(Offered as BLST 315 [A] and ARHA 353) Through a contrastive analysis of the religious and artistic modes of expression in three West African societies—the Asanti of the Guinea Coast, and the Yoruba and Igbo peoples of Nigeria—the course will explore the nature and logic of symbols in an African cultural context.
Description:
This course offers students knowledgeable in the basic principles and skills of painting and drawing an opportunity to investigate personal directions in painting. Assignments will be collectively as well as individually directed. Discussions of the course work will assume the form of group as well as individual critiques. Tuesday and Thursday classes 1:30pm - 3:30pm every week.
Requisite: ARHA 215 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 18 students. Offered Spring 2023. Professor Sweeney.
Symbiosis is a close biological interaction between living organisms. It can be temporary or permanent; positive, neutral, or parasitic; and involve two or thousands of individuals. In this class we will explore a variety of relationships with and within nature through sculpture. Conceptual prompts will be accompanied by material experimentation with “biomaterials”: materials that are grown, cooked, or processed through collaborations with fungi, plants, and bacteria.
Requisite: ARHA 214 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 12 students. Spring semester 2023. Professor Monge.
In this intermediate/advanced level course students will explore the practice of documentary photography. This course is structured around individual projects of the student’s own design and is informed by weekly group critiques and in-class visual exercises. We will examine the history, theory and ideological questions and complications of working with those outside of or within one’s own circle of experience.
This course explores sound as a medium of art-making with a rich history and radical potential within contemporary culture. Techniques covered will include non-musical scores, field recording, basic computer-based audio manipulation, and building lo-fi electronics for experimental sound synthesis. Accompanying readings draw from acoustic ecology, critical sound studies, afro-futurism, and media theory to contextualize collective exploration. Students will be expected to create studio-based art for critique. No musical experience is required.
Spring 2023. Professor House.
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.
Spring 2023. Taught by Professor House.
(Offered as ARHA 261 and ASLC 260) Visual imagery plays a central role in the Buddhist faith. As the religion developed and spread throughout Asia it took many forms. This course will first examine the appearance of the earliest aniconic traditions in ancient India, the development of the Buddha image, and early monastic centers. It will then trace the dissemination and transformation of Buddhist art as the religion reached South-East Asia, Central Asia, and eventually East Asia. In each region indigenous cultural practices and artistic traditions influenced Buddhist art.
(Offered as ARHA 260 and LLAS 260). This course explores the movement of art both in and out of Latin America in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This includes the forging of a mural movement in Mexico, the cosmopolitan travels of artists to Europe, the export of art to the United States, and the transnational circulation of art and ideas across national contexts within Latin America.
(Offered as ASLC 244 and ARHA 244)
