Hi, my name is Mackenzie Edwards. I have the credits of a junior, but this is my first year at Knox College having transferred from Carl Sandburg College where I received my Associate of Arts and still work there as a tutor in statistics. I am sort of from Galesburg since I moved here when I started high school, but before that I’ve lived in Wisconsin, Texas, and Ohio. However, I tend to just say I am from Wisconsin because I consider where I used to live there my hometown, and I spend a lot of time there visiting friends nearly every month (my car has so many miles on it now). I am majoring in art and would like to teach at the college level at some point in addition to producing and selling my own works. I am interested in and have at least dabbled in all mediums from tattooing to printmaking. However, painting and sculptural ceramics are probably my favorite to create and I just recently had one of my ceramic sculptures at the Galesburg Community Arts Center for their Members and Friends show. Some of my non-academic interests include reading, watching horror movies, trying out new recipes, camping, hiking, and concert-going (especially ones that I get to travel to new places for). I was not planning on taking a history course outside of art history, but this one piqued my interest primarily because Indigenous histories are not something I have experience learning about within the public school system and I think it would be beneficial for me to have a broader understanding of some of it in order to provide context to Native artworks I will encounter going forward. I am also very excited to look into Native American activism later in this course and see its interplay with works of art that would have been created around the same time.
Hi Mackenzie! Welcome to HIST 281! I’m glad your here and I look forward to your insights this term! I enjoyed reading about your interests in art and art history– I am a huge fan of both! I often use smarthistory.org as a resource; they have fantastic learning materials and documentary-like videos that analyze a variety of artworks. I am also looking forward to the week on Native activism in the late twentieth century, where we will certainly pull in arts and literature into that discussion!
I look forward to seeing how you engage with the course material and contribute to our discussions!