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Graduate Curriculum & Courses

Graduate Curriculum & Courses

The Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is designed to offer maximum flexibility in addressing your individual needs as a student. Following admission through a department, you will design your two-year plan of study based on optimizing the offerings and opportunities available throughout SAIC. You are encouraged to seek out curricular advising as needed from a variety of available sources including the dean, graduate dean, graduate division chair, department heads, academic advising, the graduate admissions office, and your peers.

Course titles and topics––over 30 offerings each semester––range from Intro to Photography to Lighting Fundamentals, Surrealism and Photography, Digital Light Projections, Fashion Photography, Advanced Post-Production, and more, allowing students to delve deeply into an area of interest, find synergies with departments and mediums across the school, or explore and master a wide range of techniques and equipment.

AreaCredit Hours

Studio

  • MFA 6009 Graduate Projects (21)
  • MFA 6009 Exhibition (3)

24

 

Seminar

  • Graduate Level Seminar
12

Art History

  • ARTHI 5002 OR ARTHI 5120 (3)
  • Art History Courses, 4000-level or above (9)
12

Electives—any course in any area at 3000-level or above 

  • Additional Graduate Projects sections used as electives must be approved by the Graduate Program Advisor
  • Students interested in writing a thesis must take a research methodologies course elective
12
Participation in four graduate critiques 
Participation in ONE of the following as appropriate to artistic practice: Graduate Exhibition, Graduate Performance Event, Graduate Screenings. Students who wish to use an alternative venue or presentation outside of these options must receive permission from the dean of graduate studies. 
Total Credit Hours60

* Students who wish to use an alternative venue or presentation outside of these options must receive permission from the Dean of Graduate Studies. The AIADO Department encourages students in their MFA design programs to participate in the AIADO and Fashion Graduate Exhibition.

Degree Requirements & Specifications

  • Completion schedule: You have a maximum of four years to complete your MFA in Studio degree. This includes time off for leaves of absence. Students will have access to studios for four semesters only.
  • Transfer credits: You must complete a minimum of 45 credit hours in residence at SAIC. You can request up to 15 transfer credits at the time of application for admission, which are subject to approval at that time. No transfer credits are permitted after a student is admitted.
  • Art History requirement: MFA students are required to take ARTHII 5002 Graduate Survey of Modern and Contemporary Art OR ARTHI 5120 Survey of Modern and Contemporary Architecture and Design. Art History courses must be at the 4000-level and above.
  • Undergraduate studio courses: Graduate students are permitted no more than one undergraduate studio course (3000-level and above) per semester without permission of the Dean of Graduate Studies. Courses at the 1000 and 2000-level are allowed only with permission.
  • Full-Time Status Minimum Requirement: 12 credit hours

MFA 6009 Graduate Projects

MFA 6009 Graduate Projects advising, an ongoing individual dialogue with a wide range of full-time and part-time faculty advisors, is at the heart of the MFA program at SAIC, encouraging interdisciplinary study across the curriculum. You are required to register for one MFA 6009 Graduate Projects advisor each semester, and we highly recommend you register for two.

In the registration process, you may elect to earn 3 or 6 hours of credit with each advisor. This option is designed to allow for maximum flexibility in designing your program. You can earn as few as 3 and as many as 6 credits with each advisor each semester, thus dedicating a maximum of 12 credit hours to your studio activity. The number of credits you earn has no correlation with the length or frequency of the advising sessions or to faculty assessment of student work.

The remainder of credits required for the full-time 15 credit hour load may include graduate seminars and academic or studio electives. MFA students are urged to take graduate seminars, and an introductory seminar in their department of admission is highly recommended. In addition, the MFA student may choose from all the art history, studio, and academic offerings across the curriculum (including undergraduate offerings above 3000 level) in any given semester to customize their degree experience.

Graduate Critiques

As one of the principle means of assessment each semester, you will be required to participate in Critique Week, a week-long schedule of critiques during which classes are suspended.

Fall semester critiques are organized by department with panels representing the discipline. This provides you with an opportunity to understand the department’s expectations, have your work reviewed from a disciplinary point of view, and to reiterate the expectations for graduate study.

Spring semester critiques are interdisciplinary, with panel members and students from across SAIC disciplines. Interdisciplinary critiques allow for a broad range of responses to your work, and are intended to assess the success of your work for a more general, albeit highly informed audience. Critique panels include faculty, visiting artists, and fellow graduate students.

Graduate Exhibition or Equivalent

At the conclusion of your studies, you will present work in the SAIC Graduate Thesis Exhibition, other end-of-year events at SAIC, or the Gene Siskel Film Center—or arrange with the graduate dean or division chair for an alternative thesis of equal professional quality. Each year more than 200 graduate students exhibit work, screen videos and films, and present time-based works, writings, and performance to a collective audience of 30,000 people.

Students wishing to install work around prevalent themes, strategies or stylistic affinities can participate in a juried and curated section of the SAIC Graduate Thesis Exhibition. A faculty and staff committee conducts extensive studio visits and as a collaborative project with student participants, organizes and installs the show in designated space at the exhibition.

Undergraduate Courses

MFA students are advised to understand the expectations of their faculty when enrolled in undergraduate studio classes. Although graduate students are an asset to the group dynamic, faculty requirements for graduate students in undergraduate classes are variable. The student is responsible for understanding the faculty member's expectations about completion of assignments, attendance, and any other criteria for earning credit. To assure that graduate students are working at degree level, they are permitted no more than one undergraduate studio course (3000 level and above) per semester without permission of the dean of graduate studies. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 level are allowed only with permission.

Course Listing

Title Catalog Instructor Schedule

Description

This basic class, required for entry into all other photo classes, introduces contemporary technologies for producing photographic images. This course also introduces seeing, thinking and creating with a critical mind and eye to provide greater understanding of the construction and manipulation of photographic form and meaning. Approaching the medium in its current complex and pluralistic state, students explore a variety of photographic concepts and techniques. While various physical cameras are still in use today the fundamentals of using digital cameras, including manual exposure and lighting are stressed. Eclectic forms of output are explored in order to discover methods of presentation most suited to a particular idea.

'Knowledge of photography is just as important as that of the alphabet. The illiterate of the future will be a person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen.' Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). This course will address the complex and continual shifting nature of photography; what influences our understanding of how a photograph functions while exploring a diverse array of photographic genres and applications.

Assignments will provide technical skills to use cameras, compose images and print digital photographs. Readings, screenings and discussions will provide a framework for critically analyzing the photographs we encounter every day, as well as our own photographs.

Class Number

1815

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 106

Description

This basic class, required for entry into all other photo classes, introduces contemporary technologies for producing photographic images. This course also introduces seeing, thinking and creating with a critical mind and eye to provide greater understanding of the construction and manipulation of photographic form and meaning. Approaching the medium in its current complex and pluralistic state, students explore a variety of photographic concepts and techniques. While various physical cameras are still in use today the fundamentals of using digital cameras, including manual exposure and lighting are stressed. Eclectic forms of output are explored in order to discover methods of presentation most suited to a particular idea.

'Knowledge of photography is just as important as that of the alphabet. The illiterate of the future will be a person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen.' Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). This course will address the complex and continual shifting nature of photography; what influences our understanding of how a photograph functions while exploring a diverse array of photographic genres and applications.

Assignments will provide technical skills to use cameras, compose images and print digital photographs. Readings, screenings and discussions will provide a framework for critically analyzing the photographs we encounter every day, as well as our own photographs.

Class Number

1798

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 106

Description

This basic class, required for entry into all other photo classes, introduces contemporary technologies for producing photographic images. This course also introduces seeing, thinking and creating with a critical mind and eye to provide greater understanding of the construction and manipulation of photographic form and meaning. Approaching the medium in its current complex and pluralistic state, students explore a variety of photographic concepts and techniques. While various physical cameras are still in use today the fundamentals of using digital cameras, including manual exposure and lighting are stressed. Eclectic forms of output are explored in order to discover methods of presentation most suited to a particular idea.

'Knowledge of photography is just as important as that of the alphabet. The illiterate of the future will be a person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen.' Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). This course will address the complex and continual shifting nature of photography; what influences our understanding of how a photograph functions while exploring a diverse array of photographic genres and applications.

Assignments will provide technical skills to use cameras, compose images and print digital photographs. Readings, screenings and discussions will provide a framework for critically analyzing the photographs we encounter every day, as well as our own photographs.

Class Number

1799

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 106

Description

This basic class, required for entry into all other photo classes, introduces contemporary technologies for producing photographic images. This course also introduces seeing, thinking and creating with a critical mind and eye to provide greater understanding of the construction and manipulation of photographic form and meaning. Approaching the medium in its current complex and pluralistic state, students explore a variety of photographic concepts and techniques. While various physical cameras are still in use today the fundamentals of using digital cameras, including manual exposure and lighting are stressed. Eclectic forms of output are explored in order to discover methods of presentation most suited to a particular idea.

'Knowledge of photography is just as important as that of the alphabet. The illiterate of the future will be a person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen.' Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). This course will address the complex and continual shifting nature of photography; what influences our understanding of how a photograph functions while exploring a diverse array of photographic genres and applications.

Assignments will provide technical skills to use cameras, compose images and print digital photographs. Readings, screenings and discussions will provide a framework for critically analyzing the photographs we encounter every day, as well as our own photographs.

Class Number

1800

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 106

Description

This basic class, required for entry into all other photo classes, introduces contemporary technologies for producing photographic images. This course also introduces seeing, thinking and creating with a critical mind and eye to provide greater understanding of the construction and manipulation of photographic form and meaning. Approaching the medium in its current complex and pluralistic state, students explore a variety of photographic concepts and techniques. While various physical cameras are still in use today the fundamentals of using digital cameras, including manual exposure and lighting are stressed. Eclectic forms of output are explored in order to discover methods of presentation most suited to a particular idea.

'Knowledge of photography is just as important as that of the alphabet. The illiterate of the future will be a person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen.' Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). This course will address the complex and continual shifting nature of photography; what influences our understanding of how a photograph functions while exploring a diverse array of photographic genres and applications.

Assignments will provide technical skills to use cameras, compose images and print digital photographs. Readings, screenings and discussions will provide a framework for critically analyzing the photographs we encounter every day, as well as our own photographs.

Class Number

1801

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 106

Description

This basic class, required for entry into all other photo classes, introduces contemporary technologies for producing photographic images. This course also introduces seeing, thinking and creating with a critical mind and eye to provide greater understanding of the construction and manipulation of photographic form and meaning. Approaching the medium in its current complex and pluralistic state, students explore a variety of photographic concepts and techniques. While various physical cameras are still in use today the fundamentals of using digital cameras, including manual exposure and lighting are stressed. Eclectic forms of output are explored in order to discover methods of presentation most suited to a particular idea.

'Knowledge of photography is just as important as that of the alphabet. The illiterate of the future will be a person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen.' Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). This course will address the complex and continual shifting nature of photography; what influences our understanding of how a photograph functions while exploring a diverse array of photographic genres and applications.

Assignments will provide technical skills to use cameras, compose images and print digital photographs. Readings, screenings and discussions will provide a framework for critically analyzing the photographs we encounter every day, as well as our own photographs.

Class Number

1802

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 214

Description

This basic class, required for entry into all other photo classes, introduces contemporary technologies for producing photographic images. This course also introduces seeing, thinking and creating with a critical mind and eye to provide greater understanding of the construction and manipulation of photographic form and meaning. Approaching the medium in its current complex and pluralistic state, students explore a variety of photographic concepts and techniques. While various physical cameras are still in use today the fundamentals of using digital cameras, including manual exposure and lighting are stressed. Eclectic forms of output are explored in order to discover methods of presentation most suited to a particular idea.

'Knowledge of photography is just as important as that of the alphabet. The illiterate of the future will be a person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen.' Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). This course will address the complex and continual shifting nature of photography; what influences our understanding of how a photograph functions while exploring a diverse array of photographic genres and applications.

Assignments will provide technical skills to use cameras, compose images and print digital photographs. Readings, screenings and discussions will provide a framework for critically analyzing the photographs we encounter every day, as well as our own photographs.

Class Number

1818

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 106

Description

This basic class, required for entry into all other photo classes, introduces contemporary technologies for producing photographic images. This course also introduces seeing, thinking and creating with a critical mind and eye to provide greater understanding of the construction and manipulation of photographic form and meaning. Approaching the medium in its current complex and pluralistic state, students explore a variety of photographic concepts and techniques. While various physical cameras are still in use today the fundamentals of using digital cameras, including manual exposure and lighting are stressed. Eclectic forms of output are explored in order to discover methods of presentation most suited to a particular idea.

'Knowledge of photography is just as important as that of the alphabet. The illiterate of the future will be a person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen.' Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). This course will address the complex and continual shifting nature of photography; what influences our understanding of how a photograph functions while exploring a diverse array of photographic genres and applications.

Assignments will provide technical skills to use cameras, compose images and print digital photographs. Readings, screenings and discussions will provide a framework for critically analyzing the photographs we encounter every day, as well as our own photographs.

Class Number

1821

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 214

Description

This course is designed for students who have a basic knowledge of photography and its materials and an interest in the use of the photo image as part of a broad vocabulary of image-making processes. Students explore cyanotype, van dyke brown, gum bichromate printing, collage, reproduction, and transfer techniques, and are given a basic working knowledge of the graphic arts films and print films. Also covered: Polaroid materials, copy machines, computer graphics, and applied color. Ideas related to text, installation, and performance may also be explored. Each student is encouraged to experiment in both silver and non-silver processes and to conduct research independently.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: PHOTO 1001.

Class Number

1803

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 206

Description

'The Anthropocene' is the name of the new geological epoch, first proposed by atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and marine biologist Eugene F. Stroemer in 2000, with the proposal that human species has become the single prominent agent of change affecting the earths geology and ecosystems. Since then, the conversations on the Anthropocene, climate change, sustainability and the planetary ecological crisis have proven that the extremely complex problems the Earth is facing can only be addressed by new forms of collaboration and innovative knowledge production.
Photography plays in this context a pivotal role and goal of this class is to promote empirical and forensic work on landscapes of the Anthropocene, the degraded and damaged ecologies of the planet Earth. Collaborative work and access to different material forms, laboratories, analog and digital photographic media as well as scholarship and first-person testimony on health, race, politics and aesthetics, will help generate diverse perspectives on the entangled realities of the world and the complex human-natural systems.
Questions of environmental justice and environmental ethics will take center stage in this class.

Class Number

2197

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Economic Inequality & Class, Digital Imaging, Art and Science

Location

280 Building Rm 216

Description

This course will explore the methods, history and potential of medium format film photography. Students will learn to use a wide variety of medium format cameras including the Mamiya 7, Mamiya RZ 67, Mamiya 645, Pentax 67, Holga and various Hasselblad systems. Using a wide variety of black and white and color medium format films, students will become familiar with several film development techniques, and both analog and digital printing methods to create traditional and experimental photographic work.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: 3 credits of PHOTO 1000 level courses.

Class Number

1819

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging

Location

280 Building Rm 206

Description

Color Concepts introduces complex ideas and processes associated with the various applications of color in photography. Emphasis is on conceptual, theoretical, cultural, and perceptual aspects of color related to both vision and photographic image-making. The class explores all aspects of color photography. It traces the roots of analog three-color photographic processes first theorized in 1855, less than 30 years after the advent of black and white photography, and explores the successes and the limitations of color film (for example, the racial bias of color film.) Lastly, the class examines contemporary color dominant popularity amongst artists since the 1970s, through the context of a color constructed digital future.

Through a variety of exercises and assignments students will develop a keen eye to seeing color in the world and on the screen, use peer discussion and collaboration to advance critique skills, and build aptitude for visual literacy. Technical skills learned, include image capture, color correction, qualities of light, color corrected printing on varying scales and media, digital camera and medium format film camera authorizations, strategies of presentation while expanding on digital skills introduced in PHOTO 1001.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: PHOTO 1001.

Class Number

1804

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 216

Description

Color Concepts introduces complex ideas and processes associated with the various applications of color in photography. Emphasis is on conceptual, theoretical, cultural, and perceptual aspects of color related to both vision and photographic image-making. The class explores all aspects of color photography. It traces the roots of analog three-color photographic processes first theorized in 1855, less than 30 years after the advent of black and white photography, and explores the successes and the limitations of color film (for example, the racial bias of color film.) Lastly, the class examines contemporary color dominant popularity amongst artists since the 1970s, through the context of a color constructed digital future.

Through a variety of exercises and assignments students will develop a keen eye to seeing color in the world and on the screen, use peer discussion and collaboration to advance critique skills, and build aptitude for visual literacy. Technical skills learned, include image capture, color correction, qualities of light, color corrected printing on varying scales and media, digital camera and medium format film camera authorizations, strategies of presentation while expanding on digital skills introduced in PHOTO 1001.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: PHOTO 1001.

Class Number

1805

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 216

Description

This course introduces black-and-white printing techniques including darkroom and inkjet printing, contrast control through development, the zone system, scale of images, graphic arts film, studio lighting, different darkroom techniques, alternative cameras, and different papers and films.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: PHOTO 1001.

Class Number

1806

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 206

Description

This course introduces black-and-white printing techniques including darkroom and inkjet printing, contrast control through development, the zone system, scale of images, graphic arts film, studio lighting, different darkroom techniques, alternative cameras, and different papers and films.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: PHOTO 1001.

Class Number

1807

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 206

Description

This course introduces black-and-white printing techniques including darkroom and inkjet printing, contrast control through development, the zone system, scale of images, graphic arts film, studio lighting, different darkroom techniques, alternative cameras, and different papers and films.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: PHOTO 1001.

Class Number

1816

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 214

Description

Students are introduced to using light as a means for creative control. By studying the light around us, we are able to better serve our work through specific choices with regard to existing or ambient light and light augmented by other sources of illumination. Students learn the rudiments of metering, mixing light sources, including the use of on-camera or hand-held electronic flash within existing lighting conditions. This is a practical course that enables students to better control and use light and lighting in their work.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: PHOTO 1001.

Class Number

1808

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 207

Description

Students are introduced to using light as a means for creative control. By studying the light around us, we are able to better serve our work through specific choices with regard to existing or ambient light and light augmented by other sources of illumination. Students learn the rudiments of metering, mixing light sources, including the use of on-camera or hand-held electronic flash within existing lighting conditions. This is a practical course that enables students to better control and use light and lighting in their work.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: PHOTO 1001.

Class Number

1809

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 214

Description

Large Format Photography introduces students to the ideas and aesthetics associated with a large-format view camera. Students will learn pre-visualization, camera movements, perspective control, large-format optics, and how to handle large format sheet film. Assignments focus on portraiture, landscape, studio, and architecture. Students are encouraged to develop a personal style via flexible assignments. Technical skills acquired include view camera setup and control, experience with sheet film, the zone system, large format scanning, and analog and digital printing. All enrolled students are assigned a 4x5 studio camera and will have access to an 8x10 and 4x5 field cameras, along with a variety of optics and accessories.

A variety of technical readings from multiple sources will help students understand perspective control, camera setup, lens choice, bellows extension, available film choices, exposure, and reciprocity compensation associated with large format photography. Additional readings and screenings will provide examples of historical and contemporary work created utilizing large format photography, and highlight the cameras meditative qualities and excellent resolution and control.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: 3 credits of PHOTO 2000 level courses.

Class Number

1810

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Area of Study

Digital Imaging, Books and Publishing

Location

280 Building Rm 206

Description

Every idea has a medium most suited to its execution, but often not the one in which the artist is working. This class considers new ways of translating ideas into other media to develop a sense of possibilities beyond the straight photograph. Conceptual art has given us an understanding of the triggers that might provoke an investigation of layers of meaning within the simplest of ideas. Assignment encourage students to think beyond the usual way they work and include the use of collaboration, installation, audio, video, live feed, the internet, performance, and performative uses of photography.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: 3 credits of PHOTO 2000 level courses.

Class Number

1817

Credits

3

Department

Photography

Location

280 Building Rm 207

Take the Next Step

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