This five-week introductory Art History course explores how Asian and Pacific Islander (API) artists in the U.S. have engaged performance as a mode of activism, solidarity, and community-building from the 1960s to the present. Through key case studies, students will trace the development of API arts movements across regions and generations, with a focus on grassroots organizing, collective cultural work, and socially engaged practices. No prior experience is required. Course materials will include performance documentation, archival media, and artist projects, accompanied by in-class discussions.

Weekly Topics:
1. Bay Area Movements I – The role of the Bay Area during the Vietnam War era, Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, the Redress Movement, and transnational solidarities with South Africa.
2. Bay Area Movements II – A deeper look at San Francisco’s unique place in API performance, with attention to cross-racial organizing, performance venues, and community arts institutions such as the Asian American Political Alliance, Bay Area Asian Coalition Against the War, Chinese Progressive Association, Kearny Street Workshop, Asian American Jazz Festival, Asian Improv Records, Kulintang Arts, and Asian Pacific Island Cultural Center.
3. Downtown New York – Tracing downtown New York’s API art scenes through collectives such as Basement Workshop, Asian American Arts Center, and Godzilla Asian American Arts Network, and their integration of social activism through the arts.
4. Placemaking Movements – Exploring how the radical legacies of earlier movements laid the groundwork for community-centered arts organizations including the Asian American Resource Workshop and Pao Arts Center in Boston, Asian American Arts Alliance and Asian CineVision in New York, Asian Improv aRts Midwest in Chicago, and Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia.
5. Contemporary Legacies – Examining contemporary Asian artists in performance art in America practicing socially engaged art, building on and complicating earlier generations’ approaches.

Please note: Class will not meet on Thursday, October 2 in observance of Rosh Hashanah.