Career Center

The School of Art is seeking one teaching assistant to work 8 hours per week across two courses during the Fall 2022 semester (potential to continue for the Spring 2023 semester) in Critical Theory and Art History, as well as engage in occasional research tasks for an Art History/Critical Theory professor in the School of Art.

Based upon skill set and knowledge of course content, a teaching assistant would be responsible for one or more of the following:

*Assist with grading papers across two courses
*Attend at least one class per week (ideally Wednesday night Critical Theory in Art 3), take attendance, keep track of student participation and presentations, keep clear records of all of the above
*Provide one-on-one and small group tutoring
*Preparing digital slides for course sessions
*Facilitating small-group in-class discussions with students
*Framing and moderating the course discussion forum on Canvas
*Preparing classroom before class, helping to clean-up after presentations i.e. if furniture needs to be moved or chairs organized, or whiteboard erased, etc. (physical classroom readiness)
*Participating in final classroom CRITS, as well as helping organize final presentation receptions
*Small research tasks, i.e. library research, internet searches for faculty scholarship projects

Course descriptions for both classes are as follows:

Critical Theory in Art 3 (1960-1980)

Wednesdays, 6:40-9:00 pm

This course will begin with the premise that Art History must be re-written from the multiples perspectives of BIPOC art and theory - so that we can begin to dismantle the conventional canons of Art History, often written from a hegemonic --white, male Western perspective. Photography, performance, conceptual proposals, installation art, film, video, and appropriations from mass culture play a central part in contemporary visual culture (as well as promoting racist structures throughout history, up to the present day). We will interrogate these structures --while keeping central in our minds, Audre Lorde's important adage: "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." However, rather than a call not to examine the complexity of how power-structures of knowledge are constructed, Lorde also made clear that the "master" actually appropriated the "tools" from the people that were being oppressed. Thus, this course is about reclaiming our stolen tools - it is about learning, again to borrow from Lorde, "how to take our differences and make them strengths." It is about both knowing the "master's house," but more importantly discovering how to work independently of master narratives, of colonized epistemes (as Michel Foucault articulated).

To this extent, we will examine how BIPOC artists and theorists served up a critique of art as an institution, and set the tone for other anti-modernist projects to follow which did not accept the "white cube of the gallery" as their sole exhibition space and rejected the white-dominated discourse that measured their worth as an artist. BIPOC notions of difference, and often of "indifference," (critique of aesthetic judgment), reproducibility, simulation, performativity, artist-as-curator, and interactivity between the spectator and the work of art set the stage for a host of innovative explorations by artists ranging from the path-breaking work of Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Emma Amos, Norma Lewis, Merton Simpson (and more, many associated with the SPIRAL COLLECTIVE) to the Mod-Spaceships of Mariko Mori and Sondra Perry's critical new media work that tears asunder the white canons of Art History (see her Typhoon Coming On [2018] that lays bare the racist assumptions in J.W. Turner's most lauded painting, Slave Ship [1840]).

Important contemporary trends, such as Pop, Minimalism, Process, Conceptual, and Performance-based Art will be explored. The impact of social movements and American foreign policies (i.e. Vietnam, Civil Rights, The Women's Movement, Globalism, the Aids Crisis) on the production and reception of contemporary art will also be examined.

Art Writer

Wednesdays 1:25- 4:15 pm

Art Writer will strive to bring together the intersecting discourses of artists' use of writing as an object, exploring experiments by artists, poets, novelists and critics who use language and theory as invention. The idea of experiment implied here emphasizes the urgency that art writing moves beyond its own history, beyond the received understanding of its proper practices in order to propose new modes of critical reflection. The form and material force of language will be explored through the conceptual and critical work of Ocean Vuong, Harryette Mullen, Fatimah Asghar, Jamaica Kincaid, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Frances Stark, Kathy Acker, Samuel Delaney, Glenn Ligon, Brian Kim Stefans, Pajtim Statovci, Tan Lin, Adam Pendleton, just to name a few. International projects of Art and Language, Fluxus, the Dark Room Collective, Los Contemporaneos, as well as more recent iterations will be investigated/researched. This is a writing intensive seminar with experimentation at its core. Members will workshop their writing: revise, rethink, perform, and publish.

Flexibility, excellence, and passion are vital qualities within the School of Art. Inclusion, collaboration and cultural sensitivity are valued competencies at CMU. Therefore, we are in search of a team member who is able to effectively interact with a varied population of internal and external partners at a high level of integrity. We are looking for someone who shares our values and who will support the mission of the university through their work.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree
• Prior TA or teaching experience preferred
• Strong oral and written communication skills
• Demonstrated problem-solving skills
• Demonstrated analytical skills

Note: The assignment is for 8 hours per week, assisting in both sections of either course. The hourly rate is $15.00.

Requirements:

• Successful Background Check

CMU's COVID-19 Vaccination Requirements: As a condition of employment, Carnegie Mellon University requires all staff and faculty working in the United States to be fully vaccinated, including a booster when eligible, against COVID-19. Prior to commencement of employment, new hires in the United States must provide proof of vaccination or obtain an approved exemption. (Exemptions may be requested for medical reasons or for religious or strong moral or ethical conviction.) Those granted an exemption must comply with all applicable COVID-19 mitigation requirements. The most up-to-date information on CMU's COVID-19 mitigation requirements can be found here: Minimum Requirements to Return to Campus.

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