VCS Students in conversation on an SAIC stage.
Visual & Critical Studies

Curriculum & Courses

Graduate Curriculum & Courses

VCS 5003 History and Theory of Visual Studies 

3  

VCS 5004 Research and Production 

3  

VCS 5010 Topics in VCS 

9  

VCS 5999 Thesis I 

3  

VCS 6999 Thesis II 

3  

External criticism, theory, or methodology courses relevant to individual research—these courses are selected in consultation with the graduate director.

6  

Electives—Advanced academic courses (liberal arts, art history, etc.), studio advising, co-op internships, or otherwise relevant engagement including directed and independent studies.

9  

Completion of thesis 

 

Total Credit Hours

36 

Degree Requirements and Specifications

  1. Completion schedule: Students have a maximum of four years from entry into the program to complete coursework and submit a final thesis. This includes time off for leaves-of-absences. Thesis in Progress: Students who have not submitted a finished thesis for review and approval by the end of the final semester of enrollment are given a Thesis in Progress grade (IP). All students with a Thesis in Progress grade (IP) will be charged the Thesis in Progress Fee in each subsequent full semester until the thesis is completed and approved and the grade is changed to Credit (CR). If the statute of limitations is reached without an approved thesis, the grade will be changed to No Credit (NCR).
  2. Transfer credits: A minimum of 30 credit hours must be completed in residence at SAIC. Up to 6 transfer credits may be requested at the time of application for admission and are subject to approval at that time. No transfer credit will be permitted after a student is admitted.
  3. Graduate Projects: Master of Arts students who are working on studio projects as a part of their degree requirement may enroll in MFA 6009 Graduate Projects. Students are limited to a total of 6 credits of graduate projects over a four semester period. Any MA student wishing to take a graduate project must obtain permission from both the advisor with whom they wish to study and the Dean of Graduate Studies. Students will receive a permission number from the faculty to register for the advisor's section of MFA 6009 Graduate Projects. MA students should meet with their department head to confirm that graduate advising is the type of class they need to fulfill graduation requirements.
  4. Full-Time Status Minimum Requirement: 9 credit hours

Courses

Title Catalog Instructor Schedule

Description

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.

Class Number

1024

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Area of Study

Theory

Location

Lakeview - 203

Description

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.

Class Number

1025

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Area of Study

Theory

Location

Lakeview - 203

Description

This seminar explores various media industries from both US and Global perspectives. A number of major topic areas are examined. We historically compare the media industries before the Internet era. We then take an overview of a variety of today's media businesses followed by an examination of current global television business and management structures. We also survey the competitive and creative outlook in areas such as programming, distribution, markets and seek to develop a basic knowledge of nomenclature, practices and career paths. Readings include work by media theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Marshall McLuhan and by contemporary business strategists Jim Collins and Morten Hansen. Screenings include documentaries by Adam Curtis and Douglas Rushkoff. Assignments include responses to weekly readings, a commentary on current research, an at home exam that examines readings in-depth, and a project that explores each student¿s interest in the media industries.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1022

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

Lakeview - 202

Description

This course provides an introduction to social theories of visual communication and to methods of critiquing, producing, and displaying visual representations of cultural phenomena. Drawing primarily from anthropology and ethnographic research, students will explore the significance of visual images to represent and document identity, behavior, and everyday life. This includes examining how even ways of viewing - sight - are shaped, and also vary by and within, culture. Influences from film, photography, and graphic design provide examples of how the social sciences may incorporate these technologies from other disciplines, into behavioral analysis and to understand culture. However, the consequences of visual content creation and circulation (unintended or otherwise), features heavily in the course topics such as: travel photography, photojournalism, social media, and digital activism.

Course readings and ethnographic films focus on documentary developments spanning the 20th century - from the silent picture era, scientific cinema, and cinema verite - to internet media like virtual reality, gifs, screenshots, and Tik Toks. In reviewing this learning content, students will conduct comparative analysis of still, moving, and digital images while also creating their own visual content in the process. Learning activities include in-class breakout groups and students presentations, as well as independent work involving ethnographic drawing, a photo essay, film critique paper, and meme ethnography research project.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1023

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

MacLean 620

Description

Curating today is a dynamic, many-facetted activity with open boundaries: artists, writers, historians, editors, event-, festival- and symposium organizers generate projects, configure actors and move objects across platforms. This course will trace pathways through the many options contemporary art worlds hold. It will explore curatorial rationales, outcomes and support materials by parsing examples through images, readings and site visits. Students are encouraged to develop curatorial prototypes. Both playful experimentation and the framing of more formal proposals will be supported.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

2281

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

Lakeview - 1427

Description

This course explores African American art through a study of significant museum and gallery shows from the 1920s to the present. The course offers a survey of African American art through an examination of the institutions and also the conceptual contexts (or ideological framings) that have supported its presentation over the past 90 years. Exhibits such as 'Harlem on My Mind'; 'Freestyle'; 'Frequency'; 'Only Skin Deep'; and 'Let Your Motto Be Resistance,' among others, provide a context through culture.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

2287

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

MacLean 920

Description

This three hour seminar is a professional practice class which examines what it means to have a productive, critical practice. Students not only refine their own identity as generative artist-scholar-citizen but also learn to represent that practice professionally with CVs, portfolios, project proposals, artist statements, and scholarly abstracts. Students also work collaboratively on exhibition projects to experience how different creative roles such as artists, curators, writers, and venue directors interact in the art world.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: 2900 course

Class Number

1849

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

280 Building Rm 120

Description

This course is a a workshop introducing studio art students to various kinds of writing they can do to prepare them for professional opportunities. We will focus on connecting students to their own projects through writing and then we will discuss how that writing can be used to serve more practical ends. Instead of starting with practical requirements such as artist statments and grant applications, we will first work to build students? personal vocabularies and ways of talking about their practices. Emphasis will be on experimentation and building comfort with language.

Readings will be a combination of various forms artists? writings (diaries, interviews, sketchbooks, etc) and various formats (artist statments, grant applications, professional situations) where artists are expected to present their work in language. We will use Social Medium: Artists Writing 2000-2015 as a sourcebook for examples of writing by contemporary artists and students will also be asked to collect thier own sources of inspiration from fields appropriate to their work.

Coursework focuses on weekly prompts, which will be workshopped and revised. Final projects will relate to students? own goals for presenting their studio work, including websites, grant applications, and artist statements.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: 2900 course

Class Number

1871

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Area of Study

Digital Communication, Books and Publishing, Social Media and the Web

Location

MacLean 617

Description

This collaborative, community-based course is centered around The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project, an ongoing partnership between Center on Halsted and SAIC. Classes will be held both at SAIC and Center on Halsted. Bringing together LGBTQ+-identified students and elders, this project provides a rare opportunity for dialogue across queer generations. Participants discuss, from their various perspectives and experiences, topics central to LGBTQ+ lives and histories such as Gender, Sex, Spirituality, Art, LGBTQ+ History, Family, Race, Class, Coming Out, Aging and Ageism, and Activism and Social Movements. Readings, audio recordings, and screenings will explore LGBTQ+ histories through their representation in various forms. Over the course of the semester, students work collaboratively with elders in small groups to create ¿objects'' in various forms (such as an animated video, comics zine, oral history, reflective or critical essay, personal narrative, visual art piece, or photographic essay) that bring to life the stories, histories, and lived experiences of LGBTQ+ folks. These ¿objects'' will be featured on our website (generationliberation.com).

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1035

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

Lakeview - 206

Description

This collaborative, community-based course is centered around The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project, an ongoing partnership between Center on Halsted and SAIC. Classes will be held both at SAIC and Center on Halsted. Bringing together LGBTQ+-identified students and elders, this project provides a rare opportunity for dialogue across queer generations. Participants discuss, from their various perspectives and experiences, topics central to LGBTQ+ lives and histories such as Gender, Sex, Spirituality, Art, LGBTQ+ History, Family, Race, Class, Coming Out, Aging and Ageism, and Activism and Social Movements. Readings, audio recordings, and screenings will explore LGBTQ+ histories through their representation in various forms. Over the course of the semester, students work collaboratively with elders in small groups to create ¿objects'' in various forms (such as an animated video, comics zine, oral history, reflective or critical essay, personal narrative, visual art piece, or photographic essay) that bring to life the stories, histories, and lived experiences of LGBTQ+ folks. These ¿objects'' will be featured on our website (generationliberation.com).

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1035

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

Lakeview - 206

Description

This class plots domestic histories of design in pursuit of inclusive design and community. Readings, writings, and collective experiments in sewing, cooking, organizing, and caregiving explore the pleasures and constraints of domestic life; adaptation of commercial designs and DIY kits; and plotting design justice futures. Making and writing options are introduced throughout the course and are flexible to students of all skill levels. This course combines making with research to shape our field of study. Historical materials include sewing patterns, feminist housekeeping critiques, and Flaxman Librarys extensive collection of cookbooks. Making projects (no skills/experience required) focus on DIY learning, learning through verbal and visual cues rather than written ones, and collective stitch-n-bitch models. Readings include theories of the family and queer domesticity; disability and illness as a part of home design and adaptation; and feminist and anti-racist critiques of household labor and proposals for liberatory alternatives. All students in this class will make things, engage with a variety of writing modes, and combine traditional research methods with the knowledge gained through making. Reading responses and papers will accompany their practice-based material culture study. Final projects will include a choice of formats incorporating historical research.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1029

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

Lakeview - 202

Description

This class plots domestic histories of design in pursuit of inclusive design and community. Readings, writings, and collective experiments in sewing, cooking, organizing, and caregiving explore the pleasures and constraints of domestic life; adaptation of commercial designs and DIY kits; and plotting design justice futures. Making and writing options are introduced throughout the course and are flexible to students of all skill levels. This course combines making with research to shape our field of study. Historical materials include sewing patterns, feminist housekeeping critiques, and Flaxman Librarys extensive collection of cookbooks. Making projects (no skills/experience required) focus on DIY learning, learning through verbal and visual cues rather than written ones, and collective stitch-n-bitch models. Readings include theories of the family and queer domesticity; disability and illness as a part of home design and adaptation; and feminist and anti-racist critiques of household labor and proposals for liberatory alternatives. All students in this class will make things, engage with a variety of writing modes, and combine traditional research methods with the knowledge gained through making. Reading responses and papers will accompany their practice-based material culture study. Final projects will include a choice of formats incorporating historical research.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1029

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

Lakeview - 202

Description

This course aims to critically examine the affects of race and representation of others. Students will interpret nineteenth-century and early 20th-century material and non-material culture from anti-slavery and pro-slavery sources, including biblical literature, slave narratives, print media, music, visual art, and ephemera. The course considers moral motivations for recognition, empathy, assistance, and liberation of others in an era of sentimentalism. Students will interrogate modern ideas in helping relationships as they learn to 1.) explore the role of cultural materials in preserving trauma or the history of violence; 2.) discuss the role of cultural imagery in the production of charity and empathy; and 3.) ask contemporary questions about the role of desire in feeling responsibility and doing good. Throughout the course, students will be required to travel to several local archives including the Newberry Library and the Stony Island Arts Bank for research.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1032

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

Sharp 409

Description

This course critically examines architecture and the built environment through three expanding lenses: first through form; second through concepts; and finally though politics and civic engagement. Through reading, discussion, and experiential research, students will gain a thorough understanding of the socio-cultural role of the built environment. Students will engage the systems of the built environment to come to an understanding of how social, formal, and methodological aspects of architecture can be deployed, deconstructed and reformulated through critical production.

Readings in the first unit will include spatial theory by authors like Zoe Sofia, Elizabeth Grosz, Michelle Addington, and Georg Simmel and material explorations by authors like Pauline von Bonsdorff, WJT Mitchell, and Peter Schjehldahl. Readings in the second unit explore concepts through Michel Foucault, Mark Wigley, and Roland Barthes. The third unit explores the political work of the Forensic Architecture think tank, as well as texts on gentrification, erasure urbanism, and institutional access.

Each unit will end with a short research paper, or the opportunity to present in-progress work for a longer semester-length research project. The option for a studio project will be presented with specific guidelines for preparing for critique.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

2282

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

MacLean 816

Description

Where does an artwork begin & end? Where does an exhibition begin & end? Is an exhibition solely about the materialization of specific works of art, or is it also¿and if so, in what ways¿about the various conventions that go into the making of exhibitions¿which include press releases, announcement cards, checklists, wall labels, catalogues, and digital-based media?
Conventions like these are representations. We engage in different kinds of representations both because of the implausibility of re-presenting, and also because representation is a means by which we further, through the use of language and images, and through a process that is both otherwise and otherhow, the reach of the real. In this respect, moving closer to the artwork involves moving away from the artwork--to look closer at fringes and margins and representations, and ask a very fundamental question: to what extent are these various exhibition conventions actually part of the art--and not merely an extension of it?
While the course is experiential and practical, it also explores conceptual issues underpinning the relationship between curatorial and creative practice. The class is open to both graduate and undergraduate students interested in curating across many historical periods, as well as BFA and MFA students interested in the ways exhibitions create contexts for their work, and how they might participate in the construction of these contexts.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

2283

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

MacLean 707

Description

This course explores artistic, tactical, theoretical, cultural and pedagogical approaches to resisting Empire through the work of John Akomfrah, Black Audio Collective, #decolonizethisplace, Sky Hopinka, Tirza Even, Forensic Architecture, Rafa Esparza, Damon Locks, SuperFutures Haunt Collective and Santiago X. We will consider how artists, activists and scholars destabilize linear time, imagine queer futures and utopias by remixing hegemonic forms of social memory including archives, explore community-based knowledges and develop reparative counter-narratives. Structure: Readings, discussions, presentations, visits to Chicago archives, guest lectures, and development of pedagogical materials and/or scholarly/creative projects.

Group research trips include visits to libraries and collections to meet with archivists and researchers, including the following sites: the Gerber Hardt Library for GLBTQ studies, American Indian Center, Leather Archive and Museum, Edward E. Ayers Collection of native studies at the Newberry, Vivian G. Harsch, Harold Washington Special Collections and visits to informal, uncurated collections, including flea markets. Readings may include Eve Tuck, Audra Simpson, Stuart Hall, Russell West-Pavlov, Tina Campt, Gerald Vizenor, Jose Esteban Mu?oz, Arjun Appadurai, Tananarive Due, and Saidiya Hartman.

Students will engage in weekly discussions to readings, 3 written responses, conduct an independent visit to a collection and present findings. Final projects may include hybrid production: written, artistic and/or pedagogical projects, final presentation and critique.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1031

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

Lakeview - 1428

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.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: VCS 3010

Class Number

1026

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

MacLean 818

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.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: VCS 3010

Class Number

2362

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

MacLean 620

Description

This course offers several graduate-level trajectories through visual studies, each with its own historical precedent, some drawn from neighboring disciplines and some manufactured sui generis, but all sharing one common concern: how power manifests and what it might mean to bear witness. Each week begins with a canonical text and extends its lineage to contemporary thinkers invested in how a schematic of power concretizes through the shifting context of our current moment. Contained here are multiple histories of ways of seeing, state surveillance and policing, biopower and state sovereignty, queer embodiments and the representation of gendered and raced bodies, time and its illusions, visual networks and otherwise occluded spaces of technology, and the spectacle of capitalism. The final half of the term will be devoted to your own work, in the form of shared research, lecture-conversations, and seminar papers. [This is a required course for first-year students in the MA in VCS program.]

Class Number

1028

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Area of Study

Theory

Location

MacLean 111

Description

This course spans centuries but focuses on the thin line between looking and reading, imagining and writing. Considering the question, ?What is language?? leads us to readings in linguistics from art historical, literary-theoretical, philosophical, and ethnographic disciplines. We also pursue connections between ?seen words? in movements such as pop art, conceptual art, concrete poetry, language poetry, and conceptual writing by comparing works in various media that revolve around distinctions between speech, writing, the static and moving image. Notable authors and artists include Vito Acconci, Bob Brown, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Jacques Derrida, Carl Dryer, Paul Friedrich, Luce Irigaray, Roman Jakobson, Rene Magritte, Ed Ruscha, Sapir-Whorf, Hannah Weiner, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others.

Class Number

1027

Credits

3

Department

Visual and Critical Studies

Location

MacLean 517

Take the Next Step

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