Curriculum of Visibility: Learning to See the Elite

• In Event: Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: Division B Section 5 Place and Praxis Posters

Abstract

Systems of visibility – architectures, landscapes, and their representations in text, numbers, and images – function both as curricular forms and mechanisms of power: in education, among other things they can be used differentiate the world into regions of knowledge or ignorance elite or lay. The focus of this paper is a curriculum or “mundane aesthetic” of visibility that directs naturalizes constructs of “the elite” and certain spatial regions of universities as embodying elite power and esoteric knowledge. Specifically, the paper examines strategies of visibility or “aesthetic governmentality” (Ghertner, 2010) embodied by the architectures and websites of three contrasting business school sites - Chicago, Harvard, and Ohio State.

Authors

• Jan K. Nespor, The Ohio State University

• Denice D Liggins, The Ohio State University - Columbus