Department of Art and Art Professions

Faculty

Dipti Desai

Associate Professor of Art and Art Education

Phone: 998 5700
Email:

Dipti Desai is an Associate Professor and Director of the Art Education Program. Prior to coming to NYU, she taught art education at SUNY-New Paltz. Her teaching career involves two years in New Zealand, where she taught courses in Education at Victoria University in Wellington and extensive experience teaching students from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds at the elementary and middle school level in the United States, India, and New Zealand. As a scholar and artist-educator she is committed to addressing the formative role of visual representation and its politics in order to affect social change. Her work examines the ways visual representation construct meanings about culture in schools and its implications for pedagogical practice. Focusing on contemporary art practices as a pedagogical site, she is currently exploring the relationship between incarceration and immigration, in particular the prison industrial complex and the immigration industrial complex. She is the co-author of  "History as Art, Art as History: Contemporary Art and Social Studies Education" published by Routledge. She has published widely in art education and education journals on the politics of multicultural art education, critical pedagogy, and social justice art education. She serves on the editorial board of several journals in art education and cultural institutions in NYC. Currently, she is the Senior Editor for the Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education and Guest Editor with Professor Lee Anne Bell for a Special Issue on  Social Justice and the Arts for the Journal - Equity and Excellence in Education.


Degrees Held

  • Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Ed.M. Columbia University, Teachers College
  • M.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Diploma National Institute of Design, India

Awards

  • 2010 : Curricular Development Challenge Fund, NYU
  • 2010 : Art and Culture-- Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development
  • 2009 : NYU Service Learning Course Development Grant
  • 2009 : NYU Professional Development Grant
  • 2005 : Nominated for the Manual Barkan Award for scholarly contribution to the field of art education
  • 2003 : Nominated for the Manual Barkan Award for scholarly contribution to the field of art education
  • 2001 : Goddard Award

Selected Publications

  • Dipti Desai, Jessica Hamlin, Rachel Mattson (2010). History as Art, Art as History: Contemporary Art and Social Studies Education. New York & London: Routledge
  • Desai, D. (2010). Unframing Immigration: Looking through the Educational Space of Contemporary Art. Peabody Journal of Educators, 85,1-18.
  • Desai, D. (2010). Reflections on Social Justice Art Teacher Education. In In T. Anderson, K. Khallmark, D. Gussack (Eds.), (pp.172-178), Art Education for Social Justice. Reston, Virginia: NAEA. (view)
  • Desai, D. (2009). Imagining Justice in Times of Perpetual War: Notes for hte Classroom. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 6(2),6-26. (view)
  • Bootwala, M. & Desai, D. (2009). Memoryscapes: Witnessing the crisis of internal refugees through visual practice. Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education. V.27, 94-106.
  • Desai, D. (2008). Living the Discourses. In K. Keifer-Boyd, M. J. Emme & j. jagodzinski (Eds.) InCITE/InSIGHT/InSITE: Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, The First 25 Years. Reston, Virginia: NAEA.
  • Desai, D. & Chalmers, G. (2007). Notes for a dialogue in art education in critical times. Art Education. 60 (5), 6-11. (view)
  • Bailey, C. & Desai, D. (2005). Visual art and education: Engaged visions of history and community. Multicultural Perspectives, 7(1), 39-43.
  • Desai, D. (2005). Places to Go: Challenges to multicultural art education in a global economy. 46(4), 293-308. (view)
  • Desai, D. (2004). Contesting territories. Catalogue essay for SAWCC Art Exhibition" Territories" at Gallery Arts India.
  • Desai, D. (2003). Multicultural Education and the Heterosexual Imagination: A Question of Culture. Studies in Art Education, 44(2), 147-161.
  • Desai, D. (2002). The Ethnographic Move in Contemporary Art: What does it mean for Art Education. Studies in Art Education, 43(4), 307-323. (view)