Document Type
Scholarship
Abstract
The early Jesuits placed the arts at the center of their pedagogy and worldview. Taking cues from such Ignatian teachings on crossing cultural boundaries with respect and humility, and on the an emphasis on the centrality of art in human life, this article reports on a recent ethnographic fieldwork-based encounter with the Balinese arts, specifically ritual textile dyeing and weaving in the village of Tenganan Pegeringsingan, east Bali. This fieldwork on geringsing ceremonial cloth went toward a small college exhibition at the College of the Holy Cross in Spring 2011, an exhibition designed to skewer some of the more popular, touristic, fabulist clichés about ―Balinese culture‖ as paradise-like and timeless. The exhibition display design decisions are described and show how these resonate with Ignatian parallels regarding teaching through the arts. The fieldwork and exhibition illustrate how the early Jesuit appreciation for distant societies and the arts can be modeled in inventive, multidisciplinary ways in Jesuit liberal arts college curricula today.
Recommended Citation
Rodgers, Susan. "Encountering Asian Art through Joint Faculty-Student Field Research and Museum Curatorship: Ignatian Parallels." Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal Vol. 1: No. 1 (2012) . Available at: https://epublications.regis.edu/jhe/vol1/iss1/10
