This art historiographical study focuses on African American artist Elizabeth Catlett’s linocut series I Am the Negro Woman, composed of fifteen images and executed in 1947 while Catlett was a visiting artist at the Taller de Graphica Popular in Mexico City. The series was exhibited shortly thereafter at the Barnett Aden Gallery in Washington, D.C., only to be largely marginalized by the art historical discourse of the following twenty-five years; however, during the Civil Rights Movement, a renewed interest in Catlett and her works began to develop. Later Feminist and Post-colonial art historians, seeking to widen the narrow mid-twentieth century canon, incrementally began to address these images in accordance with their respective interests, expanding the scholarship and increasing the exhibition of the series. The reputation of these images continues to grow, moving I Am the Negro Woman out of the margins of the art historical discourse into a more valued and recognized position.

The purpose of this study was to describe the implementation, structure, content and outcome of an art-centered unit developed for 5th grade students. This unit was designed to be an example/model of specific tools and procedures that teachers can use in the art and general classroom to promote critical cultural consciousness, which is the ability to analyze both the covert and overt elements of a culture with the purpose of developing a holistic viewpoint that values the cultural heritages of self and others. The participants selected for this study were all the students in three 5th grade classes. The art-centered unit focused on three artists-Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett and Charles White-under the theme "Respect and Homage." The research methods used in this investigation were qualitative. This study was written in a style that described the research design with its origins, organization and implementation. The implementation of the curricular unit developed for this study took place in the art and general classroom. Of particular interest in this study was the framework and structure of the art-centered unit, designed around two specific strategies utilized to promote critical cultural consciousness. One strategy in this unit was the identification of art-related or art-centered micro-cultures as an organizing framework for promoting critical, aesthetic inquiry of the selected works of art. Another important curricular strategy examined in this study was the utilization of personal and cultural value orientations for their role in developing cultural consciousness and critical aesthetic inquiry into works of art. Value orientations are common general issues or questions that we as people and as cultures apply various ranking patterns. Evidence of students' development of critical aesthetic inquiry into the focused works of art was documented and discussed, along with evidence of students' expanded understanding of art and culture. That evidence, added to students' personal, reflective ideas exhibited in the context of their personal art making, provided the record of students' growth in critical cultural consciousness used in this study.