In a case study of an undergraduate course in art education, modes of mastery learning and propositions of intellectual emancipation were explored as interventions in curriculum design. By adopting Rancière's framework of a "will to will" relationship between instructor and students, the core assignment--a visual journal--became a site of student positionality through mastery methods, rather than information gathering. The visual journal provided a record of the event of knowledge and served as a forum to verify that acts of student thinking were done with attention, congruent with Rancière's perspective that learning generates greater consciousness, feeling and action. Requiring both qualitative and quantitative criteria within the parameters of the visual journal functioned as a means to experiment with the potential convergences of mastery and emancipatory approaches. The visual journal then operated as a third space where ongoing, consistent engagement demonstrated the capacity of students to encounter more equitable relations with the instructor and with the content in ways that have implications for knowledge creation in teaching and learning.