Graduate Overview

Art has been many things to many people. This class introduces students to the history of art and art-like things on Earth from prehistory to ca. 1800 CE. It covers canonical examples from older scholarship alongside works and contexts emerging in recent art histories. Students will learn to perform basic art historical analysis and research, and the course will prepare them to form personal art histories, applying such art histories to their own work.

The course surveys historical art in a global scope, from the beginnings of known culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It introduces students to a range of interdisciplinary frameworks for parsing the production, reception, and conceptualization of art. And it challenges students to think about the relationships between past and present, highlighting how later artists and cultures have engaged earlier art and history.

There is a small amount of required reading each week-on average about 20 pages. Written work includes weekly reading responses, two in-class quizzes, an annotated bibliography project, and a take-home final exam.

Art has been many things to many people. This class introduces students to the history of art and art-like things on Earth from prehistory to ca. 1800 CE. It covers canonical examples from older scholarship alongside works and contexts emerging in recent art histories. Students will learn to perform basic art historical analysis and research, and the course will prepare them to form personal art histories, applying such art histories to their own work.

The course surveys historical art in a global scope, from the beginnings of known culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It introduces students to a range of interdisciplinary frameworks for parsing the production, reception, and conceptualization of art. And it challenges students to think about the relationships between past and present, highlighting how later artists and cultures have engaged earlier art and history.

There is a small amount of required reading each week-on average about 20 pages. Written work includes weekly reading responses, two in-class quizzes, an annotated bibliography project, and a take-home final exam.

Art has been many things to many people. This class introduces students to the history of art and art-like things on Earth from prehistory to ca. 1800 CE. It covers canonical examples from older scholarship alongside works and contexts emerging in recent art histories. Students will learn to perform basic art historical analysis and research, and the course will prepare them to form personal art histories, applying such art histories to their own work.

The course surveys historical art in a global scope, from the beginnings of known culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It introduces students to a range of interdisciplinary frameworks for parsing the production, reception, and conceptualization of art. And it challenges students to think about the relationships between past and present, highlighting how later artists and cultures have engaged earlier art and history.

There is a small amount of required reading each week-on average about 20 pages. Written work includes weekly reading responses, two in-class quizzes, an annotated bibliography project, and a take-home final exam.

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

This is an advanced course that surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. It is intended for BAAH students and Scholars Program students. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. ARTHI 1201: Discussion Section for Advanced Survey of Modern to Contemporary Art & Architecture is required.

This class reveals the fine art, photography and art theories of late 19th century to the present day. The first half of the semester focusing on the period 1851 to the economic crash of 1929; which had been a time of rapid social, economic and political change impacted by revolutions in communication systems, technology and easy availability of reproductions. Students will gain a comprehensive and chronological picture of the major art movements and their engagement with or reaction against previous art and artists.

The major artists of the major movements of Impressionism, Cubism, Purism, Expressionism, Futurism, Surrealism and Abstraction will be addressed in regards to their aims and achievements.These include - to name the most prominent - Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Picasso, Braque, Leger, Kirchner, Severini, Magritte, Dali and Kandinsky and Mondrian.The class ending with major 20th century artists from Pollock and De Kooning of Abstract Expressionism to Pop artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein to current times and how they relate to this legacy and the concept of an art museum in terms of urban capitalism, Colonialism, Nationalism and Internationalism.

This class has weekly reading assignments from two major texts ; one written by art historian Richard Brettell and one written by artist Alex Katz. Written questions about these readings will be assigned as well. The class also often has sketching and student discussions in the museum. There is also one final paper on the artist covered most admired by each student.

Students will review the materials from the previous week?s lecture, both the class's main thematic and conceptual points, and also the names, practices, and places that may be required for quizzes. The TA will also lead workshops in which students exchange ideas about their notebooks, maps, papers, curated projects, or installations.

Students will review the materials from the previous week?s lecture, both the class's main thematic and conceptual points, and also the names, practices, and places that may be required for quizzes. The TA will also lead workshops in which students exchange ideas about their notebooks, maps, papers, curated projects, or installations.

Students will review the materials from the previous week?s lecture, both the class's main thematic and conceptual points, and also the names, practices, and places that may be required for quizzes. The TA will also lead workshops in which students exchange ideas about their notebooks, maps, papers, curated projects, or installations.

Students will review the materials from the previous week?s lecture, both the class's main thematic and conceptual points, and also the names, practices, and places that may be required for quizzes. The TA will also lead workshops in which students exchange ideas about their notebooks, maps, papers, curated projects, or installations.

This course plunges students into content and ideas that universities often leave until graduate school, as we consider the role played by the 'critical' in 'visual and critical studies.' For the past ten years, it has been referred to as 'a primer for the art world.' It will still, mostly, provide you with a working vocabulary and crash course as to bodies of knowledge integral to the study of visual culture. At the same time, to productively engage in a reflective critique of society and culture, it will consider 'texts' from as diverse and contemporaneous a group of scholars, theorists, critics, and cultural producers as possible, from both inside and outside the academic institution.

If a society?s order of reasons disempowers its citizens, why not weaponize the irrational? This was the premise of various, systemic reactions against the ?ego? in the midlate 20th century. In Europe, the United States, and former colonies, some of this activity can be read as an extension of the historical avant garde?s investigation of altered states of consciousness and ?madness.? The neo-avant garde sometimes used the tools of rational science to deconstruct its premises, reconstruct the real, and promote a more demotic culture. This course takes an international approach and samples practices and discourses of Dadaism, Surrealism, free jazz, performance and conceptual art, dance, film, ?relational aesthetics,? and experimental poetics. We will place a special emphasis on the way indeterminacy claims to ameliorate conflicts between political commitment and aesthetic quality.

Expect to encounter works by Francis Alys, Anthony Braxton, John Cage, Aime Cesaire, Fischli & Weiss, Helio Oiticica, Huang Yong Ping, Jorge Macchi, Jackson MacLow, Gerhard Richter, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Hannah Weiner, and others.

Course work will vary but typically includes weekly written responses, moderate reading assignments, listening and viewing, avid participation in class discussions, one creative/curatorial project, one research presentation, and a final essay.

Ancient art and architecture often provides the backdrop for National politics and in many countries is the art which one first encounters outside of a museum. This course will introduce students to ancient art and architecture in a way that highlights its modern importance in terms of cultural heritage and the art making practices of modern artists.

Readings will address the contemporary relevance of ancient art, the particularities of that artwork, and the way that ancient artwork and the modern art it inspires are a manifestation of cultural values both past and present.

Students will be required to present readings to other students on a biweekly basis, take exams based on the artwork presented in lectures, and complete a research project. The research project involves the study of one repatriated artwork's provenience and provenance and the presentation of that research to the class

The course examines the history of designed objects and their place in a variety of material contexts. Even within our increasingly digitalized existences today, physical objects continue to play a key role in determining our experiences as humans. Our objects are designed by us and at the same time design us by extending the possibilities of what it means to be human and exist in a world.

The designed object will be considered under the conditions of global exchange, in relation to questions of health, disease, and the body, as well as urbanism. We will also reflect on the designed object through the lenses of craftsmanship, technology, materials, activism, identity, and cultural heritage.

Course participants will read texts relevant to the theoretical and historical aspects of the designed object and its representations, contribute to weekly discussions, conduct object-based analyses, and engage in a series of team and individually written critical writing assignments.

If you could only be seen in one outfit for the rest of your life ? what would it be? How would you represent who you are through your choice of silhouette, color, pattern, and texture? In this course we will take a look at art?s ability to freeze moments, and garments, in time. What did the sitter (or the artist) chose to clothe the body? How did fashion and its power of communication function within the time the art work was made? What choices did the artist make to idealize or change their representation of the garments?

In statues from Ancient Greece fabrics flow around bodies like liquids, 18th century subjects were often painted in swathes of fabric meant to suggest ancient ideals through similar (impossible) textiles, and today Kara Walker uses those same floating fabrics on bodies to critique less than ideal idealists. To 19th century Impressionists the urgency of Modernity could only be represented by using contemporary garments, today Kehinde Wiley dresses a man on a horse in a hoodie. What clues tell us a figure is a warrior or a captive in work of the Nazca from ancient Peru? How can we read hairstyles in Ukiyo-e paintings from 17th century Japan? What do Jeffery Gibson and Nick Cave want us to see when they create coverings for bodies? And what was Amy Sherald trying to tell us about Michelle Obama?

We will utilize the collections of the Art Institute, The Field Museum, and others around the city to look closely, sketch, and research. Students will read, lead discussions, write daily reflections, explore through making, and develop skills in critical looking leading to two short research papers examining works of their choice.

In statues from Ancient Greece fabrics flow around bodies like liquids, 18th century subjects were often painted in swathes of fabric meant to suggest ancient ideals through similar (impossible) textiles, and today Kara Walker uses those same floating fabrics on bodies to critique less than ideal idealists. To 19th century Impressionists the urgency of Modernity could only be represented by using contemporary garments, today Kehinde Wiley dresses a man on a horse in a hoodie. What clues tell us a figure is a king in Incan pottery? How can we read hairstyles in Ukiyo-e paintings from Japan? What do Jeffery Gibson and Nick Cave want us to see when they create coverings for bodies? And what was Amy Sherald trying to tell us about Michelle Obama?

We will visit the collections of the Art Institute, The Field Museum, and other collections around the city to look closely, sketch, and research. Students will read, lead discussions, write daily reflections, and develop skills in critical looking leading to two short research papers examining works of their choice.

This course introduces 20th and 21st century Korean through major themes, including the introduction of Western art, the unique formation of Korean Modernism, the Avant-garde art movement, people?s art, feminist art, and the globalization of the Korean art scene. We also address Korean artists working internationally and major thematic Korean art exhibitions held in America.

An introduction presents an overview of the academic field known as Media Art Histories as well as the specific genealogies of relevant academic disciplines (i.e. of Film Art, Video Art, New Media Art & both filmic and digital Experimental Animation) as well as genealogies of specific media technologies (i.e. cameras, computers and software; electric lights, radio and sound; chemical, magnetic, and digital forms of storage and the industrial and capitalized structures that they require). These interwoven histories of shared theory/practices are investigated in relationship to independent/experimental/art media in contemporary cultures by asking: How do artists develop methods to work with, against, and around these techno-social forms? Readings will include Kittler, Zelenski, Grau, Gunning, Gaudreault, Musser, Schivelbusch, Auge, Adorno, Kluge, and Krackauer.

These classes examine film genres such as (but not limited to) The Western, Film Noir, Science Fiction, Horror, Romance, and Screwball Comedy. Each course illuminates the defining characteristics of the particular genre by establishing its narrative conventions, its influences in literature, art and other film genres. These courses discuss the conventions of the genre's visual style and its relationship to popular culture and social upheaval.

'Gore Capitalism' takes its title from Sayak Valencia's recent book on narcotrafficking and 'necropolitics': contemporary governments' paradoxical disregard for the lives of their own citizens. Using global contemporary cinema, we will examine troublingly consistent dynamics of repression and crisis around the world: Black marginalization and death in the United States; racist ecofascism in Brazil; the African migration crisis; neo-genocide of indigenous populations; and many others. Following Valencia's link between necropolitics and the horror genre, selected films have a genre bent toward horror, ghost stories and other modes of mysticism that serve to represent traumatic realities. But they also periodically shift into realism, as in Jasmila Zbanic's Quo Vadis, Aida?, about the Bosnian War. In the end, history becomes a key category that contemporary films are exploring-- to better contextualize today's crises and excavate strategies and solutions from the past.

Can we imagine a world without war? How many nations divided by religion and political ideology have fought for unity and lost? With the ongoing violence and widening conflict in the Middle East, three years after Russia declared war on Ukraine and 50 years since the end of the war in Vietnam, we still open our newspapers to images of the aftermath of violence and bloodshed. Cinema has a long history of depicting the drama of war. Rather than focusing on the battlefield, on which Hollywood has spawned plenty of movies, this series will examine the impact of war on the human psyche and feature films that tell stories of divided families, friends and lovers, human resilience and solidarity when confronting oppression, resistance to occupation and ultimately unity in the face of tragedy. The lectures will look at the impact of partitions, divided borders, territorial conflicts, violent uprisings and civil war as they are played out in historical dramas in an attempt to reflect critically yet objectively on current divisions around the globe.

Warning: The films shown in this class contain scenes of war, violence and trauma. Please understand that the content might be disturbing to some students.

This course covers the history of animated film, from its pre-cinematic beginnings to the beginning of the television era (ca. 1960). It traces the development of the Hollywood studio cartoon, along with parallel developments in European and Japanese animation and experimental and abstract works. Special emphasis is given to the evolution of formal animation techniques and their role in the shaping of the animation aesthetic.

Much attention is given to the groundbreaking work of Disney, the Fleischer studio, and the cartoons of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. European animators are represented by Lotte Reiniger, Oskar Fischinger, and other experimenters. All films are screened chronologically, with a mix of short works and a handful of features.

There are weekly readings on the history of animation; a ten-page paper; and a final multiple-choice exam.

This course surveys performance as art throughout the Modern and Postmodern periods?including contemporary and non-Western incarnations?and covers roughly the last one hundred fifty years. Areas of historical and theoretical focus include the philosophy of performance, ethnography, feminism, and the interface of performance with film, video, dance, sculpture, theater, technology, and popular culture. Movements like Futurism, Dada, and Fluxus are explored alongside themes like endurance, performance in everyday life, the culture wars and censorship, performance and AIDS, and postcolonial uses of performance.

Key figures such as Carolee Schneemann and Marina Abramovic are analyzed through comparison of documentaries about their work. Any number of seminal performance pieces are screened, including ones by Yoko Ono, Linda Montano, Diamanda Galas, Guillermo Gomez-Pe?a & Coco Fusco, and Anna Deavere Smith. Further historical context comes from essays and movies about AIDS activism and Punk & New Wave. Readings include primary sources, artist interviews, C. Carr's reviews, and noted works in Performance Studies from Richard Schechner, Peggy Phelan, Amelia Jones, and others.

Students will attend two performances and write reviews, an annotated bibliography assignment provides opportunity to explore historical and non-western performance topics, and there will be much discussion.

In 1839 a new means of visual representation was announced to a startled world: photography. Although the medium was immediately and enthusiastically embraced by the public at large, photographers spent decades experimenting with techniques and debating the representational nature of this new invention. This course focuses on the more recent history of this revolutionary medium. From the technological advancements that characterized the rise of photography in the commercial world during the 20th century, and the acknowledgement of photography as an artistic medium in its own right, to the digital revolution and its social media applications, we will consider the technological, economic, political, and artistic histories of photography through selected works of art and seminal critical texts.

This course considers photography in a global context. We focus on seminal texts and images in order to explore ethical, commercial, artistic, and political issues that make photography essentially important to our contemporary visual culture. The course explores broad range of photographic practices, techniques, and approaches including the work of Hannah Hoch, Martha Rosler, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Dawoud Bey, Gordon Parks, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, William Eggleston, Shirin Neshat, Wolfgang Tillmans and many more. We regularly visit the collections of AIC and MCoP to enrich our class discussions with private print viewings and exhibition critiques.

Students are expected to share an image of their choice in response to the assigned weekly reading. These images are used in class discussion. There also is a final paper, a final presentation, and an in-class test.

This course is designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to the history of video art from its emergence in the late 1960s through our present moment. Students will examine key works and the major historical, cultural, and aesthetic influences on the form.

This general survey of graphic design between the 19th and 20th centuries maps the relationships between graphic design and various commercial and cultural institutions under the broad category of the modern. Students study the issues and problems that faced designers, their clients, and their audiences, in the negotiation of commercial and social changes.

Through lectures, readings, discussions, and museum visits, the course examines the cultural, social, economic, political, industrial, and technological forces that have influenced the history of graphic design.

Course work includes object analysis assignments, research paper, and mid-term and final exams.

Using the works of established critics and writers as models and using the museum and Chicago galleries as subject matter, students learn to write concise reviews and essays. Class time is spent discussing art, assigned readings, and students? writing. Students are required to turn in one short written work at the beginning of each class. The goal of the course is to develop students? powers of observation, clarity of language and ability to form and defend opinions about works of art. Readings include Kimmelman, Berger, Schjeldahl, Hickey, Lippard, Barnet, Fried, Wolfe.

This class explores a worldwide view of textiles in the historic period of Middle Ages and the Renaissance when new trade routes connected Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania, and the Americas. Topics focused on the global transfer of goods and information include exploration, exploitation, colonization, mapping, urban growth, and industrial production. We also look at textile's role in contemporary globalization and new economic theories for the developing world, such as reflected by Practec in Peru, and discussed in books such as The Spirit of Regeneration. This course includes field trips.

The main aim of this intensive course is to learn how to write art history by doing it. Each student will write an original research paper investigating a single, particularly compelling object of her choosing in scaffolded stages over the course of the entire semester, while drawing on a range of library and museum resources and responding to constructive criticism from the teacher and from peers. The course guides students to pose generative questions of their objects, to find and analyze sources, and to make persuasive arguments.

We will also at times study the study of art, examining the history of the museum as a framework for such study, and reflecting on as well as using some key analytical moves often used by art historians. We will not only study statements by scholars reflecting on their own methods, but also exemplars of analysis, which we will in turn take apart to figure out how to do such analysis ourselves.

While this course is required for the BA in Art History and BFA with Art History Thesis, any undergraduate who wants to write art history is warmly welcome.

Where is the Black Atlantic? What does it look, smell, taste, and feel like? How does it color our world? This class explores the visual and cultural history of the Black Atlantic?a phrase used to define the relationship between dissonant geographical locations that were forged into relationship with each other through the Transatlantic Slave Trade. We will forge an understanding of how vision, texture, touch, sound, and color owe their meanings through the Middle Passage and its production of arts of the Black Atlantic. Crucial to this class is the artwork of practitioners like Jacob Lawrence, Soly Cisse, AfriCOBRA, Aubrey Williams, Faustin Linyekula, Yinka Shonibare, and Renee Green. We will focus primarily on the visual history and cultural impact of the Middle Passage as discussed through the writings of Afro-Caribbean, West African, Black American, and Black British scholars. We will work with concepts like ?native? visual forms, the coloniality of painting, Negritude, and the anticolonial imagination.

This undergraduate seminar is for all types of writers (critics, creative writers, and scholars) who want to analyze the dimensions of literary and scholarly forms of description, interpretation, and explanation. Poetry, short stories, personal essays, passages from novels, and art-history articles will form the ground for weekly encounters with works of art in the Art Institute of Chicago, as we compare what we read to what we encounter in person.
Each class meeting has a tripartite structure, as we compare a literary engagement with a work of art, evaluate a scholarly argument about the same piece or its creator, and personally engage the same or similar work in the Art Institute of Chicago. We will respond to the works of art currently on display, and, as warranted, pair the appropriate scholarship with creative works by writers such as Ada Limón, Victoria Chang, Hilton Als, Diane Seuss, Mark Doty, Hanif Abdurraqib, Wayne Koestenbaum, Vivek Shraya, Cris Kraus, Ben Lerner, Teju Cole, Eileen Myles, Gwendolyn Brooks, Paisley Rekdal, Zadie Smith, Jeffrey Yang, and John Ashbery, among others.
Students will write concise analyses of every reading assignment plus a weekly follow-up reflection as preparation for a final hybrid research paper that situates their personal moment of encounter with a work of art in the Art Institute of Chicago within art-historical scholarship. The goal is for students to probe their personal experiences with art for wider cultural implications.

What is artistic decolonization? How can art be used as a tool for decolonizing culture? In this course, students will explore ways of approaching these questions through specific case studies that look at artistic practices of Africa and West Asia (Middle East), particularly from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Together we will examine how colonialism affected fine arts pedagogy and the response of visual artists, both modern and contemporary, to this violent encounter. We will analyze how artists engaged with multidisciplinary networks working across ¿non-Western¿contexts to reclaim their identity from colonizers and to envision alternative futures. Students will explore how art is intertwined with socio-political issues and how it can amplify Indigenous, feminine, and queer perspectives. Each week will typically focus on an artistic group or a country-specific case study from Africa and West Asia (Middle East). There will be several guest lectures by curators, academics, and artists. Course work will include written weekly responses to assigned readings, presentations, and a final essay or exhibition project proposal.

Greek chitons, Elizabethan farthingales, Regency bum rolls, Victorian crinolines, Art Deco bias: the fashionable European body shape has changed era by era, the lines of the body accentuated and distorted through constrictions and protrusions. In this course, you will research those changing ideals of beauty through paintings, drawings, fashion plates, periodicals, literature, satire, and extant garments and organize your research into foundational tools to support future learning and making. Through the research you will also engage with traditional methods and techniques for creating these silhouettes; techniques and skills as essential to the student interested in historical costume design as those creating worlds of science fiction and fantasy.

These investigations into changing the shape of the human body will also spark discussion around new ideas in sculpture, object design, creative motion, and the mutability of body identity. Readings from noted fashion historians and theorists Caroline Evans, Linda Baumgarten, Valerie Steele and the Fashioning the Body exhibition catalogue will be read in parallel with essays from feminist theorists and texts exploring ideas of embodiment and performativity. Remote visits with historians, reenactors, and archives such as the Newberry Library¿s special collection and the Art Institute¿s Textile collection will offer a rare opportunity to examine the qualities and materials of objects and garments made in a time distinct from our own.

Projects throughout the course will include reference journals, illustrated glossaries, annotated bibliographies, historical sewing technique samplers, and half-scale structural garments. For final projects students will produce a research paper and a costume for a historical figure or fantastical character replicating the forms of beauty past.

Greek chitons, Elizabethan farthingales, Regency bum rolls, Victorian crinolines, Art Deco bias: the fashionable European body shape has changed era by era, the lines of the body accentuated and distorted through constrictions and protrusions. In this course, you will research those changing ideals of beauty through paintings, drawings, fashion plates, periodicals, literature, satire, and extant garments and organize your research into foundational tools to support future learning and making. Through the research you will also engage with traditional methods and techniques for creating these silhouettes; techniques and skills as essential to the student interested in historical costume design as those creating worlds of science fiction and fantasy.

These investigations into changing the shape of the human body will also spark discussion around new ideas in sculpture, object design, creative motion, and the mutability of body identity. Readings from noted fashion historians and theorists Caroline Evans, Linda Baumgarten, Valerie Steele and the Fashioning the Body exhibition catalogue will be read in parallel with essays from feminist theorists and texts exploring ideas of embodiment and performativity. Remote visits with historians, reenactors, and archives such as the Newberry Library¿s special collection and the Art Institute¿s Textile collection will offer a rare opportunity to examine the qualities and materials of objects and garments made in a time distinct from our own.

Projects throughout the course will include reference journals, illustrated glossaries, annotated bibliographies, historical sewing technique samplers, and half-scale structural garments. For final projects students will produce a research paper and a costume for a historical figure or fantastical character replicating the forms of beauty past.

A marginal cinema and history; a course designed for an undergraduate level art history. This course looks at Asian American Cinema experience and historical development as Asian American ethnic cultural diaspora and visionally representations. From political to imaginary, this course will look at works of Asian American representation through cinema and examine the Asian American & pacific Islander American experience as told though cinematic expression such as documentary, short films, feature length narratives, experimental films and mainstream Hollywood releases.

Along with weekly viewings of films and excerpts, the course will also discuss Asian American collective identity and social issues, historical background, economy of film production, racism, negative stereotyping, Hollywood whitewashing, cultural appropriation, and media activism. Historically significant artists, filmmakers and producers will be presented for weekly discussion. Some of the artists introduced in the class are: the matinee idol Sessue Hayakawa (1889?1973), to Anna May Wong (1905?1961), Winifred Eaton Reeve, Renee Tajima, Steven Okazak, Wayne Wang, Kelly Saeteurn, Quentin Lee, Justin Lin and others.

Weekly viewings of films and journals, One Midterm assignment and one final Paper.

This course offers a survey of the history of manga (Japanese comics) from its premodern predecessors to the present. Beginning with narrative picture scrolls in the medieval period, it will touch on forms of humor and political cartooning in the 19th and early 20th centuries, before moving onto multi-page stories, serials, and standalone books within the serially paneled comics medium. Related developments in non-Japanese comics and media like film, animation, illustration, and painting will also be considered.

Among the major artists to be considered in this course are: Hokusai, Tagawa Suiho, Tezuka Osamu, Tatsumi Yoshihiro, Shirato Sanpei, Tsuge Yoshiharu, Hagio Moto, Otomo Katsuhiro, Takahashi Rumiko, and Tagame Gengoro.

Students will be required to complete weekly readings, including translated manga and historical/interpretive essays, in addition to occasional reading responses, a research paper, and a final exam.

This course surveys the development of commercial, institutional and residential architecture and interiors in Europe from 1890 to 1965. It examines significant movements and individuals that shaped modern architecture's history through an analysis of the theoretical literature that accompanied the built forms now understood as 'modern.' Seminal texts analyzed include those by Morris, van de Velde, Loos, Gropius, van Doesburg, Le Corbusier, Aalto, Rowe, Stirling and Rossi, among others.

This course examines the career of America's best known architect alongside the work of his followers. Consideration is given to the origins of the Prairie School, how it achieved broad patronage, and why its popularity declined after World War I. Also examined are the Prairie School's eclecticism, its relationship to modernism, and its principles of organic design. On-site explorations include Wright's Oak Park Home and Studio and the Wright Prairie School Historic District in Oak Park. Other architects considered for their interpretations of the style are W.B. Griffin, B. Byrne, Tallmadge and Watson, W. Drummond, and G.W. Maher.

Dress and Society examines, questions, researches and discusses many interconnections of clothing, cultures and fashions. We will focus upon syntheses occurring from the meeting of dress as individual self-presentation with diverse global, cultural, historic and contemporary contexts. Controversies, ethics, fashion biographies and recently-emerged expressions of human dress and adornment will be explored.

Educated opinions will be furthered through museum exhibition visits, visiting artists' talks,
critical readings on fashion/social concerns, and weekly viewing of current media articles and images. A Fashion film screening and assigned books on fashion artists' lives will be included.

Assignments will include self-introductory illustrated presentation and 2 page museum response essay, fashion book and article readings, concise 'Fashion Now' Media Reports presented weekly, collaborative spoken and illustrated Fashion Book Panel presentations and a final 10 page 'Educated Opinion' Research Paper expanding upon course readings and further research. In-class discussions will occur every week and are integral to this course.

Taxidermy became the most important tool of knowledge of natural history museums during the Victorian period when it fascinated audiences with its hyperrealist aura. Yet, it was never considered a form of fine art. Today taxidermy has entered the gallery space, but not on the merit of its accurate realism. The opposite is true: unrealistic taxidermy is the symptom of a difficult relationship with nature and alterity that marks today's ecological and capitalist global crises.

In the mid-1960s, artists and musicians ran away from home, thumbing their collective nose at the structure and security provided by their modernist parents. On the road and in the streets, in dive bars and coffeehouses, on records and off the record, artists and musicians re-wrote not just the rules of art, but the rules that structured values, ideas, and lives. Rock and roll wasn?t just the soundtrack for these changes, but an active participant.

As one of the world's greatest film directors, Alfred Hitchcock is much more than ''the master of suspense. The semester will be devoted to analyzing Hitchcock's' masterworks as well as his major themes, including sin, the transfer of guilt, voyeurism, unconscious impulses, and gay sexuality. In addition, the class will focus on his visual style, film techniques and contributions to the art of cinema, using various critical approaches, such as psychoanalysis and feminist theory. Finally, the class will look at ways Hitchcock's films have influenced other directors, as well as artists across a wide variety of media.

Through weekly screenings, lectures and discussions, students will learn how to critique
individual works of art. They will be expected to finish two scholarly articles each week and to come to class prepared to discuss both film and readings in small discussion groups. Titles are sure include Vertigo, Rear Window and Psycho, among others.

Students should expect to produce three major writing assignments during the semester: a midterm exam, a final exam and a final research paper, plus periodic quizzes and response papers.

Through weekly screenings, lectures and discussions, students will learn how to critique individual works of art. They will be expected to finish two scholarly articles each week and to come to class prepared to discuss both film and readings in small discussion groups. Titles are sure include Vertigo, Rear Window and Psycho, among others.

Students should expect to produce three major writing assignments during the semester: a midterm exam, a final exam and a final research paper, plus periodic quizzes and response papers.

Through screenings, lectures, and readings, this course will provide students with an introduction to key filmmakers and films of contemporary international art house cinema. In particular, this class will explore feature-length fiction films that revolve --thematically or structurally--around the idea of the psychological fugue state (a form of amnesia), and/or the fugal musical structure of theme-repetition-variation.

Films will be screened and discussed in their relation to national cinemas, cultural histories, genre, and primarily, film form. Through their critical writing, students will explore the ways those films and filmmakers utilize formal elements of cinema, narrative, characterization, thematic elements, and ideological perspectives, and demonstrate how those elements are used both for aesthetic purposes and to create meaning within a film

Plant?s perceived passivity and resilient silence have relegated the vegetal world to the cultural background of human civilization. However, the recent emergence of plants in the gallery space is an invitation to reappraise this relationship at a time of deep ecological and social crisis. This course focuses on plants to unravel histories of colonialism, address gender biases, racial discrimination, and social injustice. We explore how artists and scholars working at the intersection of art, science, philosophy, and indigenous knowledge are rethinking our relationships with plants in order to envision more sustainable and fairer futures.

This course proposes a rich, diverse, and multicultural perspective on the many roles plants play in our lives. It inlcudes lectures, close readings, screenings, museum visits, discussions, collaborative coursework, and contributions by Chicago-based organizations working with local communities and plants. The work of scholars and artist Yota Batsaki, Elain Gan, Vivien Sansour, Vandana Shiva, Mogaje Guihu, Anna Tsing, Monica Gagliano, Eduardo Kac, Jamaica Kinkaid, Derek Jarman, Wangari Maathai, Zayaan Khan, Kapwani Kiwanga, Maria Thereza Alves, Shela Sheikh, Michael Marder, Monica Galliano, Rashid Johnson, Uriel Orlow and many more will provide students with a comprehenisve and global and very contemporary perspective on the subject.

Coursework includes weekly reading responses, a formal/final research paper, a test, and a presentation.

This course contextualizes English gardens and their design features within larger ideas of land ownership at the level of private ownership, the nation, and Empire. It examines the way the design of 18th and 19th century British landscapes served the needs of early modern industrialists in England and shaped the identity of colonizer in relation to colonized subjects.

In this course, we will study examples of private gardens, early botanic gardens, and other colonial gardens, including plantations, in order to explore at the critical way plants and gardens were used to dispossess people of land and culture in Europe and abroad. In Europe, we will look at the way land enclosure might be said to have produced a British working class. In the colonies, we will look at the role plants and gardens played in extending British authority over its colonial subjects and how the deep knowledge that indigenous and slave communities had about plants was stolen, lost or engaged in that process.

There are weekly readings for this course, and a final scaffolded research paper. Although a final research paper is submitted, students are expected to submit along the way other smaller assignments related to that final research project, such as a paragraph thesis statement, a bibliography, an outline, a full draft and then the final revision.

What the heck is postmodernism? Why does it matter? This course will provide detailed answers to these questions while also reviewing crucial interventions in related 'posts' such as poststructuralism and posthumanism. We will examine the systems of thought that predate these posts ¿ modernism, structuralism, humanism ¿ in order to identify how and why thinkers and artists felt the need to push past these systems, inventing new ones. We will trace these legacies into our own moment of contested values and malleable truth in order to seek insights into how to live, make, and think in the twenty-first century.
This course is reading-heavy and the readings are heavy readings. We will explore the most influential theorizations of the postmodern from writers including Jean-François Lyotard and Frederic Jameson. We will also read the heavy-hitters of poststructuralism and posthumanism. Folks like: Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Donna Harraway, Gilles Deleuze, Katherine Hayles, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Julia Kristeva.
Course work will include weekly reading responses, intensive class discussion, and a final paper.

Throughout human history, a pervasive belief in spirits, gods, and divine forces has profoundly influenced cultures, leaving an indelible mark on their customs and artistic expressions. This course adopts a broad approach, anchored in the selection of artifacts and artworks from the AIC collection. These pieces will serve as portals into a spectrum of theistic and nontheistic spiritual traditions.
We will place particular emphasis on sections of the AIC dedicated to the Arts of Africa, Arts of the Americas, and Arts of Asia. Additionally, we will delve into the evolving concept of spirituality in art from the 20th century onwards, with particular attention given to the early 20th century (1900-1950).
The culminating project for this course entails the creation of a 10-15 page research paper. Throughout the semester, students will also engage in concise object-based written exercises and participate in museum group presentations.

The art world is a complex ecosystem. What should one know about its geographical and ecological dimensions in order to pursue a rewarding career?
The rise of identity politics, diversity, and multidisciplinarity, as well as the growing
importance of collaborative practices, calls to abolish museums, and intensifying criticism of our cultural institutions' colonialist foundations, have made it more challenging than ever to navigate this rapidly changing landscape. This course deconstructs the romantic myth of the artist to foreground alternative and sustainable eco-models and systems of interdependency. Together, through the analysis of case studies borrowed from posthumanism and specualtive philosophy, we map the contradictions and paradoxes that today shape the relationship between artists, institutions, and the art market, to help practitioners of all kinds redefine their identities and reposition themselves in the contemporary art world.
The course will involve a range of sources and study materials including selected clips from films, novels, classic academic readings on the artworld, and current interviews with artists, curators, and museum directors. The course will address current urgent themes like social justice, equity, accessibility, marginalization, racism/sexism, institutional critique, etc. The work is based on my new book titled 'I'm not an artist: reclaiming creativity in the age of free content that will be published by Bloomsbury in Spring 2025. Important scholarly and professional voices included will feature: Sampada Aranke, James Elkins, Mark Dion, Timothy Morton, Anna Tsing, Donna Haraway, Mandy-Suzanne Wuong, Vivien Sansour, Edgar Heap of Birds, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Pamela Sneed, Anicka Yi, Cecilia Vicuna, Okwui Enwezor, Eyal Weizman, Robin Wall Kimmerer and many more.
Course work will include weekly reading responses, an essay, a report, and a presentation.

This experimental 2000- or 4000-level course delves into the multifaceted concept, experience, and practice of 'Emptiness.' Students will explore this theme through the lenses of philosophy, the history of religions, technology, science, and artistic practices. The course examines how emptiness has been theorized, thematized, and experienced throughout history, as well as its historical and spiritual significance.
This course will explore a diverse range of scholars, artists, and artistic traditions. We will delve into Song-Yuan Flower and Bird Paintings and the Japanese Ink painting tradition, as well as modern and contemporary figures like Adolf Wölfli, Awa Tsireh, Pablita Velarde, Alberto Giacometti, John Cage, and Yves Klein. The course will also examine architectural visionaries such as Tadao Ando, and key contributors to Minimalist art, including Agnes Martin, James Turrell, and Robert Irwin. Further areas of focus include the Dansaekhwa movement, and the evolution of installation art, for instance as exemplified by the work of Danh Vo.
This experimental course combines studio visits with in-class presentations, merging practice and theory. Students will be asked to explore modes of visualizing emptiness through creative projects, while also working on papers that examine a specific art historical or theoretical aspect of the histories of emptiness.

This course offers an introduction to the thought of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995). Deleuze was one of the 20th century?s most influential critical theorists: almost single-handedly revising the reputation of Nietzsche in France; critiquing psychoanalysis in its postmodern heyday; and devising new approaches to ontology, leftist political theory, and aesthetic theory. To this day, his concepts are frequently deployed in critical theory of all kinds, especially those concepts he developed in collaboration with activist and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari.

This course provides an introduction to the reading of Deleuze?s work. The goal of the course is to familiarize you with the contours of his career and acquaint you with his peculiar style of writing. It also acquaints you with a few subsequent elaborations on and critiques of Deleuzian thought. We read Deleuze's book on Francis Bacon's paintings, his book on Henri Bergson, and also excerpts from A Thousand Plateaus, Logic of Sense, and What is Philosophy? We also read critical responses and elaborations of Deleuzian thought.

Expect a steady, dense, and provocative reading schedule. Students complete a reading journal, a major term paper, and a collaborative presentation on intersections between contemporary art practice and Deleuze's philosophy.

This studio seminar is centered around intergenerational queer art-making within the context of The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project, which is a partnership between The Senior Services Program at The Center on Halsted and faculty members Adam Greteman and Karen Morris of SAIC. This spring course is run as a workshop in which students focus on intergenerational creative production with LGBTQ+ elders. Classes will be held at both SAIC and Center on Halsted. Students and elders will share a meal together after class meetings at Center on Halsted, and take at least one field trip together.

A range of artists, works, scholars, and activist groups will be introduced during the first third of the course as students get to know one another and the purpose of the course. This will potentially include the following: Marlon Riggs, Lesbian Avengers, Chase Joynt, ACT-UP, Ron Athey, S.T.A.R., Paul Preciado, E. Patrick Johnson, Mickalene Thomas, and others. Over the course of the latter 2/3rd of the semester, students collaborate with LGBTQ+ elders in small groups to conceive and produce work related to LGBTQ+ experiences, histories, and issues. Each small group decides on topic(s) and medium(s) while working with the instructors to create a list of relevant readings, films, and/or podcasts they will engage as part of the research and production process.

Over the course of the semester, students collaborate with LGBTQ+ elders in small groups to conceive and produce work related to LGBTQ+ experiences, histories, and issues. Final projects might take the form of visual art, video, oral history, photography, writing, a podcast, or something else. This work will be showcased on the project¿s website (generationliberation.com) and have the potential to be expanded into a range of other educational resources.

This seminar explores the history and culture of transgender and gender non-conforming communities and identities, with a particular focus on moving image work encompassing cinema, television, and new media. Themes and approaches include transfeminist, postgenderist, and queer/trans theories which challenge essentialized notions of gender and sexuality.

The course consists of weekly discussions based on screenings of moving image work, as well as critical and theoretical texts that investigate identity, embodiment, technology, and representation as they relate to trans issues. Some of the scholars and artists we will study include Susan Stryker, David Valentine, Zachary I. Nataf, C. Riley Snorton, Paul B. Preciado, Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Sam Feder, Lilly Wachowski, Chase Joynt, Tourmaline, Wu Tsang, Silas Howard, Angelo Madsen Minax, Jules Rosskam, Annalise Ophelian, Zackary Drucker.

Course work will include in-class discussions, reading assignments, reading/screening response essays, a midterm critical response essay, and a final research paper.

From the 1950s to the 1980s the visual and lively arts were open to experiment. Painting and sculpture, poetry, dance, and theatre became indistinguishable at their margins, and performance art gained acceptance as a discipline. Lectures use primary documents and contemporary criticism from this rich formative period to better understand the present situation of live art. Research proceeds via reading, rehearsal, or re-embodiment of selected scores and scripts, to analysis and assessment of them as historical, interdisciplinary artworks. Pieces considered range from absurdist drama via visceral vaudeville to the monomorphic event..

Modern architecture emerged with the rise of European nationalism and imperialism, and was consolidated with the formation of independent nation-states across the ex-colonial world. This seminar examines the twin discourses of nationalism and internationalism from the perspective of the ex-colonial world (also referred to as the Global South). Readings include Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Rabindranath Tagore, Octavio Paz, Huey P. Newton, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Projects analyzed include Le Corbusier's Chandigarh, Bruno Taut's projects in Turkey, C.A. Doxiadis in Iraq, and the World Bank's self-help housing projects.

Class content begins with the start of the youth quake of the 1960s and continues until the current day of designers? oeuvres, expanding to such arenas as video art, performance and creation of merchandise.
On occasion, a select number of students will participate with an end of year presentation together with students of the Department of Fashion Design.

This course is a chronological inquiry into fashion and dress and the relationship to a heritage of the visual arts, politics, literature, gender, and equality. Students will gain recognition of primary sources for analysis relating to art and dress in the Ryerson and Flaxman libraries. The SAIC Fashion Resource Center is a fully comprehensive venue as resource for any project. While individually and as a class, conversations are immediate, since surrounded by publications, garments and related materials in the F R C Study room and Wardrobe.

Six assignments progress from the knowledge of history to lives and practices of global designers. Of significance is an exercise of garment examination in the F R C Wardrobe resulting in museum like documentation permitting students to learn vocabulary and accurate assessment. Emphasis is placed on students mastering the skills of writing, presenting visual arts and oral presentation.

Walking is the most obvious thing in the world. We all do it. In fact it is a primary way to differentiate human beings from other sentient creatures. And yet, for the past century, artists have made revolutionary, romantic and aesthetic use of this most commonplace gesture.

In this class, we consider groups like the Surrealists, the Situationist International and Fluxus, all of whom walked in cities as a means of making vanguard art. We explore the flaneurs who came before them and contemporary artists like Francis Alys and Janet Cardiff, who came after. We look outside urban limits too, at Richard Long and the long history of Romantic walkers and traditional nomads that preceded him.

Course work includes a midterm exam and a final paper?and maybe, just maybe, we will go on a couple of walks ourselves.

This seminar considers the role of the city street in postwar American and contemporary photography and the ways in which such an approach might complicate our understanding of this genre. We will examine: key historical texts; exhibitions like Street and Studio, Strangers, and Bystander that have shaped the definition of street photography to date; and the critical practices of artists (e.g. Robert Adams, Sophie Calle, Hans Haacke, Zoe Leonard, Fred McDarrah, Ed Ruscha) and scholars (e.g. Michel de Certeau, Rosalyn Deutsche, Louis Kaplan) whose works may offer alternatives to that history.