Rachel Silverman, an assistant professor of communication, and Fonda Portales, director of university art, were invited to present on a panel at the SECAC (formerly Southeastern College Art Conference) in Atlanta, Georgia. The panel, “Wayfinding In and Out of the Classroom: The Intersections of Object- and Place-based Learning,” featured transdisciplinary teams from university arts and sciences, history and museum studies centering material culture in exhibition and coursework. Silverman and Portales were invited to speak of their collaboration using campus artworks for academic activities.
Part of Silverman’s COMM 321: Rhetorical Theories course emphasizes thanatourism or visiting places associated with death or tragedy, and civic memorials. Students in the course interact with public art at Boise State in a walking tour of campus memorials, both intimate and monumental. Working within the languages of both art history and rhetoric, students discuss the purpose of memorials in creating and sustaining community identity, question the efficacy of iconography in the memorialization of traumatic events, and make a judgment about caring for artworks, with limited resources, meant to establish permanence in institutional memory among a revolving group of students and visitors.
Specific works and sites include a veteran installation outside of the Student Union Building by Kay Kirkpatrick, a monumental bronze statue near the Athletic Center of Lyle Smith by Ben Victor, and an anonymously-created memorial to Rene Clark (1962-1983), a student of a vocational school no longer situated on the Boise State campus. This student-centered partnership employs object-based learning pedagogy to maintain focus on student learning and to facilitate a sense of belonging by exploring student rituals around campus memorials.
Portales represented the collaboration at SECAC.