A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
Terri smiles at the camera, mouth closed. She wears a grey hat, blue shirt and a big silver pendant.

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Terri Kapsalis

Professor, Adjunct

Contact

Bio

Education: BA, Anthropology, 1988, University of Michigan; MA/PhD, Performance Studies,1994, Northwestern University.

Terri Kapsalis is the author of Jane Addams' Travel Medicine Kit (commissioned by the Hull-House Museum, a collaboration with forensic scientists, installed in Jane Addams' bedroom as an alternative label alongside her kit for a "slow museum" experience), Hysterical Alphabet (WhiteWalls, based on primary medical writings on hysteria from ancient Egypt to the present and written like a Victorian children's alphabet book, also a multi-media performance with film and live soundtrack performed with John Corbett and Danny Thompson throughout the U.S.), and Public Privates:  Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum (Duke University Press – the only book reviewed in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Village Voice, and a medical fetishist site The Amateur Gynecologist.)

Stories and essays have appeared online and in various edited volumes and in journals including Short Fiction, The Baffler, Denver Quarterly, and Parakeet.

Along with John Corbett and Anthony Elms, she co-edited Traveling the Spaceways: Sun Ra, the Astro Black, and Other Solar Myths and Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn, and Chicago’s Afro-futurist Underground and co-curated the touring exhibition Pathways to Unknown Worlds.

As an improvising violinist, Kapsalis has a discography that includes work with Tony Conrad, David Grubbs, Mats Gustafsson, and Thurston Moore.

She is a founding member of Theater Oobleck and has performed in over thirty productions since 1985.

Since 1991, she is a collective member and health educator at the Chicago Women's Health Center where she co-founded the Trans Health Program and the Integrative Health Program and co-created Season One of the CWHC podcast "Mirror and a Flashlight."

Her SAIC course "Wandering Uterus: Journeys through Gender, Race, and Medicine" has been written about by former students in Bomb and the L.A. Weekly blog and featured in an essay by Kapsalis on LitHub.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This interdisciplinary course approaches the topic of gender, race, and medicine from cultural, historical, and scientific perspectives. We consider hysteria (purported to be caused by a 'wandering uterus') and other mental afflictions associated with sex, gender and race, the foundation of U.S. gynecology and its dependence on enslaved bodies, the Feminist Health Movement and its legacy, queer and trans health issues, and sexual health education. Readings include works by Audre Lourde, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mia Mingus, Alice Dreger, and Elaine Showalter. We will also consider the ways in which artists have addressed issues of gender, race and medicine in their work. Assignments include an interview project, written reflections, and a final research-based project.

Class Number

1766

Credits

3

Description

This interdisciplinary course approaches the topic of gender, race, and medicine from cultural, historical, and scientific perspectives. We consider hysteria (purported to be caused by a 'wandering uterus') and other mental afflictions associated with sex and gender, the foundation of U.S. gynecology and its dependence on enslaved bodies, the Women's Health Movement and its legacy, queer and trans health issues, and sex health education. Readings include works by Audre Lourde, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Elaine Showalter, Leslie Feinberg and Andrea Smith. We will also consider the ways in which artists have addressed issues of gender, race and medicine in their work. Assignments include an interview project, written reflections, and a final research-based project.

Class Number

1735

Credits

3

Description

This course enables upper-level students to develop a well-researched thesis project on a topic of their choice. Such a thesis project may be linked to their final BFA thesis or studio project, and may be useful for students considering graduate school in a field in which research and writing expertise is required. Students may choose to enlist innovative formats and incorporate a variety of media. Topics as diverse as 'Gay Cinema,' 'Culture as Industry,' 'Is Rap Subversive?,' 'The Art and Science of Fragrance,' and 'The Morphology of the Toy Soldier Body' have been explored. Class meetings are used to share research methods, discuss the given challenges of various projects, and present works-in-progress for critique.

Class Number

1675

Credits

3

Description

This course enables upper-level students to develop a well-researched thesis project on a topic of their choice. Such a thesis project may be linked to their final BFA thesis or studio project, and may be useful for students considering graduate school in a field in which research and writing expertise is required. Students may choose to enlist innovative formats and incorporate a variety of media. Topics as diverse as 'Gay Cinema,' 'Culture as Industry,' 'Is Rap Subversive?,' 'The Art and Science of Fragrance,' and 'The Morphology of the Toy Soldier Body' have been explored. Class meetings are used to share research methods, discuss the given challenges of various projects, and present works-in-progress for critique.

Class Number

1026

Credits

3

Description

This seminar consists of weekly lectures, colloquia, and studio visits. Students are expected to arrive with completed and semi-completed works and be prepared to make and re-make new works throughout the summer sessions. A wide variety of readings chosen by faculty will guide discussions that concentrate on problems concerning methods of artmaking, distribution, and interpretation. Readings will include examples drawn from the emerging category of conceptual writing as well as crucial art historical texts, literature, and poetry.

Class Number

1211

Credits

4.5

Description

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Class Number

1769

Credits

3

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.

Class Number

2457

Credits

3

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.

Class Number

2357

Credits

3