CAA News Today

Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.

Day of Protest

It started as a simple question on social media: What would happen if adjuncts across the country walked out on the same day, at the same time? That question got answered last week on the first-ever National Adjunct Walkout Day. There were some big walkouts at a few institutions but, for a variety of reasons, adjuncts at many more colleges and universities staged alternative protests, such as teach-ins, rallies, and talks. The movement led to unprecedented levels of conversation about the working conditions of the majority of college faculty. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

The Solace of Art

Art invites multiple possible readings. At its best, it embraces contradiction, dissent, ambiguity, and idiosyncrasy. It could be said that all art—all nonpropagandist art—is a form of resistance to the idea that the shape, the meaning, the myriad ways of living in and moving through the world should—or even could—ever be one thing. The greatest paintings, performances, sculptures, installations, and films refuse to represent anyone as a type: this is, perhaps, art’s finest attribute. (Read more from Frieze.)

How It’s Being Done: Arts Business Training across the US

As a follow up to its report How It’s Being Done: Arts Business Training in the US, the Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University has compiled a list of arts business training resources available either online or in person at no cost to the participant. The program hopes that you—as well as the artists and arts organizations you work with—find this resource list helpful. (Read more from the Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship.)

The Role of Creative Failure

As an artist you’re very demanding on yourself. You see all types of things that you think you could have done better, or that you want to challenge yourself to do. Setting high standards, high expectations—it’s a very self-critical life. You’re often your own hardest critic. But through executing well and through executing poorly, you get better. You see things more clearly. (Read more from NEA Arts.)

Activists Launch “Debt Strike” against College Chain

The debt-forgiveness movement born out of Occupy Wall Street has entered a new stage in its activism around student loans. Recently a wing of the campaign known as Debt Collective announced a “debt strike” by fifteen former students of the for-profit college chain Corinthian Colleges Inc. The former students said they will not repay any more of their student loans in protest of what they describe as predatory lending practices. (Read more from Al Jazeera.)

Let’s Give Service a Real Role

“Sarah, you are doing so well—excellent progress this year. However, the committee recommends that you do considerably less service next year.” That’s the message I heard in every annual evaluation during my PhD program. Even when I received accolades for my research and teaching, I was reminded that service is a third-class citizen in graduate-student training and that I would be better off focusing my energies elsewhere. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

Why Photo Books Are Booming in a Digital Age

Since it set up in 2010, Self Publish, Be Happy, the online platform for self-published artists’ books, has been at the heart of booming interest in photographic books—in buying them, selling them, making them, exchanging them, sharing news of them on social media, attending book-signings that promote them—on a scale that has defied all predictions of the death of the physical book in a digital future. (Read more from the Financial Times.)

The Job Talk Q&A

Every part of a campus visit is important. Your meetings with faculty members count for a great deal. Your formal sit-down interview with the search committee provides critical information for its deliberations. Meals play a central role in establishing the tenor of your relationships with potential colleagues. But in my experience, the most important part of the campus visit is the Q&A after the job talk. (Read more from Vitae.)