Michelle Duncan
Michelle Duncan is a cultural historian who specializes in the intersections of art and society in 20th-century Germany and Austria. Before receiving her academic degrees, she trained as a classical musician and lived for a decade in Germany and The Netherlands. She earned a BA (with honors) in German Literature from Mills College and an MA and PhD in German Intellectual History from Cornell University. Her manuscript, Freud and the Problem of Music: A History of Listening at the Moment of Psychoanalysis, examines the role of music as a discourse signaling various forms of alterity in Viennese Modernism.
Duncan is the author and translator of several essays on aesthetics and philosophy and guest editor of a special issue of the Cambridge Opera Journal on opera and performance studies. She has received research awards from the Arnold Schoenberg Foundation, the Botstiber Institute, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Max Kade Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2014 she was the Fulbright Freud Visiting Scholar of Psychoanalysis at the Freud Museum, Vienna, and Visiting Professor at the University of Vienna. In addition to teaching at RISD, she has taught German Studies, Gender Studies and Media Studies at Brandeis, Brown, MIT, Rhode Island College and Wheaton College. She also teaches and mentors first-generation college students at Upward Bound, Rhode Island College.
Courses
Fall 2023 Courses
THAD H101-11
THAD I: GLOBAL MODERNISMS
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This is a required course for all first year and transfer students to introduce them to global modern and contemporary art, architecture and design in the period between 1750 and the present. The course addresses modernism as a global project, presenting several case studies from across the world that unfold to show how multiple kinds of modernism developed in different times and distant places. By presenting alternate, sometimes contradictory stories about modern and contemporary art and design, along with a set of critical terms specific to these times and places, the class aims to foster a rich, complex understanding of the many narratives that works of art and design can tell. With this grounding, students will be well positioned to pursue their interests in specialized courses in subsequent semesters.
Registration process: First-year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.
Transfer and sophomore and above students should register into the evening section offered in the fall.
For schedule conflicts during lecture times, please contact the Academic Programs Coordinator in the Liberal Arts Division office. For issues with registration, contact the Registrar's office for assistance.
Major Requirement | BFA
THAD H101-12
THAD I: GLOBAL MODERNISMS
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This is a required course for all first year and transfer students to introduce them to global modern and contemporary art, architecture and design in the period between 1750 and the present. The course addresses modernism as a global project, presenting several case studies from across the world that unfold to show how multiple kinds of modernism developed in different times and distant places. By presenting alternate, sometimes contradictory stories about modern and contemporary art and design, along with a set of critical terms specific to these times and places, the class aims to foster a rich, complex understanding of the many narratives that works of art and design can tell. With this grounding, students will be well positioned to pursue their interests in specialized courses in subsequent semesters.
Registration process: First-year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.
Transfer and sophomore and above students should register into the evening section offered in the fall.
For schedule conflicts during lecture times, please contact the Academic Programs Coordinator in the Liberal Arts Division office. For issues with registration, contact the Registrar's office for assistance.
Major Requirement | BFA
THAD H447-01
VISUAL CULTURE IN FREUD'S VIENNA
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This course will examine the visual culture pertinent to Sigmund Freud and his contemporaries in turn-of-the-century Vienna. We shall look at the modernist art of Austrian painters such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, as well as the minor arts of illustration, photography, scientific imaging, and film in light of Freud's psychoanalytic ideas. Classes will be devoted to topics such as avant-garde postcard design, ethnographic photography, and scientific images including x-rays and surgical films. The silent erotic "Saturn" films that were screened in Vienna from 1904-1910 will also be considered. Requirements include mid-term and final exams, two essays, and interest in the subject (no past experience needed).
Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.
Elective
Spring 2024 Courses
THAD H102-19
CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
SECTION DESCRIPTION
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 and sophomore and above students should register into the evening section offered in the spring.
For schedule conflicts during lecture times, please contact the Academic Programs Coordinator in the Liberal Arts Division office. For issues with registration, contact the Registrar's office for assistance.
Major Requirement | BFA
THAD H102-20
CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
SECTION DESCRIPTION
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 and sophomore and above students should register into the evening section offered in the spring.
For schedule conflicts during lecture times, please contact the Academic Programs Coordinator in the Liberal Arts Division office. For issues with registration, contact the Registrar's office for assistance.
Major Requirement | BFA
THAD H102-10
CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
SECTION DESCRIPTION
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 and sophomore and above students should register into the evening section offered in the spring.
For schedule conflicts during lecture times, please contact the Academic Programs Coordinator in the Liberal Arts Division office. For issues with registration, contact the Registrar's office for assistance.
Major Requirement | BFA
THAD H102-11
CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
SECTION DESCRIPTION
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 and sophomore and above students should register into the evening section offered in the spring.
For schedule conflicts during lecture times, please contact the Academic Programs Coordinator in the Liberal Arts Division office. For issues with registration, contact the Registrar's office for assistance.
Major Requirement | BFA