Courses

This course provides an introduction to modes of vision and the historical impact of visual images, visual structures, and visual space on culture, communication, and politics. It examines all aspects of culture that communicate through visual means, including 20th-century visual technologies—photography, cinema, video, etc., and their historical corollaries. The production and consumption of images, objects, and events is studied in diverse cultures. Students develop the critical skills necessary to appreciate how the approaches that define visual studies complicate traditional models of defining and analyzing art objects.

Full details for ARTH 2000 - Introduction to Visual Studies

This course explores Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) knowledge and its application across the disciplines and through time. In particular, it offers a glimpse into Cornell's local indigenous culture through Haudenosaunee understanding of themselves as a unique people, maintaining traditional teachings and fulfilling ancient responsibilities in the world. Students will engage multiple primary sources including: art, archives, material and expressive culture and interact with Haudenosaunee knowledge holders, intellectuals, and elders.

Full details for ARTH 2101 - Indigenous Ingenuities as Living Networks

Survey lecture course covering the creation, encoding, and reception of Medieval (roughly AD 500-1500) European, Byzantine, and Islamic architecture, ornament, manuscripts, liturgical and luxury objects.  The approach is thematic but chronologically grounded; attention is also given to cultural interaction in the Mediterranean basin.

Full details for ARTH 2355 - Introduction to Medieval Art and Culture

This course is designed to introduce students to Latin American art from the pre-Columbian period to the present.  It will cover the arts of ancient civilizations including the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Moche, and Inca, as well as the colonial, modern, and contemporary arts of Latin America and the Latino/a diaspora.  Major themes include the relationship between art and religion, innovations and transformations in Latin American art across time, art and identity, as well as Indigenous and Afro-Latin American contributions to the visual arts.  This course examines the societal relevance of images across Latin American cultures by paying close attention to the historical and political contexts in which they were created.  Course readings are drawn from the disciplines of art history, anthropology, and history, along with theoretical perspectives on colonialism, postcolonialism, identity, race, and ethnicity.

Full details for ARTH 2550 - Introduction to Latin American Art

Introduction and training in dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) and its applications in archaeology, art history, climate and environment through lab work and participation in ongoing research projects using ancient to modern wood samples from around the world. Supervised reading and laboratory/project work. Possibilities exists for summer fieldwork in the Mediterranean, Mexico, and New York State.

Full details for ARTH 3250 - Introduction to Dendrochronology

This course surveys the art and architecture of South Asia since 1200 CE. We cover major developments over the last eight centuries, including the architecture of the Sultanate Period, Vijaynagar, painting and architecture in the Deccan and South India, Mughal art and architecture, and Rajput painting. We look at British period colonial art and architecture, the rise of nationalism and modernism in Indian art and the circulation of vernacular images, including posters and bazaar prints in the twentieth century. The recent globalization of South Asian contemporary art is also examined. Artistic movements are situated with reference to social, economic, and political developments.

Full details for ARTH 3611 - Art of South Asia, 1200 - Present

This course looks at what it means to make art in, of, and after nature, and asks how that art might contribute to shaping the world we live in. Tracing a trajectory from the collection and display of natural history specimens to views of European and American landscapes to contemporary artists who address ecological crises, the course offers both a history of landscape in western art and a study of environmental imagination. We will further explore how nature is represented on Cornell's campus, including in the Johnson Museum, the Lab of Ornithology and the Botanic Gardens. This course includes opportunities to creatively reflect on our personal relationship to nature through hands-on activities. Students from all disciplines are welcome to engage with themes including natural curiosities, parks and gardens, ideas of wilderness, the picturesque, environmental preservation, earth works, and the "post-natural."

Full details for ARTH 3620 - After Nature: Art and Environmental Imagination

The work of women artists has been central to the development of new media art. These rich and varied practices include installation, virtual reality environments, net art, digital video, networked performance, tactical media, video games, remix and robotics. This course will begin with an overview of feminist art and early experiments in performance and video art to then investigate multiple currents of digital media. Discussions will focus primarily on works by women artists from Europe, the Americas and Australia.

Full details for ARTH 3651 - Women in New Media Art

This course explores the visual arts of the Mediterranean region from the court of Alexander the Great to the principate of Augustus, the first Roman emperor. During the first half of the semester we will explore the civic, domestic and religious uses of sculpture, painting, architecture, and other media in major settlements of the Hellenistic world such as Alexandria, Pergamon and Rhodes, focusing on the third to first centuries BCE. In the second half of the semester, we will turn to the rise of the Roman empire and the relationship between native Italian artistic traditions and those of the Hellenized Mediterranean, as Republican Rome drew influences (and booty) from its conquered territories. Throughout the course we will examine visual images alongside relevant literary and archaeological material, emphasizing the role of the visual arts within broader aesthetic, intellectual and political trends.

Full details for ARTH 3741 - Greco-Roman Art from Alexander to Augustus (c.350 BC - AD 20)

Topic: Feminist Posthumanisms in the Visual Arts. While some feminist works of art in new media address traditional feminist concerns such as the female body, identity, representation, feminist history, and consumerism, others directly engage with recent theoretical currents on the Anthropocene, posthumanism and new materialisms that view humans and non-humans as co-dependent. Non-humans include environmental factors, animals, plants, bacteria, and machines. This seminar will examine work by contemporary artists engaged with posthumanist perspectives in relation to a body of relevant theoretical texts and previous feminist media arts.

Full details for ARTH 4153 - Topics in Feminist Media Arts

The colonial period in Latin America (circa 1521-1820s) witnessed the formation of one of the most diverse societies in the world.  Labor regimes, religious activities, marriage alliances, and commercial contacts engendered by the Spanish colonial enterprise brought Spaniards, Africans, and Indigenous peoples into dynamic contact.  This cross-fertilization of cultures resulted in the construction of new cultural categories and colonial identities whose reverberations continue to be felt into the present day.  This seminar explores the role that visual culture played in the articulation of identity in Latin America.  For the purposes of this seminar, "identity" can be loosely defined as the overlapping allegiances to which one ascribes, whether racial, cultural, gendered, religious, or community-based.  The visual culture of colonial Latin America can reveal multitudes on the construction of self and community across temporal and geographical contexts.  We will explore a variety of colonial Latin American objects and images, including paintings, textiles, and material culture.  Our discussions of images will be guided by readings on hybridity, coloniality, cross-cultural exchange, and the early modern Atlantic world.

Full details for ARTH 4160 - Topics in Colonial Encounters

An examination and analysis of the major trends in art from Neoclassicism and Romanticism through Post Impressionism and the dawn of the twentieth century. Lectures and readings will concentrate on the historical context of great masterpieces by seminal artists. The class will investigate the imagery and theoretical foundation of nineteenth-century European and American art using a selection of appropriate methodological approaches. Major figures to be discussed include David, Copley, Goya, Delacroix, Courbet, Cole, Manet, Morisot, Monet, Degas, Cassatt, Sargent, Eakins, Homer, Rodin, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Part of each class will be devoted to discussions of the readings. Two classes will be held in the National Gallery of Art at times and dates to be determined. Exams, a term paper, and class participation will be used for evaluative purposes.

Full details for ARTH 4171 - 19th Century Art and Culture

Topic: The Late Medieval Devotional Image. A commonplace in the scholarly literature surrounding late medieval visual culture in Spain is that it was always "late".  The Spaniards lagged behind the Italians -- so the story goes -- in getting a handle on perspective, and trailed after van Eyck and van der Weyden in mastering the niceties of oil painting and realistic effects.  Spain's visual production, in other words, is generally treated from a standpoint of connoisseurship and "history of styles," producing predictable results:  evaluations of how it does (or does not) conform to the models established for other European contexts whose appropriateness to late medieval Iberia is doubtful to say the least.  We will examine, through the contextually based study of the introduction of the retablo (altarpiece) into Iberian churches, chapels and palaces (these contexts, of course, included a significant consciousness, and often presence, of Jews, Muslims, or recent converts to Christianity from those latter two religions) in the early 15th century, both the problems enumerated above and the problematic culture of the religious image in Iberia.

Full details for ARTH 4310 - Methods in Medieval

Situated at the crossroads between the Mediterranean in the West and the Anatolian plateau in the East, Sardis successively belonged to the Lydian, Persian, Seleucid, Roman, and Byzantine empires. An urban center from at least the 7th century BCE onwards, the city developed a very particular fabric of peoples and traditions over the long time of its existence. The seminar follows the history of the site and the changing relationship of city and hinterland from the bronze age to the Byzantine period, focusing on its major civic, religious, military and funerary monuments. Debates in heritage and a critical analysis of the site's exploration and excavation in modern times, including the first expedition organized by Princeton University and the current Harvard-Cornell led excavations, form an integral part of the class. The seminar includes excursions to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Sardis Archive at Harvard University.

Full details for ARTH 4353 - Sardis, A City at the Crossroads

Full details for ARTH 4621 - Art and Empire in Britian and France

This course will explore how contemporary artists and designers borrow, replicate, challenge, play with, and subvert the arts of Greco-Roman antiquity. We will survey the influence of classical multiples – from bronze series and plaster casts to digital imaging and 3-D printing; the use of classical objects in critiques of art-world institutions, especially by female photographers such as Louise Lawler and Sara VanDerBeek; subversions of classical monumentality by Black artists such as Kehinde Wiley and Kara Walker; and the influence of classicism upon constructions of European heritage in contemporary fashion and interior design. As a form of "critical reception studies", this course also examines the complex political legacy of classicism and the role it plays in contemporary discussions of race, from debates over the "whiteness" of classical sculpture to the relationship between state power and monumentality.

Full details for ARTH 4716 - Classicism and Contemporary Art

China, a cultural giant of East Asia, made a passive entrance into modernity. With the advent of Western and American colonialism and imperialism, coupled with recent successes in westernization by the Japanese, Chinese artists had to redefine their roles as well as their visions. This turmoil bore witness to a vibrant beginning in modern Chinese art. Interactions between the Chinese themselves, and Chinese interactions with foreigners in the major cities of Shanghai and Beijing, fostered new directions in Chinese art and helped shape western visions of Chinese art history. Issues covered include: Chinese debates on western influence--their theoretical foundations and rationales; New visions for the future of Chinese art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; Pluralistic approaches and arguments on "Chinese identity" in the modern era; Collecting art and the vision of history; The identity of traditional literati painters in the modern era-their roles, artworks, and deeds; Foreigners in China-the formation of major European collections of Chinese art, and the formation of "Chinese art history" in the West.

Full details for ARTH 4816 - Modern Chinese Art

Individual investigation and discussion of special topics not covered in the regular course offerings, by arrangement with a member of the department.

Full details for ARTH 4992 - Independent Study

The student under faculty direction prepares a senior thesis.

Full details for ARTH 4999 - Honors Work II

Individual investigation and discussion of special topics not covered in the regular course offerings, by arrangement with a member of the department.

Full details for ARTH 5992 - Supervised Reading

Individual investigation and discussion of special topics not covered in the regular course offerings, by arrangement with a member of the department.

Full details for ARTH 5994 - Supervised Study

Topic: Feminist Posthumanisms in the Visual Arts. While some feminist works of art in new media address traditional feminist concerns such as the female body, identity, representation, feminist history, and consumerism, others directly engage with recent theoretical currents on the Anthropocene, posthumanism and new materialisms that view humans and non-humans as co-dependent. Non-humans include environmental factors, animals, plants, bacteria, and machines. This seminar will examine work by contemporary artists engaged with posthumanist perspectives in relation to a body of relevant theoretical texts and previous feminist media arts.

Full details for ARTH 6153 - Topics in Feminist Media Arts

The colonial period in Latin America (circa 1521-1820s) witnessed the formation of one of the most diverse societies in the world.  Labor regimes, religious activities, marriage alliances, and commercial contacts engendered by the Spanish colonial enterprise brought Spaniards, Africans, and Indigenous peoples into dynamic contact.  This cross-fertilization of cultures resulted in the construction of new cultural categories and colonial identities whose reverberations continue to be felt into the present day.  This seminar explores the role that visual culture played in the articulation of identity in Latin America.  For the purposes of this seminar, "identity" can be loosely defined as the overlapping allegiances to which one ascribes, whether racial, cultural, gendered, religious, or community-based.  The visual culture of colonial Latin America can reveal multitudes on the construction of self and community across temporal and geographical contexts.  We will explore a variety of colonial Latin American objects and images, including paintings, textiles, and material culture.  Our discussions of images will be guided by readings on hybridity, coloniality, cross-cultural exchange, and the early modern Atlantic world.

Full details for ARTH 6160 - Topics in Colonial Encounters

Topic: The Late Medieval Devotional Image. A commonplace in the scholarly literature surrounding late medieval visual culture in Spain is that it was always "late".  The Spaniards lagged behind the Italians -- so the story goes -- in getting a handle on perspective, and trailed after van Eyck and van der Weyden in mastering the niceties of oil painting and realistic effects.  Spain's visual production, in other words, is generally treated from a standpoint of connoisseurship and "history of styles," producing predictable results:  evaluations of how it does (or does not) conform to the models established for other European contexts whose appropriateness to late medieval Iberia is doubtful to say the least.  We will examine, through the contextually based study of the introduction of the retablo (altarpiece) into Iberian churches, chapels and palaces (these contexts, of course, included a significant consciousness, and often presence, of Jews, Muslims, or recent converts to Christianity from those latter two religions) in the early 15th century, both the problems enumerated above and the problematic culture of the religious image in Iberia.

Full details for ARTH 6310 - Methods in Medieval

Situated at the crossroads between the Mediterranean in the West and the Anatolian plateau in the East, Sardis successively belonged to the Lydian, Persian, Seleucid, Roman, and Byzantine empires. An urban center from at least the 7th century BCE onwards, the city developed a very particular fabric of peoples and traditions over the long time of its existence. The seminar follows the history of the site and the changing relationship of city and hinterland from the bronze age to the Byzantine period, focusing on its major civic, religious, military and funerary monuments. Debates in heritage and a critical analysis of the site's exploration and excavation in modern times, including the first expedition organized by Princeton University and the current Harvard-Cornell led excavations, form an integral part of the class. The seminar includes excursions to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Sardis Archive at Harvard University.

Full details for ARTH 6353 - Sardis, A City at the Crossroads

Full details for ARTH 6621 - Art and Empire in Britain and France

This course will explore how contemporary artists and designers borrow, replicate, challenge, play with, and subvert the arts of Greco-Roman antiquity. We will survey the influence of classical multiples – from bronze series and plaster casts to digital imaging and 3-D printing; the use of classical objects in critiques of art-world institutions, especially by female photographers such as Louise Lawler and Sara VanDerBeek; subversions of classical monumentality by Black artists such as Kehinde Wiley and Kara Walker; and the influence of classicism upon constructions of European heritage in contemporary fashion and interior design. As a form of "critical reception studies", this course also examines the complex political legacy of classicism and the role it plays in contemporary discussions of race, from debates over the "whiteness" of classical sculpture to the relationship between state power and monumentality.

Full details for ARTH 6716 - Classicism and Contemporary Art

China, a cultural giant of East Asia, made a passive entrance into modernity. With the advent of Western and American colonialism and imperialism, coupled with recent successes in westernization by the Japanese, Chinese artists had to redefine their roles as well as their visions. This turmoil bore witness to a vibrant beginning in modern Chinese art. Interactions between the Chinese themselves, and Chinese interactions with foreigners in the major cities of Shanghai and Beijing, fostered new directions in Chinese art and helped shape western visions of Chinese art history. Issues covered include: Chinese debates on western influence--their theoretical foundations and rationales; New visions for the future of Chinese art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; Pluralistic approaches and arguments on "Chinese identity" in the modern era; Collecting art and the vision of history; The identity of traditional literati painters in the modern era-their roles, artworks, and deeds; Foreigners in China-the formation of major European collections of Chinese art, and the formation of "Chinese art history" in the West.

Full details for ARTH 6816 - Modern Chinese Art

This course provides an introduction to modes of vision and the historical impact of visual images, visual structures, and visual space on culture, communication, and politics. It examines all aspects of culture that communicate through visual means, including 20th-century visual technologies—photography, cinema, video, etc., and their historical corollaries. The production and consumption of images, objects, and events is studied in diverse cultures. Students develop the critical skills necessary to appreciate how the approaches that define visual studies complicate traditional models of defining and analyzing art objects.

Full details for VISST 2000 - Introduction to Visual Studies

This course is designed to introduce students to Latin American art from the pre-Columbian period to the present.  It will cover the arts of ancient civilizations including the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Moche, and Inca, as well as the colonial, modern, and contemporary arts of Latin America and the Latino/a diaspora.  Major themes include the relationship between art and religion, innovations and transformations in Latin American art across time, art and identity, as well as Indigenous and Afro-Latin American contributions to the visual arts.  This course examines the societal relevance of images across Latin American cultures by paying close attention to the historical and political contexts in which they were created.  Course readings are drawn from the disciplines of art history, anthropology, and history, along with theoretical perspectives on colonialism, postcolonialism, identity, race, and ethnicity.

Full details for VISST 2550 - Introduction to Latin American Art

What does it mean to call a film is "Jewish"? Does it have to represent Jewish life? Does it have to feature characters identifiable as Jews? If artists who identify as Jews—actors, directors, screenwriters, composers—play significant roles in a film's production does that make it Jewish? Our primary point of entry into these questions will be Hollywood, from the industry's early silent films, through the period generally considered classical, down to the present day. We will also study films produced overseas, in countries that may include Israel, Egypt, France, Italy, and Germany. Our discussions will be enriched by contextual material drawn from film studies, cultural studies, Jewish studies, American studies, and other related fields. Students will be expected to view a significant number of films outside of class—an average of one per week—and engage with them through writing and in-class discussion. The directors, screenwriters, composers, and actors whose work we will study may include: Charlie Chaplin, Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Billy Wilder, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Aviva Kempner, Joan Micklin Silver, the Marx Brothers, and the Coen Brothers.

Full details for VISST 2790 - Jewish Films and Filmmakers: Hollywood and Beyond

An introduction to the history and theory of writing systems from cuneiform to the alphabet, historical and new writing media, and the complex relationship of writing technologies to human language and culture. Through hands-on activities and collaborative work, students will explore the shifting definitions of "writing" and the diverse ways in which cultures through time have developed and used writing systems. We will also investigate the traditional divisions of "oral" vs. "written" and consider how digital technologies have affected how we use and think about writing in encoding systems from Morse code to emoji.

Full details for VISST 2812 - Hieroglyphs to HTML: History of Writing

The course will offer an overview of video art, alternative documentary video, and digital installation and networked art. It will analyze four phases of video and new media: (1) the development of video from its earliest turn away from television; (2) video's relation to art and installation; (3) video's migration into digital art; (4) the relation of video and new media to visual theory and social movements. Screenings will include early political and feminist video (Ant Farm, Rosler, Paper Tiger TV, Jones), conceptual video of the '80s and '90s (Vasulka, Lucier, Viola, Hill), gay and multicultural video of the '90s (Muntadas, Riggs, Piper, Fung, Parmar), networked and activist new media of the 21st century (Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Disturbance Theater, SubRosa, Preemptive Media). Secondary theoretical readings on postmodernism, video theory, multicultural theory, and digital culture will provide students with a cultural and political context for the discussion of video and new media style, dissemination, and reception.

Full details for VISST 3115 - Video and New Media: Art, Theory, Politics

Global Cinema I and II together offer an overview of international film history from the late nineteenth century to today. Through a focus on key films and significant epochs, the course traces the evolution of form, style and genre, the medium's changing technologies and business models, as well as film's relation to broader cultural, social and political contexts. Screenings of narrative, documentary and experimental films will be accompanied by readings in film theory and history.

Full details for VISST 3176 - Global Cinema II

Our present technology allows us to transmit and display information through a variety of media. To make the most of these media channels, it is important to consider the limitations and abilities of the human observer. The course considers a number of applied aspects of human perception with an emphasis on the display of visual information. Topics include "three-dimensional" display systems, color theory, spatial and temporal limitations of the visual systems, attempts at subliminal communication, and "visual" effects in film and television.

Full details for VISST 3342 - Human Perception: Application to Computer Graphics, Art, and Visual Display

This course considers issues, approaches, and complexities in the contemporary television landscape. As television has changed drastically over the past fifteen years, this course provides students with a deeper understanding of the changes in narratives, technologies, forms, and platforms that structure/restructure the televisual world. Students will grapple with how "new media" forms such as web-series and on-demand internet streaming services have changed primetime television. We will balance our look at television shows with nuanced readings about the televisual media industry. By watching, analyzing, and critiquing the powerful medium of television, students will situate their understanding within a broader consideration of the medium's regulation, production, distribution, and reception in the network and post-network era.

Full details for VISST 3463 - Contemporary Television

Computers are powerful tools for working, playing, thinking, and living. Laptops, PDAs, webcams, cell phones, and iPods are not just devices, they also provide narratives, metaphors, and ways of seeing the world. This course critically examines how computing technology and society shape each other and how this plays out in our everyday lives. Identifies how computers, networks, and information technologies reproduce, reinforce, and rework existing cultural trends, norms, and values. Looks at the values embodied in the cultures of computing and considers alternative ways to imagine, build, and work with information technologies.

Full details for VISST 3560 - Computing Cultures

The work of women artists has been central to the development of new media art. These rich and varied practices include installation, virtual reality environments, net art, digital video, networked performance, tactical media, video games, remix and robotics. This course will begin with an overview of feminist art and early experiments in performance and video art to then investigate multiple currents of digital media. Discussions will focus primarily on works by women artists from Europe, the Americas and Australia.

Full details for VISST 3651 - Women in New Media Art

Formally titled "technosomakinesics," this class works to expand the specific aesthetics related to dance as embodied performance. Included in the process is the analysis of built environments that both inspire and are designed to be inhabited by these disciplines. This studio course explores the resulting neoperformance forms being created within the range of digital media processing; such as gallery installations, multimedia dance-theatre, personal interactive media (games and digital art) and web projects. Computer-imaging and sound-production programs are examined and used in the class work (human form-animation software, vocal recording and digital editing, digital-imaging tools. The new context of digital performance raises questions concerning the use of traditional lighting, set, costume, and sound-design techniques that are examined as they are repositioned by digital-translation tools with the goal of creating experimental and/or conceptual multimedia performance and/or installation work. Theoretical texts on dance and theatrical performance, film studies, the dynamic social body, architecture, and digital technology are also used to support conceptual creative work.

Full details for VISST 3758 - Technology and the Moving Body I

Topic: Feminist Posthumanisms in the Visual Arts. While some feminist works of art in new media address traditional feminist concerns such as the female body, identity, representation, feminist history, and consumerism, others directly engage with recent theoretical currents on the Anthropocene, posthumanism and new materialisms that view humans and non-humans as co-dependent. Non-humans include environmental factors, animals, plants, bacteria, and machines. This seminar will examine work by contemporary artists engaged with posthumanist perspectives in relation to a body of relevant theoretical texts and previous feminist media arts.

Full details for VISST 4153 - Topics in Feminist Media Arts

The colonial period in Latin America (circa 1521-1820s) witnessed the formation of one of the most diverse societies in the world.  Labor regimes, religious activities, marriage alliances, and commercial contacts engendered by the Spanish colonial enterprise brought Spaniards, Africans, and Indigenous peoples into dynamic contact.  This cross-fertilization of cultures resulted in the construction of new cultural categories and colonial identities whose reverberations continue to be felt into the present day.  This seminar explores the role that visual culture played in the articulation of identity in Latin America.  For the purposes of this seminar, "identity" can be loosely defined as the overlapping allegiances to which one ascribes, whether racial, cultural, gendered, religious, or community-based.  The visual culture of colonial Latin America can reveal multitudes on the construction of self and community across temporal and geographical contexts.  We will explore a variety of colonial Latin American objects and images, including paintings, textiles, and material culture.  Our discussions of images will be guided by readings on hybridity, coloniality, cross-cultural exchange, and the early modern Atlantic world.

Full details for VISST 4160 - Topics in Colonial Encounters

Full details for VISST 4260 - Adaptation: Text/Theatricality

Often referred to as a "second skin", aesthetic representations of clothing open the possibility of reimagining the visual economy of race—the belief that race can be located in the body's visible features and characteristics. Bringing together the research methods of visual culture, material culture, and literary studies, and moving among photographic, painted, and literary portrayals by and of African Americans, we will explore fashion and clothing as aesthetic practices of everyday life that defy racism's flattening and objectifying effects. The course will pay particular attention to artwork that explores the multiple valences of "fabrication"—working with materials, making and fictionalizing—to reveal and reconfigure the psychic consequences of living under the gaze of white dominance. For longer description and instructor bio visit The Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for VISST 4658 - Fabricating Race: Art, Clothing, Resistance

A continuation of PMA 3570, Introduction to Visual Storytelling, students will dive deeper into creating story driven short form narratives. Students will have the opportunity to develop and produce a short film over the course of the semester. The expectation is the follow through of the filmmaking process, from story development, preproduction, production, post production and distribution. Students are expected to collaborate heavily and crew on each other's film productions, in various roles. Final film projects will be screened in a public, open-campus event at the end of the semester.

Full details for VISST 4793 - Film and Video Production II

Often referred to as a "second skin", aesthetic representations of clothing open the possibility of reimagining the visual economy of race—the belief that race can be located in the body's visible features and characteristics. Bringing together the research methods of visual culture, material culture, and literary studies, and moving among photographic, painted, and literary portrayals by and of African Americans, we will explore fashion and clothing as aesthetic practices of everyday life that defy racism's flattening and objectifying effects. The course will pay particular attention to artwork that explores the multiple valences of "fabrication"—working with materials, making and fictionalizing—to reveal and reconfigure the psychic consequences of living under the gaze of white dominance. For longer description and instructor bio visit The Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for VISST 6658 - Fabricating Race: Art, Clothing, Resistance