Special Topics Fall

AH 4690F/VISARTS 9555 - Special Topics: For What It’s Worth: Revolutions in Art, the 1960s

There have been few decades as tumultuous culturally as the 1960s. Artistically, it was one of the richest, most creative periods in the history of modern and contemporary art with only the decade of the 1910s as its equal. One could argue that in fact the latter sowed the seeds for the art of the 60s whose full germination was delayed by two world wars. This course will look at the breathtaking range of art movements from this decade that include Pop Art, Happenings, Post-Painterly Abstraction, the Gutai, Arte Povera, the Situationist International, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, and Fluxus amongst many, many more. We have yet to see anything equalling the varied and innovative output of the 1960s since, whose legacy survives to this day.

 Special Topics Winter

AH 3690G/MCS 3690G/SA 3690B - Special Topics: Disability and Art

This course will explore the historical and current representations of disability in art both created by, or representing disabled people, using a blended multidisciplinary approach. We will analyze the modern disability rights movement, with contextualization of the historical perspectives and influences on our views of disability. Further, we will consider accessible museum design and exhibition standards within a larger framework of societal accessibility and the social model of disability. This course is a blended lecture-seminar approach held as a synchronous Zoom course, with three assignment streams for an opportunity to cultivate practical knowledge in art history, museum studies or curation, and studio art.

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AH 4640G/VISARTS 9581 - Special Topics: Portraiture: Then and Now

This course explores the uses and forms of portraiture from the Early Modern era to contemporary times. We first explore the idea of portraiture as a mode of individual and group self-representation as peoples of various races and genders attempted to situate themselves in the increasingly global world of the sixteenth century to today. Although focusing on the pre-Modern era, the course also considers the relationships between historical portraiture on the contemporary world; from Beyonce’s play on Botticelli to the Obamas’ Presidential Portraits, contemporary portraiture both pays homage to historical imagery as well as breaking, or even perpetuating racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes.

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AH 4692G/MCS 4692G/VISARTS 9571 - Special Topics: Museum/Decay

This class begins with a provocation: the museum, as an idea, tries to avoid the passage of time, through processes of conservation, through the creation of artificial climates, and through both embracing and sidestepping linearity in being simultaneously of its time/ahead of its time/behind the times. But time always catches up, often through slow processes of decay. Ranging from deep time through to the present moment, and pausing to consider plastics, funghi, jellyfish, ice, outer space, and colour (among other objects, topics, beings, and kin), this experimental class examines museums, time, and collections from the perspective of a world that is constantly in motion.

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SA 3694B - Special Topics: Decolonial Indie Video Game Development

This course will study decolonization in gaming and teach skills in designing and developing a video game. Popular games like Animal Crossing tend to encourage colonization and normalize terraforming as a method to develop a "civilized" society. Other games with military strategy encourage the most violent parts of colonization. However there are games which push back on colonialism and encourage alternate futures. In this class students will study games, use Twine to draft a text only game, write a game design document for a new decolonial game, and learn skills like digital illustration, C# coding, and using Unity to make a small prototype of their game. At the end of the course they will walk away with skills to continue developing their games.