A new course that will take place at Iowa State will discuss diversity, social justice and culture and how it all can be expressed through art.

This course, titled “Diversity in Art,” is a one-credit art course that will meet the U.S. Diversity requirement for students that need it. It will take place from 3:10-5 p.m. Wednesdays and start March 9 this semester.

It will be structured around current events and contemporary art. Students will be able to understand how art can help interpret what is going on in society. This course will impact critical thinking and cultural empathy and work towards the intersectionality of art and how it implements diversity and social justice.

This discussion-based course will not have any artwork assignments. Students have to be willing to think, talk and challenge themselves in order to develop visual analysis skills.

“We are trying to do it from a lens of current events, but because of that, it also brings historical social structures that marginalize people,” said Nancy Gebhart, graduate student of education and graduate teaching assistant for the Women’s and Gender Studies Department. “We talk about white privilege and try to emphasize critical whiteness and how we represent art through storytelling. We also talk about how white people will profit off of the stories of marginalized people but didn’t really share that experience.”

Gebhart said the inspiration from this course came from recurring events of protesting that happened during the fall of 2015 when Trump got invited to speak on campus, and the student groups that were protesting against Trump had their banners broken by students who were supporters of Trump. This event sparked the conversations of the lack of representation and not having a voice on campus.

“Many students were talking about the lack of representation of students of color on the art on campus, and the only representation that they had was in a tokenized way, which is the statue of Jack Trice and George Washington Carver,” Gebhart said.

This course highlights many artists who are against oppression and advocates for equality, such as Brenda Jones, a university professor in art and visual culture. Students can work with local artists in the community to create an environment that allows people to advocate for social justice.

“Having them meet artists who are on campus and live in Iowa who create art to talk about oppression is important, and to create a course on campus that inquires about artwork to be shown on campus that will address the lack of diversity and representation,” Gebhart said.

One of the important features students will be able to take away from this course is to understand the underlying messages and how it is affecting one’s interpretation about what they are seeing, Gebhart said. The intention is to teach students how to build cultural empathy.

“The [Iowa State] Principles of Community will guide everything that they do in the classroom,” Gebhart said. “Trying to build an environment that is brave and that is challenging, that is open to feelings such as anger and that is open to whatever kind of expression that we have, but that it’s done with care and thought and consideration of others. I hope people have strong emotions, but with respect.”

The class still has seats open at the time of this article’s publishing. Students can register by going to AccessPlus. The course name is DSN S 145.