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Community Outline

Please note this is an archived version of the Community Audit from Spring 2021.

As part of an ongoing commitment to make university knowledge more accessible, Becca is offering a public version of this course through a designated “Community Audit”. The Community Audit version of this course is completely free and open to all. It will not come with any formal university credit and is not officially affiliated with Syracuse University, but participants who have fully engaged will receive a certificate of completion at the end of the course, and may request letters of recommendation from the Teaching Team.

The Community Audit version of Climates of Resistance will be exploring the themes below. Participants can click on the week’s title to access their preparatory materials. Click on any piece of accompanying art to learn more about the work and its creator.

Note that no group meetings will take place the week of 29 March in recognition of Easter, Passover, Qingming, and the anniversary of MLK’s assassination, but there are a variety of self-study materials available, and a special session will be held on Monday 5 April for those who would like to learn more about visual culture. The final group meetings will take place 10-16 May. To wrap up the course, participants will be invited to attend (and, optionally, present at) a special public Symposium the following week.

week of 8 February

Jessica Matier's painting titled "Give and Take." Water colors of reds, pinks, whites, yellows, and blacks splattered in the center of a neutral canvas. Black emerges from the left and right sides of the canvas.

Creating Community

to value each other’s perspectives and agree upon shared principles for engagement with these issues

artwork by Jessica Matier

week of 15 February

Jeffrey Gibson's piece titled "American History." The piece, made of arranged yarn, wool, and beads, has the message "American History is Longer Larger More Beautiful and More Terrible than Anything Anyone Has Ever Said About It J B." The message is stitched in beaded capital letters in different colors including black, green, pink, white, yellow, and blue, along different colored blocks. A black to tan to grey to white beaded gradient flows across the top of the piece with a stitched black and white pattern borders the left and right sides. A patterned black and white fringe borders the bottom.

Confronting Injustice

to acknowledge how political, social, economic, linguistic & environmental structures marginalise communities

artwork by Jeffrey Gibson

week of 22 February

Inga Bard's painting titled "#Intersectionality." The piece features a woman in the center of the piece with a red flower in her mouth and green vine in her hand covered with a white glove. The paintings message is "Feminism without Intersectionality is Still Patriarchy." "Feminism" is written with capitalized blue letters; "without" is written as "W/OUT" just below "Feminism" in capitalized black letters with a white background. Further to the right is "intersectionality" written down the side also in capitalized black letters with a white background. Across the center bottom reads "is Still Patriarchy" in black, red, and green capitalized letters with a white background.

Navigating Intersectionality

to explore our identities amidst and knowledge of privilege & oppression as they play out in the world

artwork by Inga Bard

week of 1 March

A piece by Sergio Maciel. The image features a circle in the center with two young children with their backs to one another, each facing different realities on their backgrounds. The child on the left is white wearing a white shirt with red long sleeves and looks out to a clear skies while they blow bubbles. Behind them are green pastures and exciting city in the distance with clear and calm waters below. On the right is a Black child wearing an oversized pink t-shirt. While wearing a black hazmat mask they look out to a wasteland. There appears to be a landfill in the background and a run down baseball field. Outside of and surrounding this circle are clear skies and a group of people walking with signs in protest of the location of the landfill.

Revealing Divisions

to determine how environmental harms are unequally experienced by groups, often with systemic intent

artwork by Sergio Maciel

week of 8 March

Calida Rawles' painting titled "Pillar." The painting features a Black female with a stern look on their face wearing a white shirt and wading in a pool of clear water. In this moment they hold a brownish grey vase atop their head. The dark blue - nearly black sky is riddled with white stars.

Evaluating Allocation

to identify realities in the (mis)use and provision of food, water, energy, and other environmental resources

artwork by Calida Garcia Rawles

week of 15 March

(De)Colonising Land

to understand spatial politics and how geographical histories of power have shaped access to land

artwork by Demian DinéYazhi´ with Noelle Sosaya

week of 22 March

Subhankar Banerjee's photograph titled "Oil and the Caribou." The photograph is an overhead shot of several caribou making their way across the land. The migration path begins at the top of the photograph and moves downward through the photo. The path begins out of the frame and ends out of the frame, as well.

Dismantling Dichotomies

to question the power dynamics created by socially constructed divisions between nature and culture

artwork by Subhankar Banerjee

week of 29 March (no group meeting)

Harmonia Rosales' piece "The Creation of God." This is Rosales' re-imagining of Michelangelo's "Creazione di Adamo" or "Creation of Adam." Here God is portrayed as a dark skin Black female. They lay naked in the bottom left corner on a bed of red and yellow in the sky with one hand extended and one finger pointed to reach for the creator who is depicted as an elderly dark skin Black female who emerges from the top right. They are covered in a pink tunic on a deep pink, violet colored silk sheet. Crowded behind them are several naked dark skin Black children and women. The background of this painting is mostly white to signify the sky and clouds.

Changing Stories

to critique racist portrayals in mainstream media and appreciate the potential of art for creating new narratives

artwork by Harmonia Rosales

week of 5 April

Harold Newton's "Untitled (Crashing Waves on Shore)." In this piece waves are seen rolling up and crashing on a small beachy area. On the beach are a few palm trees but nothing more. The crashing waves splatter up in white, while the rolling water is greenish blue.

Diversifying Agency

to challenge traditional conceptions of power that undermine the voices of underrepresented stakeholders

artwork by Harold Newton

week of 12 April

Sonaksha Iyengar's painting. The painting shows seven women doing essential household work in what appears to be a river or some body The top left corner is a brown color, depicting the land. The water is a deep turquoise. At about the midpoint of the painting is a woman in pink and yellow catching fish. Below this a red streak flows to the bottom the painting and a pink streak slightly to the right does the same. At the bottom of the painting are three women, one in green holding a red basket and holding a black cane, another in green and yellow reaching down into the red, and a final woman in black with pink drifting from her skirt.

Advocating Systems

to formalise the role of community consultation and the environmental right to information in governance

artwork by Sonaksha Iyengar

week of 19 April

Ioyan Mani's art card titled "Not Forgotten." In this card, a woman in the center looks off into the distance on the left as she is cloaked is multicolored feathers of red, yellow, white, and blue. The foreground of the illustration is a orange and yellow color. The background are various shades of green, blue, and white. Small orange, red, and brown feathers and leaves float around her. Outlines of people also surround her in the background.

Comparing Approaches

to evaluate governmental options and responsibilities with regard to environmental policymaking

artwork by Ioyan Mani

week of 26 April

Ricardo Levins Morales' poster titled "Environmental Justice." This poster displays several high reaching waves approaching a beach where a community stands at the water. In the right corner of the poster stands the community. One person stands tall in front of the others with a child in on arm and the other arm and hand raised as if to say, "no," to the approaching polluted waves. In the background in red letters reads the message, "Environmental justice is our cry of defiance against the onslaught of oppressive toxins and toxic oppressions that threaten to submerge our homes.”

Leveraging Grassroots

to illustrate how collective action tactics have been utilised by environmental justice initiatives

artwork by Ricardo Levins Morales

week of 3 May

Lindsay Adams' piece "Justice." This sketch shows five people in the front of the image. One in the middle in a white dress with long and curly hair holds a white sign that reads "Justice" in all capital letters. To their right are two more people, one in a pink shirt and red skirt, and another in a white dress. To the center person's left is a person with a beard in grey t-shirt and jeans and another in a black top and a black and white skirt. Behind all of them are the outlines of a city with a solid orange-ish red as a the base color.

Producing Results

to assess how distribution, recognition, and participation intersect to create extant outcomes

artwork by Lindsay Adams

week of 10 May

Chief Lady Bird's piece. In this digital painting a dark brown muskrat off center holds a tiny piece of an orange-ish brown mud. It's eye is a red circle with a yellow dot in the middle. On its ears are two blue circles and on its back is a blue streak. Further down the muskrat white veins begin to appear as roots that are connected to the green circle in the middle of the picture, likely a turtle, with an image of a tree on it. In the top right corner are waves of red, orange, and yellow.The message in the center of the image reads "We have to be The Muskrat In A New Creation Story."

Transforming Solidarity

to consider our own positions within racist structures and identify how we can work against oppressive systems

artwork by Chief Lady Bird

Thursday 20 May, 11am-12:30pm Eastern

A photograph of Uman's piece titled "I'll Sit Here and Wait for You." The piece features a black chair with the titled words written in white placed in front of a black and yellow patterned wall.

Showcasing Insights

to celebrate our class community and share our learning from the semester for a wider audience

artwork by Uman

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