Announcing New Class for 2018-2019: WORLD ON FIRE: 1968-Now

A half century on, this class examines the intersection of art, design, and politics in 1968, the mythic year of global upheaval. Nearly simultaneously, signal events erupted on multiple continents: "May 1968" in France, the Tet Offensive, the murder of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City, riots at the Democratic National Convention here in Chicago, the Soviet Union?s invasion of Czechoslovakia, and Mao Zedong's "Up to the Mountains, Down to the Countryside" movement. The course draws connections to recent events and to what we might broadly call "the contemporary." The class is team-taught by four members of the art history faculty each semester in order to draw on their individual areas of expertise, and has units that focus on the art, design, and history of Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Innovative in its structure, the class begins each meeting with a shared presentation for all students that is followed by small seminars led by the teaching faculty. 

This class can be taken as either a fall or spring stand-alone course or as a single year-long intensive study, since the teaching faculty and course material vary by semester. There is a dedicated seminar for graduate students. Standard art history learning goals, course objectives, and assessment practices apply.

Fall 2018: Faculty teaching the class are Delinda Collier (SAIC Scholars section), Nora Taylor (graduate section), Seth Kim-Cohen, and Mechtild Widrich

Select topics include:
The Vietnam War in US and Vietnamese Art
The Wall and Iron Curtain (a divided Germany)
Expanded Practices and Urban Activism
Steven Biko and Black Consciousness
1967 First World Festival of Negro Art
Chicago '68
Screenings: The Year of the Pig, The Act of Killing, The Night James Brown Saved Boston, Medium Cool

Spring 2019: Faculty teaching the class are David Raskin (graduate section), Jennifer D. Lee, Sampada Aranke, and Bess Williamson

Select readings and topics include:
cultural revolution in China and its (mis)interpretations
Black Power in the US and Africa
Hippie Modernism
Origins of Social Design
Dropouts and Cults
Monuments
Screenings: Easy Rider, 2046 (Wong Kar-Wai)