Transformative Technologies and Cultural Change is a lecture course centering on the cultural and social impacts of technologies. Choices of technologies for the class discussions will be limited to those that together have transformed how we live, work, and experience leisure.  Among included technological systems communication, transportation, energy generation, health and longevity, and mass production will be examined. The course requires reading about three to four brief articles or excerpts per meeting. These provide context and content for in-class discussions related to lectures.  Student discussion leaders guide the class and must volunteer to run at least 2 discussions during the semester.  Hence, attendance and class participation are both important elements of Transformative Technologies.  There will also be 3 brief writings derived from prompts and requiring some research beyond assigned readings. There are two tests including one at the midterm and one during the Liberal Arts Examination Day.  In addition, a presentation expanding on course topics and of your own choosing will complete the requirements for the course.

Elective

The purpose of S301 is for students to engage in scholarly exploration of topics that are of interest to them (including topics that directly impact their studio practice). Students will be guided by the particular expertise of their faculty, and the epistemological frameworks of a given HPSS discipline or interdisciplinary area, to build a liberal arts-based practice that deepens and expands understanding of their area of focus. Placement in the junior year is scaffolded to allow students to have had the time to take several liberal arts electives and be far enough along in their major to start to develop specific interests and questions that could benefit from deeper exploration and integration across bodies of knowledge. The project-based focus of the course should allow students to start to gain background understanding of a topic of interest that may serve them as they enter their final year of study at RISD, including optionally a reflection about the relevance of the project to their studio work.

Major Requirement | BFA, BArch

This section of S301 on Bodies & Borders introduces students to transdisciplinary and intersectional discussions focused on relationships between bodies and borders. Students will engage with theories of embodiment and explore linguistic, spatial, and identity borderlands, as well as issues of global mobility, contested citizenship, and radical vulnerability. Through these perspectives, they will build strong contextual and theoretical foundations, alongside skills in research methodologies. This work will be reflected in the development of a final project, including a literature review, iterative drafts, and a final presentation that reflects their intellectual engagement throughout the seminar.

Major Requirement | BFA, BArch

The course is designed to give students an overview of Mexico’s historic and contemporary art, from the cultural legacy of the pre-columbian states (the Olmecs to the Aztecs) to the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). It will explore the political, economic and cultural contexts which gave rise to the Mexican revolution and its cultural impact on the development of such movements as the estridentismo and on the muralist period; we will look at the impact of Indigenous styles on the history of Mexican art and beyond, and the continuous role of regional traditional creativity on modern art and architecture in Mexico. The course will use both an ethnographic perspective, and an aesthetics approach to explore the complex trajectory of Mexican art.

Elective

In this class we study cities and examine the shared lessons and power relations that frame urbanism today. We ponder upon the valences and representations of the terms Global South-Global North, and developing-developed, and the impacts they have on urban studies, through this we challenge conventional EuroAmercian centric ways of looking at urban life. The course highlights global mega cities such as Mumbai, Kunming, Sao Paolo, Bangkok, and Lagos and places them at the center of urban studies. The course will explore the resonances between these cities and the kinds of challenges they face as they encounter rapid urban growth and renewal. We will ask: What do cities of the Global South tell us about urbanism and urbanization today? What are formal and economic challenges facing urbanism today and how do global megacities exhibit them? What forms of knowledge, activism, and contestation emerge from urban areas outside of Europe and North America?

Like most courses in the History, Philosophy, and Social Sciences (HPSS) department, this course builds a critical understanding of diverse cultures of the world, raises ethical questions that arise as different groups interact, develops an analysis of social situations in the world, and highlights forms of power and inequity. Class texts will case study different cities and compare experience in cities in Latin America, Asia, Africa, United States, and the Middle East. Modules in the class will discuss planning and the built environment, commodities and capital, informality and climate change, infrastructure and energy, as well as think through theory from the Global South. This is a discussion-based seminar and active in-class participation is required of all students. Class activities will include mapping sessions, group work, and discussions on films.

Elective

In this class we study cities and examine the shared lessons and power relations that frame urbanism today. We ponder upon the valences and representations of the terms Global South-Global North, and developing-developed, and the impacts they have on urban studies, through this we challenge conventional EuroAmercian centric ways of looking at urban life. The course highlights global mega cities such as Mumbai, Kunming, Sao Paolo, Bangkok, and Lagos and places them at the center of urban studies. The course will explore the resonances between these cities and the kinds of challenges they face as they encounter rapid urban growth and renewal. We will ask: What do cities of the Global South tell us about urbanism and urbanization today? What are formal and economic challenges facing urbanism today and how do global megacities exhibit them? What forms of knowledge, activism, and contestation emerge from urban areas outside of Europe and North America?

Like most courses in the History, Philosophy, and Social Sciences (HPSS) department, this course builds a critical understanding of diverse cultures of the world, raises ethical questions that arise as different groups interact, develops an analysis of social situations in the world, and highlights forms of power and inequity. Class texts will case study different cities and compare experience in cities in Latin America, Asia, Africa, United States, and the Middle East. Modules in the class will discuss planning and the built environment, commodities and capital, informality and climate change, infrastructure and energy, as well as think through theory from the Global South. This is a discussion-based seminar and active in-class participation is required of all students. Class activities will include mapping sessions, group work, and discussions on films.

Elective

The study of international politics assumes gender neutrality, which tends to render women invisible in the global political economy order. In this course, we question the assumption that international politics should be gender neutral, deconstruct the role of gender in the field, and view the role of gender in transformative global change. Particularly, we employ a gendered and intersectional lens to study global and domestic political and economic processes.

Elective

How do goods/products get from producers to consumers? Global supply chains are involved in the global system of organizations, people, processes, and resources that transform raw materials into finished products. Additionally, these complex processes and networks are responsible for delivering finished products to consumers. In this course, we will first lay a foundation for understanding global supply chains, drawing from political science, economics, and management. Next, we will engage in critical analysis of the process and network with respect to issues that include human rights, gender, the environment, and labor standards. We will correspondingly examine the roles of actors such as governments, firms, consumers, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations involved in global supply chains. This course adopts the flipped classroom approach, requiring students to spend one class session a week preparing for active learning activities in the second class session of the week.

Elective

How do goods/products get from producers to consumers? Global supply chains are involved in the global system of organizations, people, processes, and resources that transform raw materials into finished products. Additionally, these complex processes and networks are responsible for delivering finished products to consumers. In this course, we will first lay a foundation for understanding global supply chains, drawing from political science, economics, and management. Next, we will engage in critical analysis of the process and network with respect to issues that include human rights, gender, the environment, and labor standards. We will correspondingly examine the roles of actors such as governments, firms, consumers, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations involved in global supply chains. This course adopts the flipped classroom approach, requiring students to spend one class session a week preparing for active learning activities in the second class session of the week.

Elective

As part of a broad civics and liberal arts education, the main goal of this course is to provide students with the opportunity to increase their knowledge of US elections, US electoral demography, and the US political system.  In addition to a focus on the campaign(s) for the US Presidency, this course will explore the cultural, demographic, social, and spatial dimensions of the current US electorate, identify and examine important swing states and congressional districts in the race for control of the Senate and the House of Representatives, detail the stakes involved for control of these two governmental bodies, analyze image-making in and the visual culture of US political campaigns and elections, and detail the mechanics and mechanisms of US elections and US electoral cycles.  The main theme addressed in this course will be the dynamic of and dialogue between a particular cultural and social moment in US history and the course and outcome of US political campaigns and elections.  Additional themes that will be developed in this course include: the on-going diversification of the nominees put forward by US political parties; splits (within and without) in the ideology and positioning of the Democratic and Republican parties; and the evolving demography and political positioning of the US electorate.  In this regard, this course will look forward to and prepare students to analyze and grapple with the run-up to and results of the next US Presidential elections.  As young adults whose lives, in many ways, will be shaped by the outcome of US elections present and future, the over-arching objective of this course will be to raise students’ civic awareness and underline the importance of US elections in articulating, defining, and reflecting the identity and future of America as a nation.

Elective

Have you ever wondered how social situations guide how we think about and act toward others, what determines who we love and who we hate, how we form attitudes about our own and others behavior, what determines whether we will help or hurt others, or how we construct knowledge about the self? If so, social psychology addresses these questions and many more. Social psychology is the science of how others influence the way people think, feel, and act. The aim of this course is to familiarize you with current and classic research and theory in social psychology, help you to develop critical thinking skills about social-psychological phenomena, and stimulate you to think about the implications of social-psychological research for everyday living. For this course, students will complete readings from a textbook and articles. There be will be four quizzes and a final project applying one concept within social psychology to everyday life.

This course is being offered as a large format class, and will involve primarily lectures with small group lab projects during class time. Assessments will include quizzes, a midterm and final exam, as well as homework assignments related to the lab based projects.

Elective

Millions of people around the world have been forced from their homes by interlinked factors including persecution, armed conflict and war, natural disasters, structural violence, and development projects. The seminar explores the “refugee” and “migrant” status and examines the refugee crisis and forced migration in a global perspective and through an interdisciplinary lens. It provides a historical background of the formation of the “refugee” concept going back to inter-war Europe and placing emphasis both on its construction in international law and on the precarious state that refugees and migrants face today globally through various case studies. The seminar also addresses the politics of humanitarianism, the role of international organizations, especially UNHCR, and the securitization of human rights as well as the ethnic, gendered, and religious identities being reshaped by forced displacement. 

The course is organized both chronologically and thematically, to understand the ways in which global migration and contemporary refugee crises have changed over time, highlighting continuities and ruptures especially in the construction of the refugee and the migrant as the “other.” Lectures and readings provide a global perspective but focus on regional case studies, often using a comparative and transdisciplinary framework. Similarly, writing assignments, lectures, and class materials will draw upon international relations, anthropology, gender studies, sociology, and history, and examine different types of sources, including academic books and journal articles, first-person narratives, and visual resources.

Elective

Through lectures and close readings of secondary and primary sources, this course investigates political power and its relationship to freedom in the creation and development of the United States. In the first third of the class, topics of particular interest are: Indigenous cultures in America; early Spanish, French, and British colonialism; the settlement of British North America; unfree systems of labor; and comparative folkways among different regions. The second examines the American Revolution and the Constitutional debate, territorial expansion, and the spread of democracy, markets, and reform movements. The last features slavery and the sectional crisis, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and imperialism in Cuba and the Philippines.

Elective

As the study of behavior and mental processes, psychology allows us to better understand how people think, feel and act. This introductory course provides a broad overview of the major content areas within the field of psychology (e.g., physiological, developmental, social and cognitive psychology) and will introduce you to the psychological theories and research used to understand human behavior. We will cover a wide variety of topics, including how people learn, process and store information, why people possess distinct personalities, how social situations and cultural norms affect our behavior, how we grow and develop throughout our lives, etc. Throughout the course we will critically evaluate the merit of classic psychological theory and research in understanding people's thoughts, feelings and actions in real world situations. This course will provide a broad knowledge base for those interested in taking upper level psychology classes.

Elective

In this course, we will investigate two central questions: how are sounds shaped by place and power, and how are place and power ​​negotiated/reconstituted in and through sound? Building on the works of Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, this course will explore "soundscapes" as fecund sites of social and political inquiry. Through readings, recordings, and soundwalks, we will question how the soundscape functions both as a sonic place and as a way of making sense of that place. The course will include lectures, discussions, and short writing assignments. For the final project, students will analyze a soundscape of their choosing, paying specific attention to its structural components (keynote sounds, signals, soundmarks, etc.) as well as its social, political, and economic resonances.

Elective

Inventive Political Ecologies is a HPSS elective and NCSS core seminar. The course provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Inventive Political Ecologies. This course will critically interrogate the many different proposals for inventive political ecologies that have emerged out of the critical social sciences, technology and engineering studies and the broad fields of design, planning and architecture. We will collectively discuss and debate what these inventive political ecologies might offer for addressing and acting on the environmental and climate crisis. We will consider ways in which discussion of “invention” and “innovation” can both open up and sometimes narrow eco-political and environmental discussions. Finally, we will continually consider which inventive political ecologies might help us move towards designing and building more just post-carbon futures.

Graduate students register for GRAD 702G - INVENTIVE POLITICAL ECOLOGIES.

Elective

Designers and architects are constantly making objects, systems, services, infrastructures but they are also involved in dream making, desire shaping and negotiating power relations. The aim of this class is to introduce students in an accessible way to the wide-ranging insights that a sociology of design and architecture offers for understanding and evaluating the contours of our current designed economies and possible future designed worlds. We will explore design and architecture as forms of classed, raced and gendered labor and look at the tensions that have long existed between professional designers and publics. We will consider the ways in which the mainstream design industry is shaped by and a shaper of politics and culture and consider how it is embedded within and maintains markets, fossil capitalism, consumer culture and colonialism. We will appraise what sociologists and design theorists have to say about possible future design economies and societies based on digital surveillance, automation/robotics, and bio/geo-engineering. Finally, we will critically examine at a range of critical design social movements: from design justice to decolonial designers, feminist designers to designs for decarbonization and sustainable transitions which argue more just and ecological design worlds are still possible. 

Elective

Designers and architects are constantly making objects, systems, services, infrastructures but they are also involved in dream making, desire shaping and negotiating power relations. The aim of this class is to introduce students in an accessible way to the wide-ranging insights that a sociology of design and architecture offers for understanding and evaluating the contours of our current designed economies and possible future designed worlds. We will explore design and architecture as forms of classed, raced and gendered labor and look at the tensions that have long existed between professional designers and publics. We will consider the ways in which the mainstream design industry is shaped by and a shaper of politics and culture and consider how it is embedded within and maintains markets, fossil capitalism, consumer culture and colonialism. We will appraise what sociologists and design theorists have to say about possible future design economies and societies based on digital surveillance, automation/robotics, and bio/geo-engineering. Finally, we will critically examine at a range of critical design social movements: from design justice to decolonial designers, feminist designers to designs for decarbonization and sustainable transitions which argue more just and ecological design worlds are still possible. 

Elective

The ability to conceive and prepare for different future(s) is a vital human capability. Designers are frequently commissioned by multinational corporations, government agencies and cultural institutions for foresight and strategy work. But in times of uncertainty we all have to be futurists. This special topic studio will introduce students to the tools and techniques of foresight practice and discursive design. We will also examine afro-futurism, decolonised futures and participatory design to see how these practices are being used by communities and cultures rarely supported in futures practices. Students will finish the semester with designed objects and written products that support more resilient futures thinking.

If you have questions about the studio, please do not hesitate to contact Charlie Cannon via email. cccannon@risd.edu.

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

Thousands of years ago, in the highlands of Peru, indigenous farmers developed an amazing plant that provided high protein yet needed very little energy to cook – it was the nuña, a bean that pops like popcorn! Now, thousands of years later, those same qualities could provide global environmental and health benefits, both reducing our fossil fuel use and our consumption of animal protein. But how can we encourage people to eat these amazing little beans?

In this studio, we will explore that very question, using human-centered design research and iterative experimentation to respectfully build on this ancient indigenous technology. Part foodways research, part food design, we will examine the challenge from top to bottom using seeds developed by the USDA to grow in non-equatorial climates. We will do everything from experimenting with how to prepare the beans to designing research-based deployment strategies and packaging, using design to help lower the barriers to environmentally-sound healthy nutrition.

If you love hands-on experimentation, are interested in design for social good and want to learn more about qualitative design research, this is the course for you!

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