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.

Trigger Warning Diffused

Students at Crafton Hills College who sign up for a course on the graphic novel next year will encounter works such as Fun Home and Persepolis without being first warned on the syllabus that they might be offended. That’s the way it has been at the college, but officials at the California community college said in June that a trigger warning would be added to the syllabus after one student and her parents complained about those two novels as well as two others. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

Speaking for the “Quitters” and “Failures”

In the eyes of many academics, as Leonard Cassuto recently pointed out, I am considered a failure because I did not earn a doctorate. Meanwhile, American universities are awarding more doctorates than ever. And yet I have something most of those newly minted PhDs will never have: a full-time, tenured teaching job. (Read more from Chronicle of Higher Education.)

The Booming World of Architecture That Only Exists in Pixels

There’s a long tradition of great architects never building a single thing. They’re called paper architects, because their work is purely two-dimensional. But today, you might look for them working somewhere else: video-game design and three-dimensional visualization. An architectural visualization artist named Ronen Bekerman has been at the center of that shift. (Read more from Gizmodo.)

Help Desk: How to Lob a Pitch

How do I pitch an art article to an editor? I have begun a writing practice that is not reviewing art as much as just reflecting on art, science, and visual culture in essay-length posts. I would love to share them but don’t even know where to start. (Read more from Daily Serving.)

Art Critics Need to Get Serious If They Want to Thrive Online

Amazon announced last month that it would change its payment structure for independent writers who publish directly on the online retailer’s different Kindle platforms, giving out royalties according to the number of pages read by Kindle users, rather than per book downloaded. A per-page payscale privileges a certain kind of writing, one that relies on cliffhangers and withholding information, but this attitude fails to echo the complexities, possibilities, and variety of web-based publishing platforms. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

Collector Fights for African Art

Sindika Dokolo, a Congolese businessman and art collector, is on a crusade to force Western museums, art dealers, and auction houses to return Africa’s art, particularly works that might have been removed illegally during the colonial era. “Works that used to be clearly in African museums must absolutely return to Africa,” Dokolo said. “There are works that disappeared from Africa and are now circulating on the world market based on obvious lies about how they got there.” (Read more from the New York Times.)

A Done Deal, Obama to Create Basin and Range Monument

A vast sweep of rural Nevada marked by lonely desert valleys, craggy mountain ranges, and ancient and modern art will become the newest addition to the nation’s inventory of protected landscapes. President Barack Obama will sign a proclamation designating the Basin and Range National Monument on 704,000 acres of Lincoln and Nye counties in Nevada, the White House announced. The artist Michael Heizer has spent decades creating a massive earthen sculpture, called City, in the midst of the newly protected area. (Read more from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.)

Is Adjuncting the “Kiss of Death”?

Numerous commentators have observed that being an adjunct, as a recent essay put it, “actually seems to decrease your chances of securing a tenure-track position.” Some have even gone so far as to label adjuncting a career destroyer, the proverbial “kiss of death.” But is it really? (Read more from Vitae.)