Lindsay Davies

I teach interdisciplinary arts, from the ancient world to the present.  In addition to NYU on the Square, I have taught at NYU Florence, NYU London, and Temple University Tokyo. I hope to convey in my courses the delight and wonder to be found in the study of what humans have made,  from the well-springs of imagination and the genius of technique, to speak to and about the human condition. I want students to grasp that these things we study were made from a sense of urgency or at least necessity, a need to record and represent, a desire to bring something into being from nothingness, a will to create beauty in the face of oblivion. I also want them to appreciate the mundane and sometimes oppressive circumstances in which great beauty is made; that is, to challenge their previously received ideas and have them understand that the concept of the artist has its own critical history. I want them to be aware of the role power and wealth play in aesthetic production; of how art can be made in collusion with or resistance to the status quo. I want my students not so much to "relate" to the material of study as to experience the jolt of recognition alongside the alienation--the uncanny coexistence of the familiar and the strange. In other words, I want my classes to become places where, for an hour or so, students can wonder at the chasms of difference across the globe and across time, and yet also marvel at the feelings, behaviors, and conditions that unite us.