Artistic Citizenship A Public Voice for the Arts

How do people in the creative arts prepare for, and participate in, civic life? This question is central to anyone involved in arts education and in the creation of public policy for the arts. Celebrity endorsements of political candidates and controversies over NEA funding aside, the role of the artists - student and professional - must increasingly be couched in terms of the social: artists make art, but they also exercise their cultural citizenship as explainers, teachers, and advocates.
This volume will be developed at NYU, where the Tisch School of the Arts (not coincidentally founded in 1965, the year the NEA came into being) is one of the country's premier institutions for arts education. Mary Schmidt Campbell and Randy Martin are putting together a volume that will explore the central questions of "artistic citizenship," a term they create here to explore a unique and powerful form of civic identity.
The list of contributors, all of whom have or have had some connection to the Tisch School, include the novelist E.L. Doctorow, performance artist Karen Finley, film and television scholar Toby Miller, Arvind Rajagopal, theatre guru Richard Schechner, cultural theorist Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Deborah Willis, George Yudice, and the African writer Ngugi Wa Thiongo.

Artistic Citizenship asks the question: how do people in the creative arts prepare for, and participate in, civic life? This volume, developed at NYU’s Tisch School, identifies the question of artistic citizenship to explore civic identity – the role of the artist in social and cultural terms. With contributions from many connected to the Tisch School including: novelist E.L. Doctorow, performance artist Karen Finley, theatre guru Richard Schechner, and cultural theorist Ella Shohat, this book is indispensable to anyone involved in arts education or the creation of public policy for the arts.

1.  Randy Martin, Artistic Citizenship: Introduction

2. Mary Schmidt Campbell, The Role of the Arts in a Time of Crisis

3.  Richard Schechner, A Polity of its Own Called Art?

4.  Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Encounters with Censorship

5.  E.L. Doctorow, Address to the students of the Tisch School for the Arts, New York University, September 14, 2001

6.  Deborah Willis, Responsible Looking

7.  Gail Segal, A Praise of Doubt

8. Toby Miller, Screening Citizens

9.  Rober Stam & Ella Shohat, Patriotism, Fear, and Artistic Citizenship

10. Arvind Rajagopal, Art for Whose Sake? Artistic Citizenship as an Uncertain Thing

11. George Yudice, Public and Violence

12. Jan Cohen-Cruz, 'Twixt Cup and Lip': Intentions and Execution of Community-based
Art as Civic Expression

13. Karen Finley, Participating in Artistic Citizenship: Constructing a National Narrative--
Considering the Passion of Terri Schiavo

List of Contributors

Index

Mary Schmidt Campbell is Dean of the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Randy Martin is Associate Dean and Professor of Public Policy at NYU.