Research and Creativity

The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora aims to promote innovative approaches to the study of culture and social life in African communities and communities of African descent.

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Faculty Learning Community

2007-08 marks the third year of the Driskell Center 's innovative curriculum development project, known as the Faculty Learning Community (FLC). Each year, the Center invites University of Maryland faculty to propose courses that intersect with the Center's annual theme (such as “Tell your Story” or “Sites of Memory and Acts of Imagination”). The FLC encourages faculty across the University of Maryland to consider how their scholarship and teaching intersect with the visual arts and culture of African Americans and the African diaspora.

Over the past three years, the Center has welcomed proposals from the departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art History, English, French and Italian, History, Studio Art, Theatre. FLC participants gather throughout the semester to discuss their coursework, to exchange ideas, and to collaborate on projects. Members of the FLC work with their colleagues to develop more interdisciplinary approaches to their teaching, exploring ways to integrate new materials or new pedagogies into their courses.

In 2006, the FLC received a grant from the Center for Teaching Excellence to support a summer workshop on interdisciplinary collaboration. In 2007, three members of the FLC attended the Association for Theatre in Higher Education's national conference to join a roundtable on interdisciplinary research with scholars from Stanford's Humanities Center .

This year's FLC will be part of the “New Critical Perspectives on African American Art History” conference in the spring of 2008.