Sophomore Seminar Curriculum & Courses

What does a designer do? This course understands architectural design as a creative practice, embedded within rich cultures of disciplinary knowledge and professional responsibilities. As a creative practice, design becomes more than problem-solving and client management and embraces complex logics of possibility. The work of contemporary architects and related designers, such as Teddy Cruz+Fonna Forman, Brian C. Lee, Virgil Abloh, AGENdA , Jennifer Bonner, Shohei Shigematsu, and Li Hu and Huang Wenjing (OPEN), among others, will provide a reference point for our work. Students will experiment with practice scenarios, designed from and through their work, and the work of others in the class and in the field. Course projects will include a portfolio and a series of design writing experiments that will result in a critical essay, a designer's statement, and an academic map that will help students align SAIC's BFA programs with their interests and ambitions.

How might one see their creative practice from novel or surprising perspectives? What methodologies reliably yield diverse viewpoints on one’s work and process as an artist, designer, or scholar? This sophomore seminar invites students to engage with a versatile toolkit of short-form practices (epigrams, aphorisms, proverbs, taglines, haikus, titles, captions, jokes, epitaphs, diagrams, charts, cartoons, icons, pictograms, caricatures, logos, maps) to develop a kaleidoscopic repertoire of sketchbook-based frames of thought. Through a discipline of playful short-form probings we will foster critical perspectives that inform and support our creative practices, connecting with each other in an open forum and working to align the curriculum and resources of SAIC behind a self-directed course of study.

This seminar introduces students' to design problem definition, design process and the logic behind design problem frameworks. The arguments are grounded through an understanding of design criticism and by looking at foundational historic and contemporary convergences in critical design thinking. The seminar is specifically conceived in conjunction with the second year core design studios and as the first part of a thread of knowledge aimed at substantiating the central role of design thinking in the undergraduate curricula.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

Clay is an amazing material for an interdisciplinary artist to have in their repertoire. It can be as hard as stone one moment and you can also watch it disintegrate before your eyes the next. Throughout the centuries artists and craftspeople have capitalized on its transformative nature, sometimes even disguising it in plain sight. In this course we will see how artists from many backgrounds have used transformative materiality within their work. ARTISTS/READINGS Readings will vary but we will look at excerpts from articles like: Jo Dahn “New Directions in Ceramics”, Jenni Sorkin “Pottery in Drag: Beatrice Wood and Camp”, Paul Matheiu “The Radical Autonomy of Ceramics”. A sample of artists whom we will be studying are: Bertozzi & Cassoni, Alexandra Engelfriet, Teri Frame, Shiyuan Xu, Claire Twomey, Marilyn Levine, Renata Cassiano Alvarez, Nina Hole, Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Andy Goldsworthy, Theaster Gates, Edmund de Waal, Magdalene Odundo and Pheobe Cummings ASSIGNMENTS/PROJECTS Course work will vary but typically includes weekly reading responses, biweekly mentoring meetings, engage in critique of both peer artwork as well as self-reflection on student’s own work and a few small individual projects.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

The word 'craft' has been used both as a badge of honor and as a dismissive slur. This seminar will explore the stereotypes, the history and the changing status of craft in relation to contemporary art in America. We will read essays by craft theorists and makers including Marie Lo, M. Anna Fariello, Bruce Metcalf, L.J. Roberts and Namita Gupta Wiggers and watch the PBS Docuseries 'Craft in America' to help us triangulate an ever-shifting definition of craft. Students will bring previously-critiqued, in-process and revised work to 3 critiques, where an emphasis will be placed not just on WHAT objects mean but also HOW they mean. Course work includes weekly free-writing, reading discussions, and several assignments designed to help students articulate their artistic concerns and contextualize their work.

as we continue to digitize our world, the chorus of techno-optimists singing technology’s praises is louder than ever. but...are our expansive networks and digital tools truly enlightening us? or are they in fact working to obscure, impede, and deny us the very things they are said to provide? this seminar will confront the dark cloud looming over our digital domains. we will examine how advances in information technology have generated a growing set of unintended consequences that hinder our view of the world, and diminish our agency within it. we will reflect on various topics including technology and power, complex uncertainty, perpetual surveillance, archival viability, and eroding empathy. selected readings, screenings, assignments, and critiques will map out lines of inquiry for students to consider and apply to their research + studio practices. a significant amount of class time will be spent in critique + conversation offering students feedback and mentorship throughout the semester.

How do environments influence art, and how can we extract imagery, sound and ideas from these places to create work and develop our artistic voices? Through location exploration, image/sound/object collection, experimentation, research and writing we can discover connections between ourselves, our environment, and the artmaking that will shape our creative practices. What are the concerns that drive one?s creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers interdisciplinary strategies for the evaluation and communication of students? individual practice as artists, designers, and/or scholars. Through essential readings, studio projects, and writing, students will generate narratives about how and why they make art. Works by video artists, visual artists, and filmmakers are also viewed and discussed.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

What do we mean when we use the term ‘voice?’ In what way(s) is it tied to our sense of identity? Does the ‘pitch’ of our voice shift across mediums? Does it modulate or distort when we work in the commercial arts as opposed to the so-called ‘fine arts?’ What impact does the academy have on an emerging artist as they are developing that voice? And how can we possibly know when we’ve found it? This course is meant to prompt questions and discussions around the choices you will be making as you prepare for a creative life outside the academy. We will look at the blurred lines between the fine and commercial arts, identify concepts, terms, and processes that illuminate connections between the work we do across mediums, attempting to determine what constitutes an ‘identifiable personal style,’ with a special emphasis on time-based work in media and performance. 'Based on a musical and trans-political approach to work and life, an ‘in-between-ness’ that remains suspended in “a constant state of reckoning with our inheritances,” we will look at one another’s work, hear from visiting artists, discuss assigned readings, and produce short essays. Come to this course expecting to do the hard work of locating yourself in the work you do, of getting to know yourself “as a product of the historical process to date which has deposited in you an infinity of traces.” (Antonio Gramsci - The Prison Notebooks)' During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision.

What does one’s emergent creative practice have to do with one’s body in the world? How do we maintain the resilience and vulnerability required of artists and art students when we already feel so vulnerable in our everyday lives? How, as audiences and community members, do we share and receive feedback generously while still honoring our own lived experiences? This course offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. While the focus of this course will be on both embodied practices and the politics of having a body, it is open to all disciplines and areas of study. Through studio assignments, readings, viewings, and writing projects, students will generate a clearer understanding about how and why they make art, and how to continue making their work authentically.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.