Screen Shot 2020 04 14 at 12 29 44 PM
Inside Oxbow

Oxbow Distance Learning - Personal as Political

04/14/20

In Citizen, An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine writes a profound personal narrative that speaks to institutional racism and cultural conditioning. She employs critical research as well as divulges personal experiences to craft her work. Using Citizen as a technical and conceptual structure, create your own personal-political narrative.
What social, political, and/or environmental issues do you care about? And how do they relate to your direct, lived experience?

Steps:

Warm-up:
Personal Chronology. Create a written timeline in your journal with major personal, political, social, and/or environmental moments from the last 5 years. Choose one political, social, and/or environmental moment that had a profound impact on you personally. Then, free write in your journal about this experience. Use this exercise as a brainstorming tool.

Research:
Pick an area (or areas) of interest (racial, gender, religious, ethnic, cultural, socioeconomic, educational, environmental, technological) that you would like to personalize. Conduct research on your area of interest. What collective stories, headlines, movements, and/or experiences support your personal narrative?

Writing:
From this, craft your own, typed, 3 + page, personal-political narrative, incorporating both personal experience and research. Use the vignette style of Claudia Rankine’s poetic prose for inspiration. Incorporating imagery and artwork into your written works is strongly encouraged.

Student Work Example

I learned to drop all previous assumptions I had about people because I had never met anyone like the other students at Oxbow. For the first time, my peers and their insightful thinking inspired me. For example, during the ‘Einstein’s Dreams’ presentations, I kept looking around the room thinking, I can’t believe all of these students are talking the way I think.

— Sara DeLong, Spring 2010

The art that goes on in most high schools is usually relatively skill-based. At Oxbow, there is more emphasis on looking and seeing and more critical thinking about what you are doing, the human connection, that personal element. Through art you can begin to understand yourself better. That may be the biggest eye-opener for students. It is almost a preview of college. Get out of the mechanical factory high school education and get into something open, new, and invigorating in a small environment.

— Bill Barrett, Former Oxbow Board Member, Former Executive Director of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design (AICAD)

Oxbow opened me up to what was out there in the world to go out and grab, and gave me so much that I take with me everywhere I go, with everything I do.

— Nina Palomba, Spring 2008

A School Like No Other

Apply