It’s easy to become disenchanted by weekly discussions, typically made mandatory by participation grades. But here in A&E;, we want to help UCLA students realize that teaching assistants are not only students themselves. Outside the classroom, they are also people with backgrounds ranging from musical festival ring leaders to comic strip satirists.
With the new series “arTistic Attention,” A&E; will feature the very people whose office hours we really should go to more, and explore their arts & entertainment-geared interests to find out what really makes them tick.
If you know an artsy TA who deserves to be featured, email us at bhornbostel@media.ucla.edu.
– A&E; editors
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One of teaching assistant Alessandra Amin’s favorite movie scenes is in “Dead Poets Society,” when one by one, students stand on their desks, declaring “O Captain! My Captain!”
In the movie, a professor deeply impacts the lives of his students, so they show respect and gratitude toward him by presenting a beloved nickname, which art history graduate student Amin blissfully hopes will become a reality for her class one day.
Aspiring to become a professor herself, Amin is a teaching assistant for the courses Modern Art, Introduction to Arts of Africa and Introduction to South Asian Arts for fall, winter and spring quarters this school year, respectively.
“I don’t have any illusions about myself as being the best teacher in the world, but I just hope that students will walk away if not really loving the art, then at least respecting where it comes from,” Amin said.
Although the fine arts have long appealed to Amin, she said she decided against attending art school. Instead, Amin married her art passion with those of reading, writing and foreign languages in her degrees in art history and French studies from Smith College in Massachusetts.
“A, I could be justified in learning foreign languages because you actually need them in art history, and B, I felt like I could channel my interest in making art into just looking more carefully at other people’s art and practices, and I could write about it,” Amin said.
Amin, noticeable by her nose piercing and side-swept curly bob, focuses on contemporary Arab art at UCLA – a tender political issue for her because her grandfather is Palestinian. She said she is influenced by exile and diaspora studies in particular.
“Contemporary Arab art is really under-studied. People are often like, ‘Wait, they make art?’ which is racist and offensive,” Amin said. “So I think it’s important that people start paying more attention to what’s going on there.”
Amin got her first taste of lecturing fall quarter as she volunteered to teach the modern art students about Dadaism, an avant-garde art movement that began in the 1910s and involves ruin, everyday materials and multimedia artworks. Relaying her interest in politicized art, Amin presented art that she said pointed out sexism of the time, such as Hannah Höch’s “The Beautiful Girl.” Art history graduate student and Amin’s partner Meg Bernstein was impressed by Amin’s devotion to her new role of teaching.
“That wasn’t a requirement of her job, but she wanted the opportunity to prepare and give a lecture,” Bernstein said. “I can tell just from the way she interacts with students in office hours that she brings her humor and her candid nature to the classroom.”
Fall quarter presented another occasion for Amin to gain experience as an art historian, marking the 48th Annual UCLA Art History Graduate Student Association Symposium at the Hammer Museum. In a dimly lit room in the Westwood museum, a spotlight illuminated the stage, where Amin acted as the master of ceremonies, Bernstein said, to introduce and coordinate the eight-hour forum for graduate student speakers from around the nation, with a keynote address from an art history professor at Bryn Mawr College, Lisa Saltzman.
“That whole sort of professional development, how to approach a far superior and beg them to please come talk … was a big responsibility but was also a really great learning experience,” Amin said.
Bernstein, who worked with Amin on the event, said this tradition is the longest running art history graduate symposium in the country.
Amin conceived of a topic that could engage a variety of art historians as they mutually shared their research with one another: (Re)Mediation. Bernstein said the broad topic is a double entendre, interpreted based on the direct definition “to remedy,” referring to interventions to pre-existing problems, or based on the root word “media” to imply a change or translation of mediums in art. Amin said the opportunity developed her skills in preparation for a career.
“I want to teach. That’s a huge goal in today’s job market so let’s hope it works out,” Amin said.
Amin also works on comics in her free time, which provide a place for her to parody art history and her fears about a future in teaching it. Lauren Taylor, a fellow art history graduate student, read these comics, which feature animals that joke about everything from the word “curated” not being in computer dictionaries to what Amin believes is the seemingly inevitable unemployment of art historians.
Although Amin said her own production of artwork mainly came to a halt in college, Taylor said Amin’s cartoons are wonderful and display her “whimsical” drawing talent.
Amin’s “O Captain! My Captain!” moment could occur this summer, since she is teaching abroad in London with the art history Travel Study Program. She said she’s committed in her current and future teaching endeavors to finding new ways to explain art history in terms of social justice and combatting stereotypes.
“Maybe I’m naïve,” Amin said. “(But) I think that all of my students are special snowflakes that have the potential to become anything.”