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

This 1.5 credit synchronous online course provides a forum for structured group discussion of students¿ studio work during remote semesters. Attendance at regularly scheduled synchronous meetings is required for this course.

The project of this course is developing students¿ skills around the observation of artworks, the verbal interpretation of artworks, and the framing of generative questions about studio practices.

In the course, students will present their own artwork and respond to colleagues¿ works within the context of facilitated group discussions on Zoom. A modest amount of asynchronous coursework will take place through Canvas and other platforms.

Regular synchronous course meetings will take place Thursdays 6-7 pm Central and Saturdays 11-12 pm Central.

Class Number

2011

Credits

1.5

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Area of Study

Community & Social Engagement, Art/Design and Politics, Exhibition and Curatorial Studies

Location

Online

Description

This 1.5 credit synchronous online course provides a forum for structured group discussion of students¿ studio work during remote semesters. Attendance at regularly scheduled synchronous meetings is required for this course.

The project of this course is developing students¿ skills around the observation of artworks, the verbal interpretation of artworks, and the framing of generative questions about studio practices.

In the course, students will present their own artwork and respond to colleagues¿ works within the context of facilitated group discussions on Zoom. A modest amount of asynchronous coursework will take place through Canvas and other platforms.

Regular synchronous course meetings will take place Thursdays 6-7 pm Central and Saturdays 11-12 pm Central.

Class Number

2012

Credits

1.5

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Area of Study

Community & Social Engagement, Art/Design and Politics, Exhibition and Curatorial Studies

Location

Online

Description

How is writing art? How is writing art connected to writing about art? How do various theories of poetics shape writing as art? This online course addresses the craft of writing in view of urgent issues of contemporary art. Students will develop and manage their own blogs and participate in continuing online discussions. The final requirement will be a finished body of writing. This seminar proposes a meeting with several authors whose writing, whatever form it takes (philosophy, film, poetry, photography...), is foremost a manner of listening. Giving pause to the scream so inscribed in occidental literary habits, this course suggests attending to muteness in various forms as a way to sensory knowledge, and further to something like a lost memory, of writing itself. Preferring ambiguity to certitude, questions to answers, perception as knowledge, in our work together, we will visit works that call upon wounded worlds, mute worlds, worlds without appeal, still capable of metamorphosis. With Frantz Fanon, Arlette Pacquit, Claude Cahun, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Kinugasa Teinosuke, Gao Xingjian.

Prerequisites

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

Class Number

1860

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

How is writing art? How is writing art connected to writing about art? How do various theories of poetics shape writing as art? This online course addresses the craft of writing in view of urgent issues of contemporary art. Students will develop and manage their own blogs and participate in continuing online discussions. The final requirement will be a finished body of writing. Poetry and Protest, Writing for Performance is a course designed to explore a multiplicity of ways of writing for page, stage and gallery with a focus on performance writing . One need not have experience writing but more openness and interest. Through assigned texts, prompts and viewing video performances, we will experiment with ways to write and to take the personal story, experiences and shape them into non-traditional texts used for solo performance. We will examine many forms of the personal monologue: autobiographical, fictional, topical and character driven, as well as poetry, the poetic series and rendering poetry visually. There will be a particular emphasis in this class on the language of protest woven with the autobiographical and historical: the interface of the personal and political. We will write and also examine writing for performance through the lens of culture, current events, race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. The goal of the course is for students to further develop voice, work on form and content and to create a body of text that reflects them uniquely. Ultimately the body of text created could be foundations of a performance or gallery project which could also involve technology, visual art, dance, and music. Some of the artists surveyed will be James Baldwin, Sekou Sundiata, Amiri Baraka, Dorothy Allison, Audre Lorde, Ocean Vuong, Ntozake Shange, Robin Coste Lewis, Fred Moten, Layli Longsoldier, Chimamanda Adichie, myself and more. Students should be prepared to write, experiment, share with the group, read, record and present their work to others. Students will develop and manage their own online blogs and participate in online discussion.. There will be bi-weekly writing assignments and viewing prompts The final project will be 10-12 page creative writing assignment.

Prerequisites

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

Class Number

1861

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

This course combines study of texts on aesthetics and language¿concentrating on works that experiment with autobiographical forms¿with short writing exercises encouraging students to reimagine genres of art writing such as artist statements, interviews, press releases, and reviews. The authors explored will include Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Peter Ho Davies, Lara Mimosa Montes, Claudia Rankine and Anne Truitt. Students will share short responses to readings and brief writing exercises every week. Students will complete a final project of their design, one formed in conversation with their classmates. Throughout the semester, there will be regular, required synchronous meetings (Mondays, 6 PM CST) via Zoom for discussion of course exercises and materials as well as asynchronous meetings when required.

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

Prerequisites

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

Class Number

1862

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

This course takes the concept of ?sculpting space? as a springboard for investigations into commemorative design, speculative architecture, and foundational sacred systems in Africa and the African Diaspora, rooted in Afro-Futurism and ?visions of a liberated future? (Larry Neal), considering the intentional sculpting of space as pathway to transformation for self and community. Areas covered will include: commemoration and protection in textile; Yoruba aesthetic of the cool in design; sacred geometry in object and environment; West African modernist and speculative architecture; contemporary designers; and inhabiting permanent spaces of transition.

Prerequisites

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

Class Number

1968

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Area of Study

Class, Race, Ethnicity

Location

Online

Description

The written thesis is a significant portion of the requirements for graduation from the Low-Residency MFA Program. Its pedagogical value is equal to the significance of the thesis exhibition during the third summer residency and should be considered in tandem with the exhibition. In this course, students work with a faculty advisor to develop a written thesis that demonstrates a strong ability to synthesize conceptual relationships across disciplines in relation to the artist¿s practice. The submitted paper will combine theoretical frameworks to reconfigure concerns into a singular and powerful statement, and demonstrate the student's ability to address work across disciplines with confidence in writing and composition. ¿According to a Bambara proverb, `the people of the person are multiple in the person.¿¿ (Dénètem Touam Bona). The approach to writing encouraged in this section of Thesis Composition is oriented toward the multiverse, which according to Bona is ¿lodged at the heart of each human and holds at its core vegetal, animal, climactic, mineral elements that enter into combinations in perpetual movement.¿ ¿Multiple Forms¿ takes this combinatory seriously, and believes writing to be capable of accounting for such movement. As such the Theses composed under this rubric will be trans-genre, themselves translations of simultaneous forms, that need not be placed in competition with one another. Various forms of writing are able here to cohabit or to combine, to varying degrees of synchrony, and other forms of scoring (such as musical annotation or ideogrammatic drawing) will be welcome variants for the expression of a given set of questions. The disposition of forms is not merely decorative but a material aspect of the process of reflection ¿ if one considers that writing is thinking through, and with, the body. Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Prerequisites

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

Class Number

2019

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

Thesis Composition: Expanded Forms is an opportunity for students to explore modes of writing that are proximate to and resonant with their thesis projects. Working closely with Professor Coburn, each member of our intimate cohort can experiment with any number of applicable forms including but not limited to poetry, autofiction, autoethnography, script writing, ekphrasis, and creative nonfiction. Whatever path a thesis paper takes, it will begin with an introduction that situates the writing within art-historical and/or theoretical discourses. Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Prerequisites

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

Class Number

2021

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

This course is designed to help students situate themselves in the broader context of contemporary theoretical discourses and practices. This is an essential component of a graduate thesis. Students will undertake independent research, source a broad range of references drawn from the approaches and outputs of artists, philosophers, and other culture-makers, will synthesize complex information, and partake in asynchronous and synchronous discussions for the purpose of competently and critically theorising their own practices. Periodic deadlines help students organize their workflow, from the proposal and outline to the drafting stages. While since the early 2000s, Giovanni Aloi has been deeply involved in the fields of animal-studies, critical plant studies, ecological studies, and Posthumanism, he is also able and willing to supervise students working on a variety of topics. Students will be able to explore creative writing approaches, although, in all instances, a thesis must include a thoroughly researched and theoretically grounded, extensive introduction. Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Prerequisites

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

Class Number

2022

Credits

3

Department

Masters in Fine Arts Low Residency

Location

Online

Description

This course is organized into the sections; mapping, collating, drafting, and refining. Participants compose a thesis paper that formalizes their research and provides contextual analysis of their creative practice. This section asks, how can we as creative practitioners approach the writing of a thesis that acts not as an endpoint, but as scaffolding in generative support of future work? Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

Prerequisites

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

Class Number

2023

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

1969

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

2356

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

2357

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

2358

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

2359

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

2360

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

2361

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

2416

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.