Cala Coats
Dr. Cala Coats’ research incorporates philosophy, ethnography, contemporary art and art education; and is part of a contemporary discourse on ecologies, social justice, community, and transdisciplinary collaboration in art education. Dr. Coats is an Associate Professor of Art Education. She serves as Director of the Art Education Program, as well as Associate Director of Curriculum Affairs and Initiatives for the School of Art. Her research focuses on intersections of ethics and aesthetics with an emphasis on nomadic inquiry, public pedagogy, and socially engaged art. Her book, New Materialisms and Embodied Encounters in Education: Curiosity's Vital Potential (Bloomsbury Academic) will be released in 2024. Dr. Coats has published in a range of journals, with book chapters in The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art, Craft, and Visual Culture Education; What Happens at the Intersection of Teaching and Conceptual Art; Makers, Crafters, Educators: Working for Cultural Change (Routledge), and Bridging Communities Through Socially Engaged Art (Routledge). In 2021, she was awarded the Pacific Region Higher Education Art Educator Award from the National Art Education Association. She is currently the Co-Editor of The Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education. She served as Co-Editor for the Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, v. 41 (Theme: Encountering Uncertainty). In 2019, she organized the symposium, Imaginative Futures: Arts-Based Research as Boundary Event, and a week-long curriculum and studio workshop for regional art educators at ASU.
Education
Ph.D. Art Education, University of North Texas, 2014
M.A. Modern Art HIstory, Theory and Criticism, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2006
B.A. Art History, University of Texas-Austin ,1999
Expertise Areas
Area of study
Publications
Books
Coats, C. (2023). New materialisms and embodied inquiry in education: Curiosity’s collective potential. Radical Politics and Education Series (T. Lewis & D. Ford, Series Eds.). Bloomsbury Academic (Under Contract – in progress for 2023 publication).
Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters
Coats, C., Singha, S., Zuiker, S., & Riske, A. (2022). Imagining our neighborhood of nonhuman residents: Sensorial attunement as ecological aesthetic inquiry. In M. Sharma & A. Alexander (Eds.), Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art, Craft, and Visual Culture Education. Routledge Taylor & Francis (accepted, in press).
Coats, C. (2021). Listen to the smell of distress. J. Lucero (Ed.), What Happens at the Intersection of Teaching and Conceptual Art(in press).
Coats, C. (2019). Transversalizing aesthetic practices: Engaging the vital force of community art work. Sabbaghi, V. & Wexler, A. (Eds.). Bridging communities through socially engaged arts(pp. 137-143). Routledge.
Coats, C. (2018). The walls tell the story: Making as collective force in the evolution of an earth home community. E. Garber, L. Hochtritt, & M. Sharma (Eds.).Makers, crafters, educators: Working for cultural change, (pp. 43-46). Routledge.
Coats, C. (2017). Feeling the sting of being a tattooed mother in the public eye. In (S. Travis, A. Kraehe, E. Hood, T. Lewis, Eds.) Pedagogies in the flesh: Case studies on the embodiment of sociocultural differences in education, (pp. 61-64). Palgrave.
Coats, C. (2016/2020).Artist-cum-Farmer: The collective aestheticization of farming as civic engagement. In (R. Shin, Ed.) Convergence of contemporary art, visual culture, and global civic engagement, (pp. 185-209) IGI Global. Doi: 10.4018/978-1-5225-1665-1.ch011 and In Environmental and Agricultural Informatics: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 1233-1257). IGI Global. http://doi:10.4018/978-1-5225-9621-9.ch056
Peer-Reviewed Academic Journal Articles
Coats, C. (2020). Stickiness as methodological condition. Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, 40, 16-28. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jstae/vol40/iss1/3/
Coats, C. (2019). Realize collective value: Generating immeasurable potential through creative micro-economies and self-organized cultural activity. Art Education, 72(5), 40-46. (Special Issue: Entrepreneurialism and Creative Destruction; acceptance rate: 30%) https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2019.1621628
Coats, C. & Clyne, D. (2017). Welcome swarms: Opening up to art education’s force in a democratic global society. Art Education: The Journal of the National Art Education Association, 70(1), 44-49.https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2017.1247572
Coats, C. (2015). Materializing transversal potential: An ecosophical analysis of the dissensual aestheticization of a decommissioned missile base. The Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, 32, 127-160. http://www.jcrae.org/journal/index.php/jcrae/article/view/45
Coats, C. (2014). Thinking through the photographic encounter: Engaging with the camera as nomadic weapon.International Journal of Education and the Arts, 15(9), 1-23. http://www.ijea.org/v15n9/
Coats, C. (2014, Summer). Tracing suburban desire. Visual Arts Research, 40(1), 17-18. https://doi.org/10.5406/visuartsrese.40.1.0017
Coats, C. (2012). Act locally: Considering possibilities with local art collectives. Trends: The Journal of the Texas Art Education Association, 2012, 48-49. https://www.taea.org/TAEA/Docs/2012/TAEA-2012-November-Trends.pdf
Invited Academic Journal Articles
Coats, C. (2020). Commentary: Embrace art education’s indiscernibility. Art Education, 73(4), 44-47. (Special Issue: The Future of Art Curriculum).
https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2020.1717818
Coats, C., & Shields, A. (2019). Inviting the waste of studio practice: Cala Coats and Alison Shields in conversation. Visual Arts Research, 45(1), 103-109. (Special Issue: Women art educators in higher education: Conversations on studio practices). https://doi.org/10.5406/visuartsrese.45.1.0103