Proposed Project for Berlin Prize

In addition to a "Summer Stipend" grant through the National Endowment for the Humanities, I'm also applying this year for a "Berlin Prize," which is administered by The American Academy in Berlin, Germany.  Information about my "Summer Stipend" proposed project can be found in the post just preceding this one.

The narrative for my "Berlin Prize" project proposal totals 7 pages, and what follows are the first 2 pages:

Proposed Project

20^th Century Perspectives: Radical Renaissance and Social Change in the Age of Global War

  

My proposed project is a request for support toward the greater research of 2 parallel book projects, whose titles are From Bauhaus |To Black Mountain: A Transcontinental Renaissance in the Age of Global War, and The Agency of Art: War, Pedagogy and Social Change in the Western World – 1915 to 1965.  Both books deal with historic aspects of the Weimar Republic, and Staatliches Bauhaus (1919 – 1933), a school founded by Walter Gropius that begin in Weimar, moved to Dessau and closed in Berlin.  Both books also examine the impact of some Bauhaus alumnae who migrated to the United States (US) to continue their pioneering social and artistic lives at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina.

By investigating one of the most enduring spans of the 20th century—from 1919 to 1933 and directly thereafter 1933 to 1957—representing the respective years of operation for Staatliches Bauhaus (the Bauhaus) in Germany and Black Mountain College (BMC) in the United States—my proposed book project goes beyond existing tropes and conversations on the subject to provide a captivating narrative on the transatlantic art and education interactions at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College (BMC); two schools that ultimately produced many of the 20^th century’s leading artists, architects, designers and bleeding-edge dramatists.

What began at the Bauhaus—a small, radical, German art school which greatly transformed European thought on visual art and architecture, urban planning, interior aesthetics and design—continued across the Atlantic Ocean to inspire the foundational DNA for yet another small, radical school with a heavy focus on the arts, yet thousands of miles away.  In From Bauhaus |To Black Mountain: A Transcontinental Renaissance in the Age of Global War, there are 9 areas of study – asking and answering:

·         What was the manifesto and core principles supporting the Bauhaus?

·         How were these core principles implemented – what did they look like in practice?

·         In addition to Walter Gropius, who were some of the Bauhaus’ key players?

·         Throughout its changes in leadership and various relocations, how did the Bauhaus remain cohesive?

·         At its end in 1933, how had the Bauhaus impacted the culture-at-large?

·         In 1933 BMC came into being as a result of what culminations?

·         Who were some of the key Bauhaus alumnae that were also at BMC?

·         BMC was similar to and different from the Bauhaus in what ways?

·         By its closure in 1957, how had BMC impacted the culture-at-large?

An expanded historical survey of the mid-20^th century is examined in The Agency of Art: War, Pedagogy and Social Change in the Western World – 1915 to 1965, where a total of 5 radical art and liberal arts schools of the 20^th century, including the 2 aforementioned, take center stage to speak more directly to the impact of the Two World Wars and the Great Depression, inclusive to the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt, specifically as it relates to the creation of the Works Project Administration (WPA), and as well to how women’s liberation and the emergence of America’s 1950’s and 60’s civil rights movement shaped and colored theses schools, which then shaped and colored the world.

Agency of Art Submitted for NEH Summer Stipend Grant

It's been a few months since I updated this site, which is due in part to a major computer crash that occurred in May.  I've also been doing a lot of research work for the ongoing 2 book projects I'm working on in tandem with this one, and this does not include my other art, design and writing projects.  With that said, I've just submitted an application to The National Endowment for the Humanities for a Summer Stipend.  And during the process of putting the application together, I realized that regardless of the outcome of the grant it was instrumental to the book project for me to organize my ideas so as to create the 3-page "Narrative."

What follows is the first page of the "Narrative" and next year should I receive a Summer Stipend award I'll probably publish the entire document:

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Narrative

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that education absent mindful-inclusion will lead to elitism and insularity, enabling the higher educated to “trample over the masses.”  However, as my proposed research seeks to show, with mindful-inclusion at the fore of higher learning, five 20th century schools in different regions of the Western world— Harlem Renaissance (School), Staatliches Bauhaus, The New School, North Carolina State – School of Design, and Black Mountain College (BMC)—became the chief form givers for art and culture in the modernist age by crafting new manifestos, moral codes, philosophies and pedagogies espoused respectively by John Dewey, Martin Luther King Jr., Walter Gropius, Henry L. Kamphoefner, Alain Locke, Albert Einstein, James Baldwin and W.E.B Du Bois.  Others, including many women, like Eleanor Roosevelt and Zora Neale Hurston, for instance, also made notable contributions. 

Each had their own unique perspective, literary and oratory style, yet all were quite similar in their egalitarian approach to affirming individual liberty and social advancement through creative collaborative activity; often artistic in nature, and always through the humanities.  Some, as in the case of Gropius, who declared in his 1919 manifesto “Art and Technology: A New Unity,” were directly involved in more than one school, and in the case of Dr. King, though he was not directly involved with any of the schools, he is nevertheless the most renown figure of social change in the 20^th century, and the consequence of his moral and educational presence, however nebulous at times, plays an important role.

The organic and amorphous nature of catalytic social change through the arts and humanities does not always manifest in the embodiment of a brick and mortar institution.  The Harlem Renaissance (School) had no walls, and is instead identified to a greater or lesser degree by artwork, letters, activism, poetry and publications, as well as organized and impromptu rap sessions in the homes, private art studios or informal gatherings on the street corners of New York City’s Harlem Neighborhood—forums and spaces acting as plein air classrooms—reflecting a key aspect of education through the cultural vernacular of African-Americans prior to the formal abolition of de jure segregation.

While examining the pedagogic and moralist impact these individuals had on said schools, the research simultaneously looks at the impact and interplay of the Two World Wars, all of which converged in facilitating cultural reform and renaissance. Through a deliberate cultivation of interdisciplinary practices, a new gestalt for cultural arbiters and public intellectuals was created with enduring global implications.