Low-Res MFA Degree Requirements and Specifications

  • Completion schedule: Students have a maximum of five years to complete the coursework and submit a final, approved thesis. This includes time off for leaves-of-absence.
  • Transfer credits: A minimum of 45 credit hours must be completed at SAIC. Although the general overall graduate credit transfer policy allows students to request 15 credits, due to the nature of the LRMFA curriculum, the department can only approve a maximum of 6 transfer credits to satisfy the elective requirement. Transfer credits are possible at the discretion of the Director. No transfer credit will be permitted after a student is admitted.
  • Full-time status minimum requirement: 9 credit hours during summer semesters, 6 credit hours during the fall and spring semesters, and, if enrolled, 3 credit hours during the winter semester.
  • Attendance is mandatory for the entire six-week summer residency period as well as orientation.

Graduate Studio Seminar

Graduate Studio Seminar (GSS) is your studio-based course over the six-week summer residency. It is taught by an experienced core SAIC Low-Res faculty member. Students are expected to arrive on campus with completed or in-process works and be prepared to make and re-make new works throughout the summer. In GSS, you will meet individually and in small groups with your core faculty, who will lead critique and assign readings that concentrate on problems concerning methods of artmaking, distribution, and interpretation. Graduating students will use summer critique sessions to gain constructive feedback on the final stages of studio and written productions for presentation.

Visiting Artists & Scholars Lectures and Colloquium

The Visiting Artists & Scholars lecture series brings world-renowned artists and scholars from all disciplines to Chicago during the Low-Res MFA six-week summer residency period. Speakers deliver a public lecture open to the entire SAIC and Chicago community and hold studio visits with Low-Res MFA students. Each Visiting Artist & Scholar lecturer will also participate in a colloquium exclusively for Low-Res MFA students and faculty, where you can engage in an in-depth discussion of the ideas and concepts presented in the lecture.

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Throughout the program, you will be introduced to critical texts and theoretical positions in contemporary praxis through interdisciplinary seminar courses. Designed for both in-person and online learning, these art, theory, and criticism courses articulate the conceptual focus of the program through faculty’s diverse areas of expertise. During the summer residencies, you will take Art History/Theory: Attention and Art History/Theory: Perception, which reinforce the thematic framework of poetics. You will also take the art history survey course required for all SAIC MFA students, Graduate Survey of Modern and Contemporary Art (ARTHI 5002), in the second summer, which makes active use of the Art Institute of Chicago museum as a site of learning. During the fall and spring, you will take Art Ideas and Writing Art, which are offered as multiple thematically-driven sections, which will deepen your understanding of how an art practice can synthesize thinking, writing, and making, preparing you for your thesis work. Additional Special Topics seminars are offered every year as elective courses.

Professional Practices

For the Low-Res MFA, a series of specialized professional practice courses will be offered throughout the three years. During the first summer, you will be introduced to online library resources and to all digital research, communication, and dissemination tools necessary for your use during off-campus semesters. In the second summer, student-initiated interviews, site visits, conversations, and tours of cultural partner organizations in Chicago will increase your exposure to other arts-related professional contexts. In your final year, you will be supported in developing the networks, tools, resources, and contacts needed to continue transitioning from a graduate program to your desired professional contexts.

Graduate Projects

During your off-campus semesters, you will be expected to engage in independent work and research from your home studio or mobile platforms. Core SAIC Low-Res MFA faculty will support your continued development of ideas and approaches initiated during summer Graduate Studio Seminars through Graduate Projects advising. Graduate Projects advising consists of one-on-one online studio visits with an advising faculty member. We encourage you to work with different faculty each semester to gain a broad range of perspectives on your practice.

MFA Thesis Composition, Presentation, and Exhibition

As a graduation requirement of the Low-Res MFA program, you must publicly exhibit/perform your final thesis project and submit for review a written accompaniment to a community of faculty and peers at SAIC. In your final two semesters, you will enroll in graduate thesis courses focused on the production of advanced work and writing to be exhibited and published. In Thesis Composition, which takes place during your second online spring semester, you will develop and workshop the written component of your MFA thesis—which can take academic or expressive forms. In Thesis Presentation, which takes place in-person during your final summer residency, you will explore ways of speaking about and presenting on your practice. Your MFA Thesis Exhibition will also take place during your final summer residency, and will be open to the public.

Elective Credits

As part of their 60 credit MFA degree, students will choose 6 elective credits. Elective credits can be taken in all semesters, time permitting, and with consent of the Director.

The elective credits can be customized based on the student's needs. These credits can be satisfied in a number of ways:

All LRMFA students must take the required Art History credits within the Low-Residency MFA Program. Students may also elect to take additional Art History courses and/or additional sections of Graduate Projects as part of the Elective credits.

Course Listing

Title Catalog Instructor Schedule

Description

What are the most urgent issues in contemporary art now? This online course addresses the central themes and ideas shaping the production and distribution of art. Students will develop and manage their own blogs and participate in continuing online discussions. The final requirement will be a finished paper.

This course will examine contemporary theories of the image and image circulation. Rooted in art histories of photography, the course will expand to cover many media, with a special emphasis on digital technologies. The artworks and writings discussed will pay special attention to the subjective effects of modern image ecologies. Authors encountered will range widely, including Tina Campt, Vilém Flusser, Byung-Chul Han, and Susan Schuppli.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

1094

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

What are the most urgent issues in contemporary art now? This online course addresses the central themes and ideas shaping the production and distribution of art. Students will develop and manage their own blogs and participate in continuing online discussions. The final requirement will be a finished paper.

This course will explore performance and theories of performativity, with a focus on histories of 20th and 21st century performance art, speech acts, and theories of gender performativity and embodiment. Taking up the core proposition of the ¿performative turn¿ in art and philosophy, we will examine not only what artworks, texts, and embodied practices mean, but what they do. Coursework will combine new and canonical works in queer theory, feminism, Black studies, Indigenous studies, and disability studies, and performance studies, as well as assignments that create opportunities to put theory into practice.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

1148

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

What are the most urgent issues in contemporary art now? This online course addresses the central themes and ideas shaping the production and distribution of art. Students will develop and manage their own blogs and participate in continuing online discussions. The final requirement will be a finished paper.

This formulation of Art Ideas will be attentive to the Caribbean archipelago as a place from which to perceive the world. Contesting continental presuppositions, we will be heedful of Antonio Benitez-Rojo¿s affirmation that ¿the culture of the Caribbean is aquatic, not terrestrial¿ and follow Aimé Césaire¿s famous injunction: ¿I shall command the islands to be.¿ We will move among texts and artworks in a kind of organic displacement, bearing in mind that the archipelago is in constant metamorphosis, an interchange between land and water, a seismic circumstance, a volcanic advent, an appellation of migrations, languages in flux ¿ in sum, a series of imbricated translations that overturn the idea of a single, stable vantage. A sense that, as Toni Morrison insists, ¿just as we watch other life, other life watches us.¿

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

2313

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

What is research and why is it important to artistic practice? In this elective, students will be presented with a range of research and visual methodologies?ways of organizing and writing about their process and practice. This course provides a framework for students to research artistic practices that relate to their individual practices. Students will write case studies articulating the chosen artists' practices, related histories, and theories. Shared case studies among the cohort will echo the multitude of ways to approach a fine arts practice. It is anticipated that the topics covered and case studies produced may work toward parts of the written thesis developed the following semester.

Students in this course are introduced to a broad range of research methodologies including; philosophical, material, experiential, comparative, descriptive, naturalistic, and practical via readings and visual material. The specific visual methodologies introduced are; semiotics, psychoanalysis, sociological, and historical approaches. Artistic research projects are introduced as an extension of new ideas around research in art, though not central to the course assignments.

Research Methodologies provides a framework for students to deeply research artistic practices that interest them. Students will write case studies that define and articulate the artists' particular methodologies and genealogies?ways of practicing and their related histories and theories. Students will build and manage their own blogs and participate in continuing online discussions. The online sharing of fellow students? case studies will echo the multitude of ways of working and the related histories behind diverse artistic practices learned. The assessed tasks are three case studies.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

1149

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

This seminar-style online course will examine relationships between architecture and painting, with special attention paid to ways that color shapes our experience of space. An introductory section will focus on some theories of aesthetic, spatial, and visual experience. The body of the course will be a series of case studies of artworks, with a concentration on works of international Modern and Contemporary abstract art. The course will conclude with student directed projects informed by our studies. Authors will include Sarah Ahmed and Gaston Bachelard. Artists discussed will include Eileen Gray, Dr. Esther Mahlangu, Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam and Judy Ledgerwood. Students will be asked to contribute their own readings and references to the synchronous and asynchronous discussions as well.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

1166

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

Human Rights and Art: A Study of Social Movements is a course about art, activism, and writing about art in relationship to history, philosophy, social studies, literature, film, and ideas of the human. We will investigate ways artists in a variety of cultures articulate and express human rights, acting as conduits and catalysts who respond locally and globally to its abuses. In particular, we will investigate the uses of poetry, performance, theater, and visual arts. Through writing prompts, essays, and online discussions we will examine art produced by and not limited to AIDS activism of the early 90s, feminism, the LGBTQ liberation struggle, the South African anti-apartheid struggle, liberation struggles in Egypt and the Middle East, and the current Black Lives Matter movement. Also, we will examine the current resurgence in political art. We will look at many philosophers, historians, and essayists including Hannah Arendt, Kevin Bales, along with artists such as Pussy Riot, Simone Leigh, Carlos Martiel, Karen Finley, Kara Walker, and Ai WeiWei.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

2338

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

Guided Studies are intensive, self-driven courses of study that have a clear rationale for their configuration and articulate an expressed need in terms of a student's scholarly, material, and theoretical research. As a 3 credit course, a Guided Study constitutes 135 hours of study and production on the part of the student, including four meetings (virtual or otherwise) with a supervising faculty who has expertise in the research areas. On the Guided Study syllabus co-produced by the LRMFA student and supervising faculty, expected research accomplishments must be formulated, alongside a course description, learning objectives, evaluation criteria, a proposed timeline, a communication plan, and a suggested reading list or bibliography. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

2433

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Description

Guided Studies are intensive, self-driven courses of study that have a clear rationale for their configuration and articulate an expressed need in terms of a student's scholarly, material, and theoretical research. As a 3 credit course, a Guided Study constitutes 135 hours of study and production on the part of the student, including four meetings (virtual or otherwise) with a supervising faculty who has expertise in the research areas. On the Guided Study syllabus co-produced by the LRMFA student and supervising faculty, expected research accomplishments must be formulated, alongside a course description, learning objectives, evaluation criteria, a proposed timeline, a communication plan, and a suggested reading list or bibliography. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

2448

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Description

Guided Studies are intensive, self-driven courses of study that have a clear rationale for their configuration and articulate an expressed need in terms of a student's scholarly, material, and theoretical research. As a 3 credit course, a Guided Study constitutes 135 hours of study and production on the part of the student, including four meetings (virtual or otherwise) with a supervising faculty who has expertise in the research areas. On the Guided Study syllabus co-produced by the LRMFA student and supervising faculty, expected research accomplishments must be formulated, alongside a course description, learning objectives, evaluation criteria, a proposed timeline, a communication plan, and a suggested reading list or bibliography. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

2457

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Description

Guided Studies are intensive, self-driven courses of study that have a clear rationale for their configuration and articulate an expressed need in terms of a student's scholarly, material, and theoretical research. As a 3 credit course, a Guided Study constitutes 135 hours of study and production on the part of the student, including four meetings (virtual or otherwise) with a supervising faculty who has expertise in the research areas. On the Guided Study syllabus co-produced by the LRMFA student and supervising faculty, expected research accomplishments must be formulated, alongside a course description, learning objectives, evaluation criteria, a proposed timeline, a communication plan, and a suggested reading list or bibliography. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

2485

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Description

The Graduate Projects course allows students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work and research from their home studio or mobile platforms. The continued development of ideas and approaches initiated during the summer Graduate Studio Seminar will be supported through in-person and online conversation with SAIC Program Mentors. These liaisons are intended to support the off-campus development of work while also providing personal connections to SAIC's vast global network of distinguished alumni. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

2459

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Description

The Graduate Projects course allows students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work and research from their home studio or mobile platforms. The continued development of ideas and approaches initiated during the summer Graduate Studio Seminar will be supported through in-person and online conversation with SAIC Program Mentors. These liaisons are intended to support the off-campus development of work while also providing personal connections to SAIC's vast global network of distinguished alumni. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

2460

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

The Graduate Projects course allows students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work and research from their home studio or mobile platforms. The continued development of ideas and approaches initiated during the summer Graduate Studio Seminar will be supported through in-person and online conversation with SAIC Program Mentors. These liaisons are intended to support the off-campus development of work while also providing personal connections to SAIC's vast global network of distinguished alumni. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

2461

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

The Graduate Projects course allows students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work and research from their home studio or mobile platforms. The continued development of ideas and approaches initiated during the summer Graduate Studio Seminar will be supported through in-person and online conversation with SAIC Program Mentors. These liaisons are intended to support the off-campus development of work while also providing personal connections to SAIC's vast global network of distinguished alumni. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

2462

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

The Graduate Projects course allows students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work and research from their home studio or mobile platforms. The continued development of ideas and approaches initiated during the summer Graduate Studio Seminar will be supported through in-person and online conversation with SAIC Program Mentors. These liaisons are intended to support the off-campus development of work while also providing personal connections to SAIC's vast global network of distinguished alumni. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

2463

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

The Graduate Projects course allows students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work and research from their home studio or mobile platforms. The continued development of ideas and approaches initiated during the summer Graduate Studio Seminar will be supported through in-person and online conversation with SAIC Program Mentors. These liaisons are intended to support the off-campus development of work while also providing personal connections to SAIC's vast global network of distinguished alumni. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

2465

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

The Graduate Projects course allows students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work and research from their home studio or mobile platforms. The continued development of ideas and approaches initiated during the summer Graduate Studio Seminar will be supported through in-person and online conversation with SAIC Program Mentors. These liaisons are intended to support the off-campus development of work while also providing personal connections to SAIC's vast global network of distinguished alumni. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Class Number

2466

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Take the Next Step

Interested in learning more about how you can apply?

Visit the graduate admissions website or contact the graduate admissions office at 312.629.6100, 800.232.7242, or gradmiss@saic.edu.