Aaron Woodruff

"The Social Responsibility and Expanded Pedagogy of the Black Artist" examines the expansion of pedagogy and formal instruction of Aaron Douglas and Hale Woodruff, two African-American artists who came to prominence during the New Negro Movement, in the 1920s. The decades following the New Negro Movement marked a new era for the art education of African- American students when renowned African-American artists began to prepare future generations of artists and art educators. Douglas and Woodruff spent their tenures teaching the visual arts at historically Black universities in Nashville, Tennessee, and Atlanta, Georgia, respectively. They both had a profound influence on this new era of art education, in which they were situated in a Black experience in the segregated United States. This book specifically explores to what extent and for what goals racial consciousness and Black content were a part of the instruction, artwork, and lives of Douglas and Woodruff.