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Reading Art is a seminar that orients students to college studies and emphasizes students' advancement of college-level critical reading and thinking skills. Students learn how to read and analyze artworks using the formal vocabulary of art and design, as well as how to read about art in art history textbooks, scholarly journals, and other sources. Students improve their ability to process, retain, and apply information by using active learning strategies and graphic organizers, including a schematic note-taking system. In addition to weekly readings and exercises, students complete an in-depth synthesis project on an artwork of their choosing. Regular museum visits complement class work.

This course is an introduction to art and design. Specific content varies by instructor and covers diverse ways of seeing and understanding the visual world. The course articulates connections between selected art of the past and contemporary practices. Students will gain first-hand knowledge from visits to and exercises in the Art Institute of Chicago and other collections.
Ultimately, the course teaches skills that enable students to understand their own practices better, orient themselves in relation to theories of art and design, and navigate our present moment where visual literacy is increasingly crucial.

This course introduces students to key aspects of the history and theory of art and design. Students will become familiar with selected art of the past and how it has been connected to contemporary practices.

This course builds on the lessons of ARTHI 1001 by discussing specific issues in modern and contemporary art and design. It focuses on examining objects and concepts, addressing theoretical and critical issues. It also explores the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes reflected in the works of artists and designers, highlighting their relevance to contemporary practices. Museum visits and group exercises supervised by the instructor and the teaching assistants will contribute to the important hands-on experience of works of art.

Note: ARTHI 1001 is the recommended prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

The Foundations Writing Workshop is a process-based writing course that serves as students' initiation to the foundations of academic writing in a school of art and design. Students engage in the writing process, learn strategies for exploring topics, and develop their knowledge of the concepts and terminology of art and design through the practice of various kinds of written compositions. Analysis of essays and active participation in writing-critiques are integral components of the Workshop.

This class offers small group tutoring for students who do not speak English as their first language. Students meet with an EIS instructor in groups of three for 1 1/2 hours each week. Students receive assistance with their class assignments for Art History, Liberal Arts and Studio classes. Activities may include discussing class concepts, checking comprehension, exploring ideas for papers or projects, revising papers, or practicing pronunciation and presentations.

This class offers small group tutoring for students who do not speak English as their first language. Students meet with an EIS instructor in groups of three for 1 1/2 hours each week. Students receive assistance with their class assignments for Art History, Liberal Arts and Studio classes. Activities may include discussing class concepts, checking comprehension, exploring ideas for papers or projects, revising papers, or practicing pronunciation and presentations.

As a project-based course, Fashion Construction III introduces the intermediate construction principles for pants and jackets. Tailoring, cut-and-sew knitwear, and creative draping techniques used on a variety of body types, and gender expressions are explored. The principles of proportion, balance, and fit as required for the achievement of well-made garments will also be studied. Pre req: minimum two Fashion construction classes: FASH 2001, FASH 2003, FASH 2020, FASH2022 or FASH2024

Crip Theory, an intersection of Disability Studies and Queer Theory, forms the theoretical groundwork for this course. Students analyze how works of literature and art reshape traditional storytelling and representations of disability and nonnormativity. Through critical engagement with a variety of texts, students will investigate how experiences of disability influence and transform our narratives. As they engage with literature, art, and theory, students will uncover the ways creative works confront power dynamics, promote inclusivity, and further the goal of social justice.

This course critically examines how land structures political and economic power, fuels conflict, and inspires collective resistance. We investigate how land has supported systems of colonialism, state sovereignty, and capitalist expansion, and how it continues to be a site of dispossession, contestation, and life-affirming practices. The course will guide students through alternative ways of conceiving land that move beyond dominant regimes of ownership and control. These perspectives emphasize care, interdependence, and autonomy, and offer foundations for political resistance and collective action.

Within an over 3.5 billion-year history of biological life on Earth, an extraordinary diversity of life forms evolved. Since the formulation of the evolutionary theory by Charles Darwin, biologists have used different data to understand how the diversity of organisms evolved. We will discuss the data that are being used to trace the evolution of organisms, from morphology, anatomy, ultrastructure, development, chemistry, to genetics, and now even the entire genome of organisms. Using examples, we will explore how these characters have shaped our understanding of evolution and how breakthroughs by new techniques or discoveries have resulted in paradigm shifts. We will discuss the major lineages of the tree of life, focusing on major shifts in biological diversity and mass extinctions. This will be achieved by a mixture of lectures, group discussions, and reading of review texts in this class, with an emphasis on the impact that discoveries have had beyond evolutionary biology. Coursework includes lectures, discussions, and readings (journal articles, book chapters). For each of the readings, students are required to submit summaries. There will be required a field trip to the Field Museum.

Dinosaurs are the most diverse group of land vertebrates on our planet. Today. Birds are the only group to survive the catastrophic asteroid impact 66 million years ago that wiped out all other dinosaurs. How did dinosaurs first evolve, diversify, and eventually take flight? Examine the evidence for yourself and learn how scientists use data from fossils to bring dinosaurs `to life.¿ This class uses dinosaurs as a fascinating group through which to explore the fundamentals of evolutionary biology and learn how organisms respond to rapid climate change.This course covers the history of dinosaurs on our planet and uses critical thinking to investigate what their unusual morphology can tell us about their biology and, ultimately, the extinction of all dinosaurs but birds. The coursework will consist of 6 in class activities due the following class, light reading (two book chapters, 1 scientific article, two online articles) and a final art project that encourages students to use art to express scientific understanding acquired in the class of how dinosaurs looked and lived. There will be several required visits to the Field Museum.

This course is designed to provide students an opportunity to gain experience as interns in professional arts and design environments and prepare for professional life after SAIC. During the semester, faculty provide in-depth mentorship and act as liaison with the internship site supporting students meet their learning goals as outlined for the semester. Through group meetings and online discussions, students engage with a peer cohort of students participating in a variety of internships. Students work at internships for a total of 140 hours (approx 14 hours per week) for the term. In addition to successfully completing the internship, students will conduct an informational interview with their employer, attend 4 class meetings and a meeting with the faculty and supervisor, complete an internship supervisor evaluation, revise their resume, and update their online portfolio, website, or professional profile.

Students are required to secure an internship prior to the start of the semester. Internships must be approved by the Career and Professional Experience (CAPX) office. Students are encouraged to meet with a CAPX advisor for assistance with researching and applying for internships. In order to begin the internship approval process students should go to https://bit.ly/35vmTTM. Upon approval, course registration is managed by CAPX.

Note that international students must receive CPT authorization prior to participating in an off-campus internship.

Internships may be in-person, hybrid, or virtual; however all four class meetings are virtual. Class meeting day and time are determined by the faculty.

This class will begin with a demonstration on traditional drawing techniques used to illustrate scientific material. Students will develop pencil and ink renderings as well as watercolor illustrations of animal, plant and insect species. Work will also include relevant habitat and scale information.

Each Class will include a lecture and /or visit behind the scenes to a lab at the Field Museum. Working scientists will expose the students to common collection methods as well as specimen preparation such as bird and mammal taxidermy.

Course work will be described at the beginning of each class. Midterm critiques, small groups of 5, will determine and promote individual projects to be presented in the Final Critiques.

In 'I Made a Thing', a Professional Practice Experience course offering, you will engage in a wide variety of activities designed to help prepare you for life after SAIC. Course activities may include creating a website, preparing a CV, attending networking events with alumni, and writing of a project statement. The course emphasizes hands-on, real-world professional activities and opportunities for emerging studio artists.

This course will be broken into six units, each of which addresses a particular concern about what to do with studio work once it has been made. Each unit will typically contain a reading assignment, a writing assignment, and a project assignment. This course would be best suited for artists who are considering a career centered around an individually driven studio practice. Units include: I Made a Thing and I think I want to make more: how to develop a practical, long-term studio practice. I Made a Thing and I think it failed: how to embrace inevitable challenges and let your work be your teacher. I Made a Thing and I think I want people to look at it: how to cultivate a supportive creative community both physically and virtually. I Made a Thing and I think I want to use it to apply to/for stuff: how to get your work 'out there.' I Made a Thing and I think I want people to talk about it: how to engage your work with dialogue and criticism. I Made a Thing and I think I want someone to buy it: how to create your own art market.

This course is designed to provide students an opportunity to gain experience as interns in professional arts and design environments and prepare for professional life after SAIC. During the semester, faculty provide in-depth mentorship and act as liaison with the internship site supporting students meet their learning goals as outlined for the semester. Through group meetings and online discussions, students engage with a peer cohort of students participating in a variety of internships. Students work on-site at internships for a total of 140 hours (approx 14 hours per week) for the term. In addition to successfully completing the internship, students will conduct an informational interview with their employer, attend 4 class meetings and an onsite meeting with the faculty and supervisor, complete an internship supervisor evaluation, revise their resume, and update their online portfolio, website, or professional profile.

Students are required to secure an internship prior to the start of the semester. Internships must be approved by the Career and Professional Experience (CAPX) office. Students are encouraged to meet with a CAPX advisor for assistance with researching and applying for internships. In order to begin the internship approval process students should go to https://bit.ly/35vmTTM. Upon approval, course registration is managed by CAPX.

Note that international students must receive CPT authorization prior to participating in an off-campus internship.

Internships may be in-person, hybrid, or virtual; however all four class meetings are virtual. Class meeting day and time are determined by the faculty.

In consultation with Study Abroad, undergraduate students may spend up to two semesters (30 credit hours) at approved partner schools, or at another Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) school in North America. Various types of credit can be earned depending on the host school?s offerings. Approval from Study Abroad is required. The process has two steps; the student first submits an application and portfolio to Study Abroad and it is reviewed by a faculty panel. If approved to proceed, the student then applies to the proposed host school. Information and resources about International Exchange, AICAD Exchange, and Tuition Transfer programs are available at Study Abroad.

For advanced-level risograph and publishing-focused students, this course delves deep into color separation techniques, fine registration, spot color layering, as well as the history and contemporary uses of Risograph and other stencil duplicators as artists' tools. Instruction will include software tools such as Spectrolite, Ilustrator, and Photoshop as well as manual techniques.
The class will consist of demonstrations, reading discussions, lectures, and presentations along with studio work time supplemented with trips to school collections and visits from current practictioners. We will investigate the work of contemporary Risograph printers, publishers and artists such as Anemone Press, Sigrid Calon, Colorama Press, Genderfail, Knust Press, Sven Tillack, among many others. Readings and course discussions will cover the history of radical and artist publishing, DIY production, and institutional adoption of the Risograph machine. The class will culminate in a show of student work.
Students will be expected to produce 3-4 self-directed print or publishing projects using advanced techniques on the risograph machine as well as participating in a collaborative research and book project. Projects will be workshopped in one-on-one meetings and discussed in group critiques.

The focus of this course is to support a sense of purpose and agency in prospective art teachers, teaching artists, and cultural workers by exploring how individual and collaborative cultural production reflects and influences conceptions of race, class, ethnicity, geography, sexuality, and physical/cognitive abilities in a diversity of communities and settings. Students will interrogate the cultural contexts-aesthetics, artmaking approaches, social, political, historical, theoretical, technological, and pedagogical-that frame the making, interpreting, analyzing, sharing, and teaching of art, design, and visual culture in school and community settings. Students will develop content for art and culture projects and curriculum sequences based upon contemporary topics, issues, and themes.

Students will explore the work of contemporary artists and cultural workers who integrate diverse artmaking approaches, cultural histories, theoretical orientations, and psychological perspectives into their arts-based practices. Artists and readings will be chosen based upon timely and emergent issues, concepts, and themes affecting a diversity of communities. Methods and strategies for integrating various literacies--verbal, visual, media, technological, computational--into cultural projects and curriculum will be explored.

Yes course will ask students to understand how individual and collaborative cultural production reflects and influences conceptions of race, class, ethnicity, geography, sexuality, and physical/cognitive abilities in a diversity of communities and settings. Students will also Understand how cultural contexts frame the making, interpreting, analyzing, sharing, and teaching art, design, and visual culture in school and community settings.

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 course is designed to provide students an opportunity to gain experience as interns in professional arts and design environments and prepare for professional life after SAIC. During the semester, faculty provide in-depth mentorship and act as liaison with the internship site supporting students meet their learning goals as outlined for the semester. Through group meetings and online discussions, students engage with a peer cohort of students participating in a variety of internships. Students work on-site at internships for a total of 140 hours (approx 14 hours per week) for the term. In addition to successfully completing the internship, students will conduct an informational interview with their employer, attend 4 class meetings and an onsite meeting with the faculty and supervisor, complete an internship supervisor evaluation, revise their resume, and update their online portfolio, website, or professional profile.

Students are required to secure an internship prior to the start of the semester. Internships must be approved by the Career and Professional Experience (CAPX) office. Students are encouraged to meet with a CAPX advisor for assistance with researching and applying for internships. In order to begin the internship approval process students should go to https://bit.ly/35vmTTM. Upon approval, course registration is managed by CAPX.

Note that international students must receive CPT authorization prior to participating in an off-campus internship.

Internships may be in-person, hybrid, or virtual; however all four class meetings are virtual. Class meeting day and time are determined by the faculty.

Descriptive Techniques: Media, Material, Place + Event: will provide a foundational survey and sampling of architectural representational conventions, hardware and software systems for analysis, visualization, materialization and iteration as well as an introduction to material processes and tool systems for design materialization, prototyping and iteration. Special focus will be given to examining emerging computational tools and media and their implication on the design of material things and places.

Readings will vary but will typically include excerpts from process instruction manuals (contemporary and archival). A structural element of this class is that it will run with a combined cohort made of 2 year option and 3 year option student groups - mixing established students with arriving students. The large class will have 2 or more assigned faculty and will explore independent and collaborative modes of learning. This will contribute to the program¿s learning culture.

Course work will consist of a survey of a variety of hardware and software based serial production processes useful for the development and communication of architectural concepts (3 to 5 digital systems, 6 to 9 material processes). Assignment work will be 80% individual response to project prompts and 20% collaborative projects. Readings meant to situate processes in a developmental history will be offered as a critical aspect of material / process learning.

What was modern art? How does it relate to social, political, and economic processes of 'modernization'? What resources does it offer us now? What, if anything, might we want to make with the 'master narratives' of formal innovation, autonomy, and criticality we might think we have left behind? What will modern art be?

This class is a highly selective narrative from the 19th to the 21st century of signal works of art and important critical texts of modernism, the avant-gardes, postmodernism, and beyond, centering on these questions and making the most of the museum's resources to explore them.

This course examines theoretical and practical issues implicit in the conceptualization of the public sphere. Teacher candidates explore social theory through historical and contemporary models of community activism, grassroots organizing, and other cultural work in relation to the contested space of the public sphere. Teacher candidates research and develop individual and collaborative creative work including interviews, observations, and proposals for an ethical community-based project.

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

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

This course focuses on the development of a culminating creative project that demonstrates the skills, knowledge, and experience gained through the MAATC program. Students will demonstrate their learning through an in-depth arts-based project to explore the field of art therapy and counseling, and participate in the MAATC exhibition.

What are the most urgent issues in contemporary art now? This online course addresses the central themes and ideas shaping the production and distribution of art. Students will develop and manage their own blogs and participate in continuing online discussions. The final requirement will be a finished paper. This course investigates issues of size, scale, scope and proximity. Its aim is to pursue our fascination with - and comprehension of - the gargantuan and the minute. The course examines the formal factors which affect our perceptions and, more importantly, the psychological and political implications of encountering the extreme spectrum of scale. Issues of public and private space reveal inherent conditions when addressed by comparing elements of the monumental and the spectacle to - and within - the intimate and fetish qualities of the small. Our primary question might be: how do we comprehend scale? Or, it might be: how is scale mobilized towards modes of comprehension? Prerequisite: Must be enrolled in the Low-Residency MFA Program.

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

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

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