Conversations
Welcome. In these Conversation Pages, the Maxine Greene Center invites Members to initiate topics for conversation with those from various professions, including: Teaching Artists, Educators, Scholars and Researchers, and those from our wonderful Alliances.
Through inquiries into sociology, history, and especially philosophy and literature, Maxine Greene explores living in awareness and "wide-awakeness" in order to advance social justice. Her thinking about existence and the power of imagination have been brought to life through her study, academic appointments, essays and books. In her teaching, she desires to educate those who speak, write, and resist in their own voices, rather than mimic her ideas and language. We look forward hearing your voices here in these pages.
Students talk about aesthetic education and social imagination
In Holly Fairbank's aesthetic education course with graduate and undergraduate students from Hunter College and Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY Fall 2020 the students were asked to read two articles by Dr. Greene "Defining aesthetic education" (2002-Blue Guitar) and "Art and Imagination" (2000-Phi Delta Kappan) To my understanding, based on Maxine Greene’s reading, aesthetic education…Encounters with works of art
Professors/Teaching Artists John Toth and Holly Fairbank invited their students from Hunter College and BMCC,CUNY to join in a conversation by adding their comments observations, questions and interpretations of this photo by Gordan Parks entitled "Emma Watson and her Grandchildren" (1934).
aesthetic space, aesthetic experience
We are concerned, as members of The Maxine Greene Institute with having aesthetic experiences, inhabiting aesthetic spaces. The excerpt here, from Variations on a Blue Guitar, reminds us how to approach the world aesthetically, and of the value of works of art created for this kind of noticing.