CV
Shana Agid
http://www.shanaagid.com
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Design, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, College of Design and Social Context, School of Media and Communication, Melbourne, Australia, 2016
Dissertation: Making Contested Futures: A Politics of Designing with People
M.A., Visual Criticism, California College of the Arts (CCA), San Francisco, CA, 2005
M.F.A., Printmaking and Book Arts, California College of the Arts, 2005
B.A., Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, concentration in Printmaking and Science, Technology, and Society, 1997 (Eugene Lang, New York, NY, Fall 1996)
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
July 2019–present
Associate Professor, Arts, Media, and Communication
Parsons School of Design, New York, New York
July 2012–June 2019
Assistant Professor, Arts, Media, and Communication
Parsons School of Design, New York, New York
July 2009–June 2012
Assistant Professor, School of Art, Media + Technology
Parsons School of Design, New York, New York
September 2005–July 2006
Visiting Faculty, Fine Arts (Printmaking and Book Arts)
Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York
July 2004–July 2006
Instructor, Screenprinting and Letterpress Printing
San Francisco Center for the Book, San Francisco, California
ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP
January 2021-present
Dean, School of Art, Media, and Technology
Parsons School of Design, New York, New York
July 2020-December 2020
Associate Dean, School of Art, Media, and Technology
Parsons School of Design, New York, New York
2016-2019
Director, First Year Program
Parsons School of Design, New York, New York
2013–2015
Coordinator, First Year Integrative Studio 1 & 2
Parsons School of Design, New York, New York
2009–2013
Director, Printmaking
Parsons School of Design, New York, New York
GRANTS / RESIDENCIES / AWARDS
2019-20
Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography, and Social Thought (GIDEST), Faculty Fellow
2016-17
Distinguished University Teaching Award, Excellence in Social Justice Teaching, The New School, New York, New York
2015-16
Scholar in Residence, New York City Center for Book Arts, New York, New York
July 2013–15
Provost’s Office Fund for Collaborative Innovation / Rockefeller Foundation, “The Ship’s First Shape Was a Raft: Building Complex Self-Determined Communities (from school to neighborhood to city) through Teaching, Learning, and Design”
2013
Esteemed Partner in Education Award, given by The Fortune Society, New York, New York
2012
Artist residency, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota
2010–11
Provost’s Office Innovations in Education Fund Grant, “Collaborative Practices in Social Design (Working with People),” Phase 2
2009–10
Provost’s Office Innovations in Education Fund Grant, “Collaborative Practices in Social Design (Working with People),” Phase 1
2006–07
Keyholder Residency, Lower East Side Printshop, New York, New York
PUBLICATIONS
Journals and Conference Proceedings (Peer Reviewed)
“Reflexive account-giving through ‘practice notations’: plural dimensions and dynamics of infrastructuring,”
co-authored with Yoko Akama. Participatory Design Conference Proceedings, ACM International,
forthcoming June 2020.
“Making and negotiating value: design and collaboration with community-led groups,” co-authored with
Elizabeth Chin. CoDesign (Special issue: Understanding, Capturing and Assessing Value in Collaborative
Design Research), 15 (1), 2019.
“‘Dismantle, Change, Build’: Designing abolition at the intersections of local, large-scale, and imagined
infrastructures,” Design Studies (Special Issue: Participatory Design), 59, 2018.
“Dance of designing: Rethinking position, relation and movement in service design,” co-authored with Yoko
Akama. ServDes2018 Conference Proceedings, 2018.
“‘…it’s your project, but it’s not necessarily your work…’: Infrastructuring, Situatedness, and Designing
Relational Practice,” Participatory Design Conference Proceedings, ACM International, 2016.
“Finding ‘Community’ and other critical words,” co-authored with Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani. Urban
Pamphleteer, Global Education for Urban Futures, 2015.
“Making Anyway: Education, Designing, Abolition.” Lateral: A Journal of the Cultural Studies Association,
Theory Thread, 3, Spring 2014.
“World-Making: Theory/Practice Practices in Design.” Design and Culture, 4(1), March 2012.
“‘How can we design something to transition people from a system that doesn’t want to let them go?’:
Social Design and its Political Contexts.” Design Philosophy Papers, “Beyond ‘Progressive Design” 3,
December 2011.
Books and Book Chapters
Call a Wrecking Ball to Make a Window, in Manhattan: An Island of Diagrams, edited by Antonis Antoniou
and Steven Heller, Abrams Press, 2021.
“Knowing what needs: design, refusal, and making otherwise,” in Design in Crisis, edited by Tony Fry and Adam Nocek, Routledge, 2021.
“What do we want?: Designing Cultures of Care in Conditions of Precarity,” in Designing Cultures of Care,
edited by Laurene Vaughn, London: Bloomsbury Press, 2018.
“Making ‘safety,’ making freedom: Problem-setting, collaborative design, and contested futures,” in Tricky
Design: The Ethics of Things, edited by Tom Fisher and Lorraine Gamman, London: Bloomsbury Press,
2018.
It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This. New York: Booklyn Artists Alliance, 2010. Letterpress printed cover,
offset interior. Numbered edition of 750.
“Hurricane Katrina and the Prison Industrial Complex.” In Through the Eye of Katrina: Social Justice in the
United States, edited by Kristin Bates and Richelle Swan, 55-75. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2007.
Journals and Magazines
“Ground Rules.” Full Bleed: A Journal of Art and Design. Issue 4: Archives, 2020.
“Ground Rules.” (excerpt) Hobart: A Literary Journal. April 2018.
Shana Agid and Erica Rand. “Introduction: Not Another Special Guest: Teaching Trans Now.” Radical
Teacher 92 (Winter 2011).
Shana Agid, Michael Bennett and Kate Drabinski. “Introduction: Teaching Against the Prison Industrial
Complex.” Radical Teacher, 88 (Summer 2010): 3-6.
Shana Agid and Erica Rand. “Introduction: Teaching Beyond ‘Tolerance’.” Radical Teacher, 80 (Winter
2008): 2-5.
“When We Became Normal: Transgender People in Pop Culture and the Politics of Normalcy.” Clamor 8
(Fall 2006): 24-5.
“When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Boy: Transgeneration’s Meditation on the Real.” flowtv.org 3(6) (November
2005). http://flowtv.org/2005/11/feature-when-i-grow-up-i-want-to-be-a-boy-transgenerations-meditationon-
the-real/
Journal Issues Edited
Shana Agid and Erica Rand, eds. “Not Another Special Guest: Teaching Trans Now.” Radical Teacher 92
(Winter 2011).
Shana Agid, Michael Bennett and Kate Drabinski, eds. “Teaching Against the Prison Industrial Complex.”
Radical Teacher 88 (Summer 2010).
Shana Agid and Erica Rand, eds. “Teaching Beyond ‘Tolerance’.” Radical Teacher 80 (Winter 2008).
Catalog Essays
“Weston Teruya.” Exhibition catalog, Pro Arts: 2 x 2 Solos 2011, 57-60. Oakland: Pro Arts, 2011.
You Can Have It All: New York. Catalog for exhibition at Salvation Gallery, New York City, 2007.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hanna Exel, “Like A Wrecking Ball: Shana Agid on New York, Nostalgia, and David Wojnarowicz,” The Visual AIDS Blog, May 28, 2014, https://www.visualaids.org/blog/detail/like-a-wrecking-ball-shana-agid-on-new-york-nostalgia-and-david-wojnarowicz.
CONFERENCES (Peer Reviewed)
2020
ServDes2020 (international Service Design Conference), Melbourne, Australia
Paper: “Holding it Open: Building capacity for Self-Determined Collaborative Service Design,” coauthored
with Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, Ayesha Hoda, John Kefales, Kerry MacNeil, Randy Martinez,
and Dilenia Santos.
Participatory Design Conference (PDC) 2020, Manizales, Colombia
Paper: “Reflexive account-giving through ‘practice notations’: plural dimensions and dynamics of
infrastructuring,” co-authored with Yoko Akama.
2019
American Studies Association, Atlanta, Georgia
Session: Emergent Counter-Topographies, Infrastructures, and Genealogies of Struggle
Additional participants: Ujju Aggarwal, Mildred Beltre, Nicole Burrowes, Deshonay Dozier, Laura Liu
National Women’s Studies Association, Atlanta, Georgia
Session: Trying Practice: The Everyday Work of Building Abolition
Additional participants: Erica Meiners, Therese Quinn, Liat Ben-Moshe, Karma Chavez
Digitally Engaged Learning Conference, Toronto, Ontario
Panel: Antiracist tactics for Digitally Engaged Teaching and Learning
Additional participants: Casey Anderson, Ben Caldwell, Elizabeth Chin
Design Research Society, Limerick, Ireland
Conversation: Imagining Critical Practices in Practice-led Design Research: What is Your “Critical”
Approach?
Co-authors / co-convenors: Yoko Akama, RMIT; Sissel Olander, KADK; Tau Lenskjold, University of
Southern Denmark
ServDes2018 (international Service Design Conference), Milan, Italy
Paper: “Dance of designing: Rethinking position, relation and movement in service design,” coauthored
with Yoko Akama (RMIT, Melbourne, Australia).
2017
American Studies Association, Chicago, Illinois
Paper: “Designing (in) the Known World: Possibilities of Dissent in Systems and Service Design”
Panel: System Breakdowns: Teaching, Imagining, and Negotiating Dissent in Everyday Structures of
Control
Additional Participants: Dan Berger, Melissa Burch, Kate Drabinski, Laura Liu
Nordes (Nordic Design Conference), 2017, Oslo, Norway
“What is Your Critical Approach: Design, Power, and Proximity,” Design Research Workshop co-led
with Sissel Olander (KADK, Copenhagen, Denmark)
Design Futures Forum, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Working with People workshop with Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani
2016
Participatory Design Conference, Aarhus, Denmark
Paper: “‘…it’s your project, but it’s not necessarily your work…’: Infrastructuring, Situatedness, and Designing Relational Practice”
Designing Interactive Systems, Brisbane, Australia
Designing Against the Status Quo workshop, paper “Wrenching Open: Queering Design Objectives”
2014
American Studies Association, Los Angeles, California
Roundtable: Teaching Against the Prison Industrial Complex through (Ambivalent) Spaces of Possibility
Additional Participants: Liat Ben-Moshe, Gillian Harkins
RGS-IBG (Royal Geographical Society – Institute of British Geographers) Annual International Conference 2014, London, England
Session: Scrapheap Challenge for Everyday Security; Presentation: Making / Contested / Futures
2013
Design Research Society OPENsig (Objects, Practices, Experiences, Networks) Symposium: Good Things and Bad Things, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK
Paper: “Making ‘Safety,’ Making Freedom: Design and Contested Futures”
2012
American Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Roundtable: Abolition Undercommons; Paper: Making Anyway
Additional Participants: Sora Han, Erica Mieners, David Stein
Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, New York, NY
Working with People: Keywords and and Contested Meanings as Pedagogical Tools for Engagement
Additional Participants: Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, Laura Liu, Judy Pryor-Ramirez
2011
American Studies Association, Baltimore, Maryland
Roundtable Chair: Critical Prison Studies Teaches against the Prison Industrial Complex: Strategies and Tools across Disciplines
Additional Participants: Kate Drabinski, Priya Kandaswamy, Sara Kaplan, Judah Schept
Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota
Roundtable: Working with People: Facilitating Critical Engagement and Collaborative Practices in Urban Design and History
Additional Participants: Jack Tchen, Lisa Yun Lee
Amsterdam School for Social Analysis International Workshop: Articulation(s), University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Panel participant: Practicing Theory; Paper: “World-making”: Theory/Practice Practices in Design
College Art Association, New York, New York
Panel participant: What’s Art Got to Do with It? Design Writing in the Twenty-First Century
Paper: “Useless: Art history and a Taste for the Useful,” with Cameron Tonkinwise
2010
American Studies Association, San Antonio, Texas
Roundtable: Teaching Abolition and the Prison Industrial Complex
Additional Participants: Patrice Douglass, Priya Kandaswamy, Elizabeth Steeby, and Kate Drabinski, Chair
Amsterdam School for Social Analysis International Workshop: Articulation(s), University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Panel participant for Politics of Mourning
Paper: “Punishment equals Recognition equals Rights equals Life: Queer Citizenship and the Prison Industrial Complex”
College Art Association, Feminist Art Project Special Sessions, Chicago, Illinois
Panel: Push and/or Pull: Trans and Gender-Variant Artists Discuss the Role of Feminism in Their Work
Paper: “Something as Simple as This: Complex Personhood and (my) Transgender Feminism”
2009
American Studies Association, Washington, D.C.
Roundtable: Sexual Citizenship and Racialized (Un)Belonging
Additional Participants: Meredith Raimondo, Priya Kandaswamy, Eithne Luibhéid, Erica Rand, Chair
2006
Cultural Studies Association 5th Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon
Paper: “I Love My Dead Gay Son: Violences of Domination and the Making of LGBT Citizens in the United States”
2005
Re-Viewing Bodies: Embodiment, Process, and Change, 2005 International Visual Sociology Association Conference, Dublin, Ireland
Paper: “No Superman: Troubling Representations of Trans ‘Masculinity’ in Visual Culture”
Trans Politics, Social Change, and Justice, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS), New York, New York
Paper: “‘Fags Doom Nations’: Imagining Safety and Politics Beyond Hate Crime Legislation”
Parties and Shared Space: 18th Annual Association of English Graduate Students Conference, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
Paper: “How I Learned to Hold It: Public Bathrooms and Gender Policing”
2004
InterseXions: Queer Visual Culture at the Crossroads, Queer Caucus for Art of the College Art Association, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS), New York, New York
Panel Chair: “Deconstructing the Queer Next Door: Interrogations of Queer Realness and the “Normal”
Paper: “Becoming the (White) Man: Loren Cameron’s Body Alchemy and the Pitfalls of the Real”
INVITED LECTURES / PANELS
2020
RMIT October 2020 Practice Research Symposium, Keynote Address
NORDES (Nordic Design Research) Summer School, Keynote Speaker
2019
Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography, and Social Thought (GIDEST),
talk: “Design + Abolition”
Service Design Melbourne (Australia), Design & Ethics #3 2019: How does time and relationships matter in human-centred design?, with Yoko Akama, Myriam D. Diatta, and Sean Donahue
The Design Museum, London, England, Tricky Design: Design Ethics for a Complex World
symposium, talk and panel: “Design in the Public Sphere”
2018
University of Illinois, Chicago, Museum and Exhibition Studies Program, Invited lecture:
Design and Abolition
The New School, Women and Gender Studies Lecture Series: Gender and Its Discontents,
“Designing Against Infrastructures of Harm,” with Paula Austin (California State University:
Sacramento)
RMIT, Melbourne, Australia, participant in talks on Design + Politics with Yoko Akama
(RMIT) and Sean Donahue (ArtCenter College of Design)
Colorado College, Design Week keynote speaker and guest course lecturer
2017
Center for Codesign Research (CODE), Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of
Architecture, Design, and Conservation (KADK), invited lectures and guest teaching with the
Codesign Masters Program
Studio at the Edge of the World: Room Without a View & the Camps,” University of
Tasmania, visiting lecturer and critic
2013
The America Project Methodology Remix: A Symposium for Educators, Artists, and Students, part of Blink Your Eyes: Sekou Sundiata Revisited, New York, New York, Artist Talk
Partnering for Impact, New York, New York, Organized by Hester Street Collaborative, the Center for Urban Pedagogy, and Urban Justice Center, “Working with People: Critical Pedagogy and Partnerships”
2010
Vera List Center for Art and Politics, Parsons the New School for Design, and New School for Social Research, The New School, New York, New York, Panel: The Oil Spill
2009, 2010
The New School, New York, New York, Paper: “Life Is Complicated and Other Theories Critical to Seeing and Making.” Invited guest lecture in University Lecture courses Fuel + Ornament (2009), and Population (2010), Faculty: Robert Kirkbride
2009
University of the Arts and DesignPhiladelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Panel: Universities and Non-Profits
Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School, New York, New York, Panel: The Crits: Parsons Faculty on the Presidential Inauguration, in conjunction with the exhibition Ours: Democracy in the Age of Branding
2005
Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, Paper: “‘Fags Doom Nations’ and Other Parables of Hate: Imagining a Transgender Politics”
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, Paper: “No Superman: Troubling Representations of Trans ‘Masculinity’”
EXHIBITION RECORD
2019
Chases Garage, York, Maine (invited)
2017
Not the End, Equity Gallery, New York, New York (invited)
2016
words | matter, Chicago, Illinois (juried)
Scholars for Advanced Study in Book Arts, Center for Book Arts, New York, New York
2015
New Impressions in American Letterpress, Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum, Two Rivers, Wisconsin (juried, catalog)
2014
National Queer Arts Festival Exhibition: Body, body, bodies, Queer Cultural Center at the SOMArts Center, San Francisco, California (juried)
2013
Artists’ Books Cornucopia IV, Abecedarian Gallery, Denver, Colorado (juried, catalog)
Trans Technology: Circuits of Culture, Self, Belonging, Mabel Smith Douglass Library at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey (invited, catalog)
2012
Tell Me How You REALLY Feel: Graphic Novels, Journals, and Travelogues, New York Center for Book Arts, New York, New York and Payne Gallery at Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA (juried, catalog)
Artists’ Books, Ripple River Gallery, Aitkin, Minnesota (invited)
2011
Multiple, Limited, Unique: Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Center for Book Arts, New York Center for Book Arts, New York, New York and Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis Minnesota (catalog)
2010–11
Book + Art: Artists’ books from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, Perkins Gallery, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
2010
Out of the Chaos and Darkness, Lower East Side Printshop, New York, New York (juried)
2009
Scissors: Pop-up, Florida Craftsmen, St. Petersburg, Florida (juried)
2008–9
Pacific States Biennial National Print Exhibition, University of Hawai’i at Hilo, Hilo, Hawai’i (juried, catalog)
Fun and Games (and Such…), New York Center for Book Arts, New York, New York (juried)
2007
Fall ’07 Exhibition, Lower East Side Printshop, New York, New York, Curator: Mary Temple (juried)
It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This, 5+5 Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (two person show)
Spring ’07 Exhibition, Lower East Side Printshop, New York, New York, Curator: Bruce Pearson (juried)
2006
’Racing Pages, New York LGBT Center, New York, New York
2005
Art Caucas International Biennial 2005, “Beyond Stereotypes,” International Art Show, Tbilisi, Georgia (invited, catalog)
Ocean Crossing, California College of the Arts, Oakland, California and Osaka University of the Arts, Osaka, Japan
2004
Parts, New College of California, San Francisco, California
Paper Cuts, Fetterly Gallery, Vallejo, California (invited)
Fresh Meat, ODC, San Francisco, California (juried)
2004 MFA Exhibition, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, California
Felix Variations, Play Space, the California College of the Arts Graduate Gallery, San Francisco, California
Paper, Ink, Fresh Perspectives, The San Francisco Center for the Book, San Francisco, California (juried)
2003
Sugar Valley, Castro Street Fair, San Francisco, California (invited installation)
Tranny Identification Project, Good Vibrations, San Francisco, California
Safe Keeping, Critical Resistance Southern Regional Conference and Strategy Session, New Orleans, Louisiana
XOXOX, The San Francisco Center for the Book, San Francisco, California (juried)
2002
Repurpose, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, California, Juror: Nicolas Bourriaud, co-director, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (juried)
1997
Coptic and Collage, New York City Center for Book Arts, New York, New York (juried)
VISITING ARTIST LECTURES
2017
2015-2016 Scholars for Advanced Study in Book Arts Artists’ Panel, Center for Book Arts, New
York, New York
2013
Queer Urban Geographies, New York, New York
“An Island of Holes and Dark Spaces: Call a Wrecking Ball to Make a Window”
Video performance and reading of an artist book, Call a Wrecking Ball to Make a Window
2012
Artist Panel for Tell Me How You REALLY Feel: Graphic Novels, Journals, and Travelogues, New York Center for Book Arts, New York, New York
Artist in Residence talk, Minnesota Center for the Book, Minneapolis, Minnesota
2011
Parsons the New School for Design, New York, New York, Course: Transdisciplinary Design MFA, Research Methods, Faculty: Lisa Grocott
2010
Eugene Lang College, New York, New York, Course: Civic Action & Interruption, Faculty: Kate Eichhorn
2006, 2009
Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, Visual Art Department/ Printmaking
2006
University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, Fine Art Department/Printmaking
COLLECTIONS
Walker Art Center
New York Public Library (NYPL)
Library of Congress
New York Center for Book Arts
New York University (NYU)
DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois
University of Michigan, Labadie Collection
University of Minnesota
University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee
University of California at Berkeley
University of California at Irvine Libraries
University of California at San Diego (UCSD), Art Library
University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)
University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB)
University of Southern California
Scripps College, Denison Library
Occidental College
San Diego State University
Athenaeum Music and Arts Library
Stanford University
Harvard University
Yale University, Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library
Wesleyan University
Dartmouth College, Hood Museum
Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum
Duke University
Grinnel College
University of Vermont (UVM)
University of Miami
The Poetry Library
Bucknell University
Wellesley College
University of Colorado, Boulder
Oberlin College
Smith College, Mortimer Rare Book Room
Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts, Wits Art Museum (WAM), The University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, South Africa