Graduate Overview

Art has been many things to many people. This class introduces students to the history of art and art-like things on Earth from prehistory to ca. 1800 CE. It covers canonical examples from older scholarship alongside works and contexts emerging in recent art histories. Students will learn to perform basic art historical analysis and research, and the course will prepare them to form personal art histories, applying such art histories to their own work. The course surveys historical art in a global scope, from the beginnings of known culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It introduces students to a range of interdisciplinary frameworks for parsing the production, reception, and conceptualization of art. And it challenges students to think about the relationships between past and present, highlighting how later artists and cultures have engaged earlier art and history. There is a small amount of required reading each week-on average about 20 pages. Written work includes weekly reading responses, two in-class quizzes, an annotated bibliography project, and a take-home final exam.

Art has been many things to many people. This class introduces students to the history of art and art-like things on Earth from prehistory to ca. 1800 CE. It covers canonical examples from older scholarship alongside works and contexts emerging in recent art histories. Students will learn to perform basic art historical analysis and research, and the course will prepare them to form personal art histories, applying such art histories to their own work. The course surveys historical art in a global scope, from the beginnings of known culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It introduces students to a range of interdisciplinary frameworks for parsing the production, reception, and conceptualization of art. And it challenges students to think about the relationships between past and present, highlighting how later artists and cultures have engaged earlier art and history. There is a small amount of required reading each week-on average about 20 pages. Written work includes weekly reading responses, two in-class quizzes, an annotated bibliography project, and a take-home final exam.

Art has been many things to many people. This class introduces students to the history of art and art-like things on Earth from prehistory to ca. 1800 CE. It covers canonical examples from older scholarship alongside works and contexts emerging in recent art histories. Students will learn to perform basic art historical analysis and research, and the course will prepare them to form personal art histories, applying such art histories to their own work. The course surveys historical art in a global scope, from the beginnings of known culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It introduces students to a range of interdisciplinary frameworks for parsing the production, reception, and conceptualization of art. And it challenges students to think about the relationships between past and present, highlighting how later artists and cultures have engaged earlier art and history. There is a small amount of required reading each week-on average about 20 pages. Written work includes weekly reading responses, two in-class quizzes, an annotated bibliography project, and a take-home final exam.

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.

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.

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.

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 is an advanced course that surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. It is intended for BAAH students and Scholars Program students. 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. ARTHI 1201: Discussion Section for Advanced Survey of Modern to Contemporary Art & Architecture is required.

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. Through lecture, readings, discussions, and museum visits, the class highlights a broad range of objects and formats in graphic design, object design, fashion design, and architectural design. Course works includes object analysis assignments, short research paper, and mid-term and final exams.

This class reveals the fine art, photography and art theories of late 19th century to the present day. The first half of the semester focusing on the period 1851 to the economic crash of 1929; which had been a time of rapid social, economic and political change impacted by revolutions in communication systems, technology and easy availability of reproductions. Students will gain a comprehensive and chronological picture of the major art movements and their engagement with or reaction against previous art and artists. The major artists of the major movements of Impressionism, Cubism, Purism, Expressionism, Futurism, Surrealism and Abstraction will be addressed in regards to their aims and achievements.These include - to name the most prominent - Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Picasso, Braque, Leger, Kirchner, Severini, Magritte, Dali and Kandinsky and Mondrian.The class ending with major 20th century artists from Pollock and De Kooning of Abstract Expressionism to Pop artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein to current times and how they relate to this legacy and the concept of an art museum in terms of urban capitalism, Colonialism, Nationalism and Internationalism. This class has weekly reading assignments from two major texts ; one written by art historian Richard Brettell and one written by artist Alex Katz. Written questions about these readings will be assigned as well. The class also often has sketching and student discussions in the museum. There is also one final paper on the artist covered most admired by each student.

Students will review the materials from the previous week?s lecture, both the class's main thematic and conceptual points, and also the names, practices, and places that may be required for quizzes. The TA will also lead workshops in which students exchange ideas about their notebooks, maps, papers, curated projects, or installations.

Students will review the materials from the previous week?s lecture, both the class's main thematic and conceptual points, and also the names, practices, and places that may be required for quizzes. The TA will also lead workshops in which students exchange ideas about their notebooks, maps, papers, curated projects, or installations.

Students will review the materials from the previous week?s lecture, both the class's main thematic and conceptual points, and also the names, practices, and places that may be required for quizzes. The TA will also lead workshops in which students exchange ideas about their notebooks, maps, papers, curated projects, or installations.

Students will review the materials from the previous week?s lecture, both the class's main thematic and conceptual points, and also the names, practices, and places that may be required for quizzes. The TA will also lead workshops in which students exchange ideas about their notebooks, maps, papers, curated projects, or installations.

This course plunges students into content and ideas that universities often leave until graduate school, as we consider the role played by the 'critical' in 'visual and critical studies.' For the past ten years, it has been referred to as 'a primer for the art world.' It will still, mostly, provide you with a working vocabulary and crash course as to bodies of knowledge integral to the study of visual culture. At the same time, to productively engage in a reflective critique of society and culture, it will consider 'texts' from as diverse and contemporaneous a group of scholars, theorists, critics, and cultural producers as possible, from both inside and outside the academic institution.

If a society?s order of reasons disempowers its citizens, why not weaponize the irrational? This was the premise of various, systemic reactions against the ?ego? in the midlate 20th century. In Europe, the United States, and former colonies, some of this activity can be read as an extension of the historical avant garde?s investigation of altered states of consciousness and ?madness.? The neo-avant garde sometimes used the tools of rational science to deconstruct its premises, reconstruct the real, and promote a more demotic culture. This course takes an international approach and samples practices and discourses of Dadaism, Surrealism, free jazz, performance and conceptual art, dance, film, ?relational aesthetics,? and experimental poetics. We will place a special emphasis on the way indeterminacy claims to ameliorate conflicts between political commitment and aesthetic quality. Expect to encounter works by Francis Alys, Anthony Braxton, John Cage, Aime Cesaire, Fischli & Weiss, Helio Oiticica, Huang Yong Ping, Jorge Macchi, Jackson MacLow, Gerhard Richter, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Hannah Weiner, and others. Course work will vary but typically includes weekly written responses, moderate reading assignments, listening and viewing, avid participation in class discussions, one creative/curatorial project, one research presentation, and a final essay.

Ancient art and architecture often provides the backdrop for National politics and in many countries is the art which one first encounters outside of a museum. This course will introduce students to ancient art and architecture in a way that highlights its modern importance in terms of cultural heritage and the art making practices of modern artists. Readings will address the contemporary relevance of ancient art, the particularities of that artwork, and the way that ancient artwork and the modern art it inspires are a manifestation of cultural values both past and present. Students will be required to present readings to other students on a biweekly basis, take exams based on the artwork presented in lectures, and complete a research project. The research project involves the study of one repatriated artwork's provenience and provenance and the presentation of that research to the class

The course examines the history of designed objects and their place in a variety of material contexts. Even within our increasingly digitalized existences today, physical objects continue to play a key role in determining our experiences as humans. Our objects are designed by us and at the same time design us by extending the possibilities of what it means to be human and exist in a world. The designed object will be considered under the conditions of global exchange, in relation to questions of health, disease, and the body, as well as urbanism. We will also reflect on the designed object through the lenses of craftsmanship, technology, materials, activism, identity, and cultural heritage. Course participants will read texts relevant to the theoretical and historical aspects of the designed object and its representations, contribute to weekly discussions, conduct object-based analyses, and engage in a series of team and individually written critical writing assignments.

If you could only be seen in one outfit for the rest of your life ? what would it be? How would you represent who you are through your choice of silhouette, color, pattern, and texture? In this course we will take a look at art?s ability to freeze moments, and garments, in time. What did the sitter (or the artist) chose to clothe the body? How did fashion and its power of communication function within the time the art work was made? What choices did the artist make to idealize or change their representation of the garments? In statues from Ancient Greece fabrics flow around bodies like liquids, 18th century subjects were often painted in swathes of fabric meant to suggest ancient ideals through similar (impossible) textiles, and today Kara Walker uses those same floating fabrics on bodies to critique less than ideal idealists. To 19th century Impressionists the urgency of Modernity could only be represented by using contemporary garments, today Kehinde Wiley dresses a man on a horse in a hoodie. What clues tell us a figure is a warrior or a captive in work of the Nazca from ancient Peru? How can we read hairstyles in Ukiyo-e paintings from 17th century Japan? What do Jeffery Gibson and Nick Cave want us to see when they create coverings for bodies? And what was Amy Sherald trying to tell us about Michelle Obama? We will utilize the collections of the Art Institute, The Field Museum, and others around the city to look closely, sketch, and research. Students will read, lead discussions, write daily reflections, explore through making, and develop skills in critical looking leading to two short research papers examining works of their choice. In statues from Ancient Greece fabrics flow around bodies like liquids, 18th century subjects were often painted in swathes of fabric meant to suggest ancient ideals through similar (impossible) textiles, and today Kara Walker uses those same floating fabrics on bodies to critique less than ideal idealists. To 19th century Impressionists the urgency of Modernity could only be represented by using contemporary garments, today Kehinde Wiley dresses a man on a horse in a hoodie. What clues tell us a figure is a king in Incan pottery? How can we read hairstyles in Ukiyo-e paintings from Japan? What do Jeffery Gibson and Nick Cave want us to see when they create coverings for bodies? And what was Amy Sherald trying to tell us about Michelle Obama? We will visit the collections of the Art Institute, The Field Museum, and other collections around the city to look closely, sketch, and research. Students will read, lead discussions, write daily reflections, and develop skills in critical looking leading to two short research papers examining works of their choice.

This course surveys the history of architecture and design, including furnishings, decorative arts and interiors, from Napoleonic Europe until the onset of Globalism in the early Twenty-First Century. Special attention is given to the developments that have remained most influential within the architecture and design of today, with particular emphasis on: nineteenth-century revivalism and industrial architecture; Chicago School, early skyscrapers and the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright; the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau movements; early twentieth-century Modernism in Europe; Art Deco, the Bauhaus and the International Style; Late Modernism and New Brutalism; Postmodernism; and contemporary twenty-first century Global movements. Through extensive lectures and primary source readings, special focus in this class is devoted to the pioneering and influential architects from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including Friedrich Schinkel, Joseph Paxton, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Greene and Greene, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Adolph Loos, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Eero Saarinen, Philip Johnson, Louis Khan, Adrian Smith and S.O.M., Robert Venturi, I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid. Students will complete a combination of in-class and take-home exams along with a final research paper on a topic chosen in consultation with the instructor.

This introductory course surveys the arts of Africa from prehistoric times to today. Focusing on the region south of the Saharan desert, the course will cover a range of media and practices, including painting, architecture, textile, ceramics, metalwork, and body art from across various cultures on the continent. We will consider major movements in the development of African civilizations, the spread of Islam, colonialism and westernization from the perspective of African artistic initiatives and responses. The course will consider ancient African kingdoms and empires, early contacts with Europeans in the fifteenth century, and problems related to African contemporary art and African artistic identities within a globalized art world.

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.

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 is a comprehensive survey of the history of furniture, including relevant information on residential architecture, the decorative arts and interior design, from the Neolithic Era until the Twenty-First Century. Special attention is given to the developments that have remained most influential within furniture design today, with particular emphasis on the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical eras, revivalism in the Nineteenth Century, early Modernism in the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau movements, Art Deco, the Bauhaus and the International Style, Mid-Century Modernism, Late Modernism and Postmodernism. Through extensive lectures and readings, special focus in this class is devoted to the relationships between furniture and societal customs throughout history, the rise of furniture?s status as a fine art during the Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical periods, the influence of industrialization, mass production and new technologies and materials on furniture manufacturing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, furniture?s role in helping to create and define architectural space within interiors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the role of individual narratives in developing unique identities and meanings for furniture throughout history. Students will complete a series of in-class exams along with a final research assignment analyzing a single object chosen from the Art Institute?s furniture collection.

Science fiction films imagine futures that often comment on the failures of the present. In recent years, “clif-fi,” or science fiction about climate change, has become an increasingly popular sub-genre, and some historical films have been newly understood within this framework. This class will study a wide range of historical and contemporary cli-fi films, including international films, experimental films, and blockbusters, in order to understand how they encourage us to see the escalating crisis of climate change. Each week a film will be screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015, George Miller, Australia); Snowpiercer (2013, Bong Joon-ho, South Korea); Neptun Frost (2021, Saul Williams, Rwanda); Princess Mononoke (1997, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan) or The Day After Tomorrow (2004, Roland Emmerich, USA), to name a few. Students will be expected to read essays before class, attend film screenings, participate in conversations and other tasks.

Science fiction films imagine futures that often comment on the failures of the present. In recent years, “clif-fi,” or science fiction about climate change, has become an increasingly popular sub-genre, and some historical films have been newly understood within this framework. This class will study a wide range of historical and contemporary cli-fi films, including international films, experimental films, and blockbusters, in order to understand how they encourage us to see the escalating crisis of climate change. Each week a film will be screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015, George Miller, Australia); Snowpiercer (2013, Bong Joon-ho, South Korea); Neptun Frost (2021, Saul Williams, Rwanda); Princess Mononoke (1997, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan) or The Day After Tomorrow (2004, Roland Emmerich, USA), to name a few. Students will be expected to read essays before class, attend film screenings, participate in conversations and other tasks.

This course covers the history of animated film, from its pre-cinematic beginnings to the beginning of the television era (ca. 1960). It traces the development of the Hollywood studio cartoon, along with parallel developments in European and Japanese animation and experimental and abstract works. Special emphasis is given to the evolution of formal animation techniques and their role in the shaping of the animation aesthetic. Much attention is given to the groundbreaking work of Disney, the Fleischer studio, and the cartoons of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. European animators are represented by Lotte Reiniger, Oskar Fischinger, and other experimenters. All films are screened chronologically, with a mix of short works and a handful of features. There are weekly readings on the history of animation; a ten-page paper; and a final multiple-choice exam.

This course surveys performance as art throughout the Modern and Postmodern periods?including contemporary and non-Western incarnations?and covers roughly the last one hundred fifty years. 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. Movements like Futurism, Dada, and Fluxus are explored alongside themes like endurance, performance in everyday life, the culture wars and censorship, performance and AIDS, and postcolonial uses of performance. Key figures such as Carolee Schneemann and Marina Abramovic are analyzed through comparison of documentaries about their work. Any number of seminal performance pieces are screened, including ones by Yoko Ono, Linda Montano, Diamanda Galas, Guillermo Gomez-Pe?a & Coco Fusco, and Anna Deavere Smith. Further historical context comes from essays and movies about AIDS activism and Punk & New Wave. Readings include primary sources, artist interviews, C. Carr's reviews, and noted works in Performance Studies from Richard Schechner, Peggy Phelan, Amelia Jones, and others. Students will attend two performances and write reviews, an annotated bibliography assignment provides opportunity to explore historical and non-western performance topics, and there will be much discussion.

In 1839 a new means of visual representation was announced to a startled world: photography. Although the medium was immediately and enthusiastically embraced by the public at large, photographers spent decades experimenting with techniques and debating the representational nature of this new invention. This course focuses on the more recent history of this revolutionary medium. From the technological advancements that characterized the rise of photography in the commercial world during the 20th century, and the acknowledgement of photography as an artistic medium in its own right, to the digital revolution and its social media applications, we will consider the technological, economic, political, and artistic histories of photography through selected works of art and seminal critical texts. This course considers photography in a global context. We focus on seminal texts and images in order to explore ethical, commercial, artistic, and political issues that make photography essentially important to our contemporary visual culture. The course explores broad range of photographic practices, techniques, and approaches including the work of Hannah Hoch, Martha Rosler, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Dawoud Bey, Gordon Parks, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, William Eggleston, Shirin Neshat, Wolfgang Tillmans and many more. We regularly visit the collections of AIC and MCoP to enrich our class discussions with private print viewings and exhibition critiques. Students are expected to share an image of their choice in response to the assigned weekly reading. These images are used in class discussion. There also is a final paper, a final presentation, and an in-class test.

This course is designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to the history of video art from its emergence in the late 1960s through our present moment. Students will examine key works and the major historical, cultural, and aesthetic influences on the form.

This general survey of graphic design between the 19th and 20th centuries maps the relationships between graphic design and various commercial and cultural institutions under the broad category of the modern. Students study the issues and problems that faced designers, their clients, and their audiences, in the negotiation of commercial and social changes. Through lectures, readings, discussions, and museum visits, the course examines the cultural, social, economic, political, industrial, and technological forces that have influenced the history of graphic design. Course work includes object analysis assignments, research paper, and mid-term and final exams.

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.

The main aim of this intensive course is to learn how to write art history by doing it. Each student will write an original research paper investigating a single, particularly compelling object of her choosing in scaffolded stages over the course of the entire semester, while drawing on a range of library and museum resources and responding to constructive criticism from the teacher and from peers. The course guides students to pose generative questions of their objects, to find and analyze sources, and to make persuasive arguments. We will also at times study the study of art, examining the history of the museum as a framework for such study, and reflecting on as well as using some key analytical moves often used by art historians. We will not only study statements by scholars reflecting on their own methods, but also exemplars of analysis, which we will in turn take apart to figure out how to do such analysis ourselves. While this course is required for the BA in Art History and BFA with Art History Thesis, any undergraduate who wants to write art history is warmly welcome.

Where is the Black Atlantic? What does it look, smell, taste, and feel like? How does it color our world? This class explores the visual and cultural history of the Black Atlantic?a phrase used to define the relationship between dissonant geographical locations that were forged into relationship with each other through the Transatlantic Slave Trade. We will forge an understanding of how vision, texture, touch, sound, and color owe their meanings through the Middle Passage and its production of arts of the Black Atlantic. Crucial to this class is the artwork of practitioners like Jacob Lawrence, Soly Cisse, AfriCOBRA, Aubrey Williams, Faustin Linyekula, Yinka Shonibare, and Renee Green. We will focus primarily on the visual history and cultural impact of the Middle Passage as discussed through the writings of Afro-Caribbean, West African, Black American, and Black British scholars. We will work with concepts like ?native? visual forms, the coloniality of painting, Negritude, and the anticolonial imagination.

Starting from a historical survey of socialist, feminist, and black radical critiques, this course explores the intensification of work in the 21st century. Course texts trace continuity and change in working conditions through (1) empirical studies and testimonials; (2) theoretical analysis and interpretation; and (3) depictions in art, writing, and film. Topics include waged and unwaged labor, automation and deskilling, and the growing precariousness of employment contracts. The course closes with a consideration of recent debates on creative work, care work, universal basic income, and “fully automated luxury communism.” Assignments include brief but regular written responses and a final paper.

This course examines the dynamism and complexities of Latinx artistic and cultural production in the United States from the mid-twentieth century to the present. An imperfect yet ultimately generative identifier, Latinx is a gender-neutral term for people of Latin American and/or Caribbean birth or descent living in the United States. In addition to studying the formation of Latinx identities among artistic and creative practitioners, the course will study the context-specific histories that have shaped the aesthetics, ideological frameworks, and socially engaged practices of Latinx art and visual culture. We will read a variety of texts and publications that debate, conceptualize, and critique Latinx art and visual culture, including academic essays and book chapters, interviews and dialogues, exhibition catalogues, primary documents and manifestos, artists’ books, and zines. Throughout the class, we will investigate issues concerning race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, intersectionality, migration and diaspora, social and political activism, family and kinship, religion and spirituality, art markets, and cultural reclamation. Students can expect to complete weekly reading responses, a midterm exam, a 3-5-page essay on an exhibition or artwork, a final research paper, and a class presentation about their final paper topic.

This undergraduate seminar is for all types of writers (critics, creative writers, and scholars) who want to analyze the dimensions of literary and scholarly forms of description, interpretation, and explanation. Poetry, short stories, personal essays, passages from novels, and art-history articles will form the ground for weekly encounters with works of art in the Art Institute of Chicago, as we compare what we read to what we encounter in person. Each class meeting has a tripartite structure, as we compare a literary engagement with a work of art, evaluate a scholarly argument about the same piece or its creator, and personally engage the same or similar work in the Art Institute of Chicago. We will respond to the works of art currently on display, and, as warranted, pair the appropriate scholarship with creative works by writers such as Ada Limón, Victoria Chang, Hilton Als, Diane Seuss, Mark Doty, Hanif Abdurraqib, Wayne Koestenbaum, Vivek Shraya, Cris Kraus, Ben Lerner, Teju Cole, Eileen Myles, Gwendolyn Brooks, Paisley Rekdal, Zadie Smith, Jeffrey Yang, and John Ashbery, among others. Students will write concise analyses of every reading assignment plus a weekly follow-up reflection as preparation for a final hybrid research paper that situates their personal moment of encounter with a work of art in the Art Institute of Chicago within art-historical scholarship. The goal is for students to probe their personal experiences with art for wider cultural implications.

What is artistic decolonization? How can art be used as a tool for decolonizing culture? In this course, students will explore ways of approaching these questions through specific case studies that look at artistic practices of Africa and West Asia (Middle East), particularly from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Together we will examine how colonialism affected fine arts pedagogy and the response of visual artists, both modern and contemporary, to this violent encounter. We will analyze how artists engaged with multidisciplinary networks working across “non-Western”contexts to reclaim their identity from colonizers and to envision alternative futures. Students will explore how art is intertwined with socio-political issues and how it can amplify Indigenous, feminine, and queer perspectives. Each week will typically focus on an artistic group or a country-specific case study from Africa and West Asia (Middle East). There will be several guest lectures by curators, academics, and artists. Course work will include written weekly responses to assigned readings, presentations, and a final essay or exhibition project proposal.

Ideas of nature that formed globally between 1400 and 1800 intersect with the emergence of the Baroque, and represent a profound field of force configuring human-environmental relations into the present. In many ways, we’re haunted by the shocks and aftershocks of this period: colonization, enslavement, extraction, genocide, pandemic, and mass death reshaped the world. This course provides students with an interdisciplinary point of departure for considering these histories through visual art, literature, and music. Readings and object engagements will vary, but will begin with critical theory oriented towards contemporary concerns but that parallel the historical arc of the course, namely Mark Payne's Hontology: Depressive Anthropology and the Shame of Life (Zer0 Books, 2018). Artists and works studied and that we will study together will focus on those represented in the Art Institute collection, and include Salvator Rosa, Peter Paul Rubens, and Caravaggio, alongside the music of Jacopo Peri and dramatic works of Shakespeare. Yet the course expands the focus of Baroque inquiry, as less a movement than way of thinking at the threshold of creativity, emotion, and awe, to work with diverse contemporaneous modes of indigenous expression in the Hemispheric Americas, including Nahua art produced in the lands now known as Mexico and Pueblo and Diné (Navajo) art created or that otherwise indexes the period under consideration. Course work will include a journal of visual analysis; four one-page essays; an annotated research bibliography; and final seminar paper of eight to ten pages.

A marginal cinema and history; a course designed for an undergraduate level art history. This course looks at Asian American Cinema experience and historical development as Asian American ethnic cultural diaspora and visionally representations. From political to imaginary, this course will look at works of Asian American representation through cinema and examine the Asian American & pacific Islander American experience as told though cinematic expression such as documentary, short films, feature length narratives, experimental films and mainstream Hollywood releases. Along with weekly viewings of films and excerpts, the course will also discuss Asian American collective identity and social issues, historical background, economy of film production, racism, negative stereotyping, Hollywood whitewashing, cultural appropriation, and media activism. Historically significant artists, filmmakers and producers will be presented for weekly discussion. Some of the artists introduced in the class are: the matinee idol Sessue Hayakawa (1889?1973), to Anna May Wong (1905?1961), Winifred Eaton Reeve, Renee Tajima, Steven Okazak, Wayne Wang, Kelly Saeteurn, Quentin Lee, Justin Lin and others. Weekly viewings of films and journals, One Midterm assignment and one final Paper.

This course offers a survey of the history of manga (Japanese comics) from its premodern predecessors to the present. Beginning with narrative picture scrolls in the medieval period, it will touch on forms of humor and political cartooning in the 19th and early 20th centuries, before moving onto multi-page stories, serials, and standalone books within the serially paneled comics medium. Related developments in non-Japanese comics and media like film, animation, illustration, and painting will also be considered. Among the major artists to be considered in this course are: Hokusai, Tagawa Suiho, Tezuka Osamu, Tatsumi Yoshihiro, Shirato Sanpei, Tsuge Yoshiharu, Hagio Moto, Otomo Katsuhiro, Takahashi Rumiko, and Tagame Gengoro. Students will be required to complete weekly readings, including translated manga and historical/interpretive essays, in addition to occasional reading responses, a research paper, and a final exam.

In assessing currents and concepts in contemporary art, this course examines the various elements in all media that have come to define postmodernism. The course places special emphasis on women artists during the 1980s, the European contribution to contemporary art, and the exploration of recent art in Chicago.

In this course, we will explore the ways in which the idea of persistence might be said to characterize modern and contemporary Native American and Indigenous arts practices--including performance, film, video, painting, sculpture, printmaking, and photography, among others. The artists we will examine employ a range of tactics to engage social, cultural, economic, and political relationships as they occupy and articulate Indigenous worldviews and systems of knowledge that are often incommensurable with Settler structures and ideologies.

What counts as ?avant-garde?? Can a work of art be radically new and traditional at the same time? Can it incorporate Western art forms and techniques and still be considered Chinese art? These were questions that Chinese artists coming out of the Cultural Revolution grappled with as they sought to reconcile Chinese artistic traditions and historical realities with Western modern and contemporary art practices. This course takes its name from the seminal 1989 exhibition China/Avant-Garde, which sought to survey the most advanced practices of the day and stake a claim for Chinese avant-garde art in relation to the shifting categories of ?modern,? ?postmodern,? ?contemporary,? ?Eastern,? and ?Western? art. Considering this exhibition and other developments from the late 1970s to the present, we will chronologically study roughly four decades of art and exhibition practices during a period of unprecedented socio-economic, political, and spatial change. We will look at a wide variety of art forms (painting, sculpture, photography, installation, video, performance, conceptual art, socially engaged practices); key exhibitions; and diverse artists including Ai Weiwei, Cai Guo-Qiang, Lu Yang, Song Dong, Xu Bing, Zhang Dali, Zhang Huan, and Yin Xiuzhen, among others. Through weekly lectures, discussions, select readings, and museum visits, students will develop the vocabulary and visual reasoning necessary to analyze a wide variety of challenging artworks, situate them within a historic and theoretical context, and construct informed arguments about them.

This course is a survey covering the major works of architecture and art from the Islamic world. It discusses 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, 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, and Malaysia. In addition, the course will also cover the applied arts in Islam, such as ceramics, carving, Oriental carpets, calligraphy and miniature painting. Required work consists of three quizzes and three short research papers of 5-6pages in length each. Two assignments will involve analyzing Arab architecture and non-Arab monuments. The third will cover an area in the decorative arts/painting.

This course surveys the development of commercial, institutional and residential architecture and interiors in Europe from 1890 to 1965. It examines significant movements and individuals that shaped modern architecture's history through an analysis of the theoretical literature that accompanied the built forms now understood as 'modern.' Seminal texts analyzed include those by Morris, van de Velde, Loos, Gropius, van Doesburg, Le Corbusier, Aalto, Rowe, Stirling and Rossi, among others.

Dress and Society examines, questions, researches and discusses many interconnections of clothing, cultures and fashions. We will focus upon syntheses occurring from the meeting of dress as individual self-presentation with diverse global, cultural, historic and contemporary contexts. Controversies, ethics, fashion biographies and recently-emerged expressions of human dress and adornment will be explored. Educated opinions will be furthered through museum exhibition visits, visiting artists' talks, critical readings on fashion/social concerns, and weekly viewing of current media articles and images. A Fashion film screening and assigned books on fashion artists' lives will be included. Assignments will include self-introductory illustrated presentation and 2 page museum response essay, fashion book and article readings, concise 'Fashion Now' Media Reports presented weekly, collaborative spoken and illustrated Fashion Book Panel presentations and a final 10 page 'Educated Opinion' Research Paper expanding upon course readings and further research. In-class discussions will occur every week and are integral to this course.

Taxidermy became the most important tool of knowledge of natural history museums during the Victorian period when it fascinated audiences with its hyperrealist aura. Yet, it was never considered a form of fine art. Today taxidermy has entered the gallery space, but not on the merit of its accurate realism. The opposite is true: unrealistic taxidermy is the symptom of a difficult relationship with nature and alterity that marks today's ecological and capitalist global crises.

In the mid-1960s, artists and musicians ran away from home, thumbing their collective nose at the structure and security provided by their modernist parents. On the road and in the streets, in dive bars and coffeehouses, on records and off the record, artists and musicians re-wrote not just the rules of art, but the rules that structured values, ideas, and lives. Rock and roll wasn?t just the soundtrack for these changes, but an active participant.

As one of the world's greatest film directors, Alfred Hitchcock is much more than ''the master of suspense. The semester will be devoted to analyzing Hitchcock's' masterworks as well as his major themes, including sin, the transfer of guilt, voyeurism, unconscious impulses, and gay sexuality. In addition, the class will focus on his visual style, film techniques and contributions to the art of cinema, using various critical approaches, such as psychoanalysis and feminist theory. Finally, the class will look at ways Hitchcock's films have influenced other directors, as well as artists across a wide variety of media. Through weekly screenings, lectures and discussions, students will learn how to critique individual works of art. They will be expected to finish two scholarly articles each week and to come to class prepared to discuss both film and readings in small discussion groups. Titles are sure include Vertigo, Rear Window and Psycho, among others. Students should expect to produce three major writing assignments during the semester: a midterm exam, a final exam and a final research paper, plus periodic quizzes and response papers. Through weekly screenings, lectures and discussions, students will learn how to critique individual works of art. They will be expected to finish two scholarly articles each week and to come to class prepared to discuss both film and readings in small discussion groups. Titles are sure include Vertigo, Rear Window and Psycho, among others. Students should expect to produce three major writing assignments during the semester: a midterm exam, a final exam and a final research paper, plus periodic quizzes and response papers.

Through screenings, lectures, and readings, this course will provide students with an introduction to key filmmakers and films of contemporary international art house cinema. In particular, this class will explore feature-length fiction films that revolve --thematically or structurally--around the idea of the psychological fugue state (a form of amnesia), and/or the fugal musical structure of theme-repetition-variation. Films will be screened and discussed in their relation to national cinemas, cultural histories, genre, and primarily, film form. Through their critical writing, students will explore the ways those films and filmmakers utilize formal elements of cinema, narrative, characterization, thematic elements, and ideological perspectives, and demonstrate how those elements are used both for aesthetic purposes and to create meaning within a film

This course examines the relationship between art and the market, by exploring the economic, cultural and institutional processes that shape the meaning and value of art. Using examples drawn from the art trade in ancient Rome, collections formed during theRenaissance, art acquired by young aristocrats during their ?Grand Tour?, the market for modern art in the first half of the twentieth century, and the billion dollar contemporary art business with a specific focus on China, this course explores the relationship between artists and patrons, patterns of shifting taste, the role of dealers and the impact of auction houses on art collecting. We will also test the boundaries of the meaning of ?market? by looking at artwork acquired as a consequence of wartime looting, ethnic cleansing, or through forced exchanges. Students willread historical texts and scholarship connecting the process of artistic creation and the trade industry, and engage in the sustained analysis of individual artworks, as well as the market structures in which such artworks were produced and bought. Primary sources will include excerpts from the work of Cicero, Giorgio Vasari, Denis Diderot. Readings will among others include chapters from Georgina Adam, 'The dark side of the BOOM'; Michael Findlay, 'The Value of Art'; Isabella Graw 'High Price'; Olav Velhuis 'Talking Prices'; and, Clare McAndrew, 'The Art Economy'. I will share recorded interviews with arts professionals and collectors - but we will also meet a number of them in person. In-class film screening: the Price of Everything. In-class participation including weekly response comments to the readings (30%); an in-class case study presentation (10%); and a 15 page paper on a selected artwork (60%).

Plant?s perceived passivity and resilient silence have relegated the vegetal world to the cultural background of human civilization. However, the recent emergence of plants in the gallery space is an invitation to reappraise this relationship at a time of deep ecological and social crisis. This course focuses on plants to unravel histories of colonialism, address gender biases, racial discrimination, and social injustice. We explore how artists and scholars working at the intersection of art, science, philosophy, and indigenous knowledge are rethinking our relationships with plants in order to envision more sustainable and fairer futures. This course proposes a rich, diverse, and multicultural perspective on the many roles plants play in our lives. It inlcudes lectures, close readings, screenings, museum visits, discussions, collaborative coursework, and contributions by Chicago-based organizations working with local communities and plants. The work of scholars and artist Yota Batsaki, Elain Gan, Vivien Sansour, Vandana Shiva, Mogaje Guihu, Anna Tsing, Monica Gagliano, Eduardo Kac, Jamaica Kinkaid, Derek Jarman, Wangari Maathai, Zayaan Khan, Kapwani Kiwanga, Maria Thereza Alves, Shela Sheikh, Michael Marder, Monica Galliano, Rashid Johnson, Uriel Orlow and many more will provide students with a comprehenisve and global and very contemporary perspective on the subject. Coursework includes weekly reading responses, a formal/final research paper, a test, and a presentation.

This course adopts the form of Raymond Williams?s Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society to build a vocabulary for abolition. Each week, students will be presented with a pair of related terms that occupy different positions on an ideological spectrum or historical continuum. These keywords include: abolition and reform, punishment and restoration, justice and ethics (and aesthetics); chattle slavery and prison slavery; mass incarceration and prison-industrial complex; human and animal; fugitivity and freedom, and more, all the while learning from artists who use their work as an opportunity for intervening into the criminal justice system and reading texts that relate the history of our current justice system and present practical and theoretical alternative to it. We will also consider the difference between assessment and grading in our collective imagining of an abolitionist pedagogy and artistic / art historical practice. The aim of the course is to help students articulate their positions and investments in relation to their own work and social structures. The artists that we will consider in this course include: Josh Begley, Zach Blas, Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun, Jamal Cyrus, Chris Burden, Martin Wong, Tirtza Even, Andrea Fraser, Maria Gaspar, Danny Giles, Coco Fusco and Guerillermo Gomez Pena, Suzanne Lacy, Ashley Hunt, Richard Kamler, Titus Kaphar, Kapwani Kiwanga, Autumn Knight, Deana Lawson, Shaun Leonardo, Prison and Neighborhood Art Project, Trevor Paglen, Jenny Polak, Carl Pope, Jr., Laurie Jo Reynolds, Sherrill Roland, Cameron Rowland,Gregory Sale, Dread Scott, Sable Elyse Smith, Tamms Year Ten, and more. The thinkers we will read include: Frank Wilderson, Angela Davis, Sadiya Hartman, Jared Sexton, Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, Denis Childs, Kelly Michelle Lyte, Michelle Alexander, Sylvia Wynters, Shawn Michelle Smith, Elizabeth Alexander, Rashaad Shabazz, Simone Brown, Michel Foucault, Tony Bennett, Douglas Crimp, and more. Assignments center around the ?intervention? as a concept that links academic writing to direct action campaigns. Weekly assignments include identifying the intervention in the week?s reading and generating discussion questions in advance of class. Throughout the semester, students will also write their own definitions of their choice of keywords. Culminating assignments include a presentation and a final paper (12-15 pages).

What the heck is postmodernism? Why does it matter? This course will provide detailed answers to these questions while also reviewing crucial interventions in related 'posts' such as poststructuralism and posthumanism. We will examine the systems of thought that predate these posts – modernism, structuralism, humanism – in order to identify how and why thinkers and artists felt the need to push past these systems, inventing new ones. We will trace these legacies into our own moment of contested values and malleable truth in order to seek insights into how to live, make, and think in the twenty-first century. This course is reading-heavy and the readings are heavy readings. We will explore the most influential theorizations of the postmodern from writers including Jean-François Lyotard and Frederic Jameson. We will also read the heavy-hitters of poststructuralism and posthumanism. Folks like: Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Donna Harraway, Gilles Deleuze, Katherine Hayles, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Julia Kristeva. Course work will include weekly reading responses, intensive class discussion, and a final paper.

Throughout human history, a pervasive belief in spirits, gods, and divine forces has profoundly influenced cultures, leaving an indelible mark on their customs and artistic expressions. This course adopts a broad approach, anchored in the selection of artifacts and artworks from the AIC collection. These pieces will serve as portals into a spectrum of theistic and nontheistic spiritual traditions. We will place particular emphasis on sections of the AIC dedicated to the Arts of Africa, Arts of the Americas, and Arts of Asia. Additionally, we will delve into the evolving concept of spirituality in art from the 20th century onwards, with particular attention given to the early 20th century (1900-1950). The culminating project for this course entails the creation of a 10-15 page research paper. Throughout the semester, students will also engage in concise object-based written exercises and participate in museum group presentations.

This course offers an introduction to the thought of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995). Deleuze was one of the 20th century?s most influential critical theorists: almost single-handedly revising the reputation of Nietzsche in France; critiquing psychoanalysis in its postmodern heyday; and devising new approaches to ontology, leftist political theory, and aesthetic theory. To this day, his concepts are frequently deployed in critical theory of all kinds, especially those concepts he developed in collaboration with activist and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari. This course provides an introduction to the reading of Deleuze?s work. The goal of the course is to familiarize you with the contours of his career and acquaint you with his peculiar style of writing. It also acquaints you with a few subsequent elaborations on and critiques of Deleuzian thought. We read Deleuze's book on Francis Bacon's paintings, his book on Henri Bergson, and also excerpts from A Thousand Plateaus, Logic of Sense, and What is Philosophy? We also read critical responses and elaborations of Deleuzian thought. Expect a steady, dense, and provocative reading schedule. Students complete a reading journal, a major term paper, and a collaborative presentation on intersections between contemporary art practice and Deleuze's philosophy.