Each year, the Stanford Arts Institute collaborates with Bing Overseas Studies Programs to offer a Global Arts Immersion.
Global Arts Seminar 2025
The Arts in Jamaica: Exploring Knowledge Production, Community, and Resistance
Take a journey through the vibrant artistic landscape of Kingston, Jamaica, including public art, visual arts, music, dance, storytelling, DJing and sound systems, theater, and culinary traditions. Emphasizing the themes of knowledge production, community, and resistance, students will analyze how artistic expressions in Jamaica have historically shaped representations of Black identity, liberation, and cultural heritage through theoretical exploration, field trips, and sustained interaction with local artists, scholars, and students. This course invites students to deepen their understandings of Jamaica by immersing themselves in its rich culture and history, engaging critically with its artistic expressions and traditions, and appreciating how art can be used as forms of knowledge production, community-building, and resistance in their own lives.
Meet the Instructor: Katie Dieter
Dr. Katie Dieter is the Director of Advanced Studies & Community Engaged Learning in the Department of African and African American Studies at Stanford University. Before arriving to Stanford in 2020, she was a Senior Lecturer at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica for four years where she was housed in both the Art & Art History and Humanities departments. She was also adjunct faculty at the University of the West Indies, Mona (UWI), in the Cultural Studies Department. With a background in African American and African Diaspora Studies, Gender Studies, and Studio Art (metal sculpture, furniture design, and painting), Katie’s research and art focus on the ways the visual and performing arts can be used as methods of knowledge production and resistance often combining themes of Black diasporic identity, personal narrative, and meanings of home and belonging.
An Arts Experience Beyond the Classroom: Building Community and Changing Lives
Contact:
Stanford Arts Institute
artsinstitute@stanford.edu
