WWW: NPR – Borderland Dispatches

Santa Muerte – Image from NPR Borderland: Dispatches

Journalist Steve Inskeep of NPR’s Morning Edition recently traveled 2,500 miles along the US/Mexico border, photographing and documenting what he saw:

We were seeking stories of people, goods and culture that cross the border. Heavily fortified though it is, the border remains the place where two nations meet, trade, clash and influence one another. It’s a place to see history — how the United States spread across the West, into lands that once belonged to Mexico — and a place to glimpse both nations’ emerging futures. We meant to explore big issues like immigration, crime and business through the personal stories of people who cross.

The resulting stories document various aspects of life along the border, including the tales of immigrants, asylum seekers, musicians, vendors, students, border patrol agents, cartel hitmen, and ordinary folks on both sides of the line.

WWW: Using Editorial Cartoons to Teach Social Justice

If I had to choose one point to take from our recent professional development workshop on Alice Leora Briggs’ depiction of the violence in Juárez, it is this:

Artists play a critical role in exposing injustice.

It’s true. Hypocrisy and greed are never safe around an artist. And among artists, there can be none more unabashedly political than an editorial cartoonist. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s: “Teaching Tolerance” website has a powerful series of political cartoons that can help students explore social justice issues while building important language skills like irony, satire, caricature, dialogue, etc…

En la Clase: “In the Wake of Juarez”–Art as Social Justice

Alice Leora Briggs, Abecedario de Juárez, 2010, Sgraffito on 32 wood panels. Collection of the Artist, Courtesy of Etherton Gallery, Tucson, AZ

In last week’s En la Clase post, I shared one of the lessons from our curriculum materials created for the professional development workshop “In the Wake of Juárez–Teaching Politics through Art”.  The workshop was based upon the current exhibition of Alice Leora Briggs’ work: “In the Wake of Juárez.”  In the workshop we discussed the significance of Briggs’ work and how and why we should implement projects like Briggs’ in the classroom. For those of you who aren’t local, Briggs’ images can be viewed at http://aliceleorabriggs.com (click on the artworks tab).

En la Clase: “In the Wake of Juárez–Teaching Politics, Art, and Poetry”

El Cholito by Alice Leora Briggs

Our most recent event was the professional development workshop for educators, “In the Wake of Juárez: Teaching Politics through Art.”  Held at the UNM Art Museum, the workshop had two purposes: first, to engage with Alice Leora Briggs’ exhibit “In the Wake of Juárez” and then to discuss how to implement it in the classroom.  We’ll be posting a link to our entire curriculum guide for the workshop soon, but I wanted to share part of our curriculum with you today, as it is a poetry based lesson that would be perfect for National Poetry Month.

Local Event for Teachers! In the Wake of Juárez: Teaching Politics through Art

Abedecario de Juárez by Alice Leora Briggs

We are very excited to announce the Latin American and Iberian Institute’s next workshop for the spring term! And it’s another art-based event! “In the Wake of Juarez: Teaching Politics through Art” will take place on Tuesday March 26, 2013, from 4:00-7:00 p.m. in the UNM Art Museum.

Participants will first engage with the subject and technique of the museums’ exhibition, “In the Wake of Juárez: The Drawings of Alice Leora Briggs,” and then discuss how to implement it in the classroom.  This event is recommended only for teachers of grades 9-12 given the content of the artwork, though all are welcome to attend.