Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. This course is a graduation requirement for all BFA programs.

First-year students are pre-registered for this course by the Liberal Arts Division.

Incoming Transfer students should register into an evening section offered in the Spring semester. Registration is managed by the Division of Liberal Arts.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. This course is a graduation requirement for all BFA programs.

First-year students are pre-registered for this course by the Liberal Arts Division.

Incoming Transfer students should register into an evening section offered in the Spring semester. Registration is managed by the Division of Liberal Arts.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. This course is a graduation requirement for all BFA programs.

First-year students are pre-registered for this course by the Liberal Arts Division.

Incoming Transfer students should register into an evening section offered in the Spring semester. Registration is managed by the Division of Liberal Arts.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. This course is a graduation requirement for all BFA programs.

First-year students are pre-registered for this course by the Liberal Arts Division.

Incoming Transfer students should register into an evening section offered in the Spring semester. Registration is managed by the Division of Liberal Arts.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. This course is a graduation requirement for all BFA programs.

First-year students are pre-registered for this course by the Liberal Arts Division.

Incoming Transfer students should register into an evening section offered in the Spring semester. Registration is managed by the Division of Liberal Arts.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. This course is a graduation requirement for all BFA programs.

First-year students are pre-registered for this course by the Liberal Arts Division.

Incoming Transfer students should register into an evening section offered in the Spring semester. Registration is managed by the Division of Liberal Arts.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. This course is a graduation requirement for all BFA programs.

First-year students are pre-registered for this course by the Liberal Arts Division.

Incoming Transfer students should register into an evening section offered in the Spring semester. Registration is managed by the Division of Liberal Arts.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. This course is a graduation requirement for all BFA programs.

First-year students are pre-registered for this course by the Liberal Arts Division.

Incoming Transfer students should register into an evening section offered in the Spring semester. Registration is managed by the Division of Liberal Arts.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 

First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Transfer students should register into the evening section offered in the Spring semester. Pre-registration into this section is managed by Liberal Arts Division.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. This course is a graduation requirement for all BFA programs.

First-year students are pre-registered for this course by the Liberal Arts Division.

Incoming Transfer students should register into an evening section offered in the Spring semester. Registration is managed by the Division of Liberal Arts.

Major Requirement | BFA

These three hot drinks with which we are so familiar became commodities and part of our everyday only recently. This course explores the values that were attached to these plants with a focus on the era of pre-industrialization, i.e. 1500-1800. We will survey their origins and their Western adoption by examining trade and colonial networks, medical theories, the issue of morality, and the expansion of sugar production. We will study how the craving for these drinks reinforced or even spurred slavery in French, Portuguese, Dutch, and English colonies. In addition, we will reflect on ritual and tableware in a variety of cultures. Sustainability, exploitative labor, and how complicit we are as present-day consumers is also part of this course. The methodology is based on the analysis of images and objects, discussions of assigned readings, written responses, visits to the RISD museum and the Brown U. rare books collection as well as contacts with local tea, coffee, or chocolate companies. This course is capped at 15 students in order to foster research and writing. For final projects, you can work either on coffee or tea, or contribute to Ethical Chocolate Day (Feb. 4), a multiple-activity venue. ECD includes an evening discussion with professionals enhanced by chocolate tasting; attendance to that event is mandatory. Active participation in class activities and completing homework is expected to pass this course.

Elective

This interdisciplinary seminar explores art’s transformative impact in the immediate world, considering the possibility of developing and fostering an art practice deeply rooted in reciprocity, sustainability, and ecological repair. We will draw deeply from the lineages of eco-art, sustainable craft, and regenerative agriculture to explore the possibilities of art making as a restorative practice in a changing climate. Focusing on the legacy of earlier artists' (like the work of Nils Udo, Ana Mendieta and Anna Halprin, Richard Long and Hamish Fulton), whose work grew out of the environmental movement of the 1960s, as well as Andy Goldsworthy and Richard Shilling, we will also consider kinship, the histories and philosophies of gardens and landscape art, models of earth-based material research, and explore the work of contemporary artists who draw from natural materials as a way to ground their work in a sustainable future. In addition to exploring the historical precedents other artists have set, students will investigate restorative interventions and deep observation as artistic practice and make site-responsive work in order to foster a deeper consciousness about our interconnectedness with the earth, contemplate artistic methods of ecological repair, and envision art as a means for sustainable living. We will reflect on our engagement with the physical and social environment; what we value and why; and learn to document and record our physical interventions within the literal and figurative landscapes we occupy. Class will travel afield to the instructor's farm to investigate earth connection practices and consider alternative narratives that can be activated through work that celebrates nature as a generative force.

Elective

This course will show how the ideas of the historical French avant-garde movement founded in Paris in 1924 have spread across borders and influenced artists of central Europe. It will also focus on the relationship between surrealist European artists of the 20th century and Mexican art. Our goal will be to see how certain ways of thinking and seeing the world can be shared by artists living in different places and under different political regimes.

Elective

What is proof of antiblackness in a world that is built upon it? What is evidence of conquest when empire is everywhere? Some of the questions these realities raise were posed profoundly by Alexis Pauline Gumbs when she asked, What if l can never find evidence of what the people did to break the silence? Am I looking to the past in vain? Am I depending on evidence to confirm what my soul has evidence enough for?

In this course, students will utilize techniques from their degree programs to create projects/works that reckon with archives. monuments, and maps as a way of unsettling dominant and unearthing radical imaginings of evidence. If we take Christina Sharpe's proposition seriously, that we do indeed exist in "the ongoingness of the conditions of capture", how may a rearticulation of evidence allow for more expansive expressions of Black life that are not required to provide proof for their existence. Though focused primarily on blackness through a Black Studies framework, we will unpack the question of evidence as it is taken up by decolonial Xicanx, Latinx, Native American, and Asian scholars, writers, artists, creatives, activists, and cultural workers.

This course is an invitation to undertake a series of speculative arguments within, against, and beyond multiple archives; to use radical research methodologies to accept Saidiya Hartman's task to "tell an impossible story and amplify the impossibility of its telling" no matter the evidence, or supposed lack thereof. During this semester, not only will we be taking apart monuments, maps, archives, but by the end of it, we may be taking apart ourselves.

Elective

More than half the people on the planet now live in urban areas. Eight of the world's ten biggest cities are in Asia. In this course we will use Asian cities and a few others to explore the possibilities and limits of design, which we will understand to include architecture and art. We will start by working out how modern cities got to be the way they are, and the role that design played. We will then take the city apart, to understand how it demands, enables, and frustrates design. We will end by asking what Asian cities have to teach us, and how we might make the cities in which many of us live and work more liveable. We will draw on materials from Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore, Delhi, and more. We will use Providence as a field site.

Elective

Many histories of 20th century Modernism privilege discourses of individuality, the avant-garde, and (ersatz) breaks with the tradition, but threads of contemplative and spiritual practices can be traced through artwork both familiar and lesser known, whether in the divine feminine imagery of Ana Mendieta, John Cage's Zen Buddhist-influence writings, or the traces of Adrian Piper's dedicated yoga practice. This class explores case studies from the 19th century to contemporary art at the intersection between contemplative practices and image-making. Students will develop definitions of "contemplative practice" and engage different methods in class to explore the "purpose" of contemplation in pursuit of the numinous in art. They will also cultivate a personal contemplative practice outside of class. We will read primary sources and critical texts and keep a journal to ground interpretation of key visual and performance works in close observation. Students will write an analysis of work that asks contemplative attention of its audience and craft a final project with the option for a research paper or experiential work. This class will involve playing close attention to breath and body in addition to external stimulus (including sound and image), and will include periods of silence that some may find challenging.

Elective

With the publication of Society of the Spectacle in 1967, Situationist theorist and filmmaker Guy Debord famously declared that images had entirely replaced lived existence. In the decades since, spectacle's domination of everyday life seems only to have intensified. Yet how exactly might we understand spectacle today? How has its role been affected or redefined by radical changes in media, technology, labor, and politics? In this class, we will consider these questions in broad critical perspective. Foregrounding contemporary art but looking as well at film, architecture, design, and new media, we will trace the development of spectacle from the postwar period to our present moment, emphasizing in turn the ways that politics, violence, sexuality, racial difference, and everyday cultural life have all been increasingly mediated and spectacularized. Against this background, we will examine the diverse aesthetic and political counter-practices that have arisen to confront, challenge, or otherwise disrupt spectacle in its varied forms. In so doing, we will attempt not only to rethink the effects and function of spectacle today but also to understand how --in response to the growing spectacularization of culture --visual artists, filmmakers, theorists, and others have attempted to reimagine and remake contemporary life itself.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

With the publication of Society of the Spectacle in 1967, Situationist theorist and filmmaker Guy Debord famously declared that images had entirely replaced lived existence. In the decades since, spectacle's domination of everyday life seems only to have intensified. Yet how exactly might we understand spectacle today? How has its role been affected or redefined by radical changes in media, technology, labor, and politics? In this class, we will consider these questions in broad critical perspective. Foregrounding contemporary art but looking as well at film, architecture, design, and new media, we will trace the development of spectacle from the postwar period to our present moment, emphasizing in turn the ways that politics, violence, sexuality, racial difference, and everyday cultural life have all been increasingly mediated and spectacularized. Against this background, we will examine the diverse aesthetic and political counter-practices that have arisen to confront, challenge, or otherwise disrupt spectacle in its varied forms. In so doing, we will attempt not only to rethink the effects and function of spectacle today but also to understand how --in response to the growing spectacularization of culture --visual artists, filmmakers, theorists, and others have attempted to reimagine and remake contemporary life itself.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

This THAD lab course will challenge you to enact methodologies that entwine visual culture with the natural sciences and Indigenous values. As a contemporary art movement, sci-art has two objectives:

1) to increase the communicative capacity of science through artistic media, and

2) to explore new dimensions of the human capacity for learning and teaching about our shared world.

This course’s active approach to sci-art history is Land-based, in which practitioners are guided by an awareness of the obligations we have to all things. To bridge sci-art methods and Land-based learning, we practice Two-Eyed Seeing, which engages locality, visuality, and textuality through observation, collection, ceremony, and craft. Register for this class if you are open to a paradigm shift that breaks from commonly learned assumptions about relationships between yourself and every other thing around you.

Elective

In this class we will explore diverse 20th and 21st century, primarily American, fiber and textile arts by makers who might work in, between, or beyond the categories of art, craft, and design, and weave them into their social, political, artistic, and cultural contexts. Chronologically and thematically organized, we will attend to the role of fiber and textile arts in major artistic movements, as well as those made in other systems of value, such as for the continuity and regeneration of community and familial traditions of making, economic necessity, and political and identity expression; and objects ranging from large scale installations, garmenting, tapestry and weavings, macrame and knotting, and quilts and other stitchery, to architectural and interior textiles, and more. Historically marginalized in hegemonic art histories, throughout the semester we will also unravel the terms of fiber and textile arts’ marginalizations, including ideologies of gender, class, imperialism, and race, and constructed hierarchies and distinctions between the artistic, the decorative, and the useful.

Elective