I am very pleased to announce that Dr. Joan Grossman will join us this coming summer as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Art.
Joan is a media artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York, with projects that span documentary film, video installation, video projection design for live performance (including collaborating on the recent Salt Marsh Suite about a distressed wetland in North Carolina), and productions for non-profit organizations such as the World Resources Institute. Her work has won numerous awards and has been screened in more than 20 countries with projects in China, Russia, Africa, and throughout Europe. She has been a visiting artist and professor of film and media arts at universities across the country, and has worked as a producer for European feature films shooting in the US. Her recent documentary, Drop City, is currently screening internationally, and is distributed by 7th Art Releasing in Los Angeles. Joan has a PhD in Media and Philosophy from the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Her book, BLACKOUT: On Memory and Catastrophe, was published by Atropos Press.
At the Middlebury School of the Environment, Joan will co-teach the Introduction to Environmental Analysis (with Steve Trombulak) and an elective course on Environmental Video Production.
I am excited about her elective in video production. In this course, students will gain hands-on experience in video production and create short video works that draw on other aspects of the environmental studies curriculum. Video can be a powerful tool for research and creative expression, and has the potential to deeply enhance how we perceive and understand the environment. The course will explore aesthetic and philosophical approaches to video production, and creative techniques for communicating information and producing artistic works. The aim of this course is to develop skills and perspectives that demonstrate how video can provoke profound discourses on issues and ideas.