Description
"Creativity" is a word that excites and dazzles us. It promises brilliance and achievement, a shield against conformity, a channel for innovation across the arts, sciences, technology, and education, and a mechanism for economic revival and personal success. But it has not always evoked these ideas. The Creativity Complex traces the history of how creativity has come to mean the things it now does, and explores the ethical implications of how we use this term today for both the arts and for the social world more broadly. Richly researched, the book explores how creativity has been invoked in arenas as varied as Enlightenment debates over the nature of cognition, Victorian-era intelligence research, the Cold War technology race, contemporary K-12 education, and even modern electoral politics. Ultimately, The Creativity Complex asks how our ideas about creativity are bound up with those of self-fulfillment, responsibility, and the individual, and how these might seduce us into joining a worldview and even a set of social imperatives that we might otherwise find troubling.
Author: Shannon Steen
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 07/12/2023
Pages: 258
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.70d
ISBN13: 9780472056279
ISBN10: 0472056271
BISAC Categories:
- Technology & Engineering | Social Aspects
- Performing Arts | Theater | History & Criticism
- Art | Art & Politics
About the Author
Shannon Steen is Associate Professor of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and American Studies, and Associate Dean for Programs and Planning in the College of Letters and Science at UC Berkeley.