Despite its ubiquitous nature in schools, there is a surprising lack of research about the syllabus as an educational form. Through a series of gestures informed by arts-based research methods, I examined a few ways to expand the vocabulary and potential of this “everyday” form by treating it as a pliable artistic material. For this project I took the assigned reading, which were assigned digitally, for two of my graduate courses, shrunk them down, printed them out double-sided and into strips, and then joined them into one long continuous scroll. The strand of readings when stretched out to its full-length measures about 1,500 ft. Experiencing the reading in this physical way highlights the sheer amount of assigned reading and the physical act of scrolling through the reading is arduous and invites getting lost within the texts. Gestures likes these may seem pointless, yet I have found that through them my conception of the syllabus has shifted, and I propose that the syllabus can – in fact – be a living curriculum and a shared platform for community, horizontal pedagogy, and a catalyst for imagining “schooling” as dynamic and complex set of relationships (at its core).
