Special Topics

Independent reading course.  A full course.

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

How to handle overenrollment: null

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: Not applicable.

Documentary Production

(Offered as ARHA 441 and FAMS 441) Intended for advanced film/video production students, this course will explore creative documentary practice through readings, weekly screenings and production assignments. Each student will complete a series of projects working both as a single maker and in collaboration with other members of the class. Topics may include: shooting the interview; scripting, performance and reenactment; history and narrativity; place and space; ethnography and the “embedded” filmmaker.

Witch/Vampire/Monster

(Offered as ARHA 385, EUST 385, and SWAG 310) Our course will explore how evil was imagined, over cultures, centuries and disciplines. With the greatest possible historical and cultural specificity, we will investigate an array of monstrous creatures and plagues -- their terrifying powers, the explanations for why they came to be, and the strategies for how they could be purged -- as we attempt to articulate the kindred qualities they shared.

Art and Global War

(Offered as SPAN 380, ARHA 380 and LLAS 380) The class will explore the work of artists, art collectives, and community-based projects in Latin America and the U.S. from the 1960s onwards. We will look at how cultural agents “make worlds” to resist, denounce, and transform lives at war. Students will actively participate in both research and creative projects. We will focus on works from Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Chile, and the U.S. Course conducted in Spanish.

Requisite: SPAN 301 or consent of the instructor. Fall semester. Visiting Professor Ferrari.

Experiments-16 mm Film

(Offered as ARHA 335 and FAMS 335) This intermediate production course surveys the outer limits of cinematic expression and provides an overview of creative 16mm film production. We will begin by making cameraless projects through drawing, painting and scratching directly onto the film strip before further exploring the fundamentals of 16mm technology, including cameras, editing and hand-processing. While remaining aware of our creative choices, we will invite chance into our process and risk failure, as every experiment inevitably must.

Adv Studio Seminar

A studio course that will emphasize compositional development by working from memory, imagination, literature and abstractions derived from nature and other works of visual art. The Students will be encouraged to explore a wide variety of media including, but not limited to, drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and collage. Students will be required to create an independent body of work over the course of the semester which explores their individual direction in pictorial construction. 

Open Circuits

Introduction to basic electronics and microcontrollers for studio artists. Students will program chips to control sensors, switches, motors, and lights to create responsive objects and performative tools. Readings and critical discussion will situate our circuits in histories of interactive art, electronics-based and otherwise. Students will create studio-based art for critique. No prior experience with electronics or programming is required, but ARHA 278: Art + Code is recommended.

Limited to 10 students. Fall semester. Professor House.

Pending Faculty Approval

Roma Redux

(Offered as ARHA 285, CLAS 285, EUST 285) From its legendary origins in the eighth century BCE, through its political framing as a republic, to its global dominion as an empire and its subsequent Renaissance revival as the center of a Christian empire, Rome was a seat of unmistakable political and cultural power. Its art and architecture, the literature and oratory of its leaders, its devotion to protective deities, and its styles of governance became the model for countless nations who sought to imitate, adopt and surpass Rome’s authority.

Museum in Digital Age

(Offered as ARHA 280 and ASLC 280) Over recent decades, museums have made their collections increasingly accessible online. Curators, in turn, have expanded the limits of museum display and interpretation through experimentation with online exhibitions, onsite digital presentations, 3-D holographic projections, interactive mapping and storytelling, and network graphing. Others have made use of these and other digital tools for their own research, including to track the dispersal of looted and illegally exported objects. But what are the ramifications of this turn towards the digital?

Art + Code

(Offered as ARHA 278 and FAMS 311) Introduction to computer programming for studio artists. By writing code to generate text and graphics, students will explore the qualities intrinsic to artistic expression with computers such as nonlinearity, indeterminacy, glitch, and emergence. Accompanying critical discussion will consider key practitioners in the field. Through progressive weekly projects, students will gain a foundation for working with code in art. Designed for students with little to no programming experience.

Limited to 12 students. Fall semester. Professor House.

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