Course Information

Faculty have provided information regarding their courses to assist students in selecting courses that are the best fit for their skills and interests.

All Courses

For a full list of Visual Arts courses, please review the Visual Arts Catalog.

Fall 2022

VIS 202- Art Practice, Topic: Guadalajara

A workshop/seminar devoted to a particular materials practice (e.g., media, painting, digital media, etc.) that engages with critical questions arising within that discipline. Content will vary from quarter to quarter. May be taken for credit two times. (Required, MFA)

VIS 203- Working Crit

Workshop in which students engage in an extensive evaluation of one another’s ongoing work in preparation for either the First Year Review or MFA Review. Offered every winter. May be taken for credit two times (Required, MFA)

VIS 204- Re-thinking Art History

Critical evaluation of the methods, practices, and disciplinary commitments of art history, encompassing both revisionist interventions of the late-twentieth century and earlier paradigms, in order to envision new discipline-specific and interdisciplinary directions for the future of art history and visual culture. (Required, PhD)

VIS 205- Intro to Grad Studies

This seminar introduces art practice students to the graduate program in a workshop environment. Emphasis is on the production of new work and on situating that work in relation to a larger art context. (Required, MFA) Offered every fall and required of all first-year MFA students.

VIS 209- Thesis Writing

This course includes research and discussion of the required thesis for MFA candidates in visual arts. Advancement to candidacy required. A draft of the MFA thesis paper is required to complete this course. (Required, MFA).

VIS 214- Performance Strategies

A practice seminar for developing performance-oriented artistic strategies and elements of sound, rhythm, and atmosphere. Open to all approaches to performing. The class is organized as a test site, oriented toward experimentation. Each student will create or refine an existing work, presenting in class, focusing on the crafting of stage presence, character, and voice, and exploring styles of delivery and forms of address. Histories of performance art and theories of performativity are studied.

VIS 242- Theories of Media and New Media

Critical study of the ways in which media (film, video, photography) and new media have been theorized. May be taught from a historical or comparative perspective or focus on a single topic or theorist.

VIS 260- Seminar in North American Indian Art

Topics for this seminar concern Native American art history from ancient to contemporary times. Seminars may focus on archaeological and art historical approaches, philosophy and aesthetics, archaeoastronomy, and cultural contexts. Issues of globalization and transculturation may be examined as well. May be taken up to three times for credit.

VIS 502- Graduate Teaching in Visual Arts

Training in teaching methods in the field of visual arts. This course examines theoretical and practical communication and teaching techniques particularly appropriate to studio and production-style courses.

Winter 2023

VIS 200- Methods and Theory

An interdisciplinary survey of key twentieth- and twenty-first-century methodological approaches to the history, theory, and criticism of the visual arts. Course engages with methodologies found in the fields of philosophy, linguistics, science and technology studies, sociology, and anthropology, among others. Students develop individualized approaches to specific objects of study, which may range from art, media, performance, design, and material culture to theory.

VIS 201- Contemporary Critical Issues

An exploration of a range of issues important on the contemporary critical scene through readings and writing assignments. Topics will vary from year to year.

VIS 202- Art Practice

A practice seminar concluding with a lecture or artist talk. By researching and reviewing examples of 'the artist's talk' we will examine the different ways artists present their practice beyond a specific work. Through presenting research alongside their work to create an artist talk. The class is organized as a test site, where we will focus on context and audience in the creation of a public talk, live or mediated, in-person or on screen.

VIS 203- Working Critique

VIS 218N- Imaging Selves and Others

Explores various strategies exhibited in a wide range of contemporary art practices engaging in the representation of personality, spirituality, and the physical self.

Focusing on humor across multiple genres, we look at works that use personae as a means of self-expression and identity formation in contemporary art, cinema and moving image, from the 1970's to today. Artists include Yussef Chahine, Dynasty Handbag, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Kalup Linzy, Stanya Kahn and Alex Bag.

VIS 244- Studies in the Relationship of Theory and Practice

This course draws on political philosophy, black studies, and histories of coloniality in order to contextualize contemporary artistic approaches. Concepts such as representation, autonomy, and expression designate social and political being, while also extending into the disciplinary space of art via influential modernist legacies. Students will be asked to read a range of theoretical and historical texts and bring those readings to the discussion of art works that trouble such concepts. At stake in sovereignty is life itself. This course seeks to engage with artists whose works attempt to critique, refute, or theatricalize powerful forms of political constraint.

VIS 255- Seminar in Contemporary Art

Thematic and critical discussions of recent US and international art, 1960s to the present. Art/Text; Mixed Media Practices; Conceptual Art; Art After Appropriation; Global Art at the Millennium; New Genres of Public Art; Mike Kelly and the Conceptual Vernacular: Art and Activism. May be taken three times for credit.

VIS 262- Design Studies

This seminar will map the agendas of speculative design, understood as the experimental prototyping of alternatives for complex sociotechnical systems. It will draw from speculative philosophy to problematize those alternatives, and formulate original concepts in turn. Foci may include architecture and urbanism, anthropology and economics, anthropogenic ecosystems, energy and geopolitics, synthetic biology, cognitive science, astronomy, computer science.

Spring 2023

VIS 202- Art Practice

VIS 203- Working Critique

VIS 208- Thesis Exhibition

Each student will be asked to explore a broad range of strategies for publicly presenting their work beyond the studio. This course includes research and planning for the required Thesis Exhibition for MFA candidates in Visual Arts. A detailed proposal of the MFA Thesis Exhibition is required to complete this course.

VIS 219- Special Topics in Art Practice

Examines a topic of special interest to permanent and visiting faculty that is not addressed in the regular curriculum. As in other Art Practice/Theory seminars, students will both produce work and read and write critically about the topic. Topics will vary.

VIS 220- Professional Practice Seminar

This course is designed to facilitate the completion of our PhD program and the successful transition into an academic career. The seminar is divided into four areas of concentration. The first area focuses on facilitating the student’s timely completion of the PhD program. The second section of the course will concentrate on publishing. The third section of the seminar will focus on the process of applying for jobs and fellowships, and the fourth section will address teaching.

VIS 258- Seminar in Chinese Art

Advanced studies in the secular and religious art traditions of China. From year to year, the seminar may focus on early China (Neolithic to the end of the T’ang dynasty), on later dynasties (Sung, Yuan, Ming) or on art of the People’s Republic. May be taken three times for credit.

VIS 261- Material Culture

We will engage in a critical reading and discussion of works by Spyros Papapetros, Philippe-Alain Michaud, Georges Didi Huberman, Caroline van Eck, Christopher Wood, Niall Atkinson and Peter Schwenger among others, in order to get a handle on some of the main lines of critical and historical discourse on the concept of material culture.