Instructor: David Ng
Critical engagement with the creative process of marginalized peoples and the intersection of creative writing, social justice, and anti-racist feminism. Emphasis on how historical and social context are crucial to acts of creative writing and reading. Recommended pre-requisites: all of GRSJ 101, GRSJ 102, or third-year standing.
Term 2
Description: Artists and cultural workers have always played a central role in supporting, galvanizing, documenting, and making interventions to support social movements for justice. Recent events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, movements for #LandBack and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, movements against Anti-Asian racism (amongst many other organizing initiatives), have brought forward the ever pressing need to address inequality in our communities.
This course examines how art and culture can be a vehicle for social change: whether it be producing artwork that addresses systemic racism, to grassroots community building initiatives, to film festivals that celebrate marginalized identities. This course will look at how themes of social justice are explored through creative-critical arts practices, research and public engagement to support social justice agendas. It will provide students opportunities to examine, analyze and undertake critical engagement with creative processes of marginalized peoples and the intersection of art, social justice, and anti-racist feminism, with strong emphasis on how socio-historical contexts are crucial to acts of cultural production, teaching, research, and engagement with multiple publics.