HWS News
12 December 2024 Mapping the Self Exhibit
Students in “Drawing for Study and Storytelling” exhibit work at the Provenzano Student Art Gallery.
The exhibit "Mapping the Self: Sixty Islands by Sixty Students" recently opened at the Provenzano Student Art Gallery. The show presents personal cartographies completed by students in Professor of American Studies Kirin Makker’s “Drawing for Study and Storytelling” course. The course is not for Art majors and is offered for beginning students from any discipline looking to fulfill their Art Goal. The course will be offered again in Spring 2026. Learn more about the HWS curriculum here.
The exhibit includes work from students in the Fall 2024 section of the course and previous years.
Island Self-Portraits
This gallery includes a selection of the maps that were on display at the exhibit.
Makker developed the personal cartography assignment. She asks every student to create an “island self-portrait” in which they draw a map of an imaginary island that represents the self. “Human stories are strongly tied to places,” Makker explains. “Each island is a rich self-portrait reflective of an individual and their experience navigating college life, life at this moment in time and life on Earth.”
Over the course of the semester, students in “Drawing for Study and Storytelling” use drawing to critically observe, study and engage in expressive storytelling about places, spaces and society. They also create art for art’s sake. The syllabus spans topics in visual communication, including fine art techniques such as illustration/cartoon, cartography and mindful drawing.
Makker says the course attracts students from a wide variety of majors on campus. Currently, students enrolled in “Drawing and Storytelling” are majoring in biology, computer science, economics, education, environmental science, geoscience, history, media and society and philosophy.
