Few practices are more central to art school education than critique. Yet in recent years, critique itself has become the target of a growing critique. Critique, its detractors argue, seeks only to discredit, to reveal what others fail to see, to prove its adversaries wrong. Yet is this really what defines critique? Has critique, in Bruno Latour’s famous phrase, indeed run out of steam? Is our present moment “post-critical”? Foregrounding these questions, this course will examine both the changing landscape of twentieth-century critique (Frankfurt School critical theory, anticolonial critique, poststructuralism, feminist and queer theoretical critique) and twenty-first-century challenges to and reinventions of critique (post-critique, critical race theory, post-Autonomist Marxism). As we proceed, we will consider the debates that unfold in this context in relation to different aesthetic practices—visual art, film, new media, architecture—with the aim both of reconceptualizing critique and of understanding its role in contemporary culture. In turn, we will attempt to develop a theoretical and historical framework through which members of the class, whatever their distinct concerns or projects, can think through and reassess their own activities in relation to the question of critique and of what constitutes critical cultural production today.

Elective

This course has two primary goals: cultivating an in-depth, hands-on knowledge of a topic in indigenous art history and developing a diverse set of writing tools for documenting lived experience. First, this course will explore the history, anthropology, and overall context of the development of traditional indigenous American textile production methods. Our examination of these textiles will involve critical readings of key texts, lectures and discussions. However, above all, we will be employing a hands-on approach to reproduce the process involved in making these textiles. Focusing on the specific example of Navajo blanket and rug weaving, together we will create our own woven tapestries, replicating traditional methods from cleaning wool straight off the sheep, to dyeing with natural dyes, to building and weaving on our own traditional-style Navajo tapestry looms. The second goal of this course is to explore a variety of approaches toward documenting through writing students' own experiences in the field - ranging from more creative and artistic approaches to more formal or technical descriptions. The intention is to expose students to a variety of writing methods that may come in handy in their professional careers, be they artists' statements or grant applications. To this end, students will be keeping a semester-long field journal detailing their hands-on experiences in this course, culminating in the production of a final presentation of their work.

Elective

As a field of study, material culture explores how we make things and how things, in turn, make us. This class examines the material culture of late consumer capitalism, focusing on how objects organize experience in everyday life. We will investigate the practices through which things-from food and clothing to smart phones-become meaningful, as we tackle political and ethical questions related to the design, manufacture, use and disposal of material goods. The class will introduce students to a range of scholarship on material culture from several disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, history, sociology, art and architectural history, and cultural studies.

Elective

As a field of study, material culture explores how we make things and how things, in turn, make us. This class examines the material culture of late consumer capitalism, focusing on how objects organize experience in everyday life. We will investigate the practices through which things-from food and clothing to smart phones-become meaningful, as we tackle political and ethical questions related to the design, manufacture, use and disposal of material goods. The class will introduce students to a range of scholarship on material culture from several disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, history, sociology, art and architectural history, and cultural studies.

Elective

Collaborations among and between Asian and Asian American artists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have sought to redefine kinship by exploring the politics of belonging, generational disconnections, and the legacy of the Cold War, and to reimagine what reparation means for the Asian Americas. Through examining artworks and performances by artists and filmmakers who engage with the questions of memory, belonging, militarism, and the formation of reparative kinship -- including An-My Lê, siren eun young jung, Ishiuchi Miyako, Jerome Reyes, Kang Seung Lee, Hồng-Ân Trương, Grace Lee, Apichatpong Weerasetakul, and Patty Chang -- this seminar expands on the discourses of transnational Asia and trans-Pacific Asia, where the history of anti-Asian racism and lingering Cold War geopolitics have become ever more palpable since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Students will also critically engage with what “Asian Americas” means when settler colonialism and anti-Black racism continue to fracture our work on ecological decoloniality and make alliances against white supremacy fragile. Initial class sessions establish a theoretical framework, introducing students to interdisciplinary vocabularies and methodologies for addressing the politics and ethics of reparation and representation in art and visual culture. We move on to interrogating specific topical issues in collaborative and individual artworks. Each week centers on a critical topic, drawing together relevant texts and art practices from art history, area studies, media studies, gender and sexuality studies, and film studies to cross-fertilize different approaches and encourage creative and critical thinking.

Students will complete reading and writing assignments and participate actively in class discussion. Students will design and develop their individual curatorial/research project under the guidance of the instructor and write a curatorial proposal based on their research. The course acts as an introduction to the discourse of Asian diasporic art, representation, and artistic collaboration through up-to-date scholarly debates and discourses. It aims to develop a political sensitivity and an analytical sophistication towards representational processes and products in the arts. Students will learn to conduct in-depth research in the interdisciplinary field of the arts and humanities. Students will synthesize interdisciplinary methodologies, develop theoretical frameworks, and apply them to their research and writing.

Elective

As a stimulus to the imagination, method of investigation, or as a basic means of communication, drawing is a fundamental process of human thought. This class will examine various kinds of drawings from the history of art and visual culture moving chronologically from the medieval to the post-modern. Our studies will have a hands-on approach, meeting behind the scenes in the collections of the RISD Museum. Working from objects directly will be supplemented by readings and writing assignments as well as active classroom discussion. This seminar is recommended for THAD concentrators and students especially interested in drawing.

Elective

As a stimulus to the imagination, method of investigation, or as a basic means of communication, drawing is a fundamental process of human thought. This class will examine various kinds of drawings from the history of art and visual culture moving chronologically from the medieval to the post-modern. Our studies will have a hands-on approach, meeting behind the scenes in the collections of the RISD Museum. Working from objects directly will be supplemented by readings and writing assignments as well as active classroom discussion. This seminar is recommended for THAD concentrators and students especially interested in drawing.

Elective

This seminar focuses on the history, discourses and transformations of the black female body as contested site of sexuality, resistance, representation, agency and identity in American visual culture. Organized thematically, with examples drawn from painting, sculpture, photography, film, popular culture and mixed media installations, we examine how the deployment, manipulations and construction of the signification of the asexualized mammy complex is juxtaposed against the jezebel vixen in a shifting terrain from the antebellum era through the post-racial decade of the 21st century.

Elective

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

This course will focus on the cultural and artistic activities which came into being as a result of contacts between the civilizations of Europe and Asia (China in particular). Among the topics explored will be: the ancient world, the Silk Route and Buddhism, the nomads of Eurasia as agents of cultural exchange, early European travelers to China (Marco Polo), the Jesuits at the court of the Chinese emperors during the Ming and Qing dynasties, and finally the Western colonial experience.

Elective

Architectural historians have scrutinized architecture in relation to its cultural, social, political, and aesthetic contexts. What about the environment? The present course proposes to explore environmental perspectives in the history and theory of architecture. It will be divided into three 4- week modules:

1. “Architecture, Nature, and Culture” will examine architecture as the cultural expression of nature’s transformation; 2. “Architecture, A Material Process” will explore architecture’s relation to processes of production and consumption; 3. “Architecture and the Environmental Question” will look into how the idea of environment permeated and still permeates architectural discourses and practices as a political question.

During the semester, we will discuss various topics such as matters pertaining to the idea of nature, the definition of environment, cultural landscapes, materiality, gender, labor, extraction, energy, obsolescence, environmental scarcity, colonial environments, environmental justice, and the Anthropocene, among others.

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

This course will introduce the arts of China through the lens of native and imported religious and philosophical traditions, exploring different approaches to representation and belief. After an introduction to the anthropological study of religion, we will cover four main periods: the pre-historic (Paleolithic - Neolithic), the early dynastic (ca. 2000 - 221 BCE), the imperial (221 BCE - 1911), and the modern-contemporary (post 1911). We will focus on elite and folk approaches to representation and belief with an emphasis on mythology and symbolism. Topics to be explored include: the dragon and the phoenix as symbols, the Han search for immortality, Buddhist cave temples, Taoist landscape painting, the Confucian scholar tradition, ritual garments, the influence of European culture and Christianity, and Communist personality cult.

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