop or share the workshop facilitating tools with other faculty and administrators in the campus. This workshop is articulated around four lenses of inquiry that allow participants to analyze the systems of oppression present in their classroom settings. The lenses are inspired by feminist and critical pedagogies. The session will create opportunities to design, visualize and strategize an actionable plan aiming to dismantle these systems while taking into account the context of each participants’ department, classroom, institution and position of power