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In this course, we will explore the visual and spatial potential of cut paper models. The course will begin with a number of directed drawing and model-making exercises, and end with original work made with paper, knives, and glue. Students will study and do research on paper models by a variety of contemporary artists and architects–Zarina’s paper houses, Siah Armajani’s bridges, James Casebere’s abandoned tabletop constructions, Bodys Isek Kingelez’s dazzling utopian propositions, and many others.

Chromophilia, refers to intense passion and love for color. What is it about color that has the power to induce reverie, and conversely to manipulate, or disgust? How does color work? What is the role of color in visual art? In language? How do we understand and respond to color from phenomenological, poetic, philosophical, and societal vantage points? How as artists can we become effective stewards of our passionately-loved and yet ever-shifting chroma?

This course will explore the construction and experience of gender and sexuality in the Middle East through a performative lens. Drawing on research in ethnomusicology, queer and gender studies, anthropology and Middle Eastern history, the course will examine performance (music, dance, theater, poetry and more) as a process of representation, assertion, and sometimes transgression of sexuality and gender identities. This course will delve into the ways that performance, gender, and sexuality relate to ethnicity, nationalism, modernity, colonialism, and religion.

In this course, we will be uncovering, re-positioning, and affirming historical legacies and traditions that stand the risk of being lost forever, and explore how to use them to fight discrimination, racism and hate today.

This course is an introductory level print media and drawing class. Students will learn about relief printmaking through demonstrations of techniques, hands-on experience, and critiques. Techniques include but are not limited to wood cut and linoleum cut. With this simple process, we will be able to explore color printing in depth. This course is also an introduction to making 2D images and the study of visual language. Students who have experience beyond the introductory level are welcome.

Against a background of what is often described as a worldwide democratic recession or regression, this advanced seminar surveys current theoretical debates, empirical analyses, and policy conversations on the emergence, survival, challenges, breakdowns, and prospects of global democratization.

research to design to construction

“Clothes aren't going to change the world. The women who wear them will.” – Anne Klein

Today it is clear that the environment matters. In activism and scholarship and public policy, the environment has become a potent (if sometimes obligatory) point of reference. Less attention, however, has focused on the emergence of the environment itself as a converging field of action for advocacy, science, and statecraft. In this seminar, we will reflect not only on what we know of the environment but also on how we came to know the environment.

“I, at least, am not a Marxist”&�Բ�����;Karl Marx

Can architecture be understood in the same terms as a photograph? A piece of writing? A painting? A film? Or does it require its own vocabulary, rules, precedents, and sensibilities?

In this intermediate level course, we will focus on learning letterpress printing within a framework of making visual art. This can be a precision process and it affords a huge range of possibilities for artists who wish to work with multiples and/or use text in their work. It is a rigorous course and each student will develop and design print projects that develop both their technical and conceptual skills. Reading will be assigned each week to expand on knowledge and give context for projects.

Mystics––historically portrayed as passionate, dangerous, romantic, heretical, satanic––are a thorn in the side of organized religion. From the very beginnings of recorded human time, the presence and practice of mystics has been controversial. Sufi mystic al-Hallaj’s pronouncement that he was “the Truth” was received as blasphemy by the orthodoxy. His execution followed shortly after. Christian mystics of the 4th and 5th centuries were relegated to practicing outside the peripheries of the Roman Empire, in relative secrecy.

This is an introductory course of basic mold making and slip casting techniques for producing components to create a series of functional ware. This course focuses on the development of design concepts through exploration of slip casting methods, application of alteration and assemblage techniques and experimentation of prototype makings to produce ceramic multiples (cups).