Junior Seminar promotes and supports students taking on greater responsibility for the content and impact of their creative practice through reading, writing, and critical discourse. The course content for this seminar is organized around BIPOC thinkers/makers, to foster an awareness of individual and collective perspectives in an effort to allow students to engage in conversations and critical thinking about the tacit racist and colonial attitudes present in the discipline. Students will read from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary sources as well as look at examples of artwork from across cultures to engage in discussions that will call into question assumptions about jewelry and art objects in order to emphasize the importance of developing a comprehensive and critical eye for cultural, social, political contexts and biases. We will journal, read, discuss, research and critique to build upon your individual interests and opinions toward developed critical positions relevant to your internal creative practice and the external contexts you support and contend with. Our shared discussions allow for testing ideas and trying out new roles, allowing you to build experience and confidence in communicating your practice.

In this seminar, we investigate and promote the role of writing in an artistic practice via reading, discussion, exercises, and written assignments. A directed effort to source texts of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ from both within and external to the jewelry field are implemented to step outside the reasoning of the studio and tread further into speculative dialogs concerning the potential future of the discipline. Please note that this seminar combines critical reading and writing with professional practices. Professional practices are embedded in all of our academic work and communications. Students will be expected to conduct all communications with professionalism, follow instructions as outlined, and complete assignments in a timely and professional manner.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Junior Jewelry + Metalsmithing Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

Ceramics: a Global Perspective will focus on two non-western ceramic traditions/movements: the Indigenous Ceramics of the Americas and Asian Ceramics. These two seemingly disparate movements have had a profound influence upon western, modern and contemporary ceramic art. Indigenous Ceramics of the Americas provides a ‘close to home/under the surface foundation’ of material and design. Asian ceramics, with its global reach of historical trade roots, provides insight into the movement and transformation of material, technology, and use value.

This combined seminar and studio class provides a historical context and hand on experience of historical developments and hierarchical structures in the ceramic arts. To enhance the students’ understanding of traditional materials and technology upon form and content, students will make ceramics (using the corresponding traditional techniques) alongside art historical study. Each clay and firing type embodies making parameters that effect form, color, content and use. Through the remaking of historical forms, students acquire a nuanced understanding of the importance of technology upon the content and use value of objects made.

The class will focus on three distinct regions and periods in ceramic history: Indigenous Practice of the Americas (Peru, New Mexico), Asian Porcelain, Production and Kiln Technology (Korea, Japan, China) and the Silk Road Trade Routes from Asia into the Middle East, Africa and up into Western Europe effecting ceramic production between 1600 – 1900. The class will culminate by illuminating the effects of colonialism and globalization of these three periods upon late 20th century, and current ceramics. In particular, we will become sensitive to the cultural appropriation of Indigenous culture and Asian aesthetics by teaching its philosophy, colonial history and initiate sensitivity to stereotypes and cultural erasure within ceramic production and its communities. The Ceramics department has visiting artists representing artists from many world cultures and students are required to attend these lectures. Independent research is required.

This course is a requirement for Sophomore Ceramics students. Non-major Sophomores may enroll pending seat availability. Email the Department Head and instructor jointly to request permission.

Major Requirement | BFA Ceramics

In “Designing Food” students will explore the product development process through an edible lens. Students will learn to design food-based products ranging from fine dining tasting experiences to sensory experiments to traditional packaged products. With an emphasis on material exploration and iterative design, students will identify opportunities surrounding undervalued ingredients and examine how design fits in a culinary landscape. We will practice iterative making with frequent group tastings and discussions to perfect form, formulation, and process. Through the semester we will host visiting industry experts including chefs, food entrepreneurs, and botanists to explore the material, ecological, economic, and interpersonal power of food product design.

The two main assignments that run-in tandem throughout the semester are The Iteration Project and The Hero Ingredient Project. The first is an individual assignment where each student will choose one dish they wish to perfect. They will prepare the dish multiple times for their class with tastings, evaluations, and close documentation. The Iteration Project culminates in a final tasting showcase and a finished Food Journal documenting the journey. The Hero Ingredient project is a group assignment where students will research and choose an edible material or ingredient with vast design potential. They will investigate and test that material with the goal of discovering its full and perhaps hidden expressions and creating a product that leverages its unique characteristics. Past projects have included fine perfume, restaurant concepts, high fidelity packaged goods, material libraries, and fine dining experiences.

Other assignments will include short in class exercises and individual research. Class will often center around group discussions on various parts of food systems, with weekly dialogs around assigned readings and videos.

Learning objectives include strengthening critical thinking and opportunity identification abilities, honing user research skills, understanding culinary benchtop formulation and processes for manufacturing, navigating group work, and strengthening communication and presentation skills. This studio is focused on sharing so bring your voice and your appetite!

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design, MID (2.5yr): Industrial Design

Can Okinawa be a design laboratory for planetary futures?  How do we grow resilient and creative on a warming planet?

The Japanese mainland is moving toward a subtropical climate, and most regions of the world have experienced excessive heat in recent years. This course investigates the material ecologies of Okinawa, a subtropical island whose cultural and architectural identity has been shaped by climate, history, and politics. Okinawa’s arts and buildings evolved under the pressures of heat, humidity, typhoons, and salt air—conditions that are no longer exceptional, but increasingly the reality of our global present. With summers growing longer and hotter each year, what lessons might be drawn from Okinawa’s centuries of adaptation to help us design for a future of rising temperatures worldwide?

Okinawa, once an independent kingdom, is Japan’s southernmost prefecture, where a distinctive and cosmopolitan culture developed from its geopolitical position and subtropical environment. This culture flourished during the Ryukyu Kingdom (1429–1879), which spanned from the Muromachi period to the early Meiji era. In the 14th and 15th centuries, trade with China and Southeast Asia introduced techniques such as dyeing. These imported practices were uniquely adapted to the Ryukyu climate and sensibilities, giving rise to the rich material cultures of Okinawa.

From coral limestone fortifications to red clay roof tiles, from lacquerware and bingata textiles to the concrete structures of the postwar era, Okinawa offers a layered material landscape that embodies resilience, adaptation, and reinvention. Although one of the smallest prefectures in Japan, it ranks third nationwide in the number of designated traditional crafts. Students will examine how traditional crafts and building practices emerged from the island’s ecology, how architecture transformed under modern pressures, and how contemporary makers and designers are reimagining material practices for ecological survival.

Students will create a collective atlas of material textures and patterns, drawn directly from observation during site visits to craft studios, historic sites, and both traditional and contemporary architectural works. These drawings, compiled into a book, will represent not only the tactile qualities of Okinawa’s materials but also their embedded histories of climate, politics, and cultural exchange. More than documenting materials and textures, we will search for clues in an island culture that has long adapted to heat, humidity, salt air, and strong weather patterns—conditions now spreading across the globe. By situating Okinawa within the planetary condition of excessive heat, this course expands design thinking, treating materiality as a cultural and ecological system that can offer strategies and inspiration for resilience in a warming world. 

Registration is not available in Workday. Students must complete an application through RISD Global Summer Studies. A minimum GPA of 2.5 is required for all RISD students. Failure to remain in good academic standing can lead to removal from the course, either before or during the course. Additional information including deadlines and travel costs can be found on the Global Summer Studies website.