share-handbook-for-artistic-research-education-high-definition

14 The Contexts of Artistic Research Educationliterary criticism, the IDSVA has had a roster of prominent guestlecturers from beyond the visual art world. Santa Cruz has a strongprogramme in North American-style visual studies, which alsoinvolves gender theory, postcolonial studies and anthropology.Rensselaer Polytechnic is one of the US’s leading technical universities(alongside Georgia Tech Institute), and the nearby State University ofNew York at Albany houses one of the world’s largest nanotechnologylaboratories; this means that students at Rensselaer receive a uniquecombination of political theory, activism and science. The Universityof California San Diego is the base of Helen Mayer and NewtonHarrison, who have been actively engaged in developing a new,environmentally focused PhD. Because of the unique culturalconfiguration in Canada, there is little communication betweenthe Francophone and Anglophone institutions, to the point atwhich Canadian correspondents have been surprised to discoverthe existence of other institutions that already grant, or arecontemplating, the PhD.North America is the least formed of the PhD ‘cultures’ around theworld. That is also my source of interest in this subject; I am scepticalabout a number of the concepts and administrative structures inexisting institutions, so I think that North America has an opportunityto rethink the fundamental conditions of the PhD. In some other partsof the world, particular administrative structures and particularunderstandings of terms such as ‘research’ and ‘knowledge’ havebecome naturalised and therefore inaccessible to foundationalcritique.By Way of ConclusionOne effect of the proliferation of PhD-granting institutions andthe literature is that many institutions are proposing changes thathave already been implemented in other places. Another consequenceis that younger traditions, like China’s, are susceptible to influenceby the more developed traditions, the latter of which take on theappearance of international norms. It can be very tempting, forexample, to ask whether a dissertation at Tokyo Geidai might bemade more reflective by engaging with Christopher Frayling’s ideaof ‘research through art’; but that would risk overwriting the lesstheorised Japanese sense of what a dissertation might do for astudent’s work.I hope that, as SHARE expands, it can make the field more interestingby highlighting similarities and differences and allowing regional