Asynchronous Online Design History Course

13 Lectures

2021

Black Design in America is the first in a series of BIPOC Centered design history courses facilitated by Polymode. Launched in January of 2021 as live and pre-recorded lectures, readings, and discussions, this synchronous and asynchronous series of classes sheds light on moments of oppression and visibility. The series revisits and rewrites the course of design history in a way that centers previously marginalized designers, cultural figures—and particularly Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and Queer, Trans, People of Color (QTPOC).

CURRICULUM DESIGN:

Silas Munro, Pierre Bowins, Tasheka Arceneaux-Sutton

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN:

Brian Johnson, Silas Munro, and Tanvi Sharma

COURSE MARKETING AND OPERATIONS:

Audrey Davies, Brian Johnson, Silas Munro, and Tanvi Sharma

PRODUCERS:

Audrey Davies, Randa Hadi, Michelle Lamb, Silas Munro, and Tanvi Sharma

TEACHING ASSISTANT: Tanvi Sharma

LECTURERS:

Saki Mafundikwa

Ziddi Msangi

Pierre Bowins

Kelly Walters

Silas Munro

Jason Forrest

Jon Key

Tasheka Arceneaux-Sutton

Omari Souza

Colette Gaiter

Chris Dingwall

Lauren Willams

Audrey Bennett

Poetic Research

Black Design in America class topics include the ancient origins of African alphabets, innovative mathematics in African architecture, systemic racism of the transatlantic slave trade, W.E.B. Du Bois’s innovative information diagrams in 1900, the aesthetics of Eugenics and its science of racial profiling, the Harlem Renaissance and other queer Blackness, the grassroots network of Victor Hugo Green’s Motorists books, urgent Civil Rights protest movements, the rise of hip hop’s graphic language, histories of Black liberation from Afrofuturism to the Black Lives Matter movement, and methodologies of Black design education. Explore this project’s poetic research →