Visual and Studio Arts

Traditionally, we refer to the house as the structure to protect the intimacy of the family. It provides shelter and separates us from work but also supports it. The house is the space that protects the biological life of the occupants and encompasses an envelope with subdivisions into smaller spaces—what we call rooms. Such rooms present a defined hierarchy—what we call privacy, set forth by the homeowner, allowing individuals to separate from the rest of the occupants—a value directly connected to the notion of the “traditional family.” The division of rooms and their functions reiterates the nuclear-family structure. It allows for the separation of the family from the outside world and of each individual within the house. This course explicates the house, home, and housing as a space we all inhabit and sometimes take for granted. We live in times of housing scarcity, climate adjustments, new family structures, and real-estate development that hinder architects, planners, and designers from proposing spaces for non-homogenized living based on the traditional family and the work-life paradigm that fuels our current housing. This course aims to question the house, its form, sustainability, temporality, production, and reproduction, as well as how to answer, propose, and study its elements for better living not only for “one family” but for all.

This course reexamines the notion of the void not as land ripe for building real-estate capital but as space for cultural expression. Students choose a void from infrastructural areas, parks, empty unused buildings, or land that has often transformed with histories of erasure and dispossession. We can discover the urban void in many forms, from abandoned retail spaces to empty lots. Urban planner Bernardo Secchi in 1984 described urban voids concerning industrial typologies as “urban fractures, areas with no current function or use or character,” while architect Ignasi de Sola-Morales in 1995 described them as “terrain vague,” which were abandoned “land in its potentially exploitable state.” How can we define “the void” without understanding a solid? The solid and void relationship can be observed in the Nolli Map of Rome, with a solid-void/figure-ground representation of urbanity. One can argue that this fundamental tool is also used in suburban and rural areas to record and derive data for our use to plan, build, design, and destroy more buildings and irresponsibly inhabit the land. The idea of representing a solid as private and void as public is key, given that the public has a notion of belonging to the people of society and perhaps their perception of the environment that they shape. On the other hand, private is not private. An individual or a group can own a specific property. Is this true? And if so, how can we elaborate on these relationships toward a definition of the void that transgresses this limited solid-void notion? The course will unfold, analyze, and investigate the primary case study through its history, present, and eventual future by developing research through exercises that include, but are not limited to, drawing representation, experimental collages, and photomontages using the readings at its core. Questions arise about the aspects that characterize the voids and the contextual clues related to the community and cultural sedimentation. The goal is to put forth a project to design an intervention as a response to the research and promote commoning practices, whether it be housing, economic solidarity, or a place of care. What does the context need? Who is it for, and why? Responses could interface with political, economic, and social concerns with the varying matters that exist but also with an underlying conceptual underpinning of their interconnectedness of site, land, and the collective.

This will be a highly rigorous drawing class that pushes young artists to develop a disciplined, sustainable, and experimental drawing practice with which to explore new ways of thinking, seeing, and making art. Each week, you will make 50 to 100 small works on paper, based on varied, open-ended, unpredictable prompts. These prompts are meant to destabilize your practice and encourage you to interrogate the relationship between a work’s subject and its material process. You will learn to work quickly and flexibly, continually experimenting with mediums and processes as you probe the many possible solutions to problems posed by each prompt. As you create these daily drawings, you will simultaneously work on one large, ambitious, labor-intensive drawing that you revisit over the entire semester. That piece will evolve slowly, change incrementally, and reflect the passage of time in vastly different ways from your daily works. This dynamic exchange will allow you to develop different rhythms in your creative practice, bridging the space between an idea’s generation and its final aesthetic on paper. This course will challenge you to ambitiously redefine drawing and, in doing so, will dramatically transform your art-making practice.

This drawing class creates works on paper in watercolor, ink, and collage using the human form while considering the ways in which the body has been depicted in art of the 21st century. Feminist artists and BIPOC artists have transformed the way we see and construct the world and how the figure is used in art. Borrowing a conceptual frame, in part from an exhibition curated by Apsara Di Quinzio at Berkeley Art Museum (2022), student assignments will include the following: returning the gaze, the body in pieces, absence and presence, gender alchemy, activism, domesticity, and labor. In the first half of the class, students can draw directly with a model present in the classroom; the second half will introduce alternative substrates, including medical textbooks, fashion magazines, and collage. Artists will be introduced to the work of Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Luchita Hurtado, Sarah Lucas, Mary Minter, Kiki Smith, Lorna Simpson, Karen Finley, Kara Walker, Rona Pondick, Simone Leigh, Zanele Muholi, Wangechi Mutu, Mary Kelly, Janine Antoni, Carolee Schneeman, Kerry James Marshall, Lyle Ashton Harris, Bob Flanagan, and Féliz Gonzalez Torres.

In this course, students will draw from a live model using a variety of drawing materials, techniques, and artistic approaches. The purpose of this course is to help students obtain the basic skill of drawing the human form, including anatomy; observation of the human form; and fundamental exercises in gesture, contour, outline, and tonal modeling. In the shorter drawings, students will explore the fundamentals of drawing, such as measurement, mark-making, value structure, and composition. Observational drawing will be used as a point of departure to examine various strategies to construct a visual world. Students will proceed to develop technical and conceptual skills that are crucial to the drawing process. The work will fluctuate between specific in-class and homework assignments.

Why is the topic of laughter so often siloed or scorned in discussions of high art, literature, and the sciences? Why don’t we take laughter seriously as a society? How many professors does it take to teach a course on laughter? (Two more than usual!) In this lecture-seminar, students will develop a highly interdisciplinary understanding of laughter as a human behavior, cultural practice, and wide-ranging tool for creative expression. Based on the expertise of the three professors, lectures will primarily investigate laughter through the lens of psychology, film history, and visual arts. The goal of the course is to think and play across many disciplines. For class assignments, students may be asked to conduct scientific studies of audience laughter patterns, create works of art with punchlines, or write close analyses of classic cinematic gags. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the building blocks of laughter; classic devices of modern comedy; and laughter as a force of resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Topics to be discussed include the evolutionary roots of laughter as a behavior; the psychological substrates of laughter as a mode of emotional and self-regulation; humor in Dada, surrealism, performance art, and stand-up comedy; jokes and the unconscious; comic entanglements of modern bodies and machines; hysterical audiences of early cinema; and how to read funny faces, word play, spit takes, toilet humor, and sound gags.

This course is intended for seniors interested in pursuing their own art-making practice more deeply and for a prolonged period of time. Students will maintain their own studio spaces and will be expected to work independently and creatively and to challenge themselves and their peers to explore new ways of thinking and making. The course will incorporate prompts that encourage students to make art across disciplines and will culminate in a solo gallery exhibition during the spring semester, accompanied by a printed book that documents the exhibition. We will have regular critiques with visiting artists and our faculty, discuss readings and myriad artists, take trips to galleries and artist’s studios, and participate in the Visual Arts Lecture Series. Your art-making practice will be supplemented with other aspects of presenting your work—writing an artist statement, writing exhibition proposals, interviewing artists, and documenting your art—along with a series of professional-practices workshops. This is an immersive studio course meant for disciplined art students interested in making work in an interdisciplinary environment.

A “live-coding,” practice-based introduction to computational art for students with no prior experience in computer programming, the course will focus this semester on small ecosystems and simulations—including in-class code sessions covering color, shape, transformations, objects, and motion. We will also read a bit on the social, cultural, and ontological nature of software art and programming cultures. This class is taught in Processing/Java.

A live demo, practice-based introduction to the uses of artificial intelligence (AI) as an artistic medium, students will create three small skills projects and one conference work using AI processes, including prompt generation, image synthesis, and style transfer. We’ll also explore the art history of AI and discuss the critical questions surrounding AI in art and society through weekly screening meetings. No prior technical or art experience is required—just a willingness to explore new genres and their creative potential.

While sculpture adds and subtracts, folding transforms. In fact, folding is everywhere in nature, science, and especially the art studio. In this class, we'll turn to the experimental world of paper mechanisms through an exploration of folding, pleating, and crumpling, using a range of materials such as paper, fabric, and filament. We’ll dive into the world of ordered space, kinetic devices, reconfigurable objects, and auxetics, using paper to explore the new technologies of transformation important to contemporary artists and scientists.

Although amateurs often confuse the terms, abstract video is a new art form that is very different from the experimental film movement of the 1970s and ’80s. Often drawing from the digital worlds of games, signal processing, 3D modeling, and computational media, abstract video has become an important new aspect of art installation, site-specific sculpture, and gallery presentations. This small-project class is an introduction to the use of video as a material for the visual artists. Using open-source software and digital techniques, students will create several small works of video abstraction intended for gallery installation, ambient surrounds, and new media screens. Artists studied include Refik Anendol, Light Surgeons, Ryoji Ikeda, and more.

The class will examine the abilities of artificial intelligence (AI) to visualize personal and historical memory. Students are asked to find a diary fragment from their own diary or from a text donated by an individual or one found in an archive, historical diary, or public domain resource. After a brief overview of generative AI and its applications in creating visual art, students will create several visual representations of this past event using AI and note any challenges, insights, or surprises encountered during the experiment. Students will also be asked to reflect on the nature of memory and ethical witness, visual storytelling, and the impact of technology on artistic expression.

In this introduction to painting course, students will learn about color and composition through observation and imagination—exploring value, intensity, hue, temperature, vectors, edges, shapes, translating volume to a 2D surface, and more. Projects will focus on direct observation from still life, collage, the live model, and imagination. Students will learn the basics of painting: using acrylic paint and other water-soluble painting materials, mixing and desaturating paint colors on a palette, and using a variety of brushes and mediums. Demos and dynamic in-class exercises will be the pillar of this experience. Students will develop basic knowledge of art history and contemporary painting through thematic slide lectures and assignments.

Using the human form as a site of inquiry, students will build their own vocabulary, image bank and method of working with acrylic paint. Each
assignment will begin with a prompt and a PowerPoint introduction of contemporary and historical artworks. Students will then develop an
individualized response to the prompt. While realism is an option, abstraction, distortion, metaphor and other ways of manifesting the body are
welcome. The emphasis of the class is on students developing confidence in their own voice and to build a committed, highly engaged studio
practice that engages risk. This class will use acrylic paint. Each assignment will begin with a series of fast paper paintings exploring color mixing,
composition and the material properties unique to acrylic before students moving towards a larger individualized response to the prompt. The
second half of the semester will introduce gels and mediums and off the stretcher skins and substrates. This is an intermediate level class and
assumes college level pre-requisites of drawing and painting. The assignment prompts will include but are not limited to curtain, skin, five
senses, intimacy, absence, morning, and dysmorphia. As much as is possible students will cull images from life, their own photoshoots or family
archive. From these prompts, the students’ greatest strength and interests will develop and a conference project will emerge - resulting in either
10 small/ 3 medium-sized or one large painting on a topic of their own choosing. Homework assignments, individual and class crits, and building
a language to talk about painting is an important and required part of class.

In this course, students will learn about color and composition through observation and imagination, exploring value, intensity, hue, temperature, vectors, edges, shapes, translating volume to a 2D surface, and more. Projects will focus on direct observation from still life, collage, the live model, and imagination. Students will learn the basics of painting: using acrylic paint and other water-soluble painting materials, mixing and desaturating paint colors on a palette, and using a variety of brushes and mediums. Demos and dynamic in-class exercises will be the pillar of this experience. Students will develop basic knowledge of art history and contemporary painting through thematic slide lectures and assignments.

This is a project-based painting intensive. Students will be given specific prompts, which will lead to investigations and experimentations in abstraction. The prompts will result in students generating work that is theirs. Each assignment encourages visual and personal research in preparation for making. Technical exploration, perception, development of ideas, intuition, invention, representation, and communication are at the core of this class. We will have a chance to explore different ways of working with acrylic paint and expand on the idea of what painting is by integrating alternative painting materials. The paintings made in this class will consider the meaning of materials; transformation of materials through touch; and working with found, as well as repurposed, materials. Paintings may be three-dimensional and may not stay within a rectangle. Curiosity and giving yourself permission to travel to unexpected places, rather than merely relying on skills and experiences which are part of you already, is an important part of this class. This class is for people who are interested in surprising themselves! Participants will engage in critical group dialogues and individual critiques to hone the fundamental aspects of their work and deepen their understanding of contemporary art practice. This class is for people who are interested in learning to work abstractly. In the context of this class, abstraction is grounded in specificity, research, and in looking for personal, particular ways to communicate through a chosen language of abstraction. Classwork is accompanied by the creation of a separate group of conference work. This intermediate painting class is a rigorous painting environment, where you will be producing a lot of work: sketches, collages, and variations on paintings. You will also be considering how to best install work in order for the work to communicate most clearly.

In this two credit class, we will explore the process of collage as a method of creating dynamic compositions. Collage is a way to communicate complex emotions, layered ideas, and nonlinear stories. We will be learning different techniques of collage, using found materials, photographs, and craft supplies. Collage in this class will be utilized as a preparation toward making a series of paintings but will also become part of paintings. At the core of this class is openness to material experimentation, interest in learning how to communicate through paint as well as nontraditional painting materials, and learning about other artists who have used collage and assemblage in their work. The class follows a series of prompts or visual problems that are posed by the instructor. By the end of class, a series of works will be produced. Each student will investigate topics of interest to them through methods of collage and painting. Some of the visual materials that we will reference are stained-glass windows, quilts, tiles, mail art, and book art, as well as artists who have used/use collage in their paintings/drawings/sculpture today.

In this experimental studio class, we will explore how to digest, appropriate, reconfigure, and rewrite popular media using mostly, but not only, painting, drawing, and collage and also open to video, animation, sculpture, and performance. We will examine how artists operate as consumers and as catalysts, motors, and destroyers of TV, film, music, social media, and advertisement. Slideshows, readings, and presentations will exemplify the tight relationship between art and popular media throughout history, and contemporary art and will serve as inspiration for students to create their own works. Students will be encouraged to deconstruct their own spectacles of adoration and critique and celebrate images that are impactful to them. We will promote generative group conversations, studio time, experimentation, collaboration, creativity, and improvisation.

Experiment and explore contemporary performance art. Through surveying a range of important artworks and movements, we will review the histories, concepts, and practices of performance art. Born from anti-art, performance art challenges the boundaries of artistic expression through implementing, as material, the concepts of space, time, and the body. Examples of artists that we will review are John Cage, Joan Jonas, Adrian Piper, Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, Simone Forti, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Pope.L, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Janine Antoni, Suzanne Lacy, Aki Sasamoto, and Anna Halprin, to name a few. We will review dialogues and movements introducing performance art, such as art interventions, sculpture, installation art, institutional critique, protest art, social media, video art, happenings, dada, comedy, sound art, graphic notation, scores, collaboration, and dance/movement. Students will be able to relate the form and function of performance art through research, workshopping ideas, experimentation, and improvisation—thereby developing the ability to confidently implement any method of the performance art genre.

Since the early 20th century, artists have explored performance art as a radical means of expression. In both form and function, performance pushes the boundaries of contemporary art. Artists use the medium for institutional critique, for social activism, and to address the personal politics of gender, sexuality, and race. This course approaches performance art as a porous, transdisciplinary medium open to students from all disciplines, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, video, filmmaking, theatre, dance, music, creative writing, and digital art. Students learn about the legacy of performance art from the 1970s to the present and explore some of the concepts and aesthetic strategies used to create works of performance. Through texts, artists’ writings, video screenings, and slide lectures, students are introduced to a range of performance-based artists and art movements.

This is an untraditional course, as I will be offering it separately for both fall and spring; however, students are more than welcome to take both semesters in sequence for the year, as each semester will cover different material. Every week, a different photographic idea or genre will be traced from its earliest iterations to its present form through slide lectures and readings. And each week, students will respond with their own photographic work inspired by the visual presentations and readings. Topics include personal dress-up/narrative, composite photography/photographic collage, the directorial mode, fashion/art photography, new strategies in documentary practice, abstraction/“new photography,” the typology in photography, the photograph in color, and the use of words and images in combination. In the second semester, the emphasis will shift, as students choose to work on a subject and in a form that coincides with the ideas that they most urgently wish to express. No previous experience in photography is necessary nor is any special equipment. A desire to explore, to experiment, and to create a personally meaningful body of work are the only requirements.

This introductory photography studio class provides students with essential training in camera techniques and workflows, covering topics such as lighting, editing, and printing. Friendship—a voluntary relationship—provides a fertile ground for examining the idea of community. What is friendship? Do friends have to be similar, or can they exist in difference? Can a strong friendship come to an end? Can humans and animals be friends? How do we deal with the loss of a friendship? Are we each other's storytellers? By examining artists and texts from diverse disciplines, such as Sharon Lockhart and Elena Ferrante, students will develop the skills to deeply investigate and portray the essence of “one friendship of their choice” through photography.

A photograph presented alone and without a description in words is a simple utterance. “Ooh,” “Aah,” and “Huh?” are its proper responses. When pictures are presented in groups with accompanying text (of any length) and perhaps in conjunction with political or poetic conceptual strategies, any statement becomes possible. The photographs can begin to function as a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire treatise. Whether working in fiction, nonfiction, or in a fictive space, artists such as Robert Frank, Jim Goldberg, Roni Horn, Dorothea Lange, Susan Meiselas, Alan Sekula, Taryn Simon, Larry Sultan, and numerous others have been in the process of transforming photography with their work. Or perhaps they have created a medium: the new narrative photography. In this course, students will initially study the work of these “narrative” photographers and either write about their work or make pictures in response to it. The culmination of this experience will be students’ creation of their own bodies of work. If you have a story to tell, a statement to make, or a phenomenon that you wish to study and describe, this course is open to you. No previous photographic experience or special equipment is necessary. The opportunity to forge a new medium is rare. This course aims to create the forum and the conditions necessary for all to do so in a critical and supportive workshop environment.

We are interconnected in complex webs of relation. The camera is a tool of relation. This studio course introduces students to a creative practice in photography rooted in an engagement with their lives and our world. We begin by exploring our body’s relationship to our camera and materials, with an emphasis on understanding light and photographic form. Picture-making prompts will facilitate slower, thoughtful engagements with our experiences and environments. We’ll delve into the implications of social documentary (LaToya Ruby Frazier, Dorthea Lange, Robert Frank); our body’s inextricable ties to Earth and biosphere (Laura Aguilar, Jenny Calivas, Ana Mendieta); expressions of family, community, and cultural identity (Eduardo Rivera, Roy de Carava, Ka-Man Tse); and spiritual, inner, or unseen worlds (Graciela Iturbide, Keisha Scarville). Technically, this course covers exposure, light, composition, a digital post-production workflow, and inkjet printing. Through weekly discussions, the study of artworks, images, field trips, and technical workshops, students will create a series of photographs on a topic of their choice.

A photograph presented alone and without a description in words is a simple utterance. “Ooh,” “Aah,” and “Huh?” are its proper responses. When pictures are presented in groups with accompanying text (of any length) and perhaps in conjunction with political or poetic conceptual strategies, any statement becomes possible. The photographs can begin to function as a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire treatise. Whether working in fiction, nonfiction, or in a fictive space, artists such as Robert Frank, Jim Goldberg, Roni Horn, Dorothea Lange, Susan Meiselas, Alan Sekula, Taryn Simon, Larry Sultan, and numerous others have been in the process of transforming photography with their work. Or perhaps they have created a medium: the new narrative photography. In this course, students will initially study the work of these “narrative” photographers and either write about their work or make pictures in response to it. The culmination of this experience will be students’ creation of their own bodies of work. If you have a story to tell, a statement to make, or a phenomenon that you wish to study and describe, this course is open to you. No previous photographic experience or special equipment is necessary. The opportunity to forge a new medium is rare. This course aims to create the forum and the conditions necessary for all to do so in a critical and supportive workshop environment.

What does contemporary America really look like? What does it mean? Perhaps no single photograph can describe the zeitgeist, particularly now; but, cumulatively, a grouping of photographs might. This is a picture-maker’s course—whether you would like to look at the social landscape, the political landscape, the built landscape, the psychological landscape, or the poetic landscape. This is a course that will welcome such efforts. No previous photographic experience is necessary, just a willingness to work at getting to the heart of the matter—which is essential. The teaching method will be weekly discussions and critiques of student work.

In this studio course, students will learn a range of relief printmaking techniques, using linoleum cutting, jigsaw printing, collographs, and more to develop original imagery. While demonstrations will instill familiarity with fundamental carving and printing skills, meetings and critiques will challenge students to analyze their creative approaches across art historical, social, and theoretical contexts. Readings and discussions will integrate basic print history and highlight notable artists using relief media.

This course is designed to introduce students to a range of printing techniques while also assisting them in developing individual visual imagery through the language of printmaking. Students will work with intaglio, relief, monotype, and monoprint techniques. As means to explore their individual idea, students will investigate a wide range of possibilities offered by printmaking techniques and will experiment with inks and paints, stencils, multiple plates, and images altered in sequence. Students will develop drawing skills through the printmaking medium and experiment with value structure, composition, mark-making, and interaction of color. Students will begin to develop a method to investigate meaning, or content, through the techniques of printmaking. There will be an examination of various strategies that fluctuate between specific in-class assignments and individual studio work. In-class assignments will be supplemented with PowerPoint presentations, reading materials, video clips, group critiques, and homework projects. Students will explore the history of printmaking media, the evolution of subject matter and technique, and the relationship of graphic arts to the methods of mechanical reproduction.

Students in this course will be challenged to use approaches outside conventional printmaking, instead adopting experimental techniques (e.g., plaster printing, cyanotypes, and relevant monotype variations). Instructor demonstrations will emphasize practical material applications, while group critiques will broaden critical understanding in visual arts both formally and conceptually. Projects will support the development of individual artistic inquiry, analyzing how meaning changes according to media, material, and audience.

This course is designed for students to develop an individual body of work and studio practice through printmaking. Each semester, there will be an in-depth focus on two techniques, including both traditional and digital approaches. Students will use printmaking as a means to develop strategies and thought processes that expand approaches to making art in an individual studio practice. We will discuss the possibilities of the printmaking medium in the context of contemporary art. Technical demonstrations will be given throughout the semester in addition to group and individual critiques, slide lectures, discussions of reading materials, and museum visits.

Theoretical readings will complement exposure to contemporary print artists in this discussion-based course. The class will consider both established and speculative concepts in print media, developing an understanding of the field based on materiality, technology, and social dynamics. As students gain footing in these new frameworks, they will be asked to apply their learning in the form of analysis.

Taking the planning and design of an exhibition as its conceptual departure point, this class will come together to consider the role that sculpture might play in the near to long-term future. What do we, as artists, owe to a changing world? How will the structures in which we have invested change? What can we do to prepare? Working through contemporary, historical, speculative, and fantastic examples, we will explore and negotiate the roles, risks, and responsibilities of artmaking in a world that lurches endlessly and unrecognizably, with ever greater speed, from one extreme crisis to the next.

This class will explore the potential of figuration within contemporary sculptural practice. What can we achieve by incorporating a humanoid figure into our sculptural works? How far can the human form be pushed while remaining legible? Who controls and is invested in this legibility? What do histories of figuration have in common with objectification and dehumanization? And can we extract utility, today, from these dynamics? Alongside material demonstrations, lectures, readings, and critiques, we will investigate unpopular media in order to explore the work of contemporary artists alongside ideas and genres such as the uncanny valley, hHorror, science fiction, and more.

This class will explore various methods and techniques for sculptural moldmaking, ranging from the traditional to the experimental. Alongside the technical development of skills and workflows, there will be a series of lectures, readings, and discussions wherein we tease out the conceptual, poetic, and psychic implications and potential of moldmaking in a radical and expanded sense. What does the mold represent as an object? Is it a tool or a work unto itself? How far can we stretch the definition of moldmaking? How widely can we apply its processes?

This introductory course will explore the fundamentals of sculpture, with an emphasis on how objects function in space and the connections between two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms. This class will focus on the process of building and constructing and working with varied materials and tools. Students will explore various modes of making, binding, building, fastening, and molding, using wood, cardboard, plaster, and found materials. Using Richard Serra’s Verb List as inspiration, students will use verbs as a guide for building. Technical instruction will be given in the fundamentals of working with hand tools, as well as other elemental forms of building. This course will include an introduction to the critique process, as well as thematic readings with each assignment. Alongside studio work, the class will look at historical and contemporary artists, such as Jessica Stockholder, Martin Puryear, Judith Scott, Rachel Whiteread, Simone Leigh, Louise Nevelson, Alexander Calder, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Eva Hesse, and Louise Bourgeois, among others.

This course is a comprehensive introduction to Rhino7 for Mac OS X and additive digital fabrication. 3D software and digital fabrication have a variety of uses in contemporary art and the real world. The course covers basic model manipulation, rendering operations, and 3D printing; we will also explore ways of adapting more advanced 3D modeling techniques. In the first half of the semester, students will gain the technical knowledge needed for a rigorous exploration of 3D modeling in Rhino through a series of small projects. The second half of the course will focus on working toward the student’s approved project of their choosing. By course end, students will have the opportunity to output their work via 3D printing, 2D rendered visualization, and more. This multidisciplinary digital sculpture studio is open to interdisciplinary projects. Although not required, students are welcome to pursue the digital fabrication of the whole or part/s of their final projects.

This course suits students seeking to create organic forms in 3D modeling—for free-form jewelry, furniture, architecture, sculptural objects, and more. By the time the course ends, students will have the opportunity to output their work via 3D printing. If you enjoy pull-and-push components as in clay modeling, SubD is the method for your 3D modeling. It is a new geometry type that can create editable, highly accurate shapes. In this course, students will learn SubD basic commands through small modeling projects such as simple characters, jewelry, or other organic shapes (TBA). The second half of the course will focus on working toward the student’s approved project of their choosing. Ideally, you should have basic knowledge of Rhino NURBS modeling—but it is not required.

Layered, built, found, saved, applied, collected, arranged, salvaged...Jean Dubuffet coined the term “assemblage” in 1953, referring to collages that he made using butterfly wings. Including found material in a work of art not only brings the physical object but also its embedded narrative. In this course, we will explore the various ways in which the found object can affect a work of art and its history dating back to the early 20th century. We will look at historical and contemporary artists, such as Joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenberg, Hannah Höch, Betye Saar, Richard Tuttle, Rachel Harrison, and Leonardo Drew. This course will tackle various approaches, challenging the notions of “What is an art material?” and “How can the everyday inform the creative process?”

This course is a comprehensive introduction to Rhino7 for Mac OS X and additive digital fabrication. 3D software and digital fabrication have a variety of uses in contemporary art and the real world. The course covers basic model manipulation, rendering operations, and 3D printing; we will also explore ways of adapting more advanced 3D modeling techniques. In the first half of the semester, students will gain the technical knowledge needed for a rigorous exploration of 3D modeling in Rhino through a series of small projects. The second half of the course will focus on working toward the student’s approved project of their choosing. By course end, students will have the opportunity to output their work via 3D printing, 2D rendered visualization, and more. This multidisciplinary digital sculpture studio is open to interdisciplinary projects. Although not required, students are welcome to pursue the digital fabrication of the whole or part/s of their final projects.

This course is an open-ended exploration of the links between drawing and sculpture. Students will explore drawing as a means of communicating, brainstorming, questioning, and building. Assignments will promote experimentation and expand the ways that we use and talk about drawing by interrogating an inclusive list of materials. The course will consider unusual forms of mark making, such as lipstick left on a glass and a tire track on pavement. Each student will cultivate a unique index of marks, maintaining his/her own sketchbook throughout the course. The class will provide contemporary and historical examples of alternate means of mark making, such as John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Ana Mendieta, Robert Smithson, Fred Sandback, Gordon Matta-Clark, David Hammons, and Janine Antoni, among others.

How does a chronic illness affect a person’s orientation to the everyday? What are the social and political forces that underpin life in a homeless shelter? What is the experiential world of a blind person, a musician, a refugee, or a child at play? In an effort to answer these and like-minded questions, anthropologists have become increasingly interested in developing phenomenological accounts of particular lived realities in order to understand—and convey to others—the nuances and underpinnings of such realities in terms that more general social or symbolic analyses cannot achieve. In this context, phenomenology offers an analytic method that works to understand and describe in words phenomena as they appear to the consciousnesses of certain peoples. The phenomena most often in question for anthropologists include the workings of time, perception, selfhood, language, bodies, suffering, and morality as they take form in particular lives within the context of any number of social, linguistic, and political forces. In this course, we will explore phenomenological approaches in anthropology by reading and discussing some of the most significant efforts along these lines. Each student will also try their hand at developing a phenomenological account of a specific social or subjective reality through a combination of ethnographic research, participant observation, and ethnographic writing.

The visual arts and architecture constitute a central part of human expression and experience, and both grow from and influence our lives in profound ways that we might not consciously acknowledge. In this course, we will explore intersections between the visual arts and cultural, political, and social history. The goal is to teach students to deal critically with works of art, using the methods and some of the theories of the discipline of art history. This course is not a survey but, rather, will have as its subject a limited number of artists and works of art and architecture that students will learn about in depth through formal analysis, readings, discussion, research, and debate. We will endeavor to understand each work from the point of view of its creators and patrons and by following the work's changing reception by audiences throughout time. To accomplish this, we will need to be able to understand some of the languages of art. The course, then, is also a course in visual literacy—the craft of reading and interpreting visual images on their own terms. We will also discuss a number of issues of contemporary concern; for instance, the destruction of art, free speech and respect of religion, the art market, and the museum. Students will be asked to schedule time on weekends to travel to Manhattan on their own or in the College van to do assignments at various museums in New York. You will need to leave several hours for each of these visits and will keep a notebook of comments and drawings of works of art. There will be weekly conferences first semester and biweekly conferences second semester in the first-year studies.

This course departs from hegemonic accounts of modernism to tell the story of modernism through the work of underrepresented artists—artists of the Black Atlantic, queer and trans artists, artists of color, women artists, and artists seen as “outside” the canon. Looking geographically to Europe, North America, South America, and East Asia, we will investigate how artists responded to fascism, colonization and anti-colonial protest, war and mass migration, the legacies of enslavement, and rationalized forms of labor. We will look to discourses of leftist politics and collectivity, feminist struggle, abolitionism and antiracist discourse. What representational strategies did artists use to respond to modernity, to remake the world anew? The emphasis of this course is on the global plurality of modernism, shifting our understanding of where modernism was produced, when, and by whom. This course serves as an introduction to art history in the sense that it will equip students with the basic tools of close, slow looking and of descriptive writing about art, art historical research, and practices of curatorial display while also introducing students to broad and diverse histories of modern art. The course will also include field trips to New York City museums. This course is a lecture-seminar hybrid: One lecture a week will introduce you to the broader movements; weekly group conferences will look at specific case studies and scholarly approaches to writing about contemporary art.

This course looks closely at the art museum as a site of contest and critique: How are museums not neutral spaces but, rather, powerful institutions that shape narratives about the objects that they collect and display? Readings will consider the origins of the modern art museum in Europe in the 17th century and explore how the conventions of display impacted art’s reception and meaning. We will analyze histories of institutional critique to look at how artists have taken aim at the museum as a site of discursive power, raising questions about the kinds of value judgments that go into determining what counts as art. We will look closely at current discourses of decolonizing the museum, weigh how museums should confront their colonizing histories of systemic racism, and explore histories of exhibitions of Indigenous and African and African Diasporic art, as well as how museums shape historical memory. This course will include field trips and conversations with visiting speakers. Because this course considers the historiography of art, some previous course work in art history is required; but with its broad coverage, this course will have something for everyone regardless of their background.

This lecture course is a rigorous introduction to computer science and the art of computer programming using the elegant, eminently practical, yet easy-to-learn programming language Python. We will learn the principles of problem-solving with a computer while also gaining the programming skills necessary for further study in the discipline. We will emphasize the power of abstraction and the benefits of clearly written, well-structured programs, beginning with imperative programming and working our way up to object-oriented concepts such as classes, methods, and inheritance. Along the way, we will explore the fundamental idea of an algorithm; how computers represent and manipulate numbers, text, and other data (such as images and sound) in binary; Boolean logic; conditional, iterative, and recursive programming; functional abstraction; file processing; and basic data structures such as lists and dictionaries. We will also learn introductory computer graphics, how to process simple user interactions via mouse and keyboard, and some principles of game design and implementation. All students will complete a final programming project of their own design. Weekly hands-on laboratory sessions will reinforce the concepts covered in class through extensive practice at the computer.

This course is an experimental laboratory that aims to expose students to a diverse set of current voices and approaches to contemporary dance making. Each guest artist will lead a module of three-to-seven class sessions. These mini-workshops will introduce students to that artist and his/her creative process. Guests will present both emergent and established voices and a wide range of approaches to contemporary artistic practice.

In this class, graduate and upperclass undergraduate students with a special interest and experience in the creation of time-based artworks that include live performance will design and direct individual projects. Students and faculty will meet weekly to view works-in-progress and discuss relevant artistic and practical problems, both in class on Tuesday evenings and in conferences taking place on Thursday afternoons. Attributes of the work across multiple disciplines of artistic endeavor will be discussed as integral and interdependent elements in the work. Participation in mentored, critical-response feedback sessions with your peers is a key aspect of the course. The engagement with the medium of time in live performance, the constraints of presentation of the works both in works-in-progress and in a shared program of events, and the need to respect the classroom and presentation space of the dance studio will be the constraints imposed on the students’ artistic proposals. Students working within any number of live-performance traditions are as welcome in this course as those seeking to transgress orthodox conventions. While all of the works will engage in some way with embodied action, student proposals need not fall neatly into a traditional notion of what constitutes dance. The cultivation of open discourse across traditional disciplinary artistic boundaries, both in the process of developing the works and in the context of presentation to the public, is a central goal of the course. The faculty members leading this course have roots in dance practice but also have practiced expansive definitions of dance within their own creative work. The course will culminate in performances of the works toward the end of the semester in a shared program with all enrolled students and within the context of winter and spring time-based art events. Performances of the works will take place in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Theatre or elsewhere on campus in the case of site-specific work.

This is an opportunity for students who have completed a full year of anatomy study in the SLC dance program to pursue functional anatomy studies in greater depth. In open consultation with the instructor during class meetings, each student engages in independent research, developing one or more lines of inquiry that utilize functional anatomy perspectives and texts as an organizing framework. Research topics in recent years have included aging and longevity in dance, discussion of functional anatomy in relation to linguistics, pedagogy, choreography and performance, investigation of micropolitics in established dance training techniques, examining connections between movement and emotion, development of a unique warm-up sequence to address specific individual technical issues, and study of kinematics and rehabilitation in knee injury. The class meets biweekly to discuss progress, questions, and methods for reporting, writing, and presenting research, alternating with weekly studio/practice sessions for individual and/or group research consultations.

This course will examine the fundamentals of design and how to both think compositionally and work collaboratively as an artist. The medium of light will be used to explore the relationship of art, technology, and movement. Discussion and experimentation will reveal how light defines and shapes an environment. Students will learn a vocabulary to speak about light and to express their artistic ideas. Through hands-on experience, students will practice installing, programming, and operating lighting fixtures and consoles. The artistic and technical skills that they build will then be demonstrated together by creating original lighting designs for the works developed in the Live Time-Based Art course.

As we want to engage in individual and collective efforts toward sustainable and climate-change mitigating solutions, this workshop offers an opportunity for students to explore the multiple ways in which “sustainability” can be fostered and developed at an institution like Sarah Lawrence College. Students will work in small groups on a variety of projects and produce research and educational material that can lead to concrete and actionable proposals for the College and our community to consider. Students will determine their own areas of interest and research, from energy and water-usage monitoring to composting solutions, recycling/reusing and consumer sobriety, landscaping choices, pollinators and natural diversity, food growing, natural and human history of the land, and community collaborations, to name a few. As part of their project effort, students will engage with College administrators who are actively working toward sustainable solutions, as well as student, staff, and faculty groups such as the Warren Green vegetable garden, the Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collective on the Environment (SLICE), and the Sustainability Committee. We will also explore the possibility of writing grants in coordination with other actors at the College. This workshop will meet once a week for one hour. It is offered as pass/fail based on attendance and a group project that will mostly be developed during our meeting time. It is open to all students, including first-year students. All skills and areas of expertise are welcome, from environmental science to writing and visual and studio arts—but any interest in issues of sustainability and a strong sense of dedication will suffice!

This course will take the form of a screening and discussion seminar designed to provide an overview of alternative and experimental animations derived from the creative practice of transforming stories of trauma and struggle into films of artistic merit. We will examine various forms of animated work produced between 1960 and the present, asking ourselves: Can animations about serious subjects lighten sad, macabre, depressing, and even horrific moments with a sense of playfulness and controlled distance? The class will survey a wide range of work from a diverse selection of artists operating in cinematic film forms alternative to commercial animation. These will include, but not be limited to, hand-drawn, cell-painted, cutout, stop-motion, pixilated, puppet, digital, and, more recently, CGI independents. In most cases, auteur artists working with stories of trauma, memory, language, and struggle—whether personal, social, or political—are attempting to put their subjects in perspective. Using the core of these sources to pose difficult and personal questions, artist-animators tackle tough issues that ultimately serve as a reflection and reframing of experience. In response to the films we watch, the class group will discuss how personal and cultural struggles have been used as resonating topics large enough to act as a central conflict for animated films. Through screenings, readings, panels of visitors, and discussions, we will investigate both the reasoning for and success of animation's ability to confront the problems that challenge us. Students in this class will be expected to participate in discussions during conference meetings. Animation production will not be taught; however, a creative conference project in studio arts, writing, media, or performing arts will be required. In addition, students will be expected to complete weekly readings and entries in a research/creative practice notebook.

Why is the topic of laughter so often siloed or scorned in discussions of high art, literature, and the sciences? Why don’t we take laughter seriously as a society? How many professors does it take to teach a course on laughter? (Two more than usual!) In this lecture-seminar, students will develop a highly interdisciplinary understanding of laughter as a human behavior, cultural practice, and wide-ranging tool for creative expression. Based on the expertise of the three professors, lectures will primarily investigate laughter through the lens of psychology, film history, and visual arts. The goal of the course is to think and play across many disciplines. For class assignments, students may be asked to conduct scientific studies of audience laughter patterns, create works of art with punchlines, or write close analyses of classic cinematic gags. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the building blocks of laughter; classic devices of modern comedy; and laughter as a force of resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Topics to be discussed include the evolutionary roots of laughter as a behavior; the psychological substrates of laughter as a mode of emotional and self-regulation; humor in Dada, surrealism, performance art, and stand-up comedy; jokes and the unconscious; comic entanglements of modern bodies and machines; hysterical audiences of early cinema; and how to read funny faces, word play, spit takes, toilet humor, and sound gags.

Animation is a magical medium that is unique because it has the potential to combine all of the art forms: painting, drawing, sculpture, music, dance, acting, writing...the list is endless. This course, with a focus on experimentation, will begin with a series of workshops that are designed to help students tap into their inner vision as artists. Each of us, as diverse individuals, have something within our soul that makes us special and unique. The goal and challenge of this course is to help students discover who they are as artists/animators. What do they want to say? This will be accomplished through a variety of lessons and workshops, both abstract and representational, which will include: cut-out stop-motion, sequential drawing, metamorphosis, object animation, and working with and interpreting sound. These techniques will be coupled with some of the fundamental principles of animation, such as timing and spacing, staging, follow through, and acting for animation. In addition to lectures and demonstrations, animated short films from all over the world will be screened in class. This is vital to help students understand the infinite possibilities of what an animated film can be and how to translate their own ideas through this powerful time-based medium. By semester’s end, each student will have completed five short animated experiments, ranging in length from 30 seconds to one minute, that will demonstrate an understanding of many of the techniques and principles discussed in class. Students are required to provide their own external hard drives and some additional art materials. Software instruction will include Adobe AfterEffects, Adobe Premier, and Dragonframe.

Animation is a unique discipline within filmmaking. Often relying less on words and more on visual interpretations, animation offers unlimited conceptual possibilities for the creative screenwriter. This course will focus on the creation and development of story, characters, and the multiple styles and methods of expressing a narrative in highly visual terms. The first segment of the course delves into the art of writing pantomime; creating scripts, outlines, and storyboards; and referencing legendary animated films that utilize wordless stories. From there, the class will move into defining music and creating stories within the framework of prerecorded media. We then progress to the various styles of script writing, from voice over narration to interviews and finally to dramatic dialogue and writing for characters. Specific limitations and possibilities are discussed, mostly within the context of the differences between animation and live-action writing, as well as comparing structures of the short story, feature script, and serial script. Throughout the course, students are encouraged to explore a diversity of personal experiences, expressing stories that may not be traditionally heard or brought into a script and film format. By the nature of its inherent use of aesthetic and its ability to reflect the multitude of visual material and stories of this complex world, animation is particularly good at embodying diverse experiences and cultures. The art of animated storytelling is a conceptual and highly visual and personal exercise; therefore, throughout the duration of this course, I encourage students to accompany written work with visual references—whether photographs or drawings. The final project for the course will be to complete a fully developed script for a five- to ten-minute short animated film.

In this class students will develop animation and micro storytelling skills by focusing on the process of creating frame-by-frame digital drawings and keyframe movement for animation. This class is essentially an introduction to both the professional digital software, Harmony by Toon Boom and the process of digital drawing and character movement. Instruction will be based in the software, Toon Boom Harmony Premium, and will include line style, visualization, character development, continuity, timing, and compositing. All the production steps required to develop simple 2D digital animations will be demonstrated and applied through exercises aimed at the production of a single animated scene. Participants will develop and refine their personal style through exercises in digital animation and assignments directed at increasing visual understanding. Students will learn about body mechanics and motion flow in the development of animated characters and backgrounds through techniques that include walk cycles, rotating forms, transformations, holds, smear frames, squash and stretch, weight, and resistance. Additional instruction will include techniques in pencil test animation, camera and layer animated movements, color palettes, and lip syncing. This one semester class will provide students with a working knowledge of the emerging and highly efficient software Harmony, recently adopted by the film and TV animation industry. The final project involves each student’s production of a single, refined animated scene. Students interested in then continuing in 2D digital animation spring semester will be encouraged to take the subsequent Intermediate/Advanced 2D Animation course.

This course will take the form of a screening and discussion seminar designed to provide an overview of alternative and experimental animations derived from the creative practice of transforming stories of trauma and struggle into films of artistic merit. We will examine various forms of animated work produced between 1960 and the present, asking ourselves: Can animations about serious subjects lighten sad, macabre, depressing, and even horrific moments with a sense of playfulness and controlled distance? The class will survey a wide range of work from a diverse selection of artists operating in cinematic film forms alternative to commercial animation. These will include, but not be limited to, hand-drawn, cell-painted, cutout, stop-motion, pixilated, puppet, digital, and, more recently, CGI independents. In most cases, auteur artists working with stories of trauma, memory, language, and struggle—whether personal, social, or political—are attempting to put their subjects in perspective. Using the core of these sources to pose difficult and personal questions, artist-animators tackle tough issues that ultimately serve as a reflection and reframing of experience. In response to the films we watch, the class group will discuss how personal and cultural struggles have been used as resonating topics large enough to act as a central conflict for animated films. Through screenings, readings, panels of visitors, and discussions, we will investigate both the reasoning for and success of animation's ability to confront the problems that challenge us. Students in this class will be expected to participate in discussions during conference meetings. Animation production will not be taught; however a creative conference project in studio arts, writing, media, or performing arts will be required. In addition, students will be expected to complete weekly readings and entries in a research/creative practice notebook.

Animation is a magical medium that is unique because it has the potential to combine all of the art forms: painting, drawing, sculpture, music, dance, acting, writing...the list is endless. This course, with a focus on experimentation, will begin with a series of workshops that are designed to help students tap into their inner vision as artists. Each of us, as diverse individuals, have something within our soul that makes us special and unique. The goal and challenge of this course is to help students discover who they are as artist/animators. What do they want to say? This will be accomplished through a variety of lessons and workshops, both abstract and representational, that will include: cut-out stop-motion, sequential drawing, metamorphosis, object animation, and working with and interpreting sound. These techniques will be coupled with some of the fundamental principles of animation, such as timing and spacing, staging, follow through, and acting for animation. In addition to lectures and demonstrations, animated short films from all over the world will be screened in class. This is vital to help students understand the infinite possibilities of what an animated film can be and how to translate their own ideas through this powerful, time-based medium. By semester’s end, each student will have completed five short, animated experiments, ranging in length from 30 seconds to one minute, that will demonstrate an understanding of many of the techniques and principles discussed in class. Students are required to provide their own external hard drives and some additional art materials. Software instruction will include Adobe AfterEffects, Adobe Premier, and Dragonframe.

This course is designed to enlighten our creative consciousness, using music and nonfiction filmmaking as tools for liberation. Music and other sonic experiences are intrinsically connected to how we witness, experience, and tell nonfiction stories. In this course, we will examine work where the score itself plays a character while creating films of our own inspired by the soundtrack as a living piece of our form. Broken into groups, students collectively create a five-minute film that invites the viewer into subjects that are engaging and new while challenging the binary and often Western notion of what storytelling can be. The role that music and sound can play as a form of protest, meditation, and transformation is at the heart of our visual experience. In the spirit of global movements toward a more just and sustainable world, this course infuses a cinematic quest for truth in storytelling with the undeniable power that music brings to our understanding of a moment in time a scene, a relationship, and ourselves. From American Utopia to Amazing Grace and Gimme Shelter, students will screen, discuss, and be inspired to create work that challenges all of the senses.

This is an open course designed to enlighten our creative consciousness, using music and nonfiction filmmaking as tools for liberation. Music and other sonic experiences are intrinsically connected to how we witness, experience, and tell nonfiction stories. In this course, we will examine work where the score itself plays a character while also creating films of our own inspired by the soundtrack as a living piece of our form. Broken into groups, students collectively will create a five-minute film that invites the viewer into subjects that are engaging and new, while also challenging the binary and often Western notion of what storytelling can be. The role that music and sound can play as a form of protest, meditation, and transformation are at the heart of our visual experience. In the spirit of global movements toward a more just and sustainable world, this course infuses a cinematic quest for truth in storytelling with the undeniable power that music brings to our understanding of a moment in time, a scene, a relationship, and ourselves. From American Utopia to Amazing Grace and Gimme Shelter, students will screen, discuss, and be inspired to create work that challenges all of the senses.

In the first semester, we will practice the fundamental skill of successful television writers—the ability to craft entertaining and compelling stories for characters, worlds, and situations created by others. Though dozens of writers may work on a show over the course of its run, the “voice” of the show is unified and singular. The way to best learn to write for television is to draft a sample episode of a preexisting show, known as a “spec script.” Developing, pitching, writing, and rewriting stories hundreds of times, extremely quickly, in collaboration and on tight deadlines is what TV writers on staff do every day, fitting each episode seamlessly into the series as a whole in tone, concept, and execution. The first semester workshop will introduce students to these fundamental skills by taking them, step-by-step, through writing of their own spec (sample) script for an ongoing scripted (fiction) television series, comedy or drama. The fall will take students from premise lines, through the outline/beat sheet, to writing a complete draft of a full teleplay for a currently airing show. No original pilots will be pursued in the fall. In conference, students will work on deepening characters, understanding dramatic and comedic techniques, and developing additional components of their portfolios. Prospective students are expected to have an extensive working knowledge across many genres of TV shows that have aired during the past 25-30 years domestically and internationally and a commitment to developing work from concept through premise lines, beat sheets, and outlines—with multiple drafts of each—and with extensive peer collaboration before writing script pages. You will not be permitted to write pages until your outlines have been “green lit.” In the second semester, the class builds on fundamentals learned in the first semester, writing specs with the focus on creating new work: original TV pilots. Students will be expected to enter the class with a completed 8-12 page outline for their original show’s pilot story. That outline will be revised and turned into an original one-hour or half-hour show (no sitcoms). Focusing on engineering story machines, we power characters and situations with enough conflict to generate episodes over many years. Having taken both semesters—spec, pilot—students will have the beginnings of the components, in first-draft form, needed for a professional portfolio. In conference, students may wish to begin to develop character descriptions and pieces of a series pitch for their show or work on previously developed material. 

Do you enjoy designing and building things? Do you have lots of ideas of things that you wished existed but do not feel you have enough technical knowledge to create yourself? Do you wish you could fix some of your favorite appliances that just stopped working? Do you want to help find solutions to problems in our community? This course is meant to give an introduction to tinkering, with a focus on learning the practical physics behind basic mechanical and electronic components while providing the opportunity to build things yourself. The course will have one weekly meeting with the whole class and three smaller workshop sessions to work on team-based projects. (You are expected to choose one of the three workshop sessions to attend weekly.) The course will be broken down into four primary units: design and modeling; materials, tools, and construction; electronics and microcontrollers; and mechanics. There will be weekly readings and assignments, and each unit will include both individual and small-group projects that will be documented in an individual portfolio to demonstrate the new skills that you have acquired. For a semester-long, team-based conference project, your team will create a display of your work that will be exhibited on campus and provide a description reflecting on the design, desired functionality, and individual contributions that led to the finished product. Let’s get tinkering!

This course analyzes children’s media, specifically preschool media through middle school, using cognitive and developmental psychology theory and methods. We will examine specific educational television programs with regard to cognitive and social developmental issues related to family life, peer relationships, and education issues. Because media has an enormous impact on children’s behavior, this has increasingly become a subject of interest among researchers and the public. This course addresses that interest by applying cognitive and developmental psychological research and theories for the development and production of educational media. In addition, the course helps identify essential elements that determine the positive and negative qualities of media for children. Finally, the course examines and evaluates how psychological theories and frameworks can guide the successful production of children’s media (e.g., social cognitive theory). Projects and assignments will include weekly class discussions on peer-reviewed journal articles, watching television programs, group preschool television pitchbook preparation, child observations interacting with screens, and media artifact critiques as assigned.

All of us today live in a technology-rich environment, which is not only different from the one in which we grew up but also is still changing and evolving rapidly. The course examines the use and design of an array of educational technologies (computer programs, multimedia software, television, video games, websites, and so on) from the perspective of basic research and theory in the human cognitive system, development psychology, and social development areas. The course aims to provide a framework for reasoning about the most developmentally appropriate uses of technologies for children and young adults at different ages. Some of the significant questions that we will focus on include: How are their developmental experiences affected by these technologies? What are the advantages and disadvantages for children using technology, especially for learning? In this class, we will try to touch upon these issues by reading classic literature, researching articles, playing games, watching programs, using apps, and discussing our experiences. Projects and assignments will include weekly class discussions on peer-reviewed journal articles and media artifact critiques written by individual students and through group project work.

Why is the topic of laughter so often siloed or scorned in discussions of high art, literature, and the sciences? Why don’t we take laughter seriously as a society? How many professors does it take to teach a course on laughter? (Two more than usual...) In this lecture-seminar, students will develop a highly interdisciplinary understanding of laughter as a human behavior, cultural practice, and wide-ranging tool for creative expression. Based on the expertise of the three professors, lectures will primarily investigate laughter through the lens of psychology, film history, and visual arts. The goal of the course is to think and play across many disciplines. For class assignments, students may be asked to conduct scientific studies of audience laughter patterns, create works of art with punchlines, or write close analyses of classic cinematic gags. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the building blocks of laughter; classic devices of modern comedy; and laughter as a force of resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Topics to be discussed include the evolutionary roots of laughter as a behavior; the psychological substrates of laughter as a mode of emotional and self-regulation; humor in Dada, surrealism, performance art, and stand-up comedy; jokes and the unconscious; comic entanglements of modern bodies and machines; hysterical audiences of early cinema; and how to read funny faces, word play, spit takes, toilet humor, and sound gags.

The creative process is paradoxical. It involves freedom and spontaneity yet requires expertise and hard work. The creative process is self-expressive yet tends to unfold most easily when the creator forgets about self. The creative process brings joy yet is fraught with fear, frustration, and even terror. The creative process is its own reward yet depends on social support and encouragement. In this class, we look at how various thinkers conceptualize the creative process—chiefly in the arts but in other domains, as well. We see how various psychological theorists describe the process, its source, its motivation, its roots in a particular domain or skill, its cultural context, and its developmental history in the life of the individual. Among the thinkers that we will consider are Freud, Amabile, Arnheim, Franklin, and Gardner. Different theorists emphasize different aspects of the process. In particular, we see how some thinkers emphasize persistent work and expert knowledge as essential features, while others emphasize the need for the psychic freedom to “let it happen” and speculate on what emerges when the creative person “lets go.” Still others identify cultural context and motivational or biological factors as critical. To concretize theoretical approaches, we look at how various ideas can contribute to understanding specific creative people and their work. In particular, we will consider works written by or about Picasso, Woolf, Welty, Darwin, and some contemporary artists and writers. Though creativity is most frequently explored in individuals, we also consider group improvisation in music and theatre. Some past conference projects have involved interviewing people engaged in creative work. Others consisted of library studies centering on the life and work of a particular creative person. And some students chose to do fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center and focus on an aspect of creative activity in young children.

Children’s books are an important bridge between adults and the world of children. What makes a children’s book attractive and developmentally appropriate for a child of a particular age? What is important to children as they read or listen? How do children become readers? How do picture-book illustrations complement the words? How can children’s books portray the uniqueness of a particular culture or subculture, allowing those within to see their experience reflected in books and those outside to gain insight into the lives of others? To what extent can books transcend the particularities of a given period and place? Course readings include writings about child development; works about children’s literature; and, most centrally, children’s books themselves—picture books, fairy tales, and novels for children. Class emphasis will be on books for children up to the age of about 12. Among our children’s book authors will be Margaret Wise Brown, C. S. Lewis, Katherine Paterson, Maurice Sendak, Matt de la Pena, Christopher Paul Curtis, E. B. White, and Vera B. Williams. Many different kinds of conference projects are appropriate for this course. In past years, for example, students have written original work for children (sometimes illustrating it, as well), traced a theme in children’s books, worked with children (and their books) in fieldwork and service-learning settings, explored children’s books that illuminate particular racial or ethnic experiences, or examined books that capture the challenge of various disabilities. At the end of each class session, we will have story time, during which two students will share childhood favorites.

In public discourse, we are bombarded with assertions of the newly “global” nature of the contemporary world. This assertion assumes that former stable categories of personhood, ideational systems, nation, identity, and space are now fragmented and transcended by intensified travel, digital technology, and cross-cultural contact. This seminar is based on the premise that people have traveled throughout history; current global moves are but the most recent manifestation of a phenomenon that has historically occurred in many forms and places. This long(er) view of mobility will allow us to rethink and reexamine not only our notions of travel but their shifting connotations and significance across time and space. We will explore how supposed stable categories—such as citizen, refugee, nation, and commodity—are constructed and consider several theoretical approaches that help us make sense of these categorizations, the processes accompanying their normalization and dissemination, and their underlying assumptions. Our questions will include: What are the political, navigational, and epistemological foundations that go into mapmaking and schemas of classification? How do nomads change into settled city dwellers or wageworkers? How does time become disciplined? How does travel change into tourism? How do commodities travel and acquire meaning? What is the relationship between legal and illicit moves? How do technologies of violence, such as weapons and drugs, circulate? What is the meaning of their circulation in different contexts? How do modern technologies enable time/space compression? What are the shifting logics of globalization? What is their relationship to our notions and constructions of authenticity, subjectivity, and identity? During the fall semester, we will begin by developing an analytical approach toward our topic (which we will continue to develop throughout the year). We will then consider the implications of classification, categorization, and mapping. For the remainder of the semester, we will follow the travel(s) of ideas, commodities, and people. In the process, we will begin to think about questions of time/space compression. In the spring, we will return to some of the themes of the fall semester but examine them in a different context and through a different lens. Among our concerns in the spring semester will be issues of fusion and hybridization in cultural practices regarding people and things (e.g., food, music, romance, families); shifting places (e.g., borders, travel, and tourism); time/space compression through new technologies of travel and communication; and drugs, terror, violence, and poverty. As our sources, we will rely primarily on interdisciplinary analytical writings but will also include travel narratives, literature, and films.

This course reexamines the notion of the void not as land ripe for building real-estate capital but as space for cultural expression. Students choose a void from infrastructural areas, parks, empty unused buildings, or land that has often transformed with histories of erasure and dispossession. We can discover the urban void in many forms, from abandoned retail spaces to empty lots. Urban planner Bernardo Secchi in 1984 described urban voids concerning industrial typologies as “urban fractures, areas with no current function or use or character,” while architect Ignasi de Sola-Morales in 1995 described them as “terrain vague,” which were abandoned “land in its potentially exploitable state.” How can we define “the void” without understanding a solid? The solid and void relationship can be observed in the Nolli Map of Rome, with a solid-void/figure-ground representation of urbanity. One can argue that this fundamental tool is also used in suburban and rural areas to record and derive data for our use to plan, build, design, and destroy more buildings and irresponsibly inhabit the land. The idea of representing a solid as private and void as public is key, given that the public has a notion of belonging to the people of society and perhaps their perception of the environment that they shape. On the other hand, private is not private. An individual or a group can own a specific property. Is this true? And if so, how can we elaborate on these relationships toward a definition of the void that transgresses this limited solid-void notion? The course will unfold, analyze, and investigate the primary case study through its history, present, and eventual future by developing research through exercises that include, but are not limited to, drawing representation, experimental collages, and photomontages using the readings at its core. Questions arise about the aspects that characterize the voids and the contextual clues related to the community and cultural sedimentation. The goal is to put forth a project to design an intervention as a response to the research and promote commoning practices, whether it be housing, economic solidarity, or a place of care. What does the context need? Who is it for, and why? Responses could interface with political, economic, and social concerns with the varying matters that exist but also with an underlying conceptual underpinning of their interconnectedness of site, land, and the collective.

Traditionally, we refer to the house as the structure to protect the intimacy of the family. It provides shelter and separates us from work but also supports it. The house is the space that protects the biological life of the occupants and encompasses an envelope with subdivisions into smaller spaces—what we call rooms. Such rooms present a defined hierarchy—what we call privacy, set forth by the homeowner, allowing individuals to separate from the rest of the occupants—a value directly connected to the notion of the “traditional family.” The division of rooms and their functions reiterates the nuclear-family structure. It allows for the separation of the family from the outside world and of each individual within the house. This course explicates the house, home, and housing as a space we all inhabit and sometimes take for granted. We live in times of housing scarcity, climate adjustments, new family structures, and real-estate development that hinder architects, planners, and designers from proposing spaces for non-homogenized living based on the traditional family and the work-life paradigm that fuels our current housing. This course aims to question the house, its form, sustainability, temporality, production, and reproduction, as well as how to answer, propose, and study its elements for better living not only for “one family” but for all.

This introductory course will explore the fundamentals of sculpture, with an emphasis on how objects function in space and the connections between two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms. This class will focus on the process of building and constructing and working with varied materials and tools. Students will explore various modes of making, binding, building, fastening, and molding, using wood, cardboard, plaster, and found materials. Using Richard Serra’s Verb List as inspiration, students will use verbs as a guide for building. Technical instruction will be given in the fundamentals of working with hand tools, as well as other elemental forms of building. This course will include an introduction to the critique process, as well as thematic readings with each assignment. Alongside studio work, the class will look at historical and contemporary artists, such as Jessica Stockholder, Martin Puryear, Judith Scott, Rachel Whiteread, Simone Leigh, Louise Nevelson, Alexander Calder, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Eva Hesse, and Louise Bourgeois, among others.

This FYS version of Forms and Fictions begins with the reading and writing of folk and fairy tales; moves on to incidents, episodes, stories, poetic translations, frame stories, personal essays, graphic novels, and lyrics; and, finally, plans for a novel, its opening, end, and first chapter. The emphasis here is on trying on forms, learning which form works best for which kind of content, which works best for each student, what your aesthetic is, what you have to say, as well as how you might say it. There will be weekly readings and exercises in each form, in dialogue, pacing, editing, portraiture, plot and its philosophical underpinnings. Also, students will send each other 100-word pieces every week. Conference work will be planned, written, and revised over the course of the semester. The emphasis in conference work is on vision, revision, editing, finishing, and presentation, a process useful for any course or endeavor. In addition to classes, we will meet every other week for individual conferences and every week for a group session to talk about whatever comes up: campus activities, procrastination, New York City, dropping or adding classes, laundry, food, internships, sports, roommates, whatever students and their don need or want to explore.

Who doesn’t love Frog and Toad? Have you ever wanted to write something like it—or like Charlotte’s Web or A Snowy Day? Why do our favorites work so well and so (almost) universally? We will begin by reading books we know and books we missed and discuss what makes them so good. We will be looking at read-to books, early readers, instructional books for children, rude books, chapter books, books about friendship, and (possibly) young adult books. We may consider what good children’s history and biography might be like. We will talk about the place of the visual, the careful and conscious use of language, notions of appropriateness, and what works at various age levels. Invariably, we will talk about childhood, our own and as part of an ever-changing set of social theories. We will try our hand at writing picture books, early readers, friendship stories, collections of poems like Mother Goose. Conference work will involve making a children’s book of any kind, on any level. Classes will be in both lecture and conversational mode, and group conferences will involve looking at our writing.

This is a course with writing at its center and other arts—mainly, but not exclusively, visual—around it. We will read all kinds of narratives, children’s books, folk tales, fairy tales, graphic novels...and try our hand at many of them. Class reading will include everything from ancient Egyptian love poems to contemporary Latin American literature. For conference work, students have created graphic novels, animations, quilts, a scientifically accurate fantasy involving bugs, rock operas, items of clothing with text attached, nonfiction narratives, and dystopian fictions with pictures. There will be weekly assignments that involve making something. This course is especially suited to students with an interest in another art or a body of knowledge that they’d like to make accessible to nonspecialists.

Collecting expresses a free-floating desire that attaches and reattaches itself—it is a succession of desires. The true collector is in the grip not of what is collected but of collecting. —Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover

I’m always looking for new lenses to use with the writing and reading of poetry. As poets, we are natural collectors—collecting images, bits of dialogue, phrases, titles. In this poetry workshop, we will discuss and write about our collections (collections of facts, objects, memories) while looking at how collections of poems and prose are constructed/corralled/arranged. Books discussed will include, among others: The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, Obit by Victoria Chang, Frank Sonnets by Diane Seuss, Hoarders by Kate Durbin, The Octopus Museum by Brenda Shaughnessy, and various essays and handouts on collecting and artists who use collection as part of their practice. This semester, you might collect dreams or facts or an object that you regularly encounter on the street. How this informs your writing can be organic. You might become obsessed with a collector’s collection and write about it. You might use your collected delights to add a new color to your emotional palette. You might start looking at the objects in your poems in a different way, writing about them with greater specificity. Most weeks, there will be a collecting or poem prompt. Each student will give a 10- to 15-minute presentation on one of their collections.