Graduation Year
2017
Document Type
Campus Only Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Environmental Analysis
Reader 1
Char Miller
Reader 2
Kasper Kovitz
Rights Information
© 2017 Dominique Chua
Abstract
As theoretical and practical explorations of design in the past century have broadened to integrate myriad disciplines, its ubiquity and pertinence across diverse ways of knowing grows more apparent and complex. However, in education, design often remains institutionally and intellectually contained to pre-professional programs and trade schools. I contend in this thesis that liberal arts campuses warrant their own critical design-oriented discourse. As a tangible way of addressing this assertion, I coordinated the publishing of a printed design magazine entitled Edge of Town. To support my rationale for my project I present in this written supplement a set of academic literature demonstrating how current political and economic forces shaping design practice justifies a critical evaluation of the discipline. I also illustrate how the growing body of research between rhetoric and design provides a theoretical template for this re-evaluation of contemporary design practice. In the second half, I outline the components of Edge of Town and how the community that worked to produce it came together.
Recommended Citation
Chua, Dominique, "Edge of Town: Cultivating a Critical Design Discourse in the Liberal Arts" (2017). Scripps Senior Theses. 1011.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1011
This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.
