Class 34: Discussion with Peter Buckley, Acting Dean of Humanities, Associate Professor

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For our thirty-fourth class on October 2, 2017 we met at 2pm in 414 Fdn..

We had a chance to talk to Peter Buckley as he enters into his new role as Acting Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. He's previously visited the class to talk about "Strategic Planning" as it relates to the current re-writing of the Mission, as well as more generally on the historic misunderstanding and inversions of language throughout the history of the institution and higher education.

We spoke a good deal about accreditation, the humanities, turns in American higher and existing and possible examples of experimental/radical restructuring of other colleges. Peter clued us in on some possible upcoming opportunities to address our "common" experiences in the coming weeks & you can read a Pioneer profile on him here, see what he had to say to Vice about the lawsuit here, and refresh yourself on past missions and accreditation reports he had a hand in here.

Photos

📸 More photos (Dropbox 🔒)

Emails

Hi Projects class✨,

Thanks to all who made it yesterday to hear Peter Buckley speak on the state of the Mission, HSS and his take on Cooper history as it relates to our present day situation. We'll be meeting next week @ 2pm on Monday in room 414 Fdn for our first round of class presentations!

Please prepare 5 minutes material to share with us about where your synapses have been firing, what more you want to know, loose ends, or any places you've begun to dig. We're asking in addition to the 5 minutes of shared material that you prepare and bring in 1 page of typed material (& copies for the class if possible) as an exercise in having a point of record for where we're all starting off!

As always we'll bring some snacks & since we'll all be talking and listening for most of this session please bring some fruits or drinks to share if you can! ☕☕☕

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This week (10/2/17): 

We had a chance to talk to Peter Buckley as he enters into his new role as Acting Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. He's previously visited the class to talk about "Strategic Planning" as it relates to the current re-writing of the Mission, as well as more generally on the historic misunderstanding and inversions of language throughout the history of the institution and higher education.

We spoke a good deal about accreditation, the humanities, turns in American higher and existing and possible examples of experimental/radical restructuring of other colleges. Peter clued us in on some possible upcoming opportunities to address our "common" experiences in the coming weeks & you can read a Pioneer profile on him here, see what he had to say to Vice about the lawsuit here, and refresh yourself on past missions and accreditation reports he had a hand in here.

Peter Buckley presenting to Projects class, Fall 2017.jpg
Slide from a presentation by Peter Buckley- "Are we a union of anything?".jpg

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Recap from the last class (9/26/17)

Last week we met in 414 before meeting up with Katie Blumenkrantz to tour the Cooper Archives where she explained the state and make up of the collection, how it currently functions and her hopes for expanding its availability to the community and to researchers via campus initiatives and continued upkeep of the card catalog system. The Library maintains an active twitter and facebook page.

We met back up to map out people's studio and work spaces over the years, when we have a chance we'll walk together to see where we've been and where we're going. We then met up with Steven Hillyer, Chris Dierks, and Caitlin Biggers to hear more about John Hedjuk, the renovation of the Foundation building, relocation of the archive, its function over the years and its current effort to roll out a massive digitization & research tool for a subset of curated student work, an initiative independently funded by outside grants as part of the School of Architecture's Strategic Planning. The accompanying show for this initiative will be @ Cooper in October 2018.

Katie Blumenkrantz presents to Projects class.jpg
Steven Hillyer, Caitlin Biggers, and Chris Dierks presenting to the Projects class in the Architecture Archive .jpg

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Next week (10/9/17):

Come prepared to talk, share, and listen, we'll be joined by a few more extended Projects members. If we have time at the end of presentations we can begin our workspace walk through of the 2 buildings or set a date outside of class to get this done!

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Reminders & Notes:

  • "A writer is at the juncture of absolute aloneness, which is not to be reduced to sociological and/or psychological solitude; and absolute collaboration, which is not to be reduced to an explicit cooperation with other artists, with the audience, or even with nature."- Jalal Toufic Distracted 2nd edition 
  • The Board of Trustees just held their fall meeting last week on Sept 27, we can speak to Mary, Julian & Walid among others about this.
  • Following the archive visit some students from class have formed Cooper Union Archive and Exhibition Club they'll be working "to give products directly to the archive or to help fundraise for the future", you can talk to Anton, Kiersten, Faye & Julian for more!
  • Anton is interested in following in Emily's footsteps and producing the yearbook for the graduating class of 2018! Students produce entirely unique yearbooks (available in the archive) with support from the Office of Communications/Mindy Lang.
  • While the Model of the Foundation Building is still on campus I'd like to hold an event bringing the 4th year architects who built it as freshmen together to share the life of the project so far, hopefully in late October please let me know if you are interested.
  • In advance of the community summit we hope to organize as a class in the Spring, Jake, Kiersten, myself and a few others are working to host a community screening of Ivory Tower in collaboration with student councils and Student affairs, we could use some help!
  • If anyone is interested in or proficient in casting we have an opportunity to collaborate withAndrew Wilhelm's Casting techniques class to recast the street lights around the foundation building which are rumored to have been repaired by students in the foundry of the shop at the old Hewitt Building during a recession!
  • Owen is hosting a screening of Abbas Kiarostami's 'Close-Up' (1990) this friday @6pm in room 215 if anyone is interested.
Poster for screening of Abbas Kiarostami's 'Close-Up' (1990) hosted by Owen and Anime Club.png