Janet Sarbanes is the author of a work of hybrid theory, Letters on the Autonomy Project, and two short story collections, Army of One and The Protester Has Been Released. The recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation art writer’s grant, she has published art criticism and other critical writing in museum catalogues, anthologies, and journals. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the MA Aesthetics and Politics program in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts.
Essay 
The Joys of Feminist Archiving: Two Southern California Shows by Janet Sarbanes
Archival exhibitions are not merely the best way to understand currents in 1970s feminist art and activism, but to form an active and personal connection to them that can energize both practices in the present. Janet Sarbanes visits "The Feminist Art Program (1970-1975): Cycles of Collectivity" at REDCAT, and "Heresies: Still Ain’t Satisfied" at UCR Arts, both which pay tribute to feminist pedagogy and organizing through the art of assembling the archive.
Essay 
A Community of Artists: Radical Pedagogy at CalArts, 1969-72 by Janet Sarbanes
A painter, a composer, a drama scholar, two directors, and two radical social scientists sat down at a table in 1969 to plot the future of the California Institute of the Arts. These were CalArts’ first administrators, and the challenge before them—and before the faculty they’d recruited for each of their departments or “schools” of art, film, theater/dance, music, design, and critical studies—was to actualize Walt Disney’s vision of bringing all of the arts together in one institution of higher learning, resulting in “a kind of cross-pollination that [would] bring out the best in its students.”
Interview 
A School Based on What Artists Wanted to Do: Alison Knowles on CalArts by Janet Sarbanes
This interview with Fluxus artist Alison Knowles took place in her Soho apartment in June 2011. Knowles describes being recruited for the original CalArts faculty by Allan Kaprow, the assistant dean of art; what it was like to teach at the institute in the first two years; the kind of student she encountered there; and the radical nature of the pedagogical situation. She also describes several pieces she did at CalArts, including an iteration of her famous House of Dust.