Art History, Theory, and Criticism: Courses

This course addresses the vexed encounter East and West, focusing on East Asia--China, Japan, and Korea. The subject is enormous-too complex for us to consider adequately in a semester--so the course addresses broad themes. In part, the course draws cross-cultural comparisons, and in part, reviews Western 'orientalism,' as well as Eastern 'self-orientalism,' while considering alternatives that challenge dichotomies that ground the very terms and ways of thinking 'East' and 'West.'

From the Judgment of Paris to Miss Universe, this course examines artist's and the public's changing conceptions of beauty through the centuries. The impact of everything from ancient and modern theories of aesthetics to advertising, cinema and television are examined. As artists of every age have sought to document the 'Story of the Beautiful' -- as Whistler once termed it -- this class explores western culture's evolving concept of 'beauty' and seeks an answer to the question: why is it continually linked with 'good?'

Incorporating daily visits to the Art Institute of Chicago, this undergraduate seminar will examine the history of European and American art from the 1870s to the twentieth century through the focused engagement with objects in the museum collections. Class time will be divided between classroom lectures, discussions of daily reading assignments, and museum visits. In all of these, students will be expected to take an active participatory role. Course topics will be determined in relation to the collections on view, but recurring questions will focus on materiality and display.

This course uses a variety of approaches to and encounters with works of art in the collection of the Art Institute to investigate the multiple meanings artworks possess. The purposes of this course are to help students (a) develop a variety of creative approaches to understanding art; (b) develop their fluency in using language and writing to communicate these, (c) understand the differences and virtues of art appreciation, art criticism, and art history, and (d) also acquire a knowledge of the complex, creative entity that is the art museum while learning about the specific history of the Art Institute of Chicago. Writing activities include poetry, narrative, art-criticism and historical analysis. Discussions focus on questions raised by an assigned reading and by the day?s lecture and activity. Readings model a variety of approaches to meaning-making.

This course will examine the work and life of Andy Warhol. The first half of the course will survey Warhol's art and films. The second half will emphasize the authoring and institutionalization of Warhol by examining the Warhol museum and the recent Warhol retrospective organized by Heiner Bastian for the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Students will read key primary documents as well as an array of recent studies in order to approach Warhol from multiple perspectives. Discussions will consider topics such as Warhol's redefinition of studio practice, the construction of Warhol as cultural icon, and Warhol's writings.

This course surveys the development of human civilization through the arts, from with the earliest records of human culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Art historical concepts such as style, iconography, and technique are discussed within a global, humanities-based approach that emphasizes a thematic comprehension of the political structures, social mores, and cosmological beliefs that inform visual cultures around the world. The survey is required of all first year students and incoming students who do not have its equivalent at either a high school or college level.

This course surveys the development of human civilization through the arts, from with the earliest records of human culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Art historical concepts such as style, iconography, and technique are discussed within a global, humanities-based approach that emphasizes a thematic comprehension of the political structures, social mores, and cosmological beliefs that inform visual cultures around the world. The survey is required of all first year students and incoming students who do not have its equivalent at either a high school or college level.

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

Abstraction epitomizes modernism, both in histories of art, and in the popular imagination. Yet defining abstraction is far from simple. What relationships exist among such terms as 'abstraction,' 'non-representation,' 'non-objective,' and even 'concrete' art? This course examines the history of the development and reception of various concepts and practices of abstraction in modern advanced art, from their beginnings in late-nineteenth-century art theory, through the first generation artists: Kandinsky, Mondrian, Kupka, and Lissitsky, Arp, Miro, to the Abstract Expressionists, and the Minimalists and Fluxus artists of the Sixties, and on to such contemporary artists as Sean Scully, Howard Hodgkins, and Gerhardt Richter. We also study artists' writings about abstraction and the work of theorists such as Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried, and Yves-Alain Bois. Abstraction in painting, sculpture and photography is also discussed.

The ability to repeat and disseminate pictorial statements has altered science and technology as well as art since about 1400. Prints constituted the first 'media explosion.' This historical discussion encompasses printmaking techniques and styles and studies examples in the Art Institute's collection.

This course provides a far-ranging introduction to the varied conceptions of modernism, antimodernism, and postmodernism by treating these formulations as complex historical and aesthetic fields of engagement. In studying the artistic diversity of the last 150 years, we also study the competing positions of artists, theorists, critics and philosophers. The goals of this course are for students to acquire a historical understanding of modernism, antimodernism, and postmodernism; to gain a familiarity with many of the theoretical arguments about art and culture mounted today; to prepare students for further examination of these ideas through additional study; and to help students to question their own artistic beliefs and improve their art making.

This course provides a far-ranging introduction to the varied conceptions of modernism, antimodernism, and postmodernism by treating these formulations as complex historical and aesthetic fields of engagement. In studying the artistic diversity of the last 150 years, we also study the competing positions of artists, theorists, critics and philosophers. The goals of this course are for students to acquire a historical understanding of modernism, antimodernism, and postmodernism; to gain a familiarity with many of the theoretical arguments about art and culture mounted today; to prepare students for further examination of these ideas through additional study; and to help students to question their own artistic beliefs and improve their art making.

This lecture course grounds students in basic critical themes in the history of design and design objects. Through lectures, demonstrations, and readings students study the material and discursive conditions of the history of design. In order to locate these conditions, the class highlights a broad range of objects and formats in graphic design, object design, fashion design, and architectural design. Our concern will be in mapping what was visible in private and public spaces through the rigorous analysis of key objects produced by modern and postmodern designers. The ephemeral or transitory nature of design--planned obsolesce and anonymity, to name two culprits--makes it all the more difficult to pin down. But, its fluttering briefly in common space can in each case provide insight into relationships between symbolic media and social structure. These insights ground students in the issues in the history of design and prepare them for future studies.

This course is a historical and critical survey of painting from the late 19th century to the present, from the introduction of modernist focus to the expanded territory of post-modernism and after. Lectures, readings, and discussions emphasize the impact of this recent history on the painting of today.

African American culture has produced a body of work as rich and diverse as it is generally unknown. This course examines selected topics on the art of African Americans. Both historical perspective and contemporary issues are considered. Field trips and studio visits are included when appropriate.

The second half of the course surveys the developments of architecture and interiors from the Greek Revival, through Egyptomania and numerous other Revivals, Japonisme and the Victorians, various world's fairs, the Arts and Crafts in England and the US, the Wienerwerkstatte, Werkbund, Bauhaus, Art Deco, the 1950s to the 1990s. Influential architects, interior designers and firms such as Schinkel, Furness, Sullivan, Mackintosh, Hoffman, Ruhlman, Wright, Green & Green, Codman, Knoll, and Stark will be discussed in detail.

This survey of Asian art from ancient times to the present is designed to provide a broad historical and cultural framework. Major monuments, important stylistic trends, and basic terminology and iconography are emphasized.

Furniture embodies the culture which contains it. A study of the history of furniture reveals the general development of society as well as the psychology of the individual. This course surveys the evolution of furniture and interior appointments from the earliest human societies of Africa and the Middle East to contemporary designs of the late twentieth century. Focus is on how furniture provides information on the way people live and how they order their lives. This survey also investigates the influence of architecture on furniture and the relationship of furniture to sculpture.

This course deals with the decorative arts of Europe and America from the Renaissance through today, with observations on non-European influences. Emphasis is placed on glass, ceramics, metalwork, and furniture of the Baroque/Rococo, various nineteenth-century revivals, the Bauhaus, modernism, deco, machine age, and Chicago.

The Arab Spring, the 'movements of the squares,' and Occupy have re-kindled interest in other revolutions from the near and distant past, as well as their manifestations in film form. This class brings together key influential and avant-garde films and experimental videos that emerged from the revolutionary moment of the 'long 1960s' (1955-1975). We look at explicitly political films by Chris Marker, Emile de Antonio, and Godard--where cameras were on the ground, recording or re-enacting the great upheavals of that era. We also watch films that directed their gaze toward the ephemeral moments of how people lived--spheres of intimacy that reflected and anticipated bigger cultural shifts. Finally, we screen a few rare 'speculative fictions' of the period.

This survey course examines films from cultural, gender, and identity perspectives, focusing on key historical periods that have shaped contemporary Latin America. Students learn about the rich cultural diversity of the region and how this relates to the complexity of its political, social and economic environment. Analysis of films begin circa 1940 and conclude in the present. Films by early directors such as Indio Fernandez and Bu?uel are included as well as work by Gutierrez Alea, Rocha, and Diegues who were members of the movement called New Latin American Cinema. The course addresses feminist, queer, and experimental films, and ends with films from the new century, such as City of God, Japon, and The Violin.

This course considers the history of American animation beginning with caricature, moving through the French and English social/political cartoon to the evolution of the comical as they pertain to the development of the animated image.

This course surveys performance as art throughout the Modern and Postmodern periods. Areas of historical and theoretical focus include the philosophy of performance, ethnography, feminism, and the interface of performance with film, video, dance, sculpture, theater, technology, and popular culture. Areas of focus include Futurism, Dada, Fluxus, body art, the culture wars of the 80s and 90s, performance and AIDS, and postcolonial uses of performance.

In this class we look at the history of comics through the lens of gender, examining the vast history of female comic-book artists and the even vaster history of male cartoonists who represent women. Starting with the superheroes and moving through the golden and silver ages of comics books, and investigating the early newspaper strip artists and the mid-1990s black-and-white boom, and finally focusing on contemporary female and transgendered creators of graphic novels and self-published works, this class provides an in-depth grounding in comics history as well as a critical awareness of the very real financial, legal, and biological barriers that tend to keep women artists from achieving renown in the same numbers as men. Texts include comics, interviews, and historical overviews, by Alison Bechdel, Lynda Barry, Roger Sabin, Trina Robbins, Bob Levin, and Jules Feiffer.

Our preoccupation with 'things' is an indication of their importance and their pervasive, intrusive power in our daily experience of our physical environment. Whether in domestic, public, transit, or virtual spaces, our continual dialogue and exchanges with designed objects have been strongly instrumental in determining the quality of life we may achieve. The course examines the history of designed objects and their place in material culture.

This course examines secular art of Europe and the Mediterranean cultures. The traditions of epic story telling, fabliaux writings, popular and courtly narratives and political commentary are examined by looking at medieval tapestries, ceramic tiles, glass, wood sculpture, woven and embroidered textiles, enamels, ivories, metalwork, wall paintings, architecture and articles of dress. Students look at how the world of visual satire invades the sacred space of church and religious manuscripts and how the narrative image, public and private, religious and profane acts as text in a time before the printed book. The course includes two field trips to local museums.

Marked by artistic personalities as diverse as Caravaggio, Bernini, Velazquez, Rubens, Poussin, Borromini, and Claude Lorrain, the Seventeenth Century in Southern and Central Europe witnessed an exuberant outpouring of creativity matched by bold patronage and immense urban projects. The last great manifestation of absolute monarchy and a confident Catholic church (both largely funded with the riches of colonies in Africa, Asia, and the New World) fully celebrated its moment, and in so doing created many of the contexts of art in the centuries that followed.

Chicago's cultural history provides an intriguing microcosm for many of the issues that have comprised art over the last two centuries. This course will use our local history in art and architecture to test ideas about place, about the development of an independent regional style, and about that style's relationship to art produced elsewhere. Chicago's extraordinary history in architecture will be a focus of this class, as will its equally exemplary accomplishments in the visual arts since 1945. The class will attempt to define just what might be meant by suggesting there is a 'Chicago Style', and to investigate its parameters. The physical fabric of the city and its cultural milieu will provide us with many opportunities to apply and extend our observations.

This course focuses on seven of Chicago's best-known intuitive artists, all of whom emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s: Henry Darger, William Dawson, Lee Godie, Aldobrando Piacenza, Pauline Simon, Drossos P. Skyllas and Joseph Yoakum. Topics examined include Darger's art and the epic novel it was based upon; correspondences between Dawson's sculpture and paintings; Godie's portraiture, still lifes and experimental mixed-media works; and Yoakum's landscapes versus his figurative work. How these artists were 'discovered' and their relationships with Chicago's Imagist artists are also discussed.

This course is an overview of current trends in 'global' art. We first acquaint ourselves with the definition(s) and debates of globalism. We briefly consider the history of globalism and its impact on art on areas considered 'trade routes.' We then consider writings and art that suggest globalism is a conceptual condition found in art?s form, content, meaning, and/or medium. The last unit of the class is devoted to studying large-scale international exhibitions, or what has become known as the 'biennialization' of art. This course argues that 'global art' is formulated largely within this circuit of exhibitions. While some argue that biennials homogenize art and exhibition themes, our aim will be to show the specificities and complexities of each exhibition in order to reveal disparities between them in funding, local reception, content of the included art, and more.

This undergraduate seminar investigates the spread of conceptual art as an international practice and the effects of different contexts on what exactly constitutes this category. It is the contention of this course that these practices persist in the present--among others, in the form of so-called 'relational' strategies--and thus the second half of the course engages the question of how contemporary art practices in a variety of international contexts relate to both local and foreign conceptualist precedents.

This course surveys Japanese art and architecture from its origins to the present. Emphasis is placed on stylistic analysis and how the art reflects the culture.

This course is a survey of the conventions and qualities of Chinese painting. Emphasis is placed on stylistic analysis and how the art reflects the broad cultural attitudes of China during various periods of its history. Museum visits to view original works of art are included.

This course introduces 20th and 21st century Korean through major themes, including the introduction of Western art, the unique formation of Korean Modernism, the Avant-garde art movement, people?s art, feminist art, and the globalization of the Korean art scene. We also address Korean artists working internationally and major thematic Korean art exhibitions held in America.

This class examines Buddhist art in India and Southeast Asia historically and conceptually from its early iconic representations to more recent works by contemporary artists who call themselves Buddhist or use Buddhist ideas in their work. We also question the use of the term 'Art' when used in a religious context.

This course is a survey covering the major works of architecture and art from the Islamic world. It covers the architecture of this civilization in greater depth than many surveys of Islamic art, over a period ranging from the beginnings of Islam in the 7th century up to and including the 20th century. Emphasis will be on the major stylistic differences between the building traditions of the Medieval Spain, the Maghreb region, West Africa, Egypt and Syria, the Seljuq and Ottoman empires in Turkey, Persian and Central Asian architecture, the Mughal empire and lastly Islamic architecture as it has developed in the Far East, in countries such as China, Indonesia and Malaysia. In addition, the course will also cover the applied arts in Islam, such as ceramics, carving, Oriental carpets and miniature painting.

New Media Art works are often constructed as games. These projects are referred to as Art Games. Game Studies is the academic study of games and the resulting discourses on the theory practices of Game Cultures. Art Game Studies resides in the intersection of these 2 fields of activity, giving students a Media Art Historical overview of Art Games as well as introductions to the theories and discourses of Game Studies. Art Games shown will include JODI's Untitled Game series, The Graveyard by Tale of Tales, WACO RESURRECTION by C-LEVEL and Natalie Bookchin's The Intruder. Game Studies texts will be drawn from theorists and historians including Katie Salen, Alexander Galloway, Jesper Juul, Anne-Marie Schleiner and Ian Bogost.

The Silver Age (1956-69) of the comic book explores the rebirth of the superhero genre in the mid-'50s and examine subsequent movements including post-Code sci-fi and horror titles, and Underground Comix of the '60s and '70s; as well as alternative comics and the creation of the graphic novel from the late '70s to the present. Key works by Jack Kirby, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, Dan Clowes, Chris Ware and others are discussed.

This course, coinciding with an Art Institute of Chicago exhibition, examines art and design in the age of the Zeppelin, ocean liner, luxury train, and airplane. Everything from posters to uniforms, seating to rooms, lightweight materials to aerodynamic designs, engines to helium, staterooms to dining rooms, silk to steel, beacons to landing lights will be discussed in their historic context and influence on other media such as painting, sculpture, buildings, and fashion. Harbors, airport planning, and train stations will also be discussed, all in the realm of the arts.

This course in the history of dress provides an opportunity for historical research into particular facets of the real and idealized human body and its coverings. Among the topics covered are concepts of modesty and sumptuary laws in relation to cultural issues such as religion, philosophy, and art-related movements. Readings include selections from Bernard Rudofsky, Richard Martin, E.H. Gombrich, and Virginia Woolf, among others.

This course offers a history and analysis of this film genre, considering its antecedents in German Expressionism as well as its stylistic influence on present day films and other genres. The course approaches film noir in terms of its conventions, concentrating on the way women are portrayed, the visual style, and the genre's view of the world.

It's no secret that graffiti started in New York by the late 70s. This class deciphers the visual language and formal concepts of graffiti and it how it is created, from bubbles to burners. This class aims to unveil the aesthetic evolution of graffiti. How did it spread across the nation? What differences emerged and why? How did it spread to the rest of the world? What have other regions contributed to the aesthetics of this genre? How do geographic backgrounds and social environments play out? Topics include: New York in the beginning, the distribution of tags and information through magazines and the internet, global explosion, marketing & pop culture integration, formal concerns, i.e, : 3-D, characters, committing to a style and planning a full-on 'burner.'

This course studies the major artists and the development of modernism in photography. Commercial and private publishing of photo books and essays, the rise of global media systems, and the dialogue between art and photography are the background for an exploration of the major trends since 1900.

The mediums of photography and painting each have easy strengths that entice other artists to redirect thoughts and practices. Across the 19th and 20th centuries, photographers and painters alike have made works that interline description and abstraction. Significant artists have plumbed both mediums to create compelling intersecting art. This course will examine the work and words of Hockney, Richter, Smithson, Kiefer, Schnabel, Dibbetts, Heizer, Kiki Smith, Salle, Rauschenberg and others to better understand their works in both mediums.

In Philosophy in the Flesh, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson posit that the physical characteristics of our bodies shape the ways in which we view and interpret the world. In this course, we utilize these concepts to explore issues in and around the body and photography; not only representations of the body itself, but the impact of embodied concepts on image creation and interpretation.

This course provides a broad overview of the aesthetic and historical development of anime. Emphasizing both technical and thematic shifts within the genre, we situate anime within the larger context of both Japanese culture and animation studies and explore what makes Japanese anime distinct from other forms of animation. Students examine works by major directors and studios, as well as lesser-known films, television series, and OAV, taking into consideration the impact of the genre within a Western context.

Tartan bondage suits. Xeroxed fanzines. Anthems proclaiming, ?No future!? In urban centers like London, New York and Los Angeles, punks embraced these kinds of statements and tactics in live music performances and in the production of records, zines, fashion and films. In examining the materials--in particular, the films--that document or analyze punk culture, this course will explore and challenge notions about the aesthetics and worldview of punk and its legacy and discuss larger questions of memory, history and representation.

This course looks at international art house cinema, focusing mainly on the 1990s and 2000s. Films are screened and discussed in their relation to national cinemas, cultural histories, genre, and primarily, film form. Themes explored include: amnesiacs, opaque narratives, texture as history, suspended time, and silence. Through screenings, lectures, and discussions, we will examine the connections and disparities between these cinematic visionaries. Filmmakers to be considered will include: Kim Ki-duk, Todd Haynes, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Guy Maddin, Lucrecia Martel, Bela Tarr, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and others.

Freud's psychotherapeutic practice and analytic theory of the complex nature of the human psyche, for instance his 'discovery' of unconscious mental processes, were profoundly influential for a variety of thinkers and practitioners, including Frantz Fanon, and critical theorists of the Frankfurt School such as Theodor W. Adorno. In this course, we read widely from Freud's writings and those he influenced, including the above authors, with attention to the societal implications of Freud's approach to subjectivity.

Since antiquity the still-life has remained among the popular genres of art. This popularity, with artists and public alike, is chiefly due to its unique position, poised between reality and illusion. This class will begin with the earliest still-lifes, such as Roman frescoes, and with categories of still-lives, such as the scientific, 'vanitas,' trompe l'oeil, and still-lifes in the context of genre scenes or portraits. We will also distinguish between the organic-chiefly flowers, fruits and meats-and the non-organic-that is, still-lives of man-made objects. The second half of the class will explore the still-life in the 20th century from Cubism through Expressionism, to Magic Realism and Pop, when artists shifted their focus from WHAT was depicted to HOW it was depicted. The class will conclude with a survey of currently practicing still-life painters.

This course looks at America's perceptions of Asians through their portrayal in American mainstream media in contrast to those made in Asia by Asian filmmakers. By comparing films made by Asians and those produced by the American mainstream, we find major differences in their perspectives and approaches. In doing this, we investigate issues of representation and misrepresentation in mass culture stereotypes of Asians to show how they have been rooted in confusions surrounding cultural differences between Asians and Asian Americans. The course presents Hollywood films, mainstream Asian films, as well as independent works from both the Asian and Asian American communities.

This course is intended for advanced students interested in developing and researching topics in art history of their own choosing. Students enrolled in the seminar develop and pursue individual research projects, compile bibliographies, compose outlines and abstracts, and produce a final research paper. Class meetings offer a forum to consider possible topics for research, to discuss research methods, share ideas, critique student work, and address writing problems. This course is required for students pursuing the BFA with an emphasis in art history, and is open to interested advanced students.

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.

Ellipses: Art-Writing in the Post-Disciplinary Context Here we look at the concept of art-writing as an emerging and particularized process; one that has been designed to foster new modes of critical rigor, assemble new objects of attention, constitute the fields in which that might happen and develop new critical conceits. The course inhabits the tensions existing between fiction, critical theory and historical accounting in recent visual cultural writing, and takes a critical approach to issues like the requirement for ready legibility, the cultivation of wes, the exercise of similitudes, technical facility, expertise, positionality, unreliable narration, fantastic space, idiomatic speech, the use of anecdote and so forth.

Choreographesis: Starting out from Dance This course takes a series of examples of dance and other forms of choreography in cinema, athletics, performance art, urban planning, legal procedure and elsewhere as a set of already available theorizations of copying, acting in concert, theories of directed social activity and manners of attentive being. We look at dance as both a mode and model of critical writing, and examine the most fore-grounded aspects of what is proposed by dance -- spatial narrative, the contriving of gesture, the poetics of physical fluency and precocity (also breathing, pain, discipline and what constitutes a break from it) as larger social metaphors.

Is art a global phenomenon? What are the best concepts to describe what is happening in the contemporary international art world? What are criticism, history, and theory in relation to contemporary global art? We read the most recent and interesting theorizing on the question of world art. Authors may include Dipesh Chakrabarty, Harry Harootunian, Okwui Enwezor, Gao Shiming, Sarat Maharaj, T.J. Demos, Parul Mukherjee, Nicolas Bourriaud, Fredric Jameson, Nestor Garcia Canclini, Arjun Appadurai, Julian Stallabrass, John Onians, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Kitty Zijlmans, Slavoy Zizek, Charlotte Bydler, Pascale Casanova, Susan Buck-Morss, Terry Eagleton, and Terry Smith. We also read the textbook Art since 1900, and study its critical reception and possible alternatives.

The word 'revolution' in the period from ca. 1730 to ca. 1830 embraces two major patterns of change and development, one political, the other industrial, whose dramatic consequences were felt world-wide. Institutions were redefined, socially, politically, and culturally, with artists and architects playing major roles in shaping, documenting, as well as propagandizing the emergent era. This course is concerned with the artists whose work most effectively confronts and reflects the social and political changes and fast-paced industrial growth that define this protean age. Among the artists and architects included are Hogarth, Wright of Derby, Blake, Boullee, Schinkel, Friedrich, David, Delacroix and Goya.

Either working on housing for rural Bangladesh or on a museum in Chicago, architects, designers and historians negotiate the increasingly complex relationship between local conditions and modernizing global forces of contemporary design culture. Studying architecture in a global context, from the past to the present, enables us to do so. Guided by strategies used by such organizations as UNESCO, Open Architecture Network, and Architecture for Humanity that promote global collaborative design while also engaging in humanitarian efforts and preserving world heritage sites, this course considers history as an integral part of architecture as demanded in current, critical design and historical practices. We emphasize built environments by comparing styles, technologies and the culture and geography that created them.

In this course, we examine what it means when artists seek to position their work as 'alternative' since 1980? Does it mean they are addressing issues they feel have been neglected or ignored by mainstream makers? How does the 'center' or 'mainstream' define itself and those 'marginalized'? Does embracing an outsider status allow these artists to critique from a better vantage point? Students examine negotiating the art market in terms of such issues as globalism, anti-consumerist strategies, alternative audiences, and environmentalism. This course also addresses topics concerning identity and its construction in relation to post-colonialism, gender/sexuality, issues of belonging/not belonging, and generational debates among artists surrounding such issues. Artists include Santiago Sierra, KimSooja, Alfredo Jaar, Banksy, Sadie Benning, Mel Chin, Emily Jacir, Glenn Ligon, Yinka Shonibare, Adrian Piper, the Yes men, John Trobaugh, and the La Pocha Nostra performance collective, among others.

With the rise of contemporary art exhibitions featuring Asian artists in Europe and the United States, not to mention the increased visibility of Asian artists in biennales and triennials around the world, this course will offer students the opportunity to examine more closely the latest trends in art practices around Asia including India, China, Vietnam and Indonesia. In order to make the class as current as possible, reading material will be drawn heavily from Asian art magazines, web sites and exhibition catalogues.

This course is a study of commercial, civic, and other public architecture (both high style and vernacular examples), and their response to the social, economic, and technological changes which transformed American society. European, Middle Eastern, and Asian influences will be traced and examined. Field trips are included.

This course is concerned with the conception, development, and construction of the skyscraper. Since tall office buildings flourished in Chicago as nowhere else during the last century, we will use the Loop as a learning laboratory. This course includes selections from the theoretical literature on the nature of tall buildings, and the exploration of the evolution of this building type. Presentations by practitioners and class members are included as well. Starting with the history of, and theories about, this building type and its early stages in nineteenth-century Chicago, the class examines the following topics: the early history of the tall office building: embracing the machine age; the impact of zoning ordinances on urban form; the role of the real estate developer; the architecture and the design process; systems synthesis: engineering and construction; and making space comfortable: the role of the interior architect.

This course examines the history of American housing, the architecture of religion, and the buildings of educational and other institutions. The focus will be on how these buildings responded to the changes in American society and the impact of technology. Prevalent and vernacular styles will be examined as well as their precedent in foreign architecture. Field trips are included.

In lectures and field trips this course explores the rich genre of art environments - combinations of art, architecture and/or landscape architecture - including religious grottos, sculptural and garden environments, transformed interior spaces, and other integrated artistic visions that are site and life specific. The course examines issues surrounding art from beyond the mainstream, environments in their social, political and cultural contexts, home as a locus for creative expression, and site preservation. Students who successfully complete the course may apply for a Roads Scholarship for Research and Travel. One to five are awarded, based on research proposals.

This course examines the dense cultural history of American cities during the 1960s and 1970s, looking primarily at Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. Using a variety of primary materials from film to planning documents, we seek to understand the modernist idealism underpinning mechanisms of urban renewal and public housing, as well as the varied ambitions of activist `users? in the city, including architects, conceptual artists, and community leaders, engaged in creating alternative visions of the metropolis and finding novel ways to contest, detourne, and appropriate urban spaces.

This course focuses on the relationship of dress, art history, and exhibition. Students engage in multi-disciplinary perspectives based on material culture analysis examining the evolution of contemporary fashion, dress, and alternative exhibition practices from 1900 to the present. Concentrating on the major directions in the field of fashion that have become polarized in the last twenty years, students study the issues of dress history and cultural studies. Through critical readings, lectures, and field trips, students discuss the methodologies of artists and designers. Individual research is encouraged in the Fashion Resource Center where linking documentary data to material culture enables students to contextualize visual examples and printed matter in a multilayered manner. The collective final project will result in an exhibition off-campus where content and promotion will be developed.

Cloth forms and textiles find their meaning in relationship to interaction - in their making, in their use, in their cultural references and material implication. (Presence of Touch exhibition catalogue, 1996). The above quotation emphasizes the way that contemporary artists, working in fiber and related materials are engaging with increasingly complex and challenging issues. Identity, gender, race, the body, colonialism and post-colonialism, authenticity and imitation, memory, tradition and innovation are some areas that have been addressed in artwork and written texts. This course provides the opportunity for students interested in fiber and material studies to 'interact' critically with written, visual and material work. Students are expected to read texts analytically and to present and discuss ideas. Seminars facilitate engagement with theoretical and contextual writing and provide students with the experience and confidence to express critical comment to their peers, verbally and through personal research and writing.

This course examines the phenomenon of gift exchange in various cultures with a particular emphasis on textiles. Concepts related to exchange such as generosity and reciprocity, artistic patronage, regulation of value, and diplomacy will be examined through readings and object-based studies. The course explores how these concepts have resonance in contemporary society and within diverse contemporary art practices. This course draws on both art historical and anthropological readings associated with gift giving such as the Book of Gifts and Rarities, and the work of Marcel Mauss, Arjun Appadurai, and Alan D Schrift.

An investigation of media and cinematic representations of 'terrorism' through the 20th century up to the present. Primary 'texts' will be films, videos, and photography, supported by readings from a wide range of sources: historical, political economy, fiction, media criticism, oral histories. Students will screen and study propaganda films, narratives, film and video essays, and experimental works whose subject directly or obliquely addresses the subject of political violence. The course will examine the moblizing effects of these works, and seek to unpack a hefty suitcase of current debates about moral relativism, just and unjust wars, the problem of evil, and uses of violence in film.

This course examines painting's fraught relationship to both its own materiality and its privileged position as the paradigmatic medium of visual modernity. What is painting?s raison d'etre -- then and now? Through close analysis of several artists from the late 17th century to the present, including Watteau, Manet, Warhol, Richter and Quaytman, we explore issues such as subjectivity; touch and facture; commodification; the ready-made and the post-medium condition.

What is the state of Performance Art today? We explore this question with respect to new trends in performance practice over the past decade, including: the popularity of biennials and participatory museum events; reenactments from the golden age of performance art in the 1970s; the impact of new technologies; the influences of dance and theater on body-based practices; and the use of performance as a tool for political activism.

Walking is the most obvious thing in the world. We all do it. In fact it is a primary way to differentiate human beings from other sentient creatures. And yet, for the past century, artists have made revolutionary, romantic and aesthetic use of this most commonplace gesture. In this class, we consider groups like the Surrealists, the Situationist International and Fluxus, all of whom walked in cities as a means of making vanguard art. We explore the flaneurs who came before them and contemporary artists like Francis Alys and Janet Cardiff, who came after. We look outside urban limits too, at Richard Long and the long history of Romantic walkers and traditional nomads that preceded him. And maybe, just maybe, we will go on a couple of walks ourselves.

This course allows students to develop more sophisticated ways to make sense of the intersection of video art, television studies, and contemporary art practices, and to place video art within the larger sphere of art history. To strengthen students' abilities to understand dialectical thinking as currently applied by art historians, the course includes writings by Thomas Crow, T. J. Clark, and Terry Eagleton, as well as the work of critical theorists working more exclusively in television studies and popular culture. A variety of work is screened each week, from television talk shows to European avant-garde, as well as low budget, grass roots video projects. The class explores how cultural differences are played out in current video art practices in Europe, Central America, and South America.

This seminar-style course examines the nature of technology in terms of reproduction and communication within the context of art making, digital media, virtual reality, and the Internet. The course begins with the theories of Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ellul, and Marshall McLuhan and culminates with those of (among others) Jean Baudrillardd, Donald Idhe, Michael Heim, Donna Haraway, Arthur Kroker, Mark Poster, Joseph Lockard, Sherry Turkle and Lebbeus Woods. Students read relevant material, participate in the in-class discussions, do research and present their research to the class. The course culminates with the writing of a synoptic or research type of paper; these final papers being put on line at James Hugunin's web site U-Turn (www.uturn.org) and made available for public perusal.

Adorno is well known for his scathing critique of 'culture industry.' But what is usually missed is that Adorno's critique of 20th Century cultural forms was dialectical, concerned with their potential for both emancipation and domination, and was aimed equally at modern practices of 'hermetic' art as well as those of 'popular' culture, anticipating issues in 'post'-modernist cultural criticism. In this course we address the Frankfurt School critical theory of experience and aesthetic subjectivity in modern social life in context, reading works by Benjamin, Kracauer and Marcuse, and then focusing on works by Adorno in considering the analytical and explanatory as well as critical power of certain enduring if problematic and contested categories such as 'commodification' and democratization' for a dialectic of modern forms of art and culture as forms of social subjectivity.

The 2008 Guangzhou Triennial had as its theme a ?farewell to postcolonialism.? From soap ads to Samburu spears to Indian films, postcolonial theory has been applied to a dizzying array of art scholarship. Much of this scholarship is insensitive to the wide range of colonial encounters, past and present; for example those initiated by Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, or even China. We will create a dialogue between art from disparate post-colonies and foundational texts by Said, Spivak, Fanon, Bhabha, etc. We will also read recent responses by Hardt and Negri, IiIek, Colas, etc. Finally we ask: whither postcolonial theory and what other names may it go by in the future?

Following Laura Mulvey's landmark essay, 'Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema,' much critical writing on pictorial art has been focused on issues relating to looking relationships. This course explores 'the gaze' in photography, painting, film, advertising, pornography and new media, using various methodologies, including psychoanalysis, feminism and queer and post-colonial theory, as well as writing on spectatorship. Texts include Velasquez's 'Las Meninas,' Hitchcock's 'Rear Window,' Cindy Sherman's 'Centerfolds' and Michael Wolf's 'The Transparent City.'

This advanced graduate seminar examines the meanings of space in architectural history from different historical, social, philosophical, and regional perspectives. Taking a comparative standpoint with a global reach, the buildings, interiors, and city plans covered in this course include both major and minor works of western and non-western architecture, from antiquity to the present. The focus of the readings is on primary texts by architects and theorists of key historical moments and schools of thought. Special attention is placed on how architecture has been studied in the historiography of architectural history. It continues the ideas explored in the Survey of Modern and Postmodern Architecture and Design, towards an advanced understanding of writing about and studying human built environments. The course is open to all eligible graduate students at SAIC.

This advanced graduate seminar examines the meanings of space in architectural history from different historical, social, philosophical, and regional perspectives. Taking a comparative standpoint with a global reach, the buildings, interiors, and city plans covered in this course include both major and minor works of western and non-western architecture, from antiquity to the present. The focus of the readings is on primary texts by architects and theorists of key historical moments and schools of thought. Special attention is placed on how architecture has been studied in the historiography of architectural history. It continues the ideas explored in the Survey of Modern and Postmodern Architecture and Design, towards an advanced understanding of writing about and studying human built environments. The course is open to all eligible graduate students at SAIC.

Walter Benjamin described answering the telephone when he was a child around the turn of the last century as follows: 'I tore off the two receivers?and was inexorably delivered over to the voice that now sounded. There was nothing to allay the violence that now pierced me.' The new technological media introduced around 1900 had violently disruptive effects on the senses and bodies of their users, on conceptions of time and space, and on the possibilities of art and politics. In this seminar, we examine these media and the use artists made of them in the early twentieth century, from the Dadaist Raoul Hausmann'' invention of the Optophone to the Surrealist practice of dropping in and out of movies at random rather than watching them from start to finish. We draw heavily on Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media and Friedrich A. Kittler's Gramophone, Film, Typewriter in our investigations, so that this course also serves as an introduction to media theory.

Brian Eno?s statement that there is not enough Africa in computers is premised on a distinction between ?straight? technology and ?African? technological disturbances and improvisations. We study theorists, visual artists, and musicians who understand technology as imperialistic and, therefore, the hijacking of technology as anti-imperialistic. We study Frantz Fanon?s essay on radio jamming during the Algerian war for independence, reggae and dub in Jamaica and London, and hacking as postcolonial digital art. We then discuss the growing number of artists making interventions in the virtual and physical spaces of Africa (physical computing): for instance Ralph Borland?s visual maps of ?wardriven? wireless networks in Johannesburg and Robin Rhode?s hip hop performances and photography in the dead zones of urban Cape Town.

This class investigates the contemporary art world through total immersion in the Chicago art scene, including museums, galleries, and artist-run spaces, meeting many art professionals including curators, arts administrators, critics, art historians, and artists. In a succession of field trips, the class looks at art in exhibition spaces and artists' studios, discuss it as a group, do interviews, and analyze our contemporary-art situation in Chicago and internationally, both present and future. Please note that attendance during alternate days and times at galleries, collections, and events will constitute many of the class sessions. The Monday morning sessions on-campus at SAIC noted in the schedule apply only to weeks when the class is not attending events elsewhere. Students must be willing to attend both depending on weekly scheduling of events which will be given out on the syllabus the first week of school.

This course probes the long association in the modern era, between Latin American art and situations of economic, political, ecological, and humanitarian crisis. Crisis, the point at which things break down, is the flipside of developmentalism, the utopian project of modernization that the region?s nations have undergone in different guises from the 1920s through the present. Against the dream that the state could distribute services, maintain order, and educate and uplift its people stand the grim histories and continuing realities of dictatorship, corruption, foreign intervention, mass poverty and migration, state terror, and, more recently, illicit markets and their collateral damage. A major portion of class discussion centers around what an appropriate artistic response to crisis--a truly political art, perhaps--might look like, but we are not limited to pragmatics, as a great deal of Latin American modernism and contemporary art has also explored the poetics of the most exigent circumstances. We remain alert to the dangers of stereotyping the region as irrevocably crisis-ridden as much as to the possibility that its models of crisis may prefigure or even mirror those of North America.

This graduate seminar explores the allographic regimes constituted in the relationship between textual and pictorial representation and multiple technologies of reproduction. Through the close study of representation, reproduction, and the broader media environment, this course will introduce students to the material practices and discursive realities of graphic and typographic cultures in the age of the mass image. Students will take paratextual and intermedial approaches to the examination of text and image in multiple formats, tracking modes of direct transmissions of knowledge. The seminar meets and draws on the wealth of available resources in the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at SAIC, and the Newberry Library, among other institutions. Some of the themes: immutable mobility of representation; authorship and audience in the age of mechanical reproduction; movement, space, and ornament; photocomposition and photo reproduction; mediated practices; national and international circulation; and others directly related to the textual and pictorial construction of knowledge sets and expert practices. We look at a tightly constrained range of objects from William Morris' Kelmscott Chaucer and News From Nowhere, to the Zodiaque series on Romanesque art and architecture, from Will Bradley's illustrations for Ladies Home Journal, to the Bauhausbucher series, and Hans Bellmer's Les Jeaux de la Poupee, among others.

This seminar provides a critical framework for contemporary fashion artists and designers. Through close readings of pertinent texts and viewing of visual and tactile material, this course examines pertinent issues in cultural and anthropological studies to contemporary design theory. The impact of technological, economic, and cultural shifts manifested through fashion practice serves as a basis for critical analysis of work.

This seminar will explore the desire for consumer goods as a cultural phenomenon in the second half of the nineteenth century. Looking at the act of display, new modes of marketing, and the depiction of fashion in art and literature will allow us to interrogate a developing modernist iconography (1850-1900) that served both to redefine and disguise the visual codes of class, status, and gender.

This class explores the intersections of design and politics. From the circulation of messages and materials related to revolutions, to personal habits of consumption and use, we will consider how design creates and responds to ideological programs and agendas. Students will develop their own paths of inquiry, selecting core issues (such as environmental, labor, social, or ideological interventions) to track in design history and culture. Our readings and writings will focus on the question, 'do artifacts have politics?' as we consider design practices both official and subversive.

This class takes a critical look at contemporary performance art practices by focusing on the ways in which performance art is presented to audiences around the world. It examines not only world performance events and workshops but also study ways in which performance artists connect to one another and establish communities through performance festivals and workshops as well as via documentation, archival practices and re-performance. It also studies how artists embody history and identity through performance.

The relationship between the visual arts and writing is vexed--and fundamental to the practices of art historians and critics. From the Renaissance doctrine of ut pictura poesis ('As is painting, so is poetry') to Rauschenberg's telegraphed portrait of Iris Clert ('THIS IS A PORTRAIT OF IRIS CLERT IF I SAY SO'), this seminar explores episodes in this difficult relationship, investigating works in the borderlands between text and object to probe problems of description, interpretation, narrative, ekphrasis, and allegory.

Drawing on the recent proposition by Carrie Lambert-Beatty, this course explores the use of fiction as an artistic device throughout twentieth-century art, from tricksterism in Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia to the self-mythologization of figures in the neo-avant-garde such as Yves Klein and Josef Beuys and from the incorporation of fiction in conceptual artists such as Marcel Broodthaers and Bas Jan Ader through the present-day interest in mixing fact and fiction in relation to social and political realities by practitioners of 'relational aesthetics' such as Pierre Huyghe, Walid Raad and the Atlas Group, and The Yes Men.

Imposing order on Pablo Picasso's seven-decade career is a challenge. A sampling of styles allots two phases to Cubism (with collage and Guitar [1912] the sparks for much impolite debate); two, three, or even four stints of Classicism; and the 'starter' phases dubbed the 'Blue' and 'Rose' Periods. Should an intrinsic restlessness across Picasso's work--perhaps one activated by his peerless drawing--be explored instead? We take up this challenge in our seminar. Two touchstones: first, the indispensable works by Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Pierre Matisse in the Art Institute of Chicago's collection; and second, the ascetic (and relatively neglected) attraction of early Picasso (i.e., pre-Les Demoiselles d'Avignon [1907]). Our readings pay special attention to those scholars who have grappled with Picasso's divisions (including Lisa Florman and Yve-Alain Bois) without neglecting commentaries on Picasso's work now considered virtually as monumental as the artist himself (Gertrude Stein's portrait of 1909, Picasso; Leo Steinberg's essay on the Demoiselles [1973; 1988]).

With the overwhelming success of the recent traveling show Rolywholyover, the ubiquitous presence of John Cage in the arts since 1950 has been confirmed by the public. Cage's synthesis of the ideas of luminaries such as Eckhart, Thoreau, Duchamp, Satie, Stein, Hoyce, Varese, Coomaraswamy, Suzuki, McLuhan-and his camaraderie with Moholy-Nagy, Tobey, Pollock, Rauschenberg, DeKooning, Rivers, M. C. Richards, Nevelson, Cunningham, von Fischinger, Fuller, et al.-informed his unique approach to the creative process. His writings and works, both musical and visual, continue to exert a profound influence on the work of artists today. This seminar will examine this phenomenon through Cage's extensive creative output, as well as through actual spoken works from his numerous appearances, including visits to the School of the Art Institute.

The production and consumption of material and, some would argue immaterial objects, is at the heart of cultural formation. The course interrogates issues in relation to the everyday and designed objects through our understanding of design and its objects, their significance in daily life and the cultures of production, mediation and interaction. The course also examines the dilemma we face in contemporary practice in labeling objects as craft, art or design.

This seminar explores core theories of the object in industrial and post-industrial societies. Readings in phenomenology, material culture, and design studies will inform a critical analysis of the roles of objects in various contexts, including intensive explorations of the public, private, commercial, and global lives of things. Classes take a hands-on approach, with discussions of objects (and subjects) in the classroom, the museum, and various non-conventional sites.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

Incorporating daily visits to the Art Institute of Chicago, this undergraduate seminar will examine the history of European and American art from the 1870s to the twentieth century through the focused engagement with objects in the museum collections. Class time will be divided between classroom lectures, discussions of daily reading assignments, and museum visits. In all of these, students will be expected to take an active participatory role. Course topics will be determined in relation to the collections on view, but recurring questions will focus on materiality and display.

With the rise of contemporary art exhibitions featuring Asian artists in Europe and the United States, not to mention the increased visibility of Asian artists in biennales and triennials around the world, this course will offer students the opportunity to examine more closely the latest trends in art practices around Asia including India, China, Vietnam and Indonesia. In order to make the class as current as possible, reading material will be drawn heavily from Asian art magazines, web sites and exhibition catalogues.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

The horror film and the American city have much in common. Both are fraught with anxieties, stained with fluids and flesh. They share a soundtrack of screams. When set in urban environments, horror films manifest complicated representations of race and class, often intersecting in surprising ways with gender and sexuality, the horror genre's most well-trodden subjects. Focusing on the last four decades, when the urban thriller's evolution has mirrored one of the most turbulent and transformative periods in our cities, this class places these films in historical and theoretical contexts as a means to tackle these urgent issues. Films include, but are not limited to: Rosemary's Baby, Polanski; Blacula, Crain; Death Wish, Winner; Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Brooks; Cruising, Friedkin; Ms. 45, Ferrara; Child's Play, Holland; People Under the Stairs, Craven; Candyman, Rose; Summer of Sam, Lee; In The Cut, Campion.

Between its incorporation in 1833 and the world's fair of 1933, Chicago was internationally the most important site for development of modern architecture. From the commercial buildings of Burnham and Root or Adler and Sullivan to the domestic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School, Chicago was on the 'cutting edge.' This architectural 'century of progress' is explored through field trips and on-site lectures. Chicago and its suburbs are the class's 'museum.'

This seminar examines issues of lust and aggression represented in contemporary culture. Unlike desire, which is about a kind of yearning, lust and aggression are about acquisition and invasion. From the aggressive stalking projects of artist Sophie Calle to the lust thrust of zine-turned-magazine BUST to the consumer goals of American Girl Place, there has been a cultural shift in the ways lust and aggression are celebrated visually, particularly but not exclusively women's lust and aggression. But what about aspects of lust and aggression that are not so easily visualized such as aggressive movements and hopes for political change? What images are in the foreground, which are upstaged, what are the related economic issues, and how can the traffic in images evolve toward a visual circulation that is radically democratic?

Since the early 1960s, artists have increasingly experimented with alternative methods of disseminating their ideas, using books or records, occasionally collaborating in periodicals, and other uncategorized projects. Students investigate the increasing acceptability of such activities and discuss a broad variety of publishing, from guerrilla fly-posting through mail-art magazines to the exhibition-in-a-book, including the unconventional artists' bookwork. Examining both well-known examples and obscure occurrences, the course attempts to place alternative art publishing in a contemporary context.

This course focuses on the relationship of dress, art history, and exhibition. Students engage in multi-disciplinary perspectives based on material culture analysis examining the evolution of contemporary fashion, dress, and alternative exhibition practices from 1900 to the present. Concentrating on the major directions in the field of fashion that have become polarized in the last twenty years, students study the issues of dress history and cultural studies. Through critical readings, lectures, and field trips, students discuss the methodologies of artists and designers. Individual research is encouraged in the Fashion Resource Center where linking documentary data to material culture enables students to contextualize visual examples and printed matter in a multilayered manner. The collective final project will result in an exhibition off-campus where content and promotion will be developed.

This course surveys the development of human civilization through the arts, from with the earliest records of human culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Art historical concepts such as style, iconography, and technique are discussed within a global, humanities-based approach that emphasizes a thematic comprehension of the political structures, social mores, and cosmological beliefs that inform visual cultures around the world. The survey is required of all first year students and incoming students who do not have its equivalent at either a high school or college level.

This class is a survey of alternative animation, primarily from the United States, Canada and Europe, with some work from Asia. We look at this work in relationship to experimental work in film, video, performance and installation. Students write two papers for the class - one at midterm and a final. Students are exposed to a world of cinema that is vital though often ignored in discussions of contemporary Cinema. We will see works by Jim Dine, Tony Oursler, Red Grooms, Robert Breer, Larry Jordan, Susan Pitt, Jan Svankmajor, Caroline Leaf, Janie Gieser and William Kentridge, to name a few. Readings for the class address ideas about manipulation of sculptural objects, puppetry, narrative and allegory, the real and the unreal.

The issues of modern philosophy have been inseparable from critical aspects of social modernity, such as the issue of 'capitalism.' From the 18th Century Enlightenment and 1789 French Revolution to the social revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, philosophers have radically interrogated problems of consciousness and subjectivity in terms of modern society, and have been concerned with possibilities for social transformation and emancipation. This course begins with the trajectory from Rousseau and Adam Smith to Kant and Hegel, proceeding to Marx and his followers Lukacs, Korsch and Althusser, and opposing accounts of revolutionary possibilities by Heidegger, Foucault and Adorno.

In the past twenty or more years the art world has witnessed a multiplication of blockbuster exhibitions in what has been called the 'biennialization of art. These exhibitions are in large part where theories of globalization are formulated and debated. Our course interrogates certain claims that art critics and historians make about biennials, namely that they obliterate nationalism, that their format allows for the exhibition of 'difference' and political chaos as such, and/or that they homogenize the form, medium, and content of art. We will study the histories, conceptual models, and locations of foundational exhibitions such as the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, S?o Paulo, Dak'art, Havana, Documenta, Whitney, Sydney and Venice. We will then examine and relate to these historical exhibitions some newer biennials--Shanghai, Istanbul, Guangzhou, Johannesburg, Luanda, Dubai, etc.

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

This course explores the arts of the Renaissance period in Italy, France, Spain, Netherlands and England during the fifteenth-century. We look at paintings, drawing, manuscripts, printed images, architecture, textiles, and more, as we consider the role of the patron and the artist, guild and workshop organization, the exchange of patterns and design and the nature of artistic creativity during this period. The meanings and origins of terms designating style groupings such as Late Gothic, Early Renaissance, High Renaissance and Early Modern are critically examined. The course includes several visits to local museums to examine texts and objects.

This course surveys the development of human civilization through the arts, from with the earliest records of human culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Art historical concepts such as style, iconography, and technique are discussed within a global, humanities-based approach that emphasizes a thematic comprehension of the political structures, social mores, and cosmological beliefs that inform visual cultures around the world. The survey is required of all first year students and incoming students who do not have its equivalent at either a high school or college level.

This course surveys the development of human civilization through the arts, from with the earliest records of human culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Art historical concepts such as style, iconography, and technique are discussed within a global, humanities-based approach that emphasizes a thematic comprehension of the political structures, social mores, and cosmological beliefs that inform visual cultures around the world. The survey is required of all first year students and incoming students who do not have its equivalent at either a high school or college level.

This course surveys the development of human civilization through the arts, from with the earliest records of human culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Art historical concepts such as style, iconography, and technique are discussed within a global, humanities-based approach that emphasizes a thematic comprehension of the political structures, social mores, and cosmological beliefs that inform visual cultures around the world. The survey is required of all first year students and incoming students who do not have its equivalent at either a high school or college level.

This course surveys the development of human civilization through the arts, from with the earliest records of human culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Art historical concepts such as style, iconography, and technique are discussed within a global, humanities-based approach that emphasizes a thematic comprehension of the political structures, social mores, and cosmological beliefs that inform visual cultures around the world. The survey is required of all first year students and incoming students who do not have its equivalent at either a high school or college level.

This course surveys the development of human civilization through the arts, from with the earliest records of human culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Art historical concepts such as style, iconography, and technique are discussed within a global, humanities-based approach that emphasizes a thematic comprehension of the political structures, social mores, and cosmological beliefs that inform visual cultures around the world. The survey is required of all first year students and incoming students who do not have its equivalent at either a high school or college level.

This course surveys the development of human civilization through the arts, from with the earliest records of human culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Art historical concepts such as style, iconography, and technique are discussed within a global, humanities-based approach that emphasizes a thematic comprehension of the political structures, social mores, and cosmological beliefs that inform visual cultures around the world. The survey is required of all first year students and incoming students who do not have its equivalent at either a high school or college level.

This course surveys the development of human civilization through the arts, from with the earliest records of human culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Art historical concepts such as style, iconography, and technique are discussed within a global, humanities-based approach that emphasizes a thematic comprehension of the political structures, social mores, and cosmological beliefs that inform visual cultures around the world. The survey is required of all first year students and incoming students who do not have its equivalent at either a high school or college level.

This course surveys the development of human civilization through the arts, from with the earliest records of human culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Art historical concepts such as style, iconography, and technique are discussed within a global, humanities-based approach that emphasizes a thematic comprehension of the political structures, social mores, and cosmological beliefs that inform visual cultures around the world. The survey is required of all first year students and incoming students who do not have its equivalent at either a high school or college level.

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

This course surveys the works of those artists and artisans who have explored and defined the aesthetic boundaries of photography since the medium's invention in 1839. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century art and ideas are related to events and ideologies to explain contextually significant photographic directions and tendencies.

The ability to repeat and disseminate pictorial statements has altered science and technology as well as art since about 1400. Prints constituted the first 'media explosion.' This historical discussion encompasses printmaking techniques and styles and studies examples in the Art Institute's collection.

This course provides a far-ranging introduction to the varied conceptions of modernism, antimodernism, and postmodernism by treating these formulations as complex historical and aesthetic fields of engagement. In studying the artistic diversity of the last 150 years, we also study the competing positions of artists, theorists, critics and philosophers. The goals of this course are for students to acquire a historical understanding of modernism, antimodernism, and postmodernism; to gain a familiarity with many of the theoretical arguments about art and culture mounted today; to prepare students for further examination of these ideas through additional study; and to help students to question their own artistic beliefs and improve their art making.

Since the Exposition des arts incoherents in 1882, the orthodox story of art has been pre-figured, parodied, or echoed by ideas and activities which are less well-known but nevertheless informative about the state of the arts through modernism to today. Including Hydropaths, `pataphysicians and members of groups called Lettrisme or Neoism, propagating ideas ranging from transmental to pandrogenic, this course identifies and contextualizes some of the salient adventures of those who ignore convention to create and play before the vanguard and behind the canon.

A general introduction to the 'moving image arts,' this course examines the distinct forms of film, video, and new media as they developed over the past century. We look at such historical forms as 'avant-garde film,' 'video art,' and 'media art' and at their convergence within contemporary art. The class will include a wide range of critical readings, screenings, as well as visits to the Art Institute and Museum of Contemporary Art.

This course plunges first-year students into visual theory using texts and ideas that universities often leave until graduate school. We work through basic 'formal' subjects (lectures on Form, Color, Time( at the same time as we explore more 'advanced' subjects (lectures on Religion, Ideology, Visual Theory). The course is vocabulary-intensive and intended to give students the widest possible exposure to visual discourse in all cultures and disciplines (The Survey is meant to do the same for visual artifacts).

This course surveys the developments of architecture and interiors from its ancient origins to the time of Napoleon. Special attention will be given to the environments in which the great cultures flourished. The course will also look closely at the interiors developed by such cultures as the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, especially in Southern Italy, the Romans, Early Christians, the Byzantines and Russians. European Middle Ages as well as the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo architecture and interiors will be looked at in context.

This course examines the emergence, growth and evolution of art by Asian Pacific Islander Americans throughout the 20th century especially in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement that also spawned the genesis of Asian American identity, culture and activism. The course then moves through the late 1980's--the apex of multiculturalism and the politics of representation--and finally to the transnationalism of the new millennium and beyond. Through readings, field trips, film screenings and visiting artist presentations, we consider the ongoing debate of what constitutes Asian American art by looking at individual artists and their work within historical, cultural, and political contexts and by considering how stereotypes, cultural difference, gender politics, and identity construction affected and shaped Asian American art's development and meaning.

This course will cover the development of Outsider Art, its historic antecedents in the 19th century and the parallel paths it has taken in Europe and the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries. Important Outsider Artists such as Alois Corbaz, Henry Darger, Madge Gill, Johann Hauser, Martin Ramirez, Adolf Wolfli and Joseph Yoakum will be examined. We will also study some of the historians, psychologists and collectors who have helped to shape the field. We will explore Outsider Art's position in the wider realm of self-taught art, its relationship to folk art, visionary art and l'art brut, as well as the challenge of defining these terms and categories.

This course introduces Korean visual culture by examining images and objects in their historical, social, religious, and philosophical contexts. It covers key examples of paintings, ceramics and Buddhist art from the Three Kingdoms period to the Choson dynasty, through Modern Korean art, This course helps students gain a comprehensive understanding of traditional Korean visual culture and its modern legacy.

This course is a survey of the conventions and qualities of Chinese painting. Emphasis is placed on stylistic analysis and how the art reflects the broad cultural attitudes of China during various periods of its history. Museum visits to view original works of art are included.

This course covers a broad range of decorative objects, such as bronze ceremonial vessels and implements, pottery and porcelain, stone carvings and brick reliefs, mural paintings, jade and furniture, etc. Students will learn through the study of real objects of Chinese decorative art, in the Art Institute and in private collections, and through lectures and readings. The course offers a brief historical introduction to the various kinds of objects, for example, the history of stone carvings and brick reliefs of the Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE) or the history of blue and white porcelains of the Ming dynasty (1386 - 1644).

Using key examples of public and private exterior and interior architectural, urban, and garden spaces, this course focuses on the universal elements (such as social, political, religious, and cultural forces) which define such spaces. It includes a history of furniture, interior design and color, light, and the fourth dimension of architecture through the major periods of history.

An introduction presents an overview of the academic field known as Media Art Histories as well as the specific genealogies of relevant academic disciplines (i.e. of Film Art, Video Art, New Media Art & both filmic and digital Experimental Animation) as well as genealogies of specific media technologies (i.e. cameras, computers and software; electric lights, radio and sound; chemical, magnetic, and digital forms of storage and the industrial and capitalized structures that they require). These interwoven histories of shared theory/practices are investigated in relationship to independent/experimental/art media in contemporary cultures by asking: How do artists develop methods to work with, against, and around these techno-social forms? Readings will include Kittler, Zelenski, Grau, Gunning, Gaudreault, Musser, Schivelbusch, Auge, Adorno, Kluge, and Krackauer.

This course examines the impact of new technologies on the aesthetics of the 20th century. Issues explored in the course include the structure of synthetic pictorial spaces, creating art on a global scale, responding to the images of pure light, the aesthetics of motion, behavior in virtual environments, and the experiences of interactive artworks. Main lecture topics are: avant-garde typography, Moholy-Nagy's work, early radio and the impact of auditory images, kinetic art, robotic art and robotic dance, telecommunication art, computer art, electronic photography, space art, virtual reality, tele-presence, and holographic art. By focusing on the theoretical and historical implications of the aforementioned media and movements, and on the work of several artists, the course places technological trends in modern and contemporary art within context.

This survey of the history of clothing from ancient times to the 20th century provides a framework for identifying and understanding the formal and symbolic development of dress within a socio-historical perspective. The history of dress provides an opportunity for research into particular facets of the real and idealized human body and its coverings. Among the topics presented in illustrated lectures, guest presentations and field trips are archaeological discoveries of dress, historic costuming for theater and film, religious vestments, and origins of contemporary fashion in l9th century reform movements. Readings include selections from James Laver, Elizabeth Barber, E.H. Gombrich, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley and others.

This course is designed to serve as an introduction to film analysis, in which students learn the basic concepts and vocabulary of film aesthetics and criticism. We examine different trajectories of film, studying mainstream film practices next to alternative ones. By studying the basics of film form and film style, through examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres, students learn to analyze and write about films as both formal and cultural constructs. Along with questions of film technique and style, we study cinema's relationship to popular culture and fine art. The films discussed include works by Griffith, Eisenstein, Welles, Hitchcock, and Godard. This course does not assume any prior exposure to film studies.

This course examines key social theories and genre readings that illustrate the changing status and historical discourses of the criminal in American and international cinema, from the Italian/Irish go-getters of the 1930s to the romanticized outlaws of the 1960s to the hipsters and serial killers of recent years. Two texts will be assigned: Alain Silver and James Ursini's Gangster Film Reader and Nicole Rafter's Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society.

It's no secret that graffiti started in New York by the late 70s. This class deciphers the visual language and formal concepts of graffiti and it how it is created, from bubbles to burners. This class aims to unveil the aesthetic evolution of graffiti. How did it spread across the nation? What differences emerged and why? How did it spread to the rest of the world? What have other regions contributed to the aesthetics of this genre? How do geographic backgrounds and social environments play out? Topics include: New York in the beginning, the distribution of tags and information through magazines and the internet, global explosion, marketing & pop culture integration, formal concerns, i.e, : 3-D, characters, committing to a style and planning a full-on 'burner.'

This survey of independent video art attempts to identify the unique properties of the medium as a tool for personal expression in the major categories of electronic imagery, conceptual/narrative works, and documentaries. Works are analyzed in terms of formal structures, coding processes, and social, psychological, and philosophical implications.

This general survey of graphic design between the mid-nineteenth-century to the present, this course seeks to account for individual designers and institutions maps the relationships between designers and the various institutions that supported graphic design. Students study the issues and problems facing designers, their clients, and their public, then and now. The class introduces students to the work of Jules Cheret, Kolomon Mosser, Peter Berhens, Jan Tschichold, Herbert Bayer, Lester Beall, Cipe Pineless, Armin Hoffmann, Rosemarie Tissi, Paul Rand, Wolfgang Weingart, April Grieman, and Experimental Jet set, to name a few. Our goal is to explore the cultural, social, political, industrial, and technological forces that have influenced graphic design. We also come to understand how graphic design influences culture at large.

Using the works of established critics and writers as models and using the museum and Chicago galleries as subject matter, students learn to write concise reviews and essays. Class time is spent discussing art, assigned readings, and students? writing. Students are required to turn in one short written work at the beginning of each class. The goal of the course is to develop students? powers of observation, clarity of language and ability to form and defend opinions about works of art. Readings include Kimmelman, Berger, Schjeldahl, Hickey, Lippard, Barnet, Fried, Wolfe.

From the Judgment of Paris to Miss Universe, this course examines artist's and the public's changing conceptions of beauty through the centuries. The impact of everything from ancient and modern theories of aesthetics to advertising, cinema and television are examined. As artists of every age have sought to document the 'Story of the Beautiful' -- as Whistler once termed it -- this class explores western culture's evolving concept of 'beauty' and seeks an answer to the question: why is it continually linked with 'good?'

Filippo Brunelleschi, Leonardo da Vinci, and Guillaume Dufay were literally 'Renaissance men.' Music, art, mathematics, philosophy, and religion were fused in the minds. Painting and music underwent an important transformation after Filippo's experiments with linear perspective. Vincenzo Galilei (Galileo's father) advocated equal temperament in tuning over a century before its currency. Tonality in music from Dufay to Monteverdi grew alongside perspective. This course examines that 'perfect storm' of music and art in the culture of the Renaissance in Medicean Florence. Art, architecture and music are studied as a source of the confluence spawned by commerce, government and humanism.

Photography has long had a presence in Africa, yet was little represented in museums and art historical scholarship until the 1990s. This survey examines how and why photography has since become central to arguments about African visual art?s modernity in Africa and the West. We consider subjects ranging from expeditionary and ethnographic projects to the rise of the portrait studio to works by photographers such as Malick Sidibe, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, David Goldblatt, and Yto Barrada.

This course presents a series of inquiries and conversations about the origins of the theories and practices collectively referred to as New Media. From Marshal McLuhan?s use of the phrase ?new media? in the 1960s to later usages by video artists in the 1970s and 80s, to those working in the network and computer cultures of the 1990s and in currently emerging discourses, New Media includes a set of contested, multiple, and modular histories as well as an implicit impulse to discard the past. While arising from the parallel, overlapping and resistant codes of experimental media art culture and socially engaged technology, New Media has become both simultaneously clearer and more ambiguous. This course explores the many precedents, exceptions, disputes, and connections that constitute the prehistories of New Media.

Students examine the history of comic book art and writing from the early 20th century to the establishment of the Comics Code Authority in 1954. The course covers artistic antecedents of the 18th and 19th centuries, newspaper funnies, pulp magazines, the Golden Age (1938-49) and various genres: superheroes, crime, war, romance, horror and science fiction. Major names discussed: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Jack Cole, Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood.

This course surveys the development of drawings as the foundation not only of the workshop process, but also of the theory and practice of pre-modern art. Special attention is given to Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo-their innovations, evolution of personal style, and use of sketches to develop a composition. There are extensive visits to the prints and drawings department at the Art Institute to discuss techniques, types of drawings, regional and personal styles, and connoisseurship.

This course explores the body as a central theme in contemporary art by investigating representations and performances of the body, the self, and identity in 20th-century visual culture and theory. Thematically organized, the course surveys the evolution of camera-based portraiture and the emergence of identity politics and body politics in art throughout the twentieth century. Discussion topics include the ideal body, the grotesque body, the artist?s body, concepts of performance, performativity, masquerade, as well as issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. Readings will encompass a range of texts from humanistic and social science perspectives; we will, for example, read Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, Douglas Crimp, Bell Hooks, and Mikhail Bakhtin.

The mediums of photography and painting each have easy strengths that entice other artists to redirect thoughts and practices. Across the 19th and 20th centuries, photographers and painters alike have made works that interline description and abstraction. Significant artists have plumbed both mediums to create compelling intersecting art. This course will examine the work and words of Hockney, Richter, Smithson, Kiefer, Schnabel, Dibbetts, Heizer, Kiki Smith, Salle, Rauschenberg and others to better understand their works in both mediums.

This course explores the radical reorientation of sculpture from the figural traditions of nineteenth-century studio practice (modeling, carving, casting) to the newer, object-oriented techniques of collage and assemblage in a range of modern materials-sheet metal, lucite, molded plastics, electric lights, steel, and glass. The persistence of the classical humanist tradition is traced against the rise of mechanistic and scientific paradigms for three-dimensional constructions. Rodin, Claudel, Matisse, Picasso, Hepworth, Archipenko, Schwitters, Bourgeois, Calder, Nevelson, and others will be discussed.

Through close reading of pertinent texts and viewing of visual material, this course traces art theory from Greenbergian Formalism to the extreme of Baudrillardian postmodernism. Emphasis of the class discussion is on painting, photography, and video and on interrelating practice and theory.

This course consists of close readings and class discussion of primary postmodernist writings (by J. F. Loytard, J. Habermas, I. Hassan, D. Crimp, J. Baudrillard, A. Bonito Oliva, P. Portoghesi, Meagham Morris, Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson, Nelly Richard, et al.) dealing with the problems of the foundation of knowledge, cultural practices, the avant-garde, politics, feminism, and multiculturalism. Discussion of readings will be integrated with the viewing of visual material (painting, photography, and video) pertinent to the texts under critical examination. Students will be encouraged to relate theoretical issues to their artistic or scholarly practice by sharing their creative or academic endeavors within the context of the course.

This course charts the demise of the object and image in the work of modern and contemporary art. Known in various guises as concept or conceptual art, process art, information or idea art, this apparent assault on the visual nature of art was undertaken by many artists who were to become very well regarded in the sixties and seventies-and their influence is still felt today. The course will attempt to identify different strands within this general trend in terms of aesthetic, political, and historical precession; and consideration will be given to the possible reasons behind the ramifications of the dematerialization of the art object.

This class examines diverse perspectives on the production, consumption, and use of design. Reading key primary writings by designers and observers, we will consider topics such as the role of technology in design change, the uses and functions of design in home, work, and community life, and proposed futures of design. Readings will include designers such as William Morris, Le Corbusier, Norman Bel Geddes, Charles & Ray Eames, Victor Papanek, and Michael Graves; as well as historians and theorists including Karl Marx, Pierre Bourdieu, Cheryl Buckley, and Mike Davis. Assignments include hands-on study of designed objects and their histories.

Incorporating daily visits to the Art Institute of Chicago, this undergraduate seminar examines the history of European and American art from the 1860s through the early twentieth century through the focused engagement with objects in the museum collections. Class time is divided between classroom lectures, discussions of daily reading assignments, and museum visits. In all of these, students are expected to take an active participatory role. Course topics are determined in relation to the collections on view, but recurring questions focus on materiality and display.

The notion of authorship has been radically redefined in the last half-century as artists have de-emphasized their role as singular creators of unique objects. In the 'real world' of art markets, museum attributions and intellectual property, however, authorship is an increasingly valuable commodity, prompting an explosion in art forgery. This class examines theories of authenticity and look at real life situations from the Renaissance to Richard Prince in which these theories come into conflict.

This seminar analyzes various problems, issues, and approaches to art history. It is also a practicum for the writing of different kinds of studies and criticism, with special attention given to the sources and methods of art historical research and analysis. Not available for Liberal Arts credit nor Graduate credit.

This course continues an investigation of the difference, if any, between looking and reading, visuality and poetics. We will read art history, critical theory and literature, concerning mainly Stephane Mallarme, Marcel Broodthaers, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Robert Smithson, Jenny Holzer, Adrian Piper, David Antin and Edgar Heap of Birds.

This seminar explores a range of printed materials that serve a prosthetic function in relation to the making and exhibiting of art: catalogues, press releases, exhibition announcements, biographies, and even wall labels. During the course of the semester the class also looks closely at how certain social activities involving negotiation strategies have a central, and not peripheral, role in relation to contemporary exhibition practices. While the course is experiential and practical, it also explores conceptual issues underpinning the relationship between curatorial and creative practice. The final project for the class involves producing either a formal curatorial proposal or a virtual exhibition consisting of exhibition announcement, press release, catalogue dummy, and checklist of the 'work'. The course is open to a wide variety of students, including students interested in curating across many historical periods, students engaged in critical studies, and 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.

In this course, we explore how art production contributes to global flows of information and culture dealing with feminist and/or gender issues. Conversely, we question how this context impacts the art. Artists whose work we consider include: Ghada Amer, Emily Jacir, Rineke Dijkstra, Vanessa Beecroft, Lin Tianmiao, Hanlu, Kara Walker, and Toxic Titties, among others.

This course considers the conjuncture of architecture and desire toward an excavation of sensory apprehensions of built environments and the circumscription of desire by (porous) territorialities. We endeavor to see what often goes unseen, that is, the altered boundaries of what otherwise appears to be fixed, immovable. Whether it is Le Corbusier's incursion into Eileen Gray's house, E1027, in Rocquebrune-Cap-Martin, Elizabeth Grosz's outsider considerations of architecture and gender, Juhani Pallasmaa's ocular skins, Bernard-Marie Koltes's theatrical frameworks for desire, we think together about ways in which these forms *inform* and *deform* one another.

As long as print has been a form of mass media, it has been used with equal fervor to mock, poke fun at, and tear holes in its own abilities to disseminate information--as well as the journalists, officials, and experts who make use of it. This course traces the history of parody and satire in print, including posters, broadsides, small press publications, comics, illustration, and editorial cartoons.

This seminar explores questions of cinema and television in relation to the larger issues concerning visual representations and definitions of sexuality. Themes and approaches include theories of spectatorship, in particular, feminist, postcolonial, and queer theories of looking as related to sexuality; stereotypes and social roles; the interplay between unconscious processes and forms of representation; and the political implications of sexual iconoclasm, concentrating on homosexuality. The course consists of weekly discussions based on screenings of films and videotapes, as well as critical and theoretical texts that, from a variety of perspectives, address these issues. Films and videos include works directed by Dorothy Arzner, Stuart Marshall, Rose Troche, John Greyson, Richard Fung, Gregg Bordowitz, Sadie Benning, Sonali Fernando, Isaac Julien, Jennie Livingston and Todd Haynes, among others.

What were the possibilities and limits of representing foreign lands, cultures, and peoples in the long 19th century? How did discourses of empire, race, and power inform or complicate these representations? This course examines Europe's imperial and colonial engagements with India, the Pacific, North Africa, and South America from 1750-1900 and representations of these engagements in the visual realm. Thematically and methodologically driven, a comparative approach will be taken to theories of travel, colonialism, and cross-cultural interactions. Such theories include, but are not limited to, Orientalism, postcolonialism, transnationalism, and their attendant critiques.

This course investigates artistic expressions of national consciousness, modernism, ukrainizatsia of the 1920s and the Boychukysty, primitive and decorative folk painting, non-conformism, Socialist Realism, and contemporary art. Historical, political, and socioeconomic contexts will be addressed throughout the class, as will Ukraine?s relationship with other European artistic centers, and their developments. Issues related to recovered art history, colonization and artistic training; national identity and oppressed regimes; and the role of the diaspora will be included throughout. Translations of documents will be provided.

With the rise of contemporary art exhibitions featuring Asian artists in Europe and the United States, not to mention the increased visibility of Asian artists in biennales and triennials around the world, this course will offer students the opportunity to examine more closely the latest trends in art practices around Asia including India, China, Vietnam and Indonesia. In order to make the class as current as possible, reading material will be drawn heavily from Asian art magazines, web sites and exhibition catalogues.

This course surveys the development of residential architecture and interiors in Europe and the United States from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. It concentrates on individuals who helped shape the history of modern housing and interior architecture, with a focus on the pioneering work of designers such as William Morris, Victor Horta, Joseph Hoffmann, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, Robert Venturi, Richard Meier, Phillipe Starck, and Tadao Ando, among others.

In 1908 the renowned Viennese architect Adolf Loos coined the famous phrase 'Ornament is a crime.' In this course we look back on historical debates concerning the function and meaning of ornament. Through a critical review of the theoretical trends, particular modern art movements such as the Arts and Crafts, the Bauhaus, and case studies of recent works by architects such as Farshid Moussavi and Hashim Sarkis, we explore a relational understanding of the categories of 'surface', 'excess' and 'the foreign', and consider ornament's current return in art and architecture.

This course focuses on the relationship of dress, art history, and exhibition. Students will engage in multi-disciplinary perspectives based on material culture analysis examining the evolution of contemporary fashion, dress, and alternative exhibition practices from 1900 to the present. Concentrating on the major directions in the field of fashion that have become polarized in the last twenty years, students will study the issues of dress history and cultural studies. Through critical readings, lectures, and field trips, students will discuss the methodologies of artists and designers. Individual research is encouraged in the fashion resource center where linking documentary data to material culture enables students to contextualize visual examples and printed matter in a multilayered manner. Offered in the fall semester only.

Cloth forms and textiles find their meaning in relationship to interaction - in their making, in their use, in their cultural references and material implication. (Presence of Touch exhibition catalogue, 1996). The above quotation emphasizes the way that contemporary artists, working in fiber and related materials are engaging with increasingly complex and challenging issues. Identity, gender, race, the body, colonialism and post-colonialism, authenticity and imitation, memory, tradition and innovation are some areas that have been addressed in artwork and written texts. This course provides the opportunity for students interested in fiber and material studies to 'interact' critically with written, visual and material work. Students are expected to read texts analytically and to present and discuss ideas. Seminars facilitate engagement with theoretical and contextual writing and provide students with the experience and confidence to express critical comment to their peers, verbally and through personal research and writing.

This class is a survey of alternative animation, primarily from the United States, Canada and Europe, with some work from Asia. We look at this work in relationship to experimental work in film, video, performance and installation. Students write two papers for the class - one at midterm and a final. Students are exposed to a world of cinema that is vital though often ignored in discussions of contemporary Cinema. We will see works by Jim Dine, Tony Oursler, Red Grooms, Robert Breer, Larry Jordan, Susan Pitt, Jan Svankmajor, Caroline Leaf, Janie Gieser and William Kentridge, to name a few. Readings for the class address ideas about manipulation of sculptural objects, puppetry, narrative and allegory, the real and the unreal.

The documentary, once regarded a vehicle for the heroic confrontation of artist and society, has been questioned in recent years. This seminar studies readings and selected documentaries that illustrate certain key issues: 1) truth claims: Does the documentary seek to validate its claim to truth or does it problematize such claims? 2) the authority of the documentaries: By what right does he/she speak for the subject of the documentary? How are subjects allowed or made to speak for themselves? How is the authority of the maker of documentaries undercut? and, 3) construction of the audience: Do the documentaries or their subjects seek to address or ignore the beholder/audience? How does it try to move its audience to action or participation?

Recent developments in many disciplines, from brain science to cultural studies--what has been called the 'affective turn' -- are exerting an enormous influence in how we make theory, make art, and think about 'feelings.' In film theory, much has been written about the 'construct' of real time. This course uses both these lenses to critically investigate an eclectic group of film and video works, primarily from the 1960s and 1970s, that re-imagine politics and consciousness through an excess of imagination and feeling, from exuberance to loss.

Despite the outright fusion of sound to music, i.e. that it is the preeminent constituent of the artform, it was not until the 1950s that sonic material was taken seriously as a structural component. This seminar examines a body of sonic art?sound-based compositions, electro-acoustical music, installations, and soundscapes?where emphasis is placed on works that tune or manipulate the performance environment, explore sound as sculpture, interact with the listener/viewer, and employ extra-musical media. Class discussions and readings include topics such as psycho-acoustics, sound manipulation, conceptual art, installation techniques, as well as electronic and computer music. Final projects consist of research papers that probe the relationship between the physical properties of sound and the aesthetics and critical theory surrounding sonic art and music. Students may elect instead to create a sound piece with an a detailed written analysis.

Despite the long history of art of political or social protest, many activists have found their work overlooked or rejected because of its political content. However, in recent years institutions have privileged activist art in projects that have in themselves become controversial-the 1993 Whitney Biennial exhibition, or Sculpture Chicago's 'Culture in Action' project are just two examples. The course is divided into two parts: the first provides an overview of activist and protest art from the early twentieth century until today. The second part of the term will focus on issues raised by some of the artworks and the responses engendered: issues of censorship, multiculturalism, public funding, community collaboration, activism along gender/racial/sexual lines, arguments of 'quality' vs 'inclusiveness,' and the role of art in society at large are among those topics.

This course investigates specific ways that gender, sex, and sexuality have affected the production of art and processes of making meaning in modern art; and various ways that art, performance, and visual culture have been used to represent (or complicate representations of) gender, sex, and sexuality. Feminist and queer critiques are surveyed. Students will be asked to think about new forms and practices in collaboratively producing zines for a final assignment.

This course introduces Zen teachings, practice, and their association with the arts in Japan. During the course, we study ink painting, religious sculpture and temple architecture, garden design, and the tea ritual. While the course introduces Zen teachings and aesthetics, it also begins to dispel the many myths propagated by D. T. Suzuki, and others, that have come to define Zen in the modern West and Japan.

Maps feature significantly in contemporary artistic practice as a device that resists fixed borders, both national and personal. As contemporary artists collapse the idea that the map is the territory, so too do they make a radical break with the seemingly permanent boundaries of nationality, race and gender and their ideological institutions. From artists such as Francis Alys and Janet Cardiff to the virtual mapping of Clement Valla, this course explores the limits of nation and self and the limits of the language in which mapmaking is embedded. In this course, students read, write, present and walk the city exploring both object-based and more ephemeral artistic mapmaking practices while calling into question the scientific and art historical languages by which mapmaking is framed.

This advanced course investigates modern and contemporary art from the late 19th century to the present. Key issues include formal, contextual, and technical developments and are discussed in relation to socioeconomic, intellectual, political, and cultural contexts. Emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues. This course is required for the Master of Fine Arts or Post-Baccalaureate Studio Certificate. If a student has previously taken a 20th century survey or its equivalent, this requirement may be waived with permission.

This advanced course investigates modern and contemporary art from the late 19th century to the present. Key issues include formal, contextual, and technical developments and are discussed in relation to socioeconomic, intellectual, political, and cultural contexts. Emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues. This course is required for the Master of Fine Arts or Post-Baccalaureate Studio Certificate. If a student has previously taken a 20th century survey or its equivalent, this requirement may be waived with permission.

This advanced course investigates modern and contemporary art from the late 19th century to the present. Key issues include formal, contextual, and technical developments and are discussed in relation to socioeconomic, intellectual, political, and cultural contexts. Emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues. This course is required for the Master of Fine Arts or Post-Baccalaureate Studio Certificate. If a student has previously taken a 20th century survey or its equivalent, this requirement may be waived with permission.

This advanced course investigates modern and contemporary art from the late 19th century to the present. Key issues include formal, contextual, and technical developments and are discussed in relation to socioeconomic, intellectual, political, and cultural contexts. Emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues. This course is required for the Master of Fine Arts or Post-Baccalaureate Studio Certificate. If a student has previously taken a 20th century survey or its equivalent, this requirement may be waived with permission.

This advanced course investigates modern and contemporary art from the late 19th century to the present. Key issues include formal, contextual, and technical developments and are discussed in relation to socioeconomic, intellectual, political, and cultural contexts. Emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues. This course is required for the Master of Fine Arts or Post-Baccalaureate Studio Certificate. If a student has previously taken a 20th century survey or its equivalent, this requirement may be waived with permission.

This advanced course investigates modern and contemporary art from the late 19th century to the present. Key issues include formal, contextual, and technical developments and are discussed in relation to socioeconomic, intellectual, political, and cultural contexts. Emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues. This course is required for the Master of Fine Arts or Post-Baccalaureate Studio Certificate. If a student has previously taken a 20th century survey or its equivalent, this requirement may be waived with permission.

This advanced course investigates modern and contemporary art from the late 19th century to the present. Key issues include formal, contextual, and technical developments and are discussed in relation to socioeconomic, intellectual, political, and cultural contexts. Emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues. This course is required for the Master of Fine Arts or Post-Baccalaureate Studio Certificate. If a student has previously taken a 20th century survey or its equivalent, this requirement may be waived with permission.

This advanced course investigates modern and contemporary art from the late 19th century to the present. Key issues include formal, contextual, and technical developments and are discussed in relation to socioeconomic, intellectual, political, and cultural contexts. Emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues. This course is required for the Master of Fine Arts or Post-Baccalaureate Studio Certificate. If a student has previously taken a 20th century survey or its equivalent, this requirement may be waived with permission.

In this seminar, the genesis of the discipline of art history, its founding and continuing assumptions are examined through close readings of key texts in the discipline up until the period of high formalism in the 1950s. Readings are chosen from among the following thinkers: Kugler, Schnaase, Morelli, Riegl, Wolfflin, Focillon, Panofsky, and Warburg. Student reports focus on others. Discussions introduce issues regarding the rise of art history in universities, professional organizations, and conferences, and the relation between museum and academia. Formalism, contextualism, universal history, and the relation between nationalism and art are explored.

This seminar considers various modern and contemporary approaches to the study of art and design--broadly defined--by a range of historians, critics, and theorists. We will focus on both Anglo-American and Continental traditions without following a strictly historiographical review. Instead, methodologies and theoretical approaches will emerge from our discussions on the manner in which the practice of the study of art and design intersects with conceptual problematics of interdisciplinarity as an analytic and intellectual practice. Readings will include, but are not limited to Focillon, Giedion, Heidegger, Kubler, Latour, Nodelman, Schwartz, Wollflin and others.

In the introduction to Burning with Desire, Geoffrey Batchen suggests that the study of photography has been largely divided by two opposing points of view, one that is interested in the essential, formal characteristics of photography and another that considers photography, and photographic meaning, to be determined by cultural context. Starting with this general rubric, we examine how that divide is addressed, reinforced, reconfigured and dismantled in recent studies of photography. Readings range from the pre-history of photography to digital imaging. We discuss works by cultural historians and art historians, and consider both popular and professional photographic practices. Texts will include books by Geoffrey Batchen, Carol Mavor, Robin Kelsey, Blake Stimson, and Christopher Pinney, among others. Class assignments include rigorous weekly discussions of the readings, two turns at leading class discussions, a final presentation based on the final project for the course, and a final project that may be written (15 pages) or studio-based.

This is a writing workshop for art historians, critics, visual studies scholars, and art theorists. We bring together three discourses: the often impoverished talk about 'good writing' in academia (Alexander Nemerov, T.J. Clark, Leo Steinberg); the scattered examples of poststructural writing on art (Jean-Louis Schefer, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Helene Cixous, Griselda Pollock); and the flourishing experimental writing scene (Marjorie Perloff, Vanessa Place, Kenny Goldsmith, Caroline Bergvall, Craig Dworkin, and Christian Bok).

Cities make visible the flow and interaction of humans, spatial organization, material, and technology. This dynamic context becomes the source for the creation of new approaches used in a city's own continued resolution. Chicago Tableaux uses the city of Chicago as a case study to examine how it's buildings evidence significant historical influences in architecture, both current and from antiquity, creating linkages from the present-day city to the various tropes and canons that have shaped both thought and form in city and building making over time. Course activity includes reading, discussion, city excursions, descriptive analysis and writing projects.

This lecture course surveys design history, from 1750 to the present day. It introduces the ideas that have driven design in the modern era. Critical and interdisciplinary investigations of artifacts, built environments, and texts throughout the course seek to establish essential links between designers, objects, and users in the history and culture industry of design and architecture. Representative texts of cultural theory supplement lectures for engaged forms of material analysis. In addition to introducing an inclusive overview, the course emphasizes creative ways of probing material sources for writing and critiquing design history and current design practices. It is a required course for all graduate students in the Master of Architecture, Master of Architecture with Emphasis in Interior Architecture and Master of Design in Designed Objects programs.

This lecture course surveys design history, from 1750 to the present day. It introduces the ideas that have driven design in the modern era. Critical and interdisciplinary investigations of artifacts, built environments, and texts throughout the course seek to establish essential links between designers, objects, and users in the history and culture industry of design and architecture. Representative texts of cultural theory supplement lectures for engaged forms of material analysis. In addition to introducing an inclusive overview, the course emphasizes creative ways of probing material sources for writing and critiquing design history and current design practices. It is a required course for all graduate students in the Master of Architecture, Master of Architecture with Emphasis in Interior Architecture and Master of Design in Designed Objects programs.

By the beginning of the century, the Salon exhibition was already as the most important arena in which the reputations of young artists could be made or broken, and it was art critics--by and large--who determined their fates. The Salon's centrality may have diminished over time, but Paris's thriving print culture, along with the traditional prestige of art criticism as an occupation, ensured a continuing and vital role for an array of commentators. This milieu is at the heart of our course. Canonical figures (Baudelaire, Stendhal, Feneon) are considered as well as lesser-known voices (Chaussard, Thore). These contemporary viewers looked long and hard at individual works of art; we will do the same--to this end, visits to the AIC are a vital feature of this course. Previous knowledge of French not essential; translations are given.

This class investigates the contemporary art world through total immersion in the Chicago art scene, including museums, galleries, and artist-run spaces, meeting many art professionals including curators, arts administrators, critics, art historians, and artists. In a succession of field trips, the class looks at art in exhibition spaces and artists' studios, discuss it as a group, do interviews, and analyze our contemporary-art situation in Chicago and internationally, both present and future. Please note that attendance during alternate days and times at galleries, collections, and events will constitute many of the class sessions. The Monday morning sessions on-campus at SAIC noted in the schedule apply only to weeks when the class is not attending events elsewhere. Students must be willing to attend both depending on weekly scheduling of events which will be given out on the syllabus the first week of school.

This seminar provides a critical framework for contemporary fashion artists and designers. Through close readings of pertinent texts and viewing of visual and tactile material, this course examines pertinent issues in cultural and anthropological studies to contemporary design theory. The impact of technological, economic, and cultural shifts manifested through fashion practice serves as a basis for critical analysis of work.

This course aims to give a thorough grounding in a phenomenon, which has been called 'the most radical and experimental art movement of the sixties.' In this seminar, students investigate the politics, theory, aesthetics, and practice of Fluxists, whose activities deliberately confused the borders between painting, poetry, music, sculpture, and life. Their work raises problems which echo dada and agitprop, while prefiguring punk and, arguably, postmodernism.

This seminar will focus on critical issues in recent music and audio art. Topics will include: Power and Responsibility-the influence of politics, identity and technology in composed and improvised musical decision making; Pleasure-the role of 'bump and mind' in the crossover of 'high' and 'low' musical culture; Groove, Pit and Wave-recording, transmission and music, the grain beneath the voice; Reducing the Tempo to Zero-the crisis of the beat after Christian Wolff and Morton Feldman, the time of music versus the time of installations; Chip Chop Shop (or Searching for the Perfect Beep)-the role of specific technological objects in the rise of new musical forms. After an initial series of lectures, students will be expected to research topics (chosen in consultation with the instructor), and present them in written and oral form, as well as guide group discussion. The course will draw on the extensive collection of recordings and printed materials in the Flaxman Library, as well as the instructor's and students' personal resources.

This seminar examines the emerging artistic practices of video, performance, and installation, mostly circa 1970. It examines artists use of 'feedback,' which is a concept intended to suggest dynamic interactions between artists, practices, and viewers. We will ask how feedback transforms works of art from metaphors of reality into reality itself, and explore this transformation in terms of culture and ethics. These issues will also be pursued from more recent perspectives, as we conclude the semester by examining the relationship between 'feedback' and 'relational aesthetics.' Artists we consider include Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, Vito Acconci, Lynda Benglis, Bruce Nauman, Nancy Holt, Robert Smithson, Nam June Paik, Robert Morris, Richard Serra, Dan Graham, Mike Kelley, Judy Chicago, Anish Kapoor, Wolfgang Laib, Felix Gonzales-Torres, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, and others.

Art criticism-the description, analysis, exegesis, contextualization, and judgement of art-is perceived as being a bit bedraggled of late. It just doesn't seem to be doing its job. It is either lumbering under the ponderous weight of crusty deconstructive theory, or fleeing to the safety of the academy with its self-perpetuating and self-fulfilling hermeticism. It is crippled by the strangling constraints of political correctness, wallowing in a solipsistic subjectivism, stuck in celebrity self-aggrandizement, and floundering in a vest undifferentiated sea of relativism. What to do? This seminar comprises reading, writing, and discussion of art criticism and cultural commentary, including a concise historical survey and many field trips to visit area exhibitions, curators, and artists. The current state of criticism is assessed by readings of contemporary art writing in journals, weeklies, daily newspapers, and on the web. Special attention is devoted to understanding different audience for practical as well as theoretical reasons. Emphasis is placed on developing new critical strategies to address new types of artistic practice-installation, video, digital media, interactive and socially engaged projects and service oriented practices-and on new venues for art criticism-new journals, 'zines, CDroms, and the internet. This is accomplished though visiting art exhibitions, class discussion of critical strategies, writing and presenting one analytical research paper.

Walter Benjamin's cultural criticism sought to grasp the nature of the dramatic social upheavals and transformations of his time (1892-1940). This work tried to discern emancipatory possibilities in contemporary social developments and the emergence of new cultural forms such as photography and cinema, but it was nonetheless preoccupied by problems of recovering past social and cultural history. In readings from Benjamin's major essays,the class seeks the critical intention of his cryptic utterances on problems of modern subjectivity in social history. These texts have provoked musings on temporality and the sense of history in present-day and 'postmodernist' social and cultural criticism. Other readings include selections from writers after Benjamin such as Susan Buck-Morss and filmmaker Alexander Kluge.

This course considers various artworks and centers of art production during the Cold War in the United States, the divided Germany, Africa, Latin America, and the divided Korea. We study artists who interrogated the global cultural divide, establishing North/South and South/South networks and complicating the anti-modernism of much of the global proselytizing of Socialist Realism. The course covers key Cold War era exhibitions, theories of developmentalism in art of the Global South, and artwork that envisioned a Socialist modernism.

Roger Brown's art making activities and collections were influenced by and responsive to the material culture of places in which he lived. In this seminar the different aspects of Brown's life will be teased out, through direct contact with paintings and archival materials alongside visits to his Chicago home and remote inspections of the other collections in New Buffalo MI and La Conchita CA. Each week the class will encounter a different painting by Roger Brown and investigate its content. A close inspection of the paintings, and related archival materials at the Roger Brown Study collection, will be supplemented with visits to museum and private collections.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

In Spring 2012 students will work on the Graduate Exhibition ('MFA show') as part of a curatorial team. Directly aligned with one of the guest curators, they will assume responsible positions for a section of the overall show. Students will benefit from conceptual discussions, hands-on training, and participation in this overall scheme of curators, graduate assistants, faculty, staff, and participating artists in this major exhibition. By instructor consent only.

This graduate seminar explores the historical interactions of technology and architecture beginning with Gottfried Semper?s Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts (1862) and ending with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown?s Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (rev. 1977). Through the study of the practical and allegorical interaction of architecture and technology, students will gain not only a more robust understanding of modern architecture and its historical formations but also a greater appreciation for the technological in contemporary architectural practice. An examination of the historiography of architecture and technology moves us closer to understanding the history of architectural practice as both integration and index of complex assemblages.

This graduate seminar explores the historical interactions of technology and architecture beginning with Gottfried Semper?s Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts (1862) and ending with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown?s Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (rev. 1977). Through the study of the practical and allegorical interaction of architecture and technology, students will gain not only a more robust understanding of modern architecture and its historical formations but also a greater appreciation for the technological in contemporary architectural practice. An examination of the historiography of architecture and technology moves us closer to understanding the history of architectural practice as both integration and index of complex assemblages.

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.