Theories of NatureCulture is a graduate-level critical and cultural theory seminar with a focus on environmental justice approaches that lays the foundations for advanced study in the interdisciplinary field of nature-culture-sustainability studies, introducing students to vital topics, theories, and perspectives in the environmental humanities.

Why does mainstream US environmental thought conceive of nature and human culture as separate? Are they really a dichotomy? What does it mean to describe something as “natural”? What do the humanities and arts have to contribute to environmental studies and environmental justice? This iteration of Theories of NatureCulture asks students to engage with a variety of cultural production, including poetry, essays, short fiction, film, music, and critical theory to analyze how the concept of nature is represented in different cultural imaginaries, as well as the embodied and material consequences of its representations. The course will expand and complicate students’ understandings of environmentalism by asking them to carefully and thoughtfully engage with a variety of ecological modes of thought, including: queer ecologies, ecofeminisms, Black ecological imaginings, Indigenous environmental thought, anticolonial environmentalisms, eco-crip theory, and Black feminist ecologies, among others.

In this seminar, we will carefully read and discuss a range of texts centered on environmental issues and concepts. Our readings and discussions will be complemented by field trips, writing assignments, group projects, and site visits. Close engagement with theoretical material will enable us to consider how different styles and disciplinary practices encourage particular forms of comprehension and interaction with the environment. This course is open to all graduate level students and to junior, senior/fifth year undergraduate students, with priority given to those in the NCSS and other Liberal Arts concentrations pending seat availability.

Elective

This 3-credit elective centers around the Sustainability Lab, an initiative between LDAR and INTAR departments to explore creative material approaches to sustainability. Looking specifically at materials common to New England, this skill-building seminar will explore one selected material each year and expose students to different techniques and methods of researching and working with the region's intrinsic materials. Students enrolled in this course are required to register for the co-requisite studio INTAR/LDAR 502G - Sustainability Lab: Thesis Studio.

In tandem with the co-requisite studio, students will collaborate with expert designers, fabricators, and engineers to refine the assemblies of their material inquiries. The course will cover advanced fabrication methods for scaled and 1:1 fabrication and interdisciplinary collaboration during the construction phases of design. Students will develop their Sustainability Lab Thesis Studio material inquiry through a concise technical and visual design package and a full-scale material assembly.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture and Interior Architecture Graduate Students.

Elective

This course presents the graduate student with a series of problems intended to develop drawing as a tool for inquiry into a terrain outside the well-known beaten paths of his/her past studio practice. Expanding the role for drawing in studio experimentation is a goal. Work will be done outside class. There are critiques each week.

Major Requirement | MFA Painting

This course is a studio survey of glass as a three-dimensional medium. The course explores traditional and non-traditional techniques of glassblowing casting, and coldworking. The greater part of the class is spent in the studio working directly with glass.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

This course is open to first-year undergraduate students only. Email the Department Head to request permission.

Elective

This graduate seminar provides an intensive study of current critical issues in contemporary art. Each Fall a visiting curator or critic is invited to lead the course. While the themes covered each semester will vary with the visiting instructor, the structure of the course will remain the same. The class is divided into two segments: a seminar and a studio. Each week the seminar lasts for three hours followed by studio visits with each student. This course helps students carry the dialogue of contemporary art issues into the studio more effectively.

This course is a requirement for Graduate Glass students. Non-major graduate-level students may enroll pending seat availability. Email the Department Head and instructor jointly to request permission.

Major Requirement | MFA Glass

This graduate seminar is organized in parallel with the Graduate Furniture Design Thesis studio for the purpose of guiding the written thesis document. The goal is to provide students with a focused opportunity to map their thesis projects and to create the document that supports their studio practice and body of work known as the thesis.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Furniture Design Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Furniture Design

This studio course considers how painting and drawing can engage landscape in a time of ecological instability and environmental change. Students will develop work that responds to land, atmosphere, weather, memory, and changing ideas of place. Through studio projects, critique, and discussion of historical and contemporary artists, the course will examine how contemporary image-making can register both the beauty and volatility of the natural world.

This course will teach the advanced skills and processes necessary to achieve reliably repeatable results in casting and mold-making. Students will gain material literacy beginning with a limited range of mold making products in the Platinum Silicone and Gypsum Cement families. This skillset will provide the necessary confidence to expand into the broader range of flexible and rigid mold making products to suit individual student needs. Students will learn key methods to achieve successful multi part flexible molds, with a specific emphasis on silicone rubber products. Direct modeling materials such as Castilene and Magic Sculpt will be demonstrated as companion products for making rigid semi-permanent mold ready objects. The proficiency gained in this studio course will enable students to problem solve mold-making challenges, such as complexity and scale, multi part molds, repeatable production of multiples, and planning for larger and more advanced mold-making and casting projects.  This procedural knowledge will assist in various purposes in a studio practice such as the need for repetition, durability, economy, and sustainability. This course is intended to assist, augment and enhance ongoing studio work for all students as they workshop their emerging studio practices.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $300.00

Elective

Students in the graduate printmaking program will utilize graduate level research and scholarship as an impetus for growth within studio practice. Investigation into historical cycles of printmaking will be fostered through assigned texts and exploration of primary resources available at RISD, especially The RISD Museum. A dialogue stemming from intensive studio work will be developed in varied formats by faculty, visiting artists and peers throughout the semester.

Major Requirement | MFA Printmaking

Students in the graduate printmaking program will utilize graduate level research and scholarship as an impetus for growth within studio practice. Investigation into historical cycles of printmaking will be fostered through assigned texts and exploration of primary resources available at RISD, especially The RISD Museum. A dialogue stemming from intensive studio work will be developed in varied formats by faculty, visiting artists and peers throughout the semester.

Major Requirement | MFA Printmaking

Have we considered what it truly means to critique? This course explores the role of critique, dissects real-life cases, and challenges existing methodologies to foster more just and equitable ways to look at design.

Well closely examine how professionals, clients, and stakeholders present and evaluate design work to critically reflect on methods within ID and further consider how ethical and inclusive practices take place in the field of industrial design. Students will actively engage in research workshops, role-playing, and discussions to reshape their understanding of design and critique.

By the conclusion of the studio, students will have designed tools and models for public and private critique. Through this, students will be equipped with enriched perspectives and a comprehensive toolkit of critique and discussion methodologies that are continuously applicable in future practices.

This studio is a Reassembling Industrial Design (REID) Special Topic Studio, which meets the graduation requirement for an SEI tagged class.

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design

Sound Critique is a studio elective focused on the development and realization of sound-based work. The course centers on sustained studio practice and weekly group critique, with students at different levels working alongside one another in a shared studio environment.

Students develop and refine projects in sound design, performance, installation, and composition. Workshops address practical skills including system setup and signal flow, responding to site conditions, troubleshooting, and documentation. Students present works-in-progress at multiple stages and respond to feedback through revision and continued development. Particular attention is given to preparing work for public presentation: testing in physical space, resolving technical and logistical problems, and readying projects for concert and installation contexts. Through ongoing critique and applied practice, students build artistic direction, technical fluency, and the independence to carry long-term projects of their own.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Elective

Mainstream games, such as Monopoly and Settlers of Catan, normalize extractive behavior, othering stereotypes, and bitter competition between players. Meanwhile, tools used in “community engagement” and “participatory design” in architecture, design, and planning fields create illusions of choice and public approval by gamifying public processes. This studio asks, how can games encourage alternative relationships and interactions between players, and be a medium through which folks of all ages can practice care, collaboration, and learning at the grassroots level?

After examining our positionalities and analyzing existing board games, students will work in teams to develop their own semi-cooperative board games. The game development process will be introduced in stages as students critically discuss how design can both help and/or harm people alongside reflections about relevant personal, social, and political perspectives. The work will include concept sketches, worldbuilding stories, rulebooks, zines, physical crafted prototypes and components, and student-organized playtesting sessions. The primary challenges for students in this studio lie in discovering how to align design decisions with core values and goals, how to source materials ethically, and how their game can be played and produced in community - all while ensuring the game is replayable and fun!

This studio is a Reassembling Industrial Design (REID) Special Topic Studio, which meets the graduation requirement for an SEI tagged class.

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design

In this studio course, second-year students identify and pursue personally driven research. Weekly individual meetings and studio visits take place with the instructor, and also with scheduled first-year and second-year group critiques. Students are required to maintain a continuous record of their research and development through drawings, writings, samples, models, etc. Active participation in group discussions and critiques is mandatory.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department; registration is not available in Workday. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Jewelry + Metalsmithing Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

Concept to Clothing is a 3-credit elective undergraduate studio course open to undergraduate and graduate students (with the approval of faculty member Meg DeCubellis) who seek to learn the fundamental and technical principles of garment development, construction and design. This is a critical making studio which will focus on basic garment making for prototypes as well as supporting individual projects to be worn on the body. Students are expected to show evidence of physical making throughout this course while developing a deeper relationship to making clothing. Students will also tour local factories to witness the making of varying quantities of garments. A professional studio practice will filter through skill building in the areas of construction, draping, pattern making, garment development, fitting, industrial machine skills, and hand sewing techniques. The development process will include conceptualization, creating specifications, fabricating iterative prototypes, conducting supplier and material research to support each student’s thesis of study. Students are expected to have a project in mind which can be something that they have started to develop in their major. Because class discussion and participation is at the heart of this course, you are required to be in class for all demos and meetings which will determine a large portion of the final grade. Prior sewing experience is required.

Estimated Material Costs: $150.00 - $300.00

THE FACULTY MEMBER AND THE DEPARTMENT MAY ADJUST THE INFORMATION LISTED IN THIS SYLLABUS AND COURSE OUTLINE THROUGHOUT THE SEMESTER. THE AIM ALWAYS BEING TO BETTER SERVE STUDENTS BASED ON STUDIO PROGRESS, PERFORMANCE AND UNFORESEEN CONDITIONS.

Elective

Industrial design’s authorized histories are often produced through designed infrastructures such as museums, textbooks, libraries, corporate archives, websites, and interfaces. These systems do not simply store history; they shape it by determining what is preserved, how it is classified, who is credited, and what becomes accessible.

In this studio, students will design and build a living counter-archive using core industrial design methods including but not limited to systems mapping, prototyping, model-making, interface design, and publication. Projects may take the form of installations, portable kits, shelving or display systems, tool libraries, publications, websites, series of objects, or hybrid platforms. Each project will propose alternative ways of knowing, crediting, and sharing design histories.

The course centers BIPOC designers, makers, and communities, and foregrounds practices often absent from mainstream narratives, including repair cultures, collective authorship, maintenance, hidden labor, and vernacular engineering. Students will examine how design structures can reinforce or challenge inequity and explore strategies for more inclusive and accessible knowledge systems.

Through hands-on exercises, case studies, critiques, and iterative prototyping, students will develop a functioning archive. The studio moves between archive, exhibition, object, and interface design, culminating in a designed counter-archive that expands how industrial design knowledge is represented and shared.

This studio is a Reassembling Industrial Design (REID) Special Topic Studio, which meets the graduation requirement for an SEI tagged class.

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design

Sophomore Jewelry I is the first of two introductory studio classes which will familiarize students with the creative jewelry studio environment. Fundamental tools and techniques integral to working with metal are introduced during class demonstrations over the semester. Class projects are structured to blend the use of tools with techniques and are introduced in order of complexity. The course begins with designing and constructing structurally sound 3D objects from 2D metal sheet stock. By the conclusion of the semester students are equipped with technical skills to make jewelry informed with an awareness of the body as site. This is the first of a two-semester course.

Major Requirement | BFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

The advanced course studies multimedia drawing It explores the possibilities with the material and content of two dimensional expression. The class encourages greater connections with the design studios by testing and reevaluating design work through the lens of phenomenology and seriality. Scale and composition are emphasized in the detailed and constructed drawings that are required in class. Individual investigations are developed throughout this advanced course to encourage a way of making marks that connect with the various modes of exploration in their studio work.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $225.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I Landscape Architecture

This course will provide the foundation for the creation of an archival painting practice for both traditional and contemporary painting methods. Topics covered will include tools, preparation process for both canvas and wood panels, sizes and grounds, drying oils, varnishes and resins, pigments, solvents, painting procedures, and the care of finished paintings. A historical overview of traditional methods and materials including egg tempera and oil paint will be covered, in addition to modern alkyd resins and acrylics. RISD's Environmental Health & Safety practices that pertain to painting practice and painting studio safety will be an integral part of this course. A short research paper is required to supplement studio work.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

This course will provide the foundation for the creation of an archival painting practice for both traditional and contemporary painting methods. Topics covered will include tools, preparation process for both canvas and wood panels, sizes and grounds, drying oils, varnishes and resins, pigments, solvents, painting procedures, and the care of finished paintings. A historical overview of traditional methods and materials including egg tempera and oil paint will be covered, in addition to modern alkyd resins and acrylics. RISD's Environmental Health & Safety practices that pertain to painting practice and painting studio safety will be an integral part of this course. A short research paper is required to supplement studio work.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting