Collaboration Across Disciplines: Implementation in Creative Assignment Development

Authors

  • Mary Slavkin Young Harris College
  • Mary Phillips Lehman College, City University of New York

Abstract

This article explores the assignments that two professors developed while utilizing Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) strategies to collaborate across the disciplines of Art History and African American Studies. While we discuss our teaching philosophies, course designs and structures for courses on the Black Panther Party and studio art, we focus on sharing the assignments that we created out of this collaborative process. In our experience, creating assignments across disciplines broadened our horizons and gave us a variety of additional ways to incorporate critical thinking and analysis of course material.  

Author Biographies

Mary Slavkin, Young Harris College

Mary Slavkin is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Young Harris College in Georgia. She received her Ph.D in art history at the Graduate Center, CUNY, writing her disseratation on the artists who exhibited at the Salons of the Rose + Croix in Paris between 1892 and 1897. She has taught at Parsons The New School and Hunter College. She also worked as a Writing Fellow at the Writing Across the Curriculum program at Lehman College.

Mary Phillips, Lehman College, City University of New York

Mary Phillips is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at Lehman College, City University of New York. A native Detroiter, she he completed her Ph.D in African and African American Studies at Michigan State University. Her research explores women and gender in the Black Panther Party. She is currently completing a book manuscript on the life history of Ericka Huggins, an extraordinary leader in the Black Panther Party.

References

Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Elbow, Peter. “Grading Student Writing: Making It Simpler, Fairer, Clearer. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 1997 no. 69 (1997): 127-140.

Hilliard, David. “Introduction.” In The Huey P. Newton Reader, edited by David Hilliard and Donald Weise, 9-19. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002.

Hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Pough, Gwendolyn. “Empowering Rhetoric: Black Students Writing Black Panthers” College Composition and Communication 53, no. 3 (2002): 466-486.

McLeod, Susan and Elaine Maimon, “Clearing the Air: Myths and Realities,” College English, 62, no. 5 (2005): 573-583.

Zehr, Howard. The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Intercourse: Good Books, 2002.

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Published

2016-06-28

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2016)

Section

Articles

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