Community of Scholars

Date
February 23, 2026
Time
12:40 p.m. - 1:40 p.m.
Location
Morrill Hall, Room 200

About this event

Sustained Experiment: Labor, Absence, and the Making of Black Mountain College

Abstract: Black Mountain College, an experimental college that operated in North Carolina from 1933 to 1957, coalesced around principles of progressive pedagogy, communal living, and an unusual integration of the arts into academic life. Although it has been widely mythologized for its iconoclasm and influence on postwar American art—particularly through the work of Bob Rauschenberg, John Cage, Josef Albers, and Ruth Asawa—the forms of labor that sustained the dissident institution are often minimized or rendered invisible in accounts of its history and impact. Drawing on college records held by the Western Regional Archives (Asheville, NC), I consider why certain kinds of creative, pedagogical, and institutional labor are remembered, why some are forgotten, and what that erasure means for how we conceive of the work of a college today.

Speakers

Dr. Jennifer Schlueter
Dean & Director of Ohio State Marion

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