Sarah Sentilles to Chair MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research at Pacific Northwest College of Art
January 18, 2016
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 18, 2016
Contact: Lisa Radon
lradon@pnca.edu
Sarah Sentilles to Chair MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research at Pacific Northwest College of Art
Friday, January 18, 2016 – Portland – Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) welcomes Sarah Sentilles as the new Chair of the MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research. Dr. Sentilles is a writer, critical theorist, scholar of religion, and author of three books including the memoir Breaking Up with God: A Love Story (HarperOne). She earned a bachelor’s degree at Yale in literature and art history, and a masters and a doctorate from Harvard, where she studied philosophy, photography criticism, visual studies, ethics, theology, religious studies, and feminist, critical, and postcolonial theories. At the core of her scholarship, writing, and activism is a commitment to investigating the roles language, images, and practices play in oppression, violence, social transformation, and justice movements.
Sentilles has taught at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland State University, and California State University Channel Islands. She also taught elementary school in Compton, California. She is currently the Mark and Melody Teppola Presidential Distinguished Visiting Professor at Willamette University.
Sentilles takes the helm of PNCA’s MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research which is now a two-year program that combines the study of critical theory with the practice of creative research, so students learn not only to critique but also to intervene, reimagine, and remake. The program is designed to help students develop modes of thinking, writing, and making that cross disciplinary boundaries.
Coursework includes seminars in critical race theory, feminist theory, LatCrit theory, queer theory, and other emancipatory projects. The program also offers seminars in creative research that claim research as a form of intervention and making. The program culminates in a thesis project so students can make a contribution to the field based on their own interests and commitments. For more information on the program, see: pnca.edu/graduate/c/ctcr.
FULL BIO
Sarah Sentilles
Doctorate in Theology, Harvard University (2008)
Master of Divinity, Harvard University (2001)
Bachelor of Arts, Yale University (1995)
Sarah Sentilles is a writer, critical theorist, scholar of religion, and author of three books including the memoir Breaking Up with God: A Love Story (HarperOne). She earned a bachelor’s degree at Yale in literature and art history, and a masters and a doctorate from Harvard, where she studied philosophy, photography criticism, visual studies, ethics, theology, religious studies, and feminist, critical, and postcolonial theories.
She wrote her dissertation on the torture photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. At the core of her scholarship, writing, and activism is a commitment to investigating the roles language, images, and practices play in oppression, violence, social transformation, and justice movements. She is currently completing a book of creative nonfiction titled Draw Your Weapons that examines how images can make and unmake the world in a time of war.
An award-winning speaker, Sentilles has been invited to organizations and universities around the country, including Harvard University, Wellesley College, Simmons College, Willamette University, Portland State University, Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Portland Center for Public Humanities, and The Rothko Chapel in Houston. Her writing has appeared in Religion Dispatches, Oregon ArtsWatch, Ms. Magazine Blog, and CNN’s Belief Blog. She has been a Writer in Residence at Hedgebrook and was awarded the Peter J. Gomes STB ‘68 Memorial Honors from Harvard Divinity School. In 2010, Sentilles co-led a workshop at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study that brought together world-renowned scholars to explore how suffering bodies have been represented in literature, art, and ritual and how those representations function socio-politically.
Sentilles has taught at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland State University, and California State University Channel Islands. She also taught elementary school in Compton, California. She is currently the Mark and Melody Teppola Presidential Distinguished Visiting Professor at Willamette University.
MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research
The MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research (CT+CR) claims critical theory as a creative project of analysis and exposure radically interested in accountability and the material effects of ideas. The two-year program combines the study of critical theory with the practice of creative research, so students learn not only to critique but also to intervene, reimagine, and remake. The program is designed to help students develop modes of thinking, writing, and making that cross disciplinary boundaries. pnca.edu/graduate/c/ctcr.
About PNCA
As Oregon’s premiere college of art and design since 1909, PNCA has helped shape the region’s visual arts landscape for more than a century. Today PNCA is a dynamic platform for 21st century art and design education at its new campus in the heart of downtown Portland. PNCA offers four BFA programs with 10 concentrations, six graduate programs within the Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies and a Post-Baccalaureate program. pnca.edu