This course will trace major developments in contemporary art from the 1960s to the present. Beginning with the shift away from modernist abstraction in the late 1950s and proceeding chronologically, we will examine the diverse array of movements, practices, and events that have come to define the larger field of contemporary art: minimalism, conceptualism, and pop in the 1960s, site specific and performance art in the 1970s, the culture wars and postmodernist debates of the 1980s, and the various forms of "abject," project-based, and "relational" art that followed. Foregrounding problems that have remained central for artists throughout this period - the status of the body, the institutional conditions of artistic production and reception, the politics of representation and difference - we will focus on putting the shifting terrain of contemporary art into broad social, historical, and theoretical perspective. In turn, we will attempt to develop a comprehensive critical framework for understanding the aesthetic and political stakes of contemporary art today.

Elective

This course focuses on representations by, of, and for Latinx peoples in the United States, beginning with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, which ended the Mexican-American War and ceded one-third of Mexican territory to the United States, until the present day. Drawing from Glorφa Anzalda's theory of the borderland as a both physical and psychological "in-between space," we will address questions of identity and belonging, assimilation and resistance, and visibility and erasure as they are encountered and debated by (and about) diasporic communities in the United States. Topics of discussion will include nineteenth-century debates of Pan-Americanism, the popularization and critique of Hollywood stereotypes during the Good Neighbor era, and Chicanx activism of the 1960s and 1970s. Issues of racial and ethnic identity will be considered alongside and in dialogue with those of gender, sexuality, class, and immigration status, and our discussions will encompass not only visual art but also music, cinema, literature, and activism. We will ask ourselves, what is the relationship of Latinx art and visual culture to that of the U.S.? What is its relationship to "Latin American" history and identity? And how might we begin to expand our definitions of U.S. art history?

Elective

From international film festivals to university campuses, from museums of modern art to neighborhood theaters, Iranian cinema has now emerged as the staple of a cultural currency that defies the logic of nativism and challenges the problems of globalization. Hamid Dabashi writes this in the introduction to his landmark study of Iranian cinema, Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present and Future (Verso, 2001). This course introduces you to the history of Iranian cinema, from the Iranian New Wave (1960s) to the present. It examines the ways in it occupies an important place on the scene of global cinema while it defies the logic of nativism. We will watch some of the most prominent movies by acclaimed Iranian filmmakers Dariush Mehrjui, Ebrahim Golestan, Nasser Taghvai, Amir Naderi, Sohrab Shahid-Saless, Forough Farrokhzad, Jafar Panahi, Masoud Kimiai, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Bahram Beyzaie, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Marzieh Meshkini, Asghar Farhadi, Tahmineh Milani, Ebrahim Hatamikia, and Kamran Shirdel. We will also look at the works of diasporic artists, including Shirin Neshat, Marjane Satrapi, Ramin Bahrani, Mitra Farahani, Ana Lily Amirpour, and Granaz Moussavi.

Elective

The arts have always played a central role in social protest. This course examines the arts in five key socio-political revolutions in the modern and contemporary Muslim world. We will focus on arts practices that have emerged from and contributed to political movements, including religious movements, struggles for national liberation from colonial and imperialist domination, and movements for social equality and against state oppression. Students will learn about the cultural politics of revolutionary movements in the Muslim world and will gain skills in analyzing the role of a wide array of art forms, including traditional arts, cinema, poetry, visual and performance arts, zines and protest graphics, and comics journalism. The course will also introduce crucial theories and debates about relationships between aesthetics and politics, the role of artists and other intellectuals in political struggle, and the way governments attempt to control what artists make and who it reaches. Comparative works will be drawn from global social revolutions about disarmament, race and gender equality, indigenous rights, climate action, and more. In addition to regular assignments and biweekly quizzes, students will develop and present their own final project using historical visual strategies to support a social cause of choice. 

Elective

In this seminar, we will examine the often complex, dynamic relationships between words and images in the book, broadly conceived, from the birth of the codex in the ancient mediterranean to the so-called “death” of the codex and rise of digital illustrated texts today. Working directly from RISD’s Special Collections and the collections of the RISD Museum, we will attend to the history of the illustrated book, the materials and techniques of its production, and the distinct means by which books tell stories beyond words. A series of critical essays—in psychoanalysis, Black studies, thing theory, among other methods—will enrich our perspective on picture books of all kinds.

Elective

Japanese brands retain global reputations and Japanese products remain objects of desire. Japanese artistry and design can give even a commonplace utensil immediate cachet. This course will begin by asking what counts as a Japanese object, then use the things we find as a repository with which to question what art, architecture, and design has done -- and can do -- in the world. We will explore how people living in the Japanese islands have used materials, objects, and ideas, often from elsewhere, to address their needs, and how the things they have made have changed over time and migrated overseas. The needs may range from food, shelter, and clothing to status, story, and speed; the objects from Buddhist mandalas to anime celluloids, prehistoric pots to elder care robots, and wooden farmhouses to recycling systems. We will end by asking how we might adopt, adapt, and use Japanese objects, together with the principles and practice of art and design they reveal, in our own lives.

Elective

This course offers an introduction to the history and practice of artists as collaborators, critics, and creators in art museums from the 1960s to the present. Exploring questions concerning the purpose, possibilities, and problems of art museums, students will be invited to consider how artists have responded to museum collections, histories, and spaces. We will discuss different strategies artists have used to offer alternate ways of experiencing, examining or critiquing historic and contemporary art and design and other issues. Students will use a wide variety of interpretive lenses to analyze the interventions of a diverse range of artists, including Andy Warhol, Fred Wilson, Andrea Fraser, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Lee Mingwei, Simone Leigh, and artists of RISD’s own Dorner Prize, among others. Students will also be invited to consider training in studio art as preparation for different ways of working with museum collections—from conservation and curation to education and exhibition design. Through case studies, readings, guest lectures, and field trips, students will explore key issues, debates, and concerns of artists as collaborators and museums as sites of critical and creative production. Coursework includes writing, research, and creative projects inspired by students' own artwork and contemporary and historic objects from the collection of the RISD Museum.

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

While definitions of “performance art” remain vague and contested, this introductory class examines the practice as it emerges in the early 20th century as a tool to explore shifting understandings and experiences of embodiment. We will return to the open questions of how artists engaged the locus of 'the body' to evaluate and reevaluate the rapid changes of the 20th and 21st centuries, in all of their ethical unclarity. We will consider recurrent themes of ephemerality, time, technology, documentation, and the shifting roles of artists, cultural institutions, and audiences. Students will develop the skills to describe languages of the body, both in stillness and in movement, interrogate theoretical texts and frameworks of performativity, and develop a sense of historical narrative to contextualize the thematic questions broached by “performance art.” We will keep a journal to ground interpretations of key works and readings in close analysis, attend a performance artwork and write a critical response, and craft a final project with the option for a research paper or performance work.

Elective

This course will critically examine how global architectural exchange shapes cultural identities and historical narratives, and engages with dominant power systems—understanding architecture as a symptom of larger political, social, and cultural forces. Covering the period from The Enlightenment to the early 20th Century, it is structured as a dialogue between cases of Chinoiserie, Japonisme, and Indo-Saracenic architecture and decolonial, race, and gender studies. This course will lead students to ask questions: What kinds of inventions result from crosscultural exchange? How do these modes of representation reinforce or subvert established cultural beliefs? How can we characterize the process of architectural circulation across regions? Students are encouraged to bring cases of Chinoiserie, Japonisme, and Indo-Saracenic influences connected to their personal backgrounds to develop a unique understanding of global architectural exchanges between Asia and the world.   

Elective

This course discusses developments in architecture, painting, and sculpture in Southern Europe, Northern Africa, and the Western Asia, in the Hellenic sphere of influence between 900 BCE and CE 400. Topics include Greek and Hellenistic Art, Etruscan and Roman Art, and the archaeological methods used to investigate these civilizations. Emphases will include the importance of cultural exchange in the development of what would become Greek culture and the immense plurality seen in those regions during that period.

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

This writing-intensive course helps students consider the relationship between writing and design, examining language and writing as an active component of a dynamic studio practice. We will explore contemporary culture and issues that affect designers through reading, writing, and discussion, and will examine several different types of design writing in the process. Exercises train students in essential tasks such as conducting formal analyses, writing catalogue entries, and making visual presentations, and we will discuss methods for idea generation, research and writing about our work and our selves, as well as engaging with professional design writing practices like reviews and interviews. We will hone strategies for gathering, organizing, and archiving research material, and will discuss the ways in which writing, as well as self reflection, researching texts, reading arts publications and reviews, and studying like-minded artists can contribute to a critical, engaged, and continually evolving body of work.

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

Public programs in art museums are designed to spark conversation, curiosity, and connection. What was once the limited realm of educational lectures from experts in the field has evolved into a dynamic, diverse practice spanning a range of modes of engagement. Programs amplify the perspectives of artists, writers, thinkers, community leaders and changemakers, and explore art, our lives, and the critical issues of our time. From quiet, intimate gatherings looking closely at a single work of art to listening parties, performances, readings, conversations, hands-on workshops and more, public programs can be designed to incite wonder, spark curiosity, deepen understanding, pose critique, share new perspectives or relax, unwind, and have fun. What makes a great program and why? How do you engage different audiences and develop an inclusive and equitable approach? How do you create meaningful experiences and lasting impressions?

In this course, students will be introduced to the art of engagement. Drawing on case studies, readings, and lectures by guest speakers in the field, students will be immersed in the methods, objectives, history, and theory of public engagement. Throughout the semester, students will develop their skills through workshops, exercises, and interactive discussions, examining questions of care, relevance, responsiveness, equity, access, innovation, imagination, and fun in public engagement—from the Brooklyn Museum’s community-centered First Saturdays, the Whitney Museum’s artist programs, the Met’s contemplative Observant Eye, MoMA’s Create Ability and Art inSight Access Programs, to the RISD Museum’s own signature Ways of Looking. Students will also be introduced to collaborative methods of co-creating programs with artists and communities, and strategies for designing mutually beneficial programs. This course is designed for students to think deeply about activating and sharing different aspects of their work with different audiences, exploring creative process, concepts, context, and inspiration. 

Students will also have the option of researching and working with contemporary and historic objects from the RISD Museum collection. This course will also introduce students to the history and theory of public programs in the art museum and areas of growth, innovation and new directions in the field. Students will learn about different audiences, and strategies and modes of engagement with opportunities to learn firsthand through field trips and workshops.

Elective

The critical framework of intersectional feminism was first theorized Black scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s to highlight the ways in which social identities, such as race, class, and gender, and systems of inequality and discrimination can “intersect” to create complex dynamics and impacts. It has its roots in longer histories of women-of-color feminisms and continues to be a productive research—and activist—framework to the present. Grounded in the words and actions of Black, Indigenous, queer, disability, and other thinkers, in this class we will practice using such theories as critical frameworks to engage diverse craft artists and traditions.

We will consider questions such as how “craft” —a term unbounded by media which presses against the historically constructed limits of “art”—has been deployed historically to create racialized, gendered, ethnic, regional, colonial, nationalist, and other hierarchies which marginalize some artistic practices; how craft has historically sustained communities; and how contemporary artists are reclaiming craft in powerful ways. bell hooks wrote of theory as “liberatory practice”; this class asks, “Can craft, too, be a liberatory practice?” Students are encouraged to bring their own practices, interests, and experiences into class discussions and projects, and we will routinely visit with RISD Museum collections to practice applying theory to artworks.

Elective

How has the image been understood, theorized, and practiced in the Iranian world across millennia? What distinguishes a painterly image from other regimes of representation? And how do historical shifts—religious, imperial, technological, colonial, and global—transform the very ontology of the image? This lecture-based survey traces the longue durée of visual arts in Iran from antiquity to the present.

Anchored in Ruyin Pakbaz’s Pictorial Arts in Iran (Tehran: Fenjan Books, 2023) and supplemented by focused readings on Persian painting, photography, and visual theory, the course approaches Iranian art not simply as a stylistic succession, but as a series of evolving responses to the problem of representation itself. We begin with antiquity, examining early visual formations and the conceptual foundations of figuration, monumentality, and symbolic image-making in the Iranian world. The course then turns to the efflorescence of Persian manuscript painting between the 12th and 18th centuries, attending to its complex dialogues—particularly with Chinese painting—as well as to the aesthetic and intellectual achievements of the Herat and Tabriz schools. The Safavid period becomes a crucial site for examining the entry of European pictorial systems and the reconfiguration of local visual epistemologies. The nineteenth century introduces another decisive transformation: the rise of court portraiture and the arrival of photography. We ask how photography recalibrates painterly practice, reshapes notions of subjecthood, and repositions Iran within emergent global visual modernities. The final segment of the course follows developments from the 1920s onward, investigating how modern and contemporary artists negotiate inherited traditions while articulating new relations between image, history, and artistic identity.

Throughout the semester, students develop visual literacy through close analysis of artworks and sustained engagement with historiographical debates. Weekly readings average approximately thirty pages. Students are expected to conclude the semester with a research paper (3500–4000 words) that synthesizes visual analysis with scholarly argumentation.

Elective