Visual and Studio Arts

Work/labor are directly connected and drive reasoning for producing more commodities, people, and even art—extending our livelihoods further into the future. Leisure is a vital part of a system where labor is extracted from society and, in turn, yearns for time away from work or something in return. Some tensions lie in the decision-making process of wanting time from work and the rewards of that work that generate paradoxical circumstances. Workers give their labor and, in return, earn a conditioned status that is sought after and that perpetually feeds this cycle. The course looks at work typologies embedded within their leisure and the amenities used as a tool for greater work output. A question arises regarding the work/life vs. work/leisure paradigm and the blurred line between them. Counter examples include the festival as a site of leisure, the home, and more sites that function as a release for work—but is work still happening on these sites? Through drawing, collage, and mapping, students will identify the experiences in these spaces, how they function with or against the norms of society, and where the future of these spaces linked to “play” symbolizes for them. What aspects of leisure are necessity vs. desire, and what is the role of aesthetics in these places?

Defined by Ignacio Sola Morales as land in its exploitable state, urban voids have been a topic of discussion for quite some time. This course aims to reexamine the notion of the void not as land ripe for building real estate capital but, rather, as space for cultural expression. Students are given a list of different voids—infrastructural areas, parks, empty/unused buildings, and land that has transformed many times over with histories of erasure and dispossession. Exercises include visual representation via an exegetic collage of the assigned void. What are the colors of the voids? Do these colors and textures differ from their context? The project then would be to design an intervention as a response to the context of the chosen void. What does the context need? Who is it for, and why? Responses could interface with political, economic, and social concerns with the varying matter on our planet but also with an underlying conceptual underpinning of their interconnectedness of site, land, and the collective.

Portraiture has a rich and complex history. Drawing a face is an ideally challenging way for students to learn how to render realistically, through line, light, shadow, volume, and space. Intentionally manipulating this same graphic language can embed portraits with the complex emotional and psychological states that lie beyond visual representation. Politically, socially, and historically, portraits have been a means to establish class and gender, provide immortality, and document the human condition. In this course, you will learn the fundamentals of drawing through the subject of the portrait. The act of looking will be primary for us, as seeing the face accurately—as it truly exists—is a constant challenge for artists. As the semester progresses, we’ll move from observational portraits into interpreted, experimental drawings that challenge traditions and norms of portraiture. As you learn to draw what you see, you’ll simultaneously begin to reveal qualities not visible—those psychological, political, symbolic, and personal aspects of portraits that make them individual and unique. Students will work on daily drawing exercises both inside and outside of the studio in order to build a disciplined drawing practice. For context, we will look at a range of historical and contemporary examples of portraiture and will visit New York City exhibitions to see art works. A visiting artist working in portraiture will visit class, as well.

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.

FYS Project will serve as an orientation to the fundamental disciplines within the visual and studio arts. Each year, the entire visual-arts FYS cohort will come together to make a series of works revolving around a particular theme to be chosen by the FYS faculty each year. Within this theme, FYS students will take short workshops in each discipline, making a thematically-based artwork in each medium. Group critique sessions will be held every other week by select faculty members, with the goal of teaching students how to analyze and discuss works of art; the entire project will culminate in an end-of-semester exhibition and reception in the Barbara Walters Gallery. The cohort will gain a multidisciplinary understanding of the fundamentals of visual arts while forming personal connections to their fellow classmates. FYS Project will have six sessions with alternating group critiques; class size, 30-40 students.

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 visual-arts programming—including color, shape, transformations, and motion—this course is designed for artists with little or no prior programming experience. We’ll meet twice weekly to code together live, working on short, in-class exercises within a larger analysis of the social, cultural, and historical nature of programming cultures. All students will be required to keep a sketchbook and participate in installation. Artists include Reas, Davis, Riley, MacDonald, and others. The class is taught using Processing software.

In a search for form, many contemporary artists have turned to the diary. Diaries and diary forms—like to-do lists, calendars, notebooks, and so on—are a kind of ready-made structure for image making and art installation. Some diaries are based in drawing and painting, but many more are hybrid works that draw from all kinds of media, including video, computation, and photography. This semester, New Genres looks at the ways in which recent artists have flipped the diary form into works of contemporary art. Two small exercises will build into one longer conference work. Artists surveyed include Acconci, Boltanski, Breakwell, Calle, Haring, Kelley, Leeson, Pruit, Raad, and more. No prior art experience is needed for this studio.

This class is open to all students of any experience level, including those currently enrolled in a creative arts FYS, and serves as an introduction to fundamental areas of the visual arts, including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography, collage, and related mixed-media processes. We’ll discuss these mediums through image presentations, videos, and a gallery/museum visit. Students will then make art in each of those areas via open-ended prompts, experimenting with new materials, processes, techniques, and ideas. Materials will be provided, and you’ll be encouraged to discover through play. Emphasis will focus on developing your creative imagination and building visual literacy. This class culminates in an end-of-semester exhibition.

Although amateurs often confuse the two 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 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 others.

In 2016, So Kanno and Takahiro Yamaguchi used skateboards and pendulums to create “The Senseless Drawing Bot,” a self-propelling device that sprays abstract lines on walls. Meanwhile, François Xavier Saint Georges used power tools to create “The Roto,” a small, circular machine that prints orbital graphite patterns on flat surfaces. In 2011, Eske Rex, a designer in Copenhagen, built two nine-foot towers to stage a double harmonograph for Milan Design Week. Joseph Griffiths uses exercise bikes. Alex Kiessling uses robot arms. Olafur Eliasson simply vibrates balls, covered in ink, across paper. For centuries, artists have been obsessed with machines that make pictures; today, their ongoing experiments with mechanics, scanners, plotters, and bizarro contraptions have become a core aspect of the studio’s relationship to technology. Part art studio, part history, and part mad-scientist lab with a bit of eBay salvage thrown in, this class is devoted to the exploration of drawing machines and the intent of turning ordinary objects into marvelous machines—goofy gadgets that know how to draw, hopefully, in a way all their own.

This course is an introduction to figure drawing of live male and female models, using a variety of drawing materials, techniques, and artistic approaches. The purpose of the 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. In-class drawing assignments will be supplemented by keynote presentations, video screenings, selected readings, and group critiques.

This course explores the graphic novel as a creative medium, from the intricacies of page layout to panel-to-panel transitions, text-to-image relationships, time mapping, and other innovations of the form. Designed for both beginning and advanced creators from all disciplines, students may work on creative projects or written analysis—but everyone will try the visual form. You will need a notebook, journal, or sketchbook of some sort for ongoing short assignments. Artists surveyed include Auster, Barry, Bechtel, Kuper, Madden, McCloud, Pekar, Ware, and others. No prior drawing experience is necessary.

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 by 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 that builds on introductory painting skills. Students will be given 10 specific prompts, which will lead them to generate work that is theirs. Prompts encourage 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 upon the idea of what painting can be. We will view slide lectures and have discussions about historical and contemporary painting. We will engage in explorations and techniques for gathering imagery, with ample studio time and one-on-one and group critiques. As a result of this class, students will produce a group of 10 personal paintings (and sketches, preparatory works, collages, photographs) and gain insight into numerous methods of making paintings. Drawings in this class will often be produced in tandem with paintings in order to solve painting problems and illuminate visual ideas. Revisions are a natural and mandatory part of this class. The majority of our time will be spent in a studio/work mode. The studio is a lab where ideas are worked out and meaning is made. It is important that you are curious, that you allow yourself to travel to unexpected places, and that you do not merely rely on skills and experiences that are already part of you but, rather, challenge yourself to openness and progress. The process will be part critical thinking, part intuition, and in large part physical labor. Working rigorously during class and on homework assignments is required. The goal of this class is to establish the roots of a healthy and generative personal studio practice. You will also strengthen your knowledge of art history and take into consideration the wider cultural, historical, and social contexts within which art is being made today.

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 by 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 that builds on introductory painting skills. Students will be given 10 specific prompts, which will lead them to generate work that is theirs. Prompts encourage 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 upon the idea of what painting can be. We will view slide lectures and have discussions about historical and contemporary painting. We will engage in explorations and techniques for gathering imagery, with ample studio time and one-on-one and group critiques. As a result of this class, students will produce a group of 10 personal paintings (and sketches, preparatory works, collages, photographs) and gain insight into numerous methods of making paintings. Drawings in this class will often be produced in tandem with paintings in order to solve painting problems and illuminate visual ideas. Revisions are a natural and mandatory part of this class. The majority of our time will be spent in a studio/work mode. The studio is a lab where ideas are worked out and meaning is made. It is important that you are curious, that you allow yourself to travel to unexpected places, and that you do not merely rely on skills and experiences that are already part of you but, rather, challenge yourself to openness and progress. The process will be part critical thinking, part intuition, and in large part physical labor. Working rigorously during class and on homework assignments is required. The goal of this class is to establish the roots of a healthy and generative personal studio practice. You will also strengthen your knowledge of art history and take into consideration the wider cultural, historical, and social contexts within which art is being made today.

This is a two-credit class in which we will explore the process of collage as a method for creating dynamic compositions. Collage is a way to communicate complex emotions, layered ideas, non-linear 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 a 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 the course, 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 we will reference are stained-glass windows, quilts, tiles, mail art, 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 limited to, painting, drawing, and collage and open to video, animation, sculpture, and performance. We will examine how artists operate as consumers, 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, Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Pope.L, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Janine Antoni, Suzanne Lacy, Aki Sasamoto, and Anna Halprin, to name a few. Reviewing dialogues and movements introducing performance art—such as sculpture, installation art, protest art, social media, video art, happenings, dada, comedy, sound art, graphic notation, scores, collaboration, and movement—students will be able to relate the form and function of performance art through research, workshopping ideas, experimentation, improvisation, and movement, 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, 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.

In the past 75 years, our understandings of the photographic image have changed utterly: A simplistic belief in the image as a truth-conveying artifact of a real moment or object is deeply suspect and perhaps archaic. With these changes in understanding have come different usages of the lens-based image or light-based image (that might not even involve a lens) in art intended to function within the gallery or museum or book or digital space. The plurality of approaches and results is overwhelming and does not lend itself to simple categorization for study. And so, this is a course designed to provide a survey introduction to the would-be practitioner through a deeper study of exemplars: noted figures whose work has stood out…so far. Of course, the designation of someone as an exemplar runs the risk of new canonization; so, the exemplars to be studied each semester in this two-semester course will be democratically determined. Approximately three weeks will be spent on slideshows, presentations by faculty and students, and review of student work in class criticism—all inspired by the exemplar culled from a list that will include (in no particular order): La Toya Ruby Frazier, Alfredo Jaar, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz, Carrie Mae Weems, William Eggelston, Robert Adams, Justine Kurland, Lucas Blalock, and others.

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.

This class will focus on the technical and conceptual underpinnings of black-and-white photography. Students will learn how to use the 35mm film camera and how to print in the darkroom. We will cover a wide range of technical topics, including exposure, film development, printing on RC and fiber paper, and split-filter printing. In-class lectures will introduce students to historical and contemporary practitioners, with a focus on voices and perspectives that have too often been sidelined in photo history curricula. Weekly shooting assignments will challenge students to engage with the complexities of the medium and to think beyond traditional modes of presentation. Reading and writing assignments will supplement studio work. In addition to art criticism, we will read fiction and poetry by writers such as Elena Ferrante, Rebecca Solnit, and Jorie Graham. Some of the guiding questions for our class will include: How can we use photography, the indexical medium, to investigate what we don’t understand? How can making images teach us about the people and places closest to us? And how can printing and installation choices support our artistic arguments? At the end of the semester, each student will present a body of work on a topic of their choice. This class is open to beginners.

How do we tell the story of a relationship through pictures? How can photography express interpersonal dynamics in a way that words cannot? In this course, students will develop a body of work about a relationship or set of relationships. There will be an emphasis on consistent project development, with weekly critiques, readings, and written reflections. Some of the themes we will consider include the complexities of closeness, interpersonal power dynamics, identity within a group, community archives, and the role of narrative in relationships. We will look at artists who draw on formats like the family archive, the diary, and the confessional as we discuss editing, sequencing, photographic voice and project structure. Independent studio work will be complemented by technical demonstrations on image editing and printing in the digital lab. In addition, we will focus on how to write an artist statement. Readings from various fields—including psychoanalysis, poetry, and art history—will provide a conceptual framework for the photographic process. Some of the artists we will look at include Elle Perez, Pao Houa Her, Kate Ovaska, Jacolby Satterwhite, Ka-Man Tse, Clifford Prince King, Maria Antelman, Genesis Baez, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya.

In this hybrid lecture-studio class, we will study reality television as a visual and cultural phenomenon. Why has this format gained ever-increasing traction in our culture? How do reality shows enforce or subvert our understanding of popular forms like the hero’s journey or the fairytale? How do they reflect our values and needs as a society? Starting with a history of the genre, we will consider topics like cyberfeminism, gendered performance, the influencer economy, and evolving notions of privacy. We will discuss how reality TV can provide a script or structure for artistic work. Students will be encouraged to explore a variety of media and approaches, as they engage in their own projects. Writings by Legacy Russell, Donna Haraway, Naomi Fry, and Coco Fusco will create a basis for ongoing studio work. Some of the artists we will look at include Sophia Narrett, Casey Jane Ellison, Penelope Umbrico, Pamela Chen, Christine Wang, and Tony Cokes.

Some 60 or 70 years ago, the idea of art as a comfort to middle- and upper-class tastes and values—more or less a visual soporific to be occasionally consumed, as needed—began to come under assault. The methodologies of the Fluxus Movement, the happenings of the ’60s, and various conceptual practices of the ’70s provided a ground from which artists such as Hans Haacke or Neo Rauch could make work that was critical of prevailing economic or political realities. In 1971, when a pointed artwork by Haacke caused the Guggenheim Museum to cancel his retrospective, the then-director of the museum wrote to Haacke to say that the institution’s policies “exclude active engagement toward social or political ends.” Unfortunately for the museum, a constantly expanding and ever-more vital ocean of such work has ensued. Using Nato Thompson’s Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century as our text, we will examine the work of artists whose work has intentionally called for a different social or political order. Exemplars to be studied will include Francis Alys, David Hammons, Alfredo Jaar, Barbara Kruger, Suzanne Lacy, Ana Mendieta, Adrian Piper, Pussy Riot, Martha Rosler, Doris Salcedo, Carolee Schneemann, Felix Gonzalez Torres, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Ai Weiwei, and Fred Wilson, to name but a very few. In the beginning of the semester, students will respond to readings, class discussions, and prompts with artworks that relate to the issues at hand. As the semester progresses, students will also work on a conference project that is borne of their own independent concerns.

Students in this studio course will acquire a variety of traditional and experimental intaglio techniques informed by contemporary, nontoxic printmaking practices. While instilling basic etching skills, the class will also strengthen individual capacity for creative image development. As course work and demonstrations create technical frameworks from which to understand this historic medium, students will be encouraged to integrate and interrogate their own creative processes. Group critiques will create opportunities to expand critical insight in the visual arts, both formally and conceptually.

This course is an opening foray into the possibilities of painterly printmaking and experimental processes that merge printmaking with painting and drawing. Students will investigate a wide range of possibilities offered by monoprint techniques and will experiment with inks and paints, stencils, multiple plates, and images altered in sequence. The course will also cover fundamentals such as basic drawing and color mixing. As a means to explore an individual idea, students will begin to develop a method to investigate meaning, or content, through the techniques of painterly 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, film clips and video screenings, group critiques, homework projects, and visits to artist studios.

This course is designed to introduce students to a range of relief printing techniques while also assisting students in developing their own visual imagery through the language of printmaking. Students will work with linoleum and woodblock materials. Students will develop drawing skills through the printmaking medium and experiment with value structure, composition, mark making, and interaction of color. 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. Course objectives will include becoming familiar with using printing equipment, printing an edition, critically discussing one’s work, and developing a process of visual storytelling. The course will be supplemented by technical demonstrations, critiques, field trips, and keynote presentations.

With a variety of print media at their disposal, experienced printmaking students will use this course to support their ongoing studio investigations. Students’ own creative inquiries will direct relevant technical demonstrations; potential media may include monoprinting, etching, relief, intaglio, and screenprinting, among others. Students will work across techniques to individualize and refine their creative output, with attention toward printmaking in the expanded field. Discussions and critiques will offer theoretical and historical context for analysis.

In this fast-paced course, students will use a variety of prompts from which to self-publish zines and relevant printed ephemera. Lectures, field trips, and readings will provide insight into the history and politics of the medium. The course will involve relatively few technical demonstrations, with a focus on spirited creative output. Students will share their work in group discussions and critiques, developing the critical vocabulary to guide their own aesthetic and conceptual pursuits.

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, 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.

By adopting creative reuse strategies in art-making practices, we can transform everyday objects, remnants, and trash into treasures. When researching a common object’s history, its use, circulation, and disposal, we see the devastating consequences of extractive practices and overconsumption on our planetary health. How can we, instead, use our junk and leftover scraps to hold memory, tell stories, and evoke regenerative possibilities? While salvaging and repurposing materials, students explore innovative ways to infuse personal meaning, cultural significance, and ecological urgency in their artwork. The course is structured around assignments, hands-on experimentation, research, and field trips. Students will develop a conference project that gives discards a second life.

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.

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?”

The course will guide students in navigating the complexity of working in the public realm. The class explores methodologies and precedents for how artists translate their concepts, research, materials, processes, and scale into proposals for public works that respond to the needs of place and community. How can your work be in direct dialogue with its surroundings—physically, historically, and metaphorically—to activate the site? How can art mobilize the public into civic engagement, social change, and ecological repair? Through intentionality, projects engage audiences in participation, collaboration, or even disruption. Students will propose and develop a conference project with regular feedback, critique, and support from faculty and peers.

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 do we notice the traces of what’s no longer here? How do surfaces and forms bear the lingering presence of human use? This course will consider the artistic and philosophical concept of absence in its many forms: vanishing, dematerialization, disappearance, nothingness, forgetting, loss, and grief. Through lectures, readings, and studio exercises, we will experiment with multiple artistic and conceptual frameworks for bearing witness to acts of removal, erasure, and temporality. The class will explore how these strategies can, in fact, bring more visibility to suppressed bodies, histories, and ecologies. Some of the artists whose works we will consider include Gordon Matta-Clark, Félix González-Torres, Ana Mendieta, David Hammonds, Doris Salcedo, Rachel Whiteread, Walid Raad, Do Hoh Suh, Danh Võ, Janine Antoni, and Stephanie Syujuco, among others.

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.

Images wavered in the sunlit trim of appliances, something always moving, a brightness flying, so much to know in the world.—Don Delillo, Libra

A few cartoons lead to cataclysmic events in Europe. A photograph printed in a newspaper moves a solitary reader. A snapshot posted on the internet leads to dreams of fanciful places. Memories of a past year haunt us like ghosts. What each of these occurrences has in common is that they all entail the force of images in our lives, whether these images are visual or acoustic in nature, made by hand or machine, circulated by word of mouth, or simply imagined. In this seminar, we will consider the role that images play in the lives of people in various settings throughout the world. In delving into terrains at once actual and virtual, we will develop an understanding of how people throughout the world create, use, circulate, and perceive images and how such efforts tie into ideas and practices of sensory perception, time, memory, affect, imagination, sociality, history, politics, and personal and collective imaginings. Through these engagements, we will reflect on the fundamental human need for images, the complicated politics and ethics of images, aesthetic and cultural sensibilities, dynamics of time and memory, the intricate play between the actual and the imagined, and the circulation of digital images in an age of globalization. Readings will include a number of writings in anthropology, art history, philosophy, psychology, cultural studies, and critical theory. Images will be drawn from photographs, paintings, sculptures, drawings, films, videos, graffiti, religion, rituals, tattoos, inscriptions, novels, poems, road signs, advertisements, dreams, fantasies, phantasms, and any number of fabulations in the worlds in which we live and imagine.

Transnational migration, human-animal relations, and American community life are but a few of the cultural realities that anthropologists have effectively studied and written about. This is no easy task, given the substantial difficulties involved in understanding and portraying the concerns, activities, and lifeworlds other than one’s own. Despite these challenges, ethnographic writing is generally considered one of the best ways to convey a nuanced and contextually rich understanding of people’s experiences in life. To gain an informed sense of the methods, challenges, and benefits of ethnographic writing, students in this course will try their hands at a concerted work of ethnographic writing. Along with undertaking a series of ethnographic writing exercises, students will be encouraged to craft a fully-realized piece of ethnographic writing that conveys something of the features and dynamics of a particular world in lively, accurate, and comprehensive terms. Along the way, and with the help of anthropological writings that are either exceptional or experimental in nature, we will collectively think through some of the most important features of the craft of ethnographic writing from the use of field notes and interviews, the interlacing of theory and data, the author’s voice in ethnographic prose, and the ethical and political responsibilities that come with any attempt to understand and portray the lives of others. This seminar will work best for students who already have a rich body of ethnographic research materials to work with, such that they can quickly delve into the intricacies of writing about their chosen subject.

Art and culture have long offered ways for people minoritized on the basis of gender and/or sexuality to both represent and come to understand who they are. But as representations of LGBTQ+ lives have coalesced around particular terms and, more recently, have left the largely coded language of the closet, they have come to embrace increasingly complex and intersectional forms of representation that often exceed—even as they rely on—our extant visions of queer and trans cultures, communities, and subjects. Beginning in the late 19th century—when the categories as we know them today began to coalesce—and focusing on, but not limited to, Western art, this course explores a set of histories both within and beyond the art historical canon.

This course looks at the shifting role of monuments in Western culture, from a public representation of the values of dominant culture to one that challenges what Kara Walker calls the “monumental misrememberings” attendant to most historical monuments. We will investigate the role that monuments play in forming—and disrupting—the stories that we tell ourselves about history. Attending to narratives of both domination and minoritization and foregrounding work by Black, Indigenous, and queer artists, this course reaches across continents and back centuries and will involve a field trip to experience monumental forms in and around the City of New York.

This course explores the powerful architecture, sculpture, and painting styles that lie at the heart of the creation of Europe and the idea of the West. We will use a number of strategies to explore how expressive narrative painting and sculpture and new monumental architectural styles were engaged in the formation of a common European identity and uncover, as well, the artistic vestiges of diverse groups and cultures that challenge that uniform vision. These are arts that chronicle deep social struggles between classes, intense devotion through pilgrimage, the rise of cities and universities, and movements that could both advocate genocide and nurture enormous creativity—in styles both flamboyant and austere—growing from places as diverse as castles and rural monasteries to Gothic cathedrals. The course will explore those aspects of expressive visual language that link works of art to social history, the history of ideas, and political ideology.

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.

In this course, we will trace the history of Paris from its foundation until World War I, working from the visual arts that both defined and emanated from this remarkable city. We will explore works of art, architecture, and urban design as documents of history, of social and cultural values, and of the history of ideas. Our readings and discussions will lead us to interactions between the arts and the history, fashion, religion, science, and literature of Paris. Student projects will chart these relationships graphically and construct, in both individual and group projects, a cultural history of Paris from Roman Lutetia to the City of Lights.

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. This course will include field trips and visiting speakers, and students will also contribute writing to an exhibition planned for Spring 2024. Because this course considers the historiography of art, some previous course work in art history is expected; but with its broad coverage, this course will have something for everyone regardless of their background.

How have artists visualized the climate crisis from the vantage point of environmental justice? How can art help us understand the past and shape discourses for the future? This course looks closely at modern and contemporary art through the lenses of the environment, ecology, and climate justice. We will ask how Euro-American artists portrayed ideologies of settler colonialism through the genre of landscape and explore how Indigenous artists have defined place, land, and embodiment as counter histories to a dominant settler norm. We will take up the sanitization of enslavement through landscape painting and consider contemporary representations of reparative landscapes by Black artists working in the wake of enslavement, including artworks that engage the effects of climate crisis on BIPOC communities. We will look at the aesthetics and politics of representations of climate change and what it means to visualize petrochemical and extractivist sites and the communities impacted by them. We will consider artists engaging in forms of attention, slowness, indigenous futurity, and care work in dialogue with a Heimbold Gallery exhibition on climate justice and care. This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster, with a focus on environmental and climate justice and a strong involvement with local organizations and field trips. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Conference projects will entail writing a long-form research paper or presenting your research in a digital humanities format.

This small seminar will provide students with the opportunity to engage in community-based work at the Hudson River Museum. Much of our course work will be held on-site at the Hudson River Museum, where we’ll work together on a series of curatorial and public programming projects related to the Community and Partnerships Gallery. Students should have previous experience working in an arts or nonprofit setting, as much of our course work will be directly aimed at engaging the local community with the Hudson River Museum’s exhibitions, collections, and events. Ultimately, students will gain firsthand experience working in the fields of curation and community engagement, as well as in events planning.

Students will enroll in a combination of component classes in dance, including an academic study in dance, improvisation, and a selection of movement practice classes at the appropriate level and with various instructors throughout the week. Together, these studies will make up the First-Year Studies in Dance. (Please refer to the component class descriptions.) The Improvisation course, taught by John Jasperse in the fall, is a required component for all FYS in Dance students. This course will include other students at the College and the entire FYS cohort; it is the heart of FYS in Dance. Here, we will explore making dance, starting with real-time composition in improvisation and progressing through the year to create short pieces of choreography in the spring. Students will be dancing in the studio every day. Throughout the fall semester, we’ll meet occasionally in sessions that bring us into exchanges with other creative arts-based FYS cohorts. Students will also meet in individual conferences with John Jasperse each week throughout the fall semester and in biweekly conferences in the spring semester to develop individual conference projects based on their particular interests and the materials explored in their classes.

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, graduates and upper-class undergraduates 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. This 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.

Throughout the year, we will use movement as a powerful vehicle for experiencing, in detail, our profoundly adaptable musculoskeletal anatomy. In the fall semester, students will learn sections of Irene Dowd’s Spirals, a comprehensive warm-up/cool-down for dancing that coordinates all joints and muscles through their fullest range of motion, facilitating study of the musculoskeletal system. In addition to movement practice, drawings are made as part of each week’s lecture (drawing materials provided); problem-solving activities are incorporated throughout the semester. Several short readings and responses will provide opportunities for students to engage primary texts in the field of functional anatomy. In the spring semester, a weekly lecture with definitions, palpation of bony landmarks, and accompanying movement-based activities will support an in-depth understanding of each anatomical component. Development and refinement of technical training, as well as addressing injury prevention and rehabilitation, are central to this semester’s work. Students will be expected to show critical-thinking skills around the concepts presented in class through discussion and written reflection. New perspectives and skills developed in this course will benefit technical development for dancers and movers, as well as provide inspiration in the process of movement invention and composition.

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.

This yoga class is designed with the interests of dancers and theatre students in mind. Various categories of postures will be practiced, with attention to alignment, breath awareness, strength, and flexibility. The physical practice includes seated and standing poses, twists, forward bends and backbends, traditional yogic breathing practices, and short meditations. Emphasis is placed on mindfulness and presence. This approach allows the student to gain tools for reducing stress and addressing unsupportive habits to carry into other aspects of their lives. Attention will be given to the chakra system as a means and metaphor for postural, movement, and character choices. The instructor has a background in dance and object theatre, in addition to various somatically-based practices that she draws upon for designing the classes to meet the individual needs of the class members.

This seminar course will take the form of a screening and small-lecture discussion, designed to provide an overview of auteur animation based on alternative writing and the relationship of form and style to content. We will examine various forms of animated films produced between 1960 and the present, with some time spent on the history and cultural crosscurrents that this work was produced within. The class will survey a wide range of work from a diverse selection of artists, including Oscar Fischinger, Lotte Reiniger, Renske Mijnheer, Stacey Steers, Karen Yasinsky, Adam Beckett, Christine Panushka, Chris Sullivan, William Kindridge, Lius Cook, and many others. The focus of the class is on animated film forms alternative to commercial animation; hand-drawn, cell-painted, cutout, stop-motion, pixilated, puppet, and more recently, CGI independents. In most cases, artists retaining control of their own work—unlike the battery of decision makers in commercial studio systems—will be the guiding factor in selecting work for review. As a class, we will look for aesthetic consequences and structural differences within the auteur system vs. an animation studio’s divisions of labor. All students are expected to fully participate in discussions during class and in conference meetings. Animation production will not be taught in this class; however, a creative conference project in studio arts, creative writing, film, animation, theatre, dance, or music—made at each student’s discretion and on their own—will be required. In addition, students will be expected to complete assigned readings outside of class, to attend biweekly group conferences, and to keep a weekly creative journal.

At a time when digital, three-dimensional space has saturated our visual vocabulary in everything from design and entertainment to gaming, now more than ever it is important to explore the interface of this space and find methods for unlocking its potential. This is an introductory course for Maya, the industry-standard 3D modeling and animation software. Over two semesters, we will learn the fundamental approaches to environment building, 3D modeling, character creation, character rigging, and keyframe animation. This course will also provide a comprehensive understanding of the important process of rendering, using texturing, lighting, and staging. We will explore how all of these processes may culminate in narrative-based animations, alongside how 3D constructions can be exported into everything from film projects to physical media. Great emphasis will be placed on experimentation in navigating between digital and physical processes. Exercises and assignments will be contextualized through lectures and with readings of both historical and contemporary creators in the field.

This course focuses on the fundamentals of animation through the development of 2D character design. The course will introduce students to traditional hand-drawn and digital techniques of frame-by-frame animation, where movement is created through successive, sequential character drawings. Students will learn the principles of animation through character design and visual development. Students will gain knowledge in drawing by engaging with formal spatial concepts in order to create fully-realized animated characters both visually and conceptually. Through the development of character boards, beat boards, and character animation, students will draw and animate human, animal, mechanical, and hybrid figures. Students will learn about body mechanics and motion flow in the development of animated characters through techniques that include walk cycles, rotating forms, transformations, holds, squash and stretch, weight, and resistance. Additional instruction will include techniques in pencil-test animation and lip syncing. Students will research characters in their visual, environmental, psychological, and social aspects to establish a full understanding of characterization. Examples of animations illustrating frame-by-frame character movement will be screened regularly. The course will conclude with a final project, for which students will develop, conceptualize, and produce a short animated character study. ToonBoom animation software Harmony will be the primary software incorporated in this course and will be provided to each student through the Animation Lab. Information and skills established in this class can be used to improve basic drawing and animation proficiency, establish fundamentals for digital animation production, create and enhance an animation portfolio, and develop tangible skills for producing graphic novels or a character outline for an interactive media project.

Animation is the magic of giving life to objects and materials through motion. Whether through linear storytelling or conceptual drive, a sense of wonder is achieved with materials, movement, and transformation. Combining digital processes with handmade techniques, this class helps students hone their visual skills to create short works that communicate through simplicity. The emphasis of the class is on process and concept, starting with a series of workshops intended to enhance student's skills in idea generation, concept development, and material animation techniques. The class includes instruction in a variety of undercamera, stop-motion processes, including: cutout paper animation, sequential drawing, sand, aftereffects motion graphics, simple object animation, puppet performance, and green-screen live performance for stop motion. All aspects of progressive movement are covered, especially the laying out of ideas through time and the establishment of convincing motion. The course includes instruction in basic design techniques, material manipulation, movement and timing, color, and idea development. A brief foundational study of the history of experimental animation is introduced through viewing the animated film work of artists from around the globe. During the semester, each student will complete five short, animated films ranging in length from 15 seconds to two minutes. Students are required to provide their own external media hard drive and to purchase some additional art materials. Software instruction includes AfterEffects, Adobe Premier, and Dragonframe. The aim of this course is to explore freely with materials in order to trailblaze fresh narrative and aesthetic possibilities in animation. Final projects may be executed as animated films, hybrid films, or animated/hybrid video projections for installation or the stage. Collaborations with students in music, dance, or theatre may be established at the incentive of individual class participants.

In film, while significant attention is inevitably paid to the director and his/her vision, the actualization of any project—whether documentary, fiction, or hybrid—rests in the ability of the producer to realize and even enhance a director’s vision all the way from development through to distribution. The job of the producer is to support a project’s creative direction and to make the project happen on schedule, on budget, within legal compliance, and toward the desired educational, distribution, impact or even commercial goals of the film. It is also to ensure a production environment informed and dictated by inclusive, safe, and ethical practices. In an ideal scenario, the director and producer work hand-in-hand, constantly weighing creative concerns against producing realities. Producing for Film and Television is a foundation course, designed to ground students in the fundamentals of the producing craft. The course will be organized around a semester-long project—the execution of a proposal (treatment, rough schedule, and budget) for a short film. In this way, students will experience firsthand the role of the producer through the development stage of a project—from the germ of an idea to its research, development, and final proposal presentation and pitch. While students will experience producing firsthand as it relates to their own project, instruction will extend the applicability of lessons learned to best filmmaking practices and include recent and current examples or conversations underway in the US film industry. Watching, screening, and analyzing films from a producing lens will be an ongoing aspect of the course. Although the “hard skills” of producing are the core of this class—budgeting, scheduling, and fundraising—the softer skills of producing in terms of team building, clear communications, and time management will be ongoing themes, as will issues of accountability, inclusion, safety, and representation. Ultimately, the producer is accountable to many people—the subjects of your film and the people with whom you work, including funders, executive producers, distributors, and others. An understanding of a whole panoply of skills are paramount to the role of producer, to your success in this class, and to your future as a filmmaker if that is your focus. Conferences will be held in small groups.

This course focuses on the art of storyboard construction as the preproduction stage and previsualization for graphics, film/video, and animation. Students will be introduced to storyboard strategies, exploring visual concepts such as shot types, continuity, pacing, transitions, and sequencing into visual communication. Both classical and experimental techniques for creating storyboards will be covered. Emphasis will be placed on production of storyboard drawings, both by hand and digitally, to negotiate sequential image development and establish shot-by-shot progression, staging, frame composition, editing, and continuity in film and other media. Instruction will concentrate primarily on drawing from thumbnail sketches through final presentation storyboards and animatics. The final project for this class will be the production by each student of a full presentation storyboard and a low-res animatic in a combined visual, audio, and text presentation format. Knowledge of storyboards and animatics from this class can be used for idea development and presentation of your project to collaborators, pitching projects, professional agencies, and, most importantly, for you—the maker. Storyboard Pro software will be used throughout this course.

This course will explore the preproduction aspects of animation concepts and visual development. Students will gain knowledge in character development, background environments, object and prop design, flora and fauna, scene building, color keys, aerial mapping, and techniques for digital painting. Through the development of compositional painting, model sheets, title cards, and animatics, students will draw and conceptualize spaces, characters, and props that are visually harmonious and consistent in form and function. Students will research and produce narrative outlines that include visual and environmental components to establish a full understanding of preproduction for animated projects. Students will “worldbuild” concepts by researching and designing a thematic approach to specific assignments and projects. Both hand-drawn materials and digital drawing will be used during the semester. Various software will be utilized for character design, background paintings, and concept presentation animatics. The final project for this course will include a fully-developed, multicharacter/environment concept animatic. Knowledge from this course can be used to create and enhance an animation or art portfolio, to establish a concept outline for an interactive media project, and to help in developing a cast of characters and environments for a graphic novel or an animated film. Lab Software: Storyboard Pro, Harmony, Photoshop, illustrator, Final Cut Pro X, After Effects, and/or Premiere, depending on experience and availability. Alternative Technology: iPad with Apple Pen. Microsoft Surface with stylus. Drawing software: Procreate, Fresco, ClipArt Studio, GIMP, Krita, etc. Additional choice of digital drawing software, with instructor’s approval.

In this seminar, we will focus on the tools of digital editing and how they can be used to achieve the filmmaker’s desired artistic results. Weekly assignments will range from editing a simple narrative scene with limited “coverage” to more complicated work editing scenes from feature films, television, and short films. Class discussion will navigate between the ever-changing technical landscape of postproduction to more aesthetic interests that emerge from various readings, including books such as Walter Murch’s In the Blink of an Eye, Bobbie O’Steen’s The Invisible Cut, and Christopher Bowen’s Grammar of the Edit. Technical instruction will focus on media management, import and organization, utilization of keywords and smart collections, basic editing, split editing, sound editing, color correction and color grading, export, and delivery. The class will balance time between step-by-step technical demonstrations and discussion of postproduction topics and techniques, screening, and critique of student work. This is not a “conference” course and has no conference work or individual conference meeting time outside of class. There will be opportunities during class time for individual attention during some class sessions. This course requires no previous editing experience. All footage will be provided.

In this course, you are going to take an idea for a passion project and take the first step in bringing it to life. You will design, execute, and publish a minimum viable project that validates your area of interest, develops your reputation in your interest area, and gives you valuable experience from which to continue moving forward. This type of project will help you to: clearly and concisely communicate your ideas, reflections, and insights; practice pitching your work to new audiences and potential partners and collaborators; build influence in a field or space that is new to you; develop your professional network in a meaningful and intentional way; engage with and activate rockstar mentors on a tangible projec; learn more about yourself, including your values, passions, and purpose; and gain valuable perspective and experience on what it takes to bring ideas to life. You are an ideal fit for this course if you have one or more of the following: an idea for a passion project that you want to bring to life; a business idea that you would like to explore and test; a particular problem that you would like to solve for a specific group of people; an initiative that you want to launch; a personal brand that you want to launch into the world; a specific job for which you want to competitively position yourself.

The perceiving mind is an incarnated mind. —Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1964

Sensory perception is a vital component of the creation and experience of artistic works of all types. In psychology and neuroscience, the investigation of sensory systems has been foundational for our developing understanding of brains, minds, and bodies. Recent work in brain science has moved us beyond the Aristotelian notion of five discrete senses to a view of the senses as more various and interconnected—with each other and with the fundamental psychological processes of perception, attention, emotion, memory, imagination, and judgment. What we call “taste” is a multisensory construction of “flavor” that relies heavily on smell, vision, and touch (mouth feel); “vision” refers to a set of semi-independent streams that specialize in the processing of color, object identity, or spatial layout and movement; “touch” encompasses a complex system of responses to different types of contact with the largest sensory organ—the skin; and “hearing” includes aspects of perception that are thought to be quintessentially human—music and language. Many other sensations are not covered by the standard five: the sense of balance, of body position (proprioception), feelings of pain arising from within the body, and feelings of heat or cold. Perceptual psychologists have suggested that the total count is closer to 17 than five. We will investigate all of these senses, their interactions with each other and their intimate relationships with human emotion, memory, and imagination. Some of the questions that we will address are: Why are smells such potent memory triggers? What can visual art tell us about how the brain works, and vice versa? Why is a caregiver’s touch so vital for psychological development? Why do foods that taste sublime to some people evoke feelings of disgust in others? Do humans have a poor sense of smell? Why does the word “feeling” refer to both bodily sensations and emotions? What makes a song “catchy” or “sticky”? Can humans learn to echolocate like bats? What is the role of body perception in mindfulness meditation? This is a good course for artists who like to think about science and for scientists with a feeling for art. This is a collaborative course, with small-group meetings held weekly in addition to the individual conference meetings held every other week. The main small-group collaborative activity is a sensory lab in which students will have the opportunity to explore their own sensory perceptions in a systematic way, investigating how they relate to language, memory, and emotion. Other group activities include mindful movement and other meditation practices for stress relief and emotional regulation, as well as occasional museum visits if these can be done safely.

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.

Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. —John Berger

Psychologists and neuroscientists have long been interested in measuring and explaining the phenomena of visual perception. In this course, we will study how the visual brain encodes basic aspects of perception—such as color, form, depth, motion, shape, and space—and how they are organized into coherent percepts, or gestalts. Our main goal will be to explore how the study of visual neuroscience and art can inform each other. One of our guides in these explorations will be the groundbreaking gestalt psychologist Rudolf Arnheim, who was a pioneer in the psychology of art. The more recent and equally innovative text by the neuroscientist Eric Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, will provide our entry into the subject of neuroaesthetics. Throughout our visual journey, we will seek connections between perceptual phenomena and what is known about brain processing of visual information. This is a course for people who enjoy reflecting on why we see things as we do. It should hold particular interest for students of the visual arts who are curious about scientific explanations of the phenomena that they explore in their art, as well as students of the brain who want to study an application of visual neuroscience. The course format is a small lecture (30 people), with one lecture and one small seminar (10 people) every week.

All of us today grow up in a technology-rich environment, which is not only different from the one we grew up in 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 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.

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, Jung, 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 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 storytime, during which two students will share childhood favorites.

Using US-based artist Sarah Sze’s remark, “Great protests are great art works,” as its inspiration, this seminar explores the relationship between art, collective ideas, and social change within the context of social movements. We begin by discussing the relationship between aesthetics and the social sciences, focusing on a sociological notion of art as a collective and inherently social process. Our study includes the work of social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Theodor Adorno, whose works not only illuminate how public culture communicates collective ideas but also how the latter is imbricated with existing power structures and social hierarchies. These critical frameworks will help us investigate the modern art world, exploring how artistic institutions and movements are sites that both perpetuate and resist authoritative ideologies. In the second half of the semester, students will use these frameworks to explore the role of culture and art within collective social movements. We will investigate several questions, including: What defines a social movement and what social conditions produce social movements? How are art and aesthetics used within social movements to communicate ideas and strengthen communities? In what ways do movements deploy art as a form of social resistance or authority? Our discussions will particularly attend to grassroots movements within historically marginalized communities. Throughout the semester, students will also learn about the benefits of visual methodologies and how social scholars use them to understand collective culture and social change. For conference, students will select a specific social movement, exploring how art is deployed within the movement for collective resistance or control. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) critical analysis of an artistic institution, comparative analysis of how different contexts of resistance deploy shared artistic mediums, or the use of art within a given movement over time. While class discussions will primarily focus on the United States, students are also invited to explore the relationship between art and social movements in other social locations.

Using US-based artist Sarah Sze’s remark, “Great protests are great art works,” as its inspiration, this seminar explores the relationship between art, collective ideas, and social change within the context of social movements. We begin by discussing the relationship between aesthetics and the social sciences, focusing on a sociological notion of art as a collective and inherently social process. Our study includes the work of social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Theodor Adorno, whose works not only illuminate how public culture communicates collective ideas but also how the latter is imbricated with existing power structures and social hierarchies. These critical frameworks will help us investigate the modern art world, exploring how artistic institutions and movements are sites that both perpetuate and resist authoritative ideologies. In the second half of the semester, students will use these frameworks to explore the role of culture and art within collective social movements. We will investigate several questions, including: What defines a social movement and what social conditions produce social movements? How are art and aesthetics used within social movements to communicate ideas and strengthen communities? In what ways do movements deploy art as a form of social resistance or authority? Our discussions will particularly attend to grassroots movements within historically marginalized communities. Throughout the semester, students will also learn about the benefits of visual methodologies and how social scholars use them to understand collective culture and social change. For conference, students will select a specific social movement, exploring how art is deployed within the movement for collective resistance or control. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) critical analysis of an artistic institution, comparative analysis of how different contexts of resistance deploy shared artistic mediums, or the use of art within a given movement over time. While class discussions will primarily focus on the United States, students are also invited to explore the relationship between art and social movements in other social locations.

The concept of space will serve as the point of departure for this course. Space can be viewed in relation to the (human) body, social relations and social structures, and the physical environment. In this seminar, we will examine the material (social, political, and economic) and metaphorical (symbolic and representational) dimensions of spatial configurations in urban settings. In our analysis, we will address the historical and shifting connotations of urban space and urban life. We will then turn our attention to spatial relations within urban space(s). Here, emphasis will be placed on practices and processes whereby social “space” is created, gendered, re-visioned. “Space” will no longer be seen simply as physical space but also in terms of the construction of meanings that impact our use of, and relations in, both physical and social settings. While economic factors will continue to be of significance to our analysis, we will emphasize extra-economic relations and constructs—including power, gender, and sexuality. The focus will also shift, as the semester proceeds, from macro-analyses to an examination of everyday life, including the significance of public-private distinctions. In the latter part of the seminar, particular attention will be paid to attempts by scholars and activists to open up space both theoretically and concretely. Although the analytical questions at the core of this seminar lend themselves to an analysis of any city, our focus in class will be largely, although not exclusively, on New York City. Students are encouraged to examine the relevance of our readings to other spaces, including places in which they have lived. In their conference work, too, students may elect to study space and place making in contexts and with respect to themes that are of particular interest to them.

This is a course about sports as practice. "Practice" is used here in a multiple sense. As an embodied activity, sporting practice is felt and experienced in and through the body, which is its primary but not sole “habitus”—a term the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu elaborated upon in his use of the term “cultural capital.” Taking the sporting body and Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (taste, habits, skills, dispositions) as our point of departure, we will examine sports and their habitation of worlds that reach far beyond the individual (body) in both time and space. We will examine sports along various axes: as a collective and/or individuated activity; as a source of leisure and recreation; as a source of profitable employment; as a site of identity, as urban and nation-building projects; and as a space that engenders transnational mobilities and interconnections as well as ruptures. In its commoditized contemporary form, sports are more often than not controlled by big money and/or the state and are part and parcel of what Debord refers to as the “society of the spectacle,” a site of production, consumption, and entertainment. The complex relationship between sports as experienced through the body and as a set of disciplinary practices will allow us to think through the relation between the individual, the collective, and institutionalized powe—linking those to questions of body politics. Taking the internal dynamics and meaning of sports seriously, we will engage sports as a contradictory field, as both a productive space and a space of consumption. Our readings will include scholarly works, sports journalism, films, documentaries, and other primary sources. Possible conference topics include sports and politics; analysis of particular sports events (e.g., the Olympics, women’s basketball, the World Cup); (auto)biographies and/or oral histories of athletes; sports and protest; “fitness,” health, and the body; gender, race, sexuality, (dis)ability and sports; nationalism(s), national “styles,” and sports; and the phenomenology of sports.

This is a two-credit class in which we will explore the process of collage as a method for creating dynamic compositions. Collage is a way to communicate complex emotions, layered ideas, non-linear 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 a 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 the course, 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 we will reference are stained-glass windows, quilts, tiles, mail art, book art, as well as artists who have used/use collage in their paintings/drawings/sculpture today.

This is a project-based painting intensive that builds on introductory painting skills. Students will be given 10 specific prompts, which will lead them to generate work that is theirs. Prompts encourage 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 upon the idea of what painting can be. We will view slide lectures and have discussions about historical and contemporary painting. We will engage in explorations and techniques for gathering imagery, with ample studio time and one-on-one and group critiques. As a result of this class, students will produce a group of 10 personal paintings (and sketches, preparatory works, collages, photographs) and gain insight into numerous methods of making paintings. Drawings in this class will often be produced in tandem with paintings in order to solve painting problems and illuminate visual ideas. Revisions are a natural and mandatory part of this class. The majority of our time will be spent in a studio/work mode. The studio is a lab where ideas are worked out and meaning is made. It is important that you are curious, that you allow yourself to travel to unexpected places, and that you do not merely rely on skills and experiences that are already part of you but, rather, challenge yourself to openness and progress. The process will be part critical thinking, part intuition, and in large part physical labor. Working rigorously during class and on homework assignments is required. The goal of this class is to establish the roots of a healthy and generative personal studio practice. You will also strengthen your knowledge of art history and take into consideration the wider cultural, historical, and social contexts within which art is being made today.

This is a project-based painting intensive that builds on introductory painting skills. Students will be given 10 specific prompts, which will lead them to generate work that is theirs. Prompts encourage 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 upon the idea of what painting can be. We will view slide lectures and have discussions about historical and contemporary painting. We will engage in explorations and techniques for gathering imagery, with ample studio time and one-on-one and group critiques. As a result of this class, students will produce a group of 10 personal paintings (and sketches, preparatory works, collages, photographs) and gain insight into numerous methods of making paintings. Drawings in this class will often be produced in tandem with paintings in order to solve painting problems and illuminate visual ideas. Revisions are a natural and mandatory part of this class. The majority of our time will be spent in a studio/work mode. The studio is a lab where ideas are worked out and meaning is made. It is important that you are curious, that you allow yourself to travel to unexpected places, and that you do not merely rely on skills and experiences that are already part of you but, rather, challenge yourself to openness and progress. The process will be part critical thinking, part intuition, and in large part physical labor. Working rigorously during class and on homework assignments is required. The goal of this class is to establish the roots of a healthy and generative personal studio practice. You will also strengthen your knowledge of art history and take into consideration the wider cultural, historical, and social contexts within which art is being made today.

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, 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.

By adopting creative reuse strategies in art-making practices, we can transform everyday objects, remnants, and trash into treasures. When researching a common object’s history, its use, circulation, and disposal, we see the devastating consequences of extractive practices and overconsumption on our planetary health. How can we, instead, use our junk and leftover scraps to hold memory, tell stories, and evoke regenerative possibilities? While salvaging and repurposing materials, students explore innovative ways to infuse personal meaning, cultural significance, and ecological urgency in their artwork. The course is structured around assignments, hands-on experimentation, research, and field trips. Students will develop a conference project that gives discards a second life.

How do we notice the traces of what’s no longer here? How do surfaces and forms bear the lingering presence of human use? This course will consider the artistic and philosophical concept of absence in its many forms: vanishing, dematerialization, disappearance, nothingness, forgetting, loss, and grief. Through lectures, readings, and studio exercises, we will experiment with multiple artistic and conceptual frameworks for bearing witness to acts of removal, erasure, and temporality. The class will explore how these strategies can, in fact, bring more visibility to suppressed bodies, histories, and ecologies. Some of the artists whose works we will consider include Gordon Matta-Clark, Félix González-Torres, Ana Mendieta, David Hammonds, Doris Salcedo, Rachel Whiteread, Walid Raad, Do Hoh Suh, Danh Võ, Janine Antoni, and Stephanie Syujuco, among others.

The course will guide students in navigating the complexity of working in the public realm. The class explores methodologies and precedents for how artists translate their concepts, research, materials, processes, and scale into proposals for public works that respond to the needs of place and community. How can your work be in direct dialogue with its surroundings—physically, historically, and metaphorically—to activate the site? How can art mobilize the public into civic engagement, social change, and ecological repair? Through intentionality, projects engage audiences in participation, collaboration, or even disruption. Students will propose and develop a conference project with regular feedback, critique, and support from faculty and peers.

In this FYS class, we will study the art, the mystery, and the power of poetry. In our first semester, we will learn to pay attention. We will become intimate with the skills of the art: with the sounds of sense, the way a word feels in the mouth, the where-it-is in a sentence (diction, syntax). We will wonder: What is a line of poetry? What part does silence play in a poem? How is poetry experienced out loud—or read silently to oneself? Why use a metaphor? How important are forms? How do we know when a poem is “finished”? How do we write into what we don’t know? We will read the work of many published poets. We will read essays, watch films, take field trips, and meet in weekly poetry dates and in conferences. You will write a poem every week and bring it to class to share; then, you will revise each poem that you bring. At the end of the first semester, you will collect your revised poems into a chapbook. Expect to spend a great deal of time every week reading the poems written by other people—both dead and living. Expect to read the poems of your class community. Expect to spend time dwelling with your own writing—without preoccupations. In our second semester, we will concentrate on ecopoetry, poetry that concerns itself with the living world and the current planetary emergency. We will read ecopoems in order to come to an understanding of the possibilities. Each of you will choose a topic to learn about (an animal? a river? a forest?) and write into that knowledge, into a new understanding. At the end of the second semester, you will collect your poems into a chapbook. We will create a community together of trust and care so that every writer feels free to share work. We will delight in each other’s voices, in reading together, in wandering into the power of poetry. And we will have a wonderful time. This course will have biweekly conferences. During conferences, we will check on your well-being, go over your recent poems and revisions, review your responses to your reading of weekly poetry packets, and take a look at your weekly observations.

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.

The use of the episode is both ancient and modern and is central to storytelling in everything from The Arabian Nights to telenovelas, from The Canterbury Tales to Netflix, from comics to true-crime podcasts. Episodes differ from chapters in a novel and from short stories and can have many changing characters and plot lines. Episodes are disinclined toward resolution but love time, hunks of it, and do well depicting both the daily, including work, and the historical. We will be reading, looking at, discussing, and writing episodes in several forms and, for conference work, writing or rewriting six or so related episodes supported by small brainstorming conference groups as we go forward.

Whatever short form you are interested in— episode, story, reflection, memoir, essay, tale—you will find in this course, both for reading and writing. We will talk about how different forms open the door to different takes on experience and how content or change can become more or less accessible in different forms. We will write 100-word pieces each week to learn to edit ourselves and to search through our minds for what’s there. We will practice pacing, dialogue, scene, portraiture. We will discuss what our favored forms say about our lives and the people in them. We will be writing and reading short pieces all semester, then editing, redrafting, and arranging them for conference work.

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.

This course is for students who want to break free from the conventions of the traditional essay and memoir and discover a broader range of narrative and stylistic possibilities available to nonfiction writers. During the first half of the semester, students will read and discuss examples of formally innovative nonfiction by writers such as Claudia Rankine, Nathalie Sarraute and George W. S. Trow. These readings will serve as the inspiration for brief assignments that will be read aloud and discussed each week. During the second half of the semester, students will workshop longer pieces that they will have written in consultation with the instructor as a part of their conference work. Required texts: The Next American Essay, edited by John D’Agata, and Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra. All other readings are in the PDF packet.

This is a course for creative writers who are interested in exploring nonfiction as an art form. We will focus on reading and interpreting outside work—essays, articles, and journalism by some of our best writers—in order to understand what good nonfiction is and how it is created. During the first part of the semester, writing will be comprised mostly of exercises and short pieces aimed at putting into practice what is being illuminated in the readings; in the second half of the semester, students will create longer, formal essays to be presented in workshop.

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.