No matter what field a person is working in or preparing for, collaboration and integration of ideas and knowledge are important to success. Interdisciplinary Arts provides a portal to that success by introducing students to the integration of arts concepts that they can apply to any field or endeavor they undertake.
This unique text draws from the separate but related disciplines of theatre, dance, and visual arts to help students explore creative and innovative thinking and problem solving. The authors guide the students through the creative process, using exercises, journal prompts, and other tools to aid them in creating original works that employ those arts concepts.
Interdisciplinary Arts uses strategies and terminology from multiple areas of artistic practice to enrich students' perspectives as artists and as problem solvers and communicators. It also spotlights various artists from history and presents case studies about former students who have created exciting projects, broadening students' understanding of what might be possible and spurring more creative thinking.
As students delve into the text and its resources and prompts, they will address these types of questions:
- How can I look past the first solution to find the right solution?
- How can I train myself to be creative?
- How can I better articulate how my study of the arts informs my decision-making in other fields?
- How can the arts help me get a job in my chosen field?
Interdisciplinary Arts helps students discover their expressive capabilities and integrate them fully into their lives. They will learn to break through barriers by looking at things in new ways and by allowing their experiences in each discipline to inform their work in others. Their creative journey will take them through a four-step creative process:
- A thumbnail sketch that acts as a rough draft or outline for their project
- A feedback phase, where they learn to assimilate their ideas and others' ideas about their project
- A presentation phase, where they showcase their work
- A reflection phase, where they consider why they made the work, what it means to them, and what they learned from it
The book also comes with an
instructor guide that offers chapter overviews, teaching tips, additional exercises, a sample syllabus, and more. A
student web resource includes all the activities and journal prompts as well as editable worksheets and additional resources.
Students engaging with
Interdisciplinary Arts will come away with a better sense of cross-disciplinary thinking, their own capacity for creativity, and the connections between their body, mind, and spirit. They will find that their creative energies flow more freely, and they will be able to see how to transfer the skills they learned through this text to a host of endeavors throughout their lives.
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Suzanne Ostersmith (MFA, Goddard College) is the founding director of the dance and interdisciplinary arts programs and an associate professor of theatre and dance at Gonzaga University. As a professor and scholar of dance, theatre, and visual arts, Ostersmith develops opportunities for students to grow and learn about themselves and the world around them through community, collaboration, and creativity. Ostersmith's areas of research and creative inquiry are in the intersection of the art forms of theatre, dance, and visual arts.
Kathleen Jeffs (DPhil, University of Oxford) is core director and an associate professor of theatre and dance at Gonzaga University. Publications include her translation of the 17th-century Spanish play
The Force of Habit (Guillén de Castro's
La fuerza de la costumbre) and
Staging the Spanish Golden Age: Translation and Performance, which is based on her time as rehearsal dramaturg with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Kathleen teaches performance studies, playwriting, acting, and directing using classroom and studio methods.
