Arts & Humanities

Dr Lena writes about how candidates try — and sometimes fail — to effectively use music to bolster their campaigns. According to Dr. Lena, candidate playlists “seem to be about… communicating the candidate’s platform…and in other cases candidates are trying to communicate their tastes.”

In Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts, Dr Jennifer C. Lena, charts the history of American arts and cultural policy, interrogating the institutions, practices, and technologies underpinning the development of American Art. The book celebrates and critiques key moments, organisations, and actors, as well as giving new insights into our own, contemporary, elites, their taste practices, and social inequalities. 

Sociologist and author Jennifer Lena drops some inspiration and insight in regards to the Works Progress Administration and #ArtsNewDeal. In this interview she did with Canadian stars of stage and screen Torquil Campbell and Ali Momen of SOFT REVOLUTION, they discuss her recently published book Entitled in the context of their appeal to the Canadian government for a new “WPA” for Canadian artists.

Dr. Marcelle Mentor contributed to an article titled, “When People Say They Don’t See Race, I Ask Them If They Don’t See Me” through EdWeek. The piece is part of a six-part series featured on EdWeek, which covers contributions from faculty at universities as well as other educators in New York City and the USA. This sixth post explores, “Why colorblindness continues to be perpetuated in the field of education and the cost of not addressing it."  

"Before deeply investigating the disparities in their suspension data, school districts must first acknowledge and affirm the humanity of black girls. They must understand how their practice of disproportionately suspending them is an infringement on their humanity. Black girls deserve to be seen for their complexity and should not have certain aspects of their behavior stereotyped as defiant and deviant. Stereotypes flatten their experiences."