Dipti Desai is Professor of Art and Art Education and Co-Director of the Graduate Art + Education Programs at New York University. As a scholar, artist-educator and activist her work addresses the intersection between visual art, activism, critical pedagogy, and critical race theory. She has published widely in critical race theory in art education, critical pedagogy, and artistic activism. She is a co-author of Creating Third Spaces of Learning for Post-capitalism: Lessons from Educators, Artists, and Activists (Routledge, 2023); co-editor of Social Justice and the Arts (Taylor & Francis, 2014) and her co-authored book History as Art, Art as History: Contemporary Art and Social Studies Education (Routledge, 2010) received an Honorable mention for Curriculum Practice Category by Division B of American Education and Research Association (AERA). Among her awards, she received the Studies Lecture Award for scholarly contribution to art education, Specialist Fulbright Award and the Ziegfield Service Award for contribution to International Art Education.
Selected Publications
Desai, D. (2025). We Make the Road by Walking: Exploring Art Activist Pedagogy. In Doug Blandy and Flavia Bastos, (Eds). Promoting Civic Engagement Through Art Education: A Call to Action for Creative Educators. New York, London: Routledge.
Anderson, G. L., Desai, D., Heras A. I., Spreen, C.A. (2024). Born out of Struggle in Argentina: Bachilleratos Populares with/in/against the State. NORRAG Publishers.
Desai, D, (2024). The Black School: A Radical Space of Art, Pedagogy, and Social Transformation. In Injeong Yoon & Alejandra Ramirez, (Eds). Transnational Feminist Arts Praxis and Pedagogy for Decolonization. New York, London: Routledge.
Anderson, G. L., Desai, D., Heras A. I., Spreen, C.A. (2023). Creating Third Spaces of Learning for Post-Capitalism: Lessons from Educators, Artists, and Activists. New York and London: Routledge.
Anderson, G. L., Desai, D., Heras A. I., Spreen, C.A. (2021). Procesos de subjetivación, prácticas y políticas para el poscapitalismo. Revista Argentina de Investigación Educativa, 1(2), 77-100.
Desai, D. (2021) "There was so much silence growing up…: Artistic interventions of Tomie Arai and Flo Oy Wong. Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures Journal, 6:3, 217–237.
Amato, R., Desai, D, Meringolo, D. D., Rizzo, M. (2021). Radical is a Process: Public History Pedagogies in Urban Universities In D. D. Meringolo, (Ed.), Radical Roots: Civic Engagement, Public History, and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism. Amherst, Ma: Amherst College Press.
Desai, D. (2020). Educating for social change through art: A personal reckoning. Studies in Art Education, 61(1), 10-23.
Desai, D. (2019). Art and Activism: Moving between and beyond Aesthetic Objects to Organizing. In D. Garnet & A. Sinner (Eds.), Art, Culture, and Pedagogy: Revisiting the Work of Graeme Chalmers. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishers.
- Desai, D. (2018). Staging Protest as Art and Pedagogy. Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present Journal (ASAP/Journal), 3(2), 423-447.
- Desai, D. (2018). University of the Unknown: Interview with Raqs Media Collective, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, 4(1-2),
- Desai, D. (2018). Cultural diversity in art education. International Encyclopedia for Art and Design Education. (Ed.), Freedman, K. London: Wiley-Blackburn Publication.
- Desai, D. (2017). Artistic Activism in Dangerous Times: Teaching and Learning Against the Grain, Visual Inquiry: Learning and Teaching Art, 6(2), 135-144.
- Desai, D. & Finkelstein, A. (2017). NYU Flash Collective: An Art Intervention in the Public Sphere. In G. Sholette, C. Bass, & J. Kasper (Eds.), Art as Social Action: An Introduction to the Principles & Practices of Teaching Social Practice Art. New York: Allworth Press.
Desai, D. & Hamlin, J. (2017). Sites of Learning: Artists and Educators as Change Agents. In R. Mateus-Berr & L. Reitstatter (Eds.), Art & Design Education in Times of Change, pp. 37-42, Vienna, Austria: De Gruyter.