In the Kitchen With Linda Weintraub

Emerging Arts at Oberlin: In A Class of its Own

The Way She Moves: A first-year dancer shows her stuff at the Freshman Talent Show. (photo by Claire-Helene Mershon)

Professor Linda Weintraub is the head of Oberlin College’s Emerging Arts department. The program consists of experimental courses designed to cultivate creativity relevant to contemporary modes of artistic inspiration.

Julie Johnson: I looked up the Emerging Arts Program in the catalog, and it isn’t under arts. Where is it in the catalog?

Linda Weintraub: It is its own entity. It is not a part of anything else. The way I am structuring it is that I try to create programs that are relevant to many different arts programs, and even going beyond art disciplines. Anybody who is interested in what is happening is welcome in from all the other departments.
I have not made an effort to attach myself to anyone, I am free floating. That’s why I call myself a free radical. The metaphor is actually quite appropriate. What I’m here to do, like what free radicals do in nature, is to instigate change, to introduce possibilities, and those possibilities aren’t connected to any particular discipline.

JJ: When you say the program goes beyond art, what do you have in mind?

LW: I’m working with professors from environmental studies, some biology, essentially what we are dealing with is how to develop the whole person to explore the creative process. One course focused on the definition and the identification of inspiration — does inspiration come from within the individual or is it a challenge that is presented from outside in the world? These are the kinds of issues that cross all kinds of activities and though I think the arts pay attention to them a lot more they certainly a component of whatever we do, and whatever one does if we do it with this kind of willingness to consider options, to go beyond expected ways of functioning.

JJ: When did this program start? Is it new this year?

LW: Last September, it’s one year old. Here I am, a whole department of one.

JJ: Is this completely your brainchild?

LW: No, the school received a grant form the Henry Luce Foundation to have a professor of the “Emerging Arts.” The idea was to not focus so much on the skills related to any particular discipline or the traditions related to any particular discipline and to think more broadly. It was necessary to establish a different structure.

JJ: So this is part of a wider movement within the arts outside of Oberlin?

LW: There is in the practice of the arts today a great deal of activity involving visual artists working with sound and dancers working with text. And of course when you come to something like video and film, like opera, all the different art forms are integrated. That is very much like what our world is like. Even if you think about the technologies that give us our information, they are not isolated. It’s not so easy to isolate movements of the body from movement of the brain any more. The arts always reflect the nature of the world in which they are created, and the connection between different sensual experiences, different parts of the body different parts of the mind.

We have to think about how we’re training our students for this new world. and perhaps the old academic model needs to be expanded. And so this is an experiment.

JJ: What did you have in mind while you were developing the curriculum for this program?

LW: The way I have defined my own responsibilities, since there is nobody to give me an assignment, is to do things with significance beyond benefit to the fifteen students in my class.
My second order of priority is to share, for instance, guests and activities with as many students as possible.
My third is to work with professors who are interested in exploring alternative ways to teach and the different kinds of content for their classes.
My fourth is to create some kind of document that can be shared with professors on campuses everywhere. My goal is to use this privileged position at Oberlin as some kind of catalyst to jumpstart activities everywhere. We are deeply committed to this.

The workshops I am conducting right now that Philippe Petit is a part of are all being videotaped because Petit, like my other guests, are so amazing in their ability to be innovative in their own art forms, and they are so committed to sharing their philosophies and their insights, that they are equally committed to teaching. But their method of teaching is just as innovative as their method of being artists. So Oberlin is supporting this endeavor to bringing people to campus to videotape their interactions with Oberlin students. In addition, we are going to be creating a DVD set that we’ll be disseminating to campuses across the country.

JJ: Are these types of integrating programs happening on other campuses?

LW: There are lots of reconsiderations going on in the arts departments. You will find departments of interdisciplinary arts or you will find courses in thematic material that then will involve writers, actors, musicians, whomever. But I don’t think there’s been a campaign like this to really focus on the problems and to harness some resources and truly try to do something that is capable of being shared.

The next thing we’re going to do after all this, a year from this spring, is run a conference so all that has happened in the previous three years at Oberlin will be discussed. We’ll be bringing back Petit and many of the other participants. We’re going to have a major opportunity to share ideas, I’ll be showing the videos of all of their workshops.
Essentially when people ask me why is this necessary, what is going on, I try to explain that the arts today include everything. There is no tradition that is not relevant, there is no material that is not appropriate for art making, there’s no format. There’s nothing that can’t happen.

Professors are dealing with a situation: if everything can be relevant, what do we teach? There is a real dilemma that we are confronting. There has been isolated activity on individual campuses with maybe one or two professors trying to consider this, but there has been no concerted effort. That’s what we’re trying to achieve.
What is so personally thrilling is that someone is paying me to explore things that I am really interested in exploring, things I can’t presume to be an expert in. Every semester is a brand new experiment. I’ve decided to never to the same thing twice while I’m here.

JJ: It’s a real gift that you are able to do this.

LW: It’s a privilege.