I think it’s safe to say I found my reading groove this month. After having a hard time focusing during the early months of the pandemic, it was nice to really dive into some new books. (Ok, so technically I had read The Eyes of the Skin once before, but everything else was a first time read for me!)
I already wrote about Sensuous Knowledge, The Social Photo, and Beyond the Periphery of the Skin over on Designing an MBA, so click here if you want more of my take on those.
I decided to read Sister Outside after Minna Salami quoted Audre Lorde throughout Sensuous Knowledge. I’m a little ashamed to admit it’s taken me so long to read Audre Lorde, but now that I have, I want to read more! Her statements on moving from life as a problem to be solved to an experience to be lived are something I often talk about in relationship to the value of art (especially in my class Sell Without Shame), and reading them made me feel as though I had found concrete proof of these ideas.
Another book I wish I read sooner was Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks. I mean, seriously, why isn’t this required reading for every graduate student who is learning to teach for the first time?!? I do feel that a lot of my teaching style already reflects what hooks talked about, but it also gave me more to think about and interrogate. I’m also interested in thinking about how I can pull more of those ideas into my course Do/Teach.
Like I mentioned above, I had already read Eyes of the Skin by Juhani Pallasmaa, but it was nice to revisit it, as it reflects my belief (one that I’ve had since my undergrad thesis on sensory jewelry) that art should appeal to all the senses and not just sight. The Thinking Hand also focuses on those ideas, but dives a bit more into the role of the hand in thought and human development. (As someone who is very tactile and fidgety, this is an argument I can get behind.)
Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown was not exactly what I expected (it was a little heavier on pleasure than activism) but was still super valuable for bringing in other perspectives to my reading and thinking about the idea of art that engages the senses from a different perspective and the ways pleasure operates.
I also started a few other books this month, most notably The Death of the Artist, which I will NOT be finishing. If you want to see my angry rant about that book, you can check out this video I shared on IGTV.
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