crisman

Image
crisman@arizona.edu
Office
Room 337
Crisman, Jonathan Jae-an
Assistant Professor
Assistant Professor, Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Arid Lands Resource Sciences
Assistant Professor, Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Social, Cultural & Critical Theory
Assistant Professor, Institute for LGBTQ+ Studies
Assistant Professor, School of Architecture
Assistant Professor, School of Art
Assistant Professor, School of Geography & Development
Assistant Professor, School of Landscape Architecture & Planning

Jonathan Jae-an Crisman is an artist and urban scholar whose work considers the intersections between culture, politics, and place. His book Urban Humanities: New Practices for Reimagining the City (MIT Press, 2020), co-authored with Dana Cuff, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Todd Presner, and Maite Zubiaurre, stakes out new disciplinary terrain for the humanities. His current research focuses on the role that art and culture can play as forms of political engagement in gentrifying cities, and (with collaborator Maite Zubiaurre) on the forensic, cultural, and political practices around migrant death in the Borderlands. Work from his collaborative art practice has been shown at the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, the West Bund Biennial of Arts and Architecture, and the Reykjavík Arts Festival. He was formerly the founding Project Director and Core Faculty for the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative, and was a research affiliate with USC’s Spatial Analysis Lab (SLAB) where he worked with Annette Kim on humanizing cartographic representation. He holds a PhD in Urban Planning and Development from the University of Southern California, Master of Architecture and Master in City Planning degrees from MIT, and a BA in Architectural Studies, Geography, and Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA.

Currently Teaching

PAH 160D4 – Life in the City of Tomorrow: Time Travel, World Building, and Speculative Futures

This course explores the past, present, and future of urban life by looking at speculative representations of cities. We focus especially on practices of time travel and world building used by futurists and creatives as tools for thinking about how our cities ought to be. In addition to engaging with a range of materials that demonstrate these practices over the course of the term, we will also experiment with using these practices as methods for problem solving, critical study, and the creation of urban futures in the real world, taking into particular consideration markers of identity such as race, gender, or class.

This course explores the past, present, and future of urban life by looking at speculative representations of cities. We focus especially on practices of time travel and world building used by futurists and creatives as tools for thinking about how our cities ought to be. In addition to engaging with a range of materials that demonstrate these practices over the course of the term, we will also experiment with using these practices as methods for problem solving, critical study, and the creation of urban futures in the real world, taking into particular consideration markers of identity such as race, gender, or class.

PAH 420 – Innovation and the Human Condition: Learning How to Improve Life in the Community and Beyond

This course will equip students with the skills to use the humanities intellectual and analytical traditions to identify and pursue strategic responses to opportunities for innovation in the human condition. Over the course of the semester, students will draw on a range of humanities-based ways of seeing and doing to: 1) identify opportunities for improving the human condition at the community level and beyond; 2) analyze the cultural, political, and economic conditions that influence such opportunities; 3) design technological, industrial, and socio-cultural innovations that are directly responsive to these opportunities; and 4) develop strategic storylines that effectively convey the merits of these innovations to relevant stakeholders.

We will begin by forming small teams of student innovators. Each team will engage, experience, and internalize the course content through a series of activities and tasks that include: 1) identifying a community-based issue or opportunity that warrants an intervention; 2) analyzing the issue or opportunity through secondary research; 3) formulating an innovative strategy that is data-driven and based in the principles and concepts central to the humanities intellectual and analytical traditions; 4) refining and enhancing said innovative strategy through primary research; and 4) developing and delivering a multi-faceted presentation (visual, oral, written) of the strategy to a panel of experts.

This course will equip students with the skills to use the humanities intellectual and analytical traditions to identify and pursue strategic responses to opportunities for innovation in the human condition. Over the course of the semester, students will draw on a range of humanities-based ways of seeing and doing to: 1) identify opportunities for improving the human condition at the community level and beyond; 2) analyze the cultural, political, and economic conditions that influence such opportunities; 3) design technological, industrial, and socio-cultural innovations that are directly responsive to these opportunities; and 4) develop strategic storylines that effectively convey the merits of these innovations to relevant stakeholders.

We will begin by forming small teams of student innovators. Each team will engage, experience, and internalize the course content through a series of activities and tasks that include: 1) identifying a community-based issue or opportunity that warrants an intervention; 2) analyzing the issue or opportunity through secondary research; 3) formulating an innovative strategy that is data-driven and based in the principles and concepts central to the humanities intellectual and analytical traditions; 4) refining and enhancing said innovative strategy through primary research; and 4) developing and delivering a multi-faceted presentation (visual, oral, written) of the strategy to a panel of experts.