UC San Diego News: Art Professor Requires Students to Take Final Naked or Fail
According to 10News in San Diego, an ABC affiliate, local University of California, San Diego, associate professor Ricardo Dominguez apparently required the students of his "Visual Arts 104A: Performing the Self" class to take their final while naked.
This news broke after a mother's complaint that her daughter was forced to take the final nude or risk a failing grade.
"It bothers me, I'm not sending her to school for this," said the woman, who requested the news station keep her name out of the report. "To blanket say you must be naked in order to pass my class ... It makes me sick to my stomach."
The TV news station contacted Dominguez for comment as well.
"The class that focuses on the history of body art and performance art in relation to the question of the self or subjectivity," said Dominguez, who also confirmed the nudity requirement.
"At the very end of the class, we've done several gestures, they have to nude gesture. The prompt is to speak about or do a gesture or create an installation that says, 'What is more you than you are.'"
In a statement from Dr. Jordan Crandall, chair of the Visual Arts Department, he seemed to see it a little differently.
"Removing your clothes is not required in this class. The course is not required for graduation," Crandall said in the statement.
"VIS 104A is an upper division class that Professor Dominguez has taught for 11 years. It has a number of prompts for short performances called 'gestures.' These include 'Your Life: With 3 Objects and 3 Sounds' and 'Confessional Self,' among others. Students are graded on the 'Nude/Naked Self' gesture just like all the other gestures," he explained.
"Students are aware from the start of the class that it is a requirement, and that they can do the gesture in any number of ways without actually having to remove their clothes. Dominguez explains this -- as does our advising team if concerns are raised with them." the department chair continued.
"There are many ways to perform nudity or nakedness, summoning art history conventions of the nude or laying bare of one's 'traumatic' or most fragile and vulnerable self. One can 'be' nude while being covered."
Fox News also reports that the professor himself was also nude during the final.
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