This course focuses on contemporary art in and out of Africa, with specific reference to Nigeria. Our objective is to situate Contemporary Nigerian Art within the dialectics of modernism and postmodernism beginning first with the colonial implantation of the modernist trend in Africa. We examine the impact on the artistic vision and direction of the major artists in Africa, while highlighting the careers of their counterparts operating outside the continent within the postmodernist currents of Paris, New York, London, Berlin, etc.

Elective

The Bronze Age saw the development of several advanced civilizations in the Mediterranean basin. Perhaps the best-known among these is the civilization of Pharaonic Egypt. This course will focus on the art and architecture of Egypt and their neighbors to the north: the Aegean civilizations known as Cycladic, Minoan, and Mycenaean. While art historical study of these cultures will be emphasized, evidence for trade and other cultural interchange between them will also be discussed. The course will cover such topics as the Pyramids of Giza, the Tomb of Tutankhamun, and the Palace of Knossos.

Elective

This course explores the diversity of form, style, and narrative content of works created by African American artists from the antebellum period to the present. Specific attention will be devoted to several underlining issues including but not limited to identity, race, class, ethnicity, representation, sexuality and aesthetic sensibilities.

Elective

Registration by application only. Application is restricted to concentrators in the Theory & History of Art & Design. A call for applications will be sent to all THAD concentrators.

Please contact the instructor for permission to register. 

Elective

Registration by application only. Application is restricted to concentrators in the Theory & History of Art & Design. A call for applications will be sent to all THAD concentrators.

Please contact the instructor for permission to register. 

Elective

This course examines the artistic images of black women artists in the African Diaspora. We will investigate how race, gender, sexuality and ethnicity have shaped and continues to shape black female identity and artistic productions particularly in the USA, Europe, Britain, Brazil and the Caribbean.

Elective

This course will explore the architectural traditions of the Indigenous cultures of North America, Mesoamerica, and South America in historic perspective. Examinations will focus on the critical cultural and environmental circumstances which led to the development of distinctive architectural styles throughout the Americas. Approached from an anthropological/archaeological perspective, specific topics of discussion will include the following: construction methods and material choices, spatial arrangements and use areas, the relationship between physical and social community structure, and architectural manifestation of cultural belief systems. Emphasis will also be placed on manipulations of the landscape in response to social and climatic needs. Architectural culture discussed in this course will range widely in scale, dispersal and geography - from the igloo of a small Inuit hunting party to the entire Mayan city of Chichen Itza, to the terrace and irrigation systems of the Inca.

Elective

Sustainability is an important consideration for artists on many levels. We shall explore the many ways sustainability affects us as artists including choosing and sourcing art materials to work with and their physical or conceptual longevity. Sustainability is also a growing concern for art conservators and museums in general. What are both domestic and international museums discussing regarding sustainability? This course will delve into the materiality of art, and its component source materials. We will discuss how art and art materials break down and why. We will also discuss the sustainability of art materials used by art conservators in the preservation of art displayed in the museum context. This course will hopefully empower you, the art student, to make more informed decisions while creating and preserving their artwork. Restricted to THAD concentrators or MA candidates in Museum Education.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

This course will examine the role played by urban mythology in 19th and 20th - century European and American art. We will study the late - 19th - century idea of the flaneur, which influenced both visual arts and literature. We will discuss the Futurists' fascination with machines and the Surrealists' concept of a city perceived as a human body. We will analyse the Impressionists' views of Parisian streets, Frans Masereel's woodcuts The City, de Giorgio Chirico's metaphysical paintings and Edward Hopper's nostalgic images of the American metropolis. We will study how the interest in urban reality has influenced the development of new art movements of the last two centuries.

Elective

This course will explore the approaches and contexts of Leonardo da Vinci's draftsmanship. Studying some of his surviving 6000 drawings and notes, we shall locate his aesthetic and analytical processes in the context of a broad range of projects, such as paintings, sculpture, treatises, machines, weapons, maps, festivals, built environments, and philosophical propositions. Nature and the natural sciences will be considered as presented in the drawings of Leonardo. Leonardo's adherence to artisanal traditions, to members of princely courts and republics, to a Classical ideal, and more generally to investigative and inventive strategies will be considered.

Elective

Introduces some of the complex challenges that confront those who engage with making meaning in the arts. The course begins by establishing an interdisciplinary vocabulary and methodology to address questions of ethics and representation in the arts. The second segment of the course interrogates specific case studies in the politics and ethics of representation. Case studies may be drawn from art, design, literature, music, performance or other forms of cultural production. The course will be run as a seminar with weekly reading assignments, regular writing assignments and in class discussion.

This course is offered as GAC 703G for graduate-level students.

Elective

This course provides an art historical survey and thematic exploration of 9 centuries of Yoruba Art and Aesthetics and its intercession with history (including but not limited to colonialism and postcolonial impact, interventions, and discourses), religion, philosophy, and the socio-political beliefs of one of Africa's most ancient civilizations, and a visible presence in the African Diaspora.

Elective

This lecture course offers a broad introduction to the architecture, pictorial arts, and visual and material culture of the Middle Ages in the Latin West, Greek-speaking East, and across the transcultural Mediterranean c. 300–1450 CE. It provides an overview of the concepts, developments, and vocabulary necessary for analyzing and understanding the arts of the medieval period in light of the historical, religious, social, cultural, conceptual, and esthetic contexts and of their production and reception. Topics to be examined include the creation of a vocabulary of medieval imagery and architectural forms; uses of and attitudes toward the classical tradition; art and its makers, patrons, and audiences; materials and techniques of medieval art-making; the arts of religious and devotional practice; the relationships of word and image; the imaginative, multisensory, and performative dimensions of medieval art and architecture; medieval cultural exchange and colonization; art and ideologies; the relationship between art and nature; and the functions of and controversies concerning images in the medieval world. Museum visits will provide the opportunity to discuss objects firsthand. 

Elective

How can we add to the future enrichment of our disciplines? How do we make future collegiate teaching a more meaningful practice? This semester-long professional practice course is designed for artists, designers, architects, and educators who are considering teaching in higher education after graduation and/or those who will be teaching during Wintersession as they complete their course of study at RISD. The goal is to introduce graduate students to a reflective teaching foundation and to provide an orientation to the collegiate teaching and learning experience. The first half of the course is composed of readings and discussions related to seven teaching portfolio assignments. The second half of the course entails Individual Teaching Practice Sessions in which students prepare a class that is observed, videotaped, and receives detailed feedback from faculty and peer observers. Major outcomes of the course are: a partial teaching portfolio including a teaching and inclusivity philosophy, course proposals and an extensive course syllabus.

This is the first course in the required sequence for the Certificate of Collegiate Teaching in Art + Design.

Elective

How can we add to the future enrichment of our disciplines? How do we make future collegiate teaching a more meaningful practice? This semester-long professional practice course is designed for artists, designers, architects, and educators who are considering teaching in higher education after graduation and/or those who will be teaching during Wintersession as they complete their course of study at RISD. The goal is to introduce graduate students to a reflective teaching foundation and to provide an orientation to the collegiate teaching and learning experience. The first half of the course is composed of readings and discussions related to seven teaching portfolio assignments. The second half of the course entails Individual Teaching Practice Sessions in which students prepare a class that is observed, videotaped, and receives detailed feedback from faculty and peer observers. Major outcomes of the course are: a partial teaching portfolio including a teaching and inclusivity philosophy, course proposals and an extensive course syllabus.

This is the first course in the required sequence for the Certificate of Collegiate Teaching in Art + Design.

Elective

How can we add to the future enrichment of our disciplines? How do we make future collegiate teaching a more meaningful practice? This semester-long professional practice course is designed for artists, designers, architects, and educators who are considering teaching in higher education after graduation and/or those who will be teaching during Wintersession as they complete their course of study at RISD. The goal is to introduce graduate students to a reflective teaching foundation and to provide an orientation to the collegiate teaching and learning experience. The first half of the course is composed of readings and discussions related to seven teaching portfolio assignments. The second half of the course entails Individual Teaching Practice Sessions in which students prepare a class that is observed, videotaped, and receives detailed feedback from faculty and peer observers. Major outcomes of the course are: a partial teaching portfolio including a teaching and inclusivity philosophy, course proposals and an extensive course syllabus.

This is the first course in the required sequence for the Certificate of Collegiate Teaching in Art + Design.

Elective

Using RISD as a site for the exploration of strategies for studio-based teaching and learning is the goal of the course. It is designed for students who have completed TLAD-044G Collegiate Teaching: Preparation & Reflection and are interested in models of practice for a future academic environment. The course examines teaching methodologies in graduates' respective fields through case studies, faculty interviews, and article reviews. Learning to teach in a generative and attentive manner can bring teaching closer to one's studio practice. The seminar is composed of guest faculty and graduates, readings, discussions, and project assignments. Graduates in this course will complete a full professional teaching portfolio in preparation for teaching position applications. Individual and group meetings will be equally balanced.

The seminar fulfills a partial requirement for the Certificate in Collegiate Teaching in Art and Design.

Elective

This course invites creative practitioners from all disciplines to play and experiment with the notion of teaching as creative practice. What might happen if we consider the classroom our studio, instructional materials as form, and students as peers and collaborators? How do we push the boundaries of what a lecture, a workshop, a syllabus, a lesson plan, an instructional video, a how-to guide, can be? Whether in the context of higher education, community-based education, early childhood, alternative schools, artist residencies, or the inbetweens, we will take up pedagogy as our discipline and devise multidisciplinary, speculative experiments that redefine the space of pedagogy as one of endless creative potential. Studio work will be scaffolded with readings by thinkers such as Paulo Freire, Fred Moten, bell hooks, and la paperson, and we will consider the works of artists like Nina Katchadourian, Slavs and Tatars, Valie Export, and Walid Raad.

Elective

This is a field-based course that provides students with various kinds of clinical experiences related to their student teaching residency experiences in the Department of Teaching + Learning in Art + Design. MAT students are mentored by TLAD faculty and local teaching artists as a part of this course.

Major Requirement | MAT Teaching + Learning in Art + Design

This is a field-based course that provides students with various kinds of clinical experiences related to their student teaching residency experiences in the Department of Teaching + Learning in Art + Design. MAT students are mentored by TLAD faculty and local teaching artists as a part of this course.

Major Requirement | MAT Teaching + Learning in Art + Design