Advanced Critical Studies courses take deep dives into some of the theoretical, political, social, and ethical issues that help shape contemporary art and culture today. These classes emphasize intense investigations of the work of contemporary artists and scholars to help you think about your own art practice – and its place in the world – in new ways.
Recent advanced courses:
Art Writer: Writing as Object, Criticism, and Experiment
ART WRITER strives to bring together the intersecting discourses of artists’ use of writing as an object, exploring experiments by artists, poets, novelists and critics who use language and theory as invention. The idea of experiment implied here emphasizes the urgency that art writing move beyond its own history, beyond the received understanding of its proper practices in order to propose new modes of critical reflection.
Black Utopias: Writing Ourselves Into a Better Future
This course is an exploration of the empowerment and self-determination that African Americans use to visualize a better world for themselves. In this class, youwill research the Afro-futurist and Afro-utopian ideologies found in literature, film, and art, and their opposition to canonical American utopian ideals.
Queer Art & Culture
Surveying the unapologetically queer voices of the past five decades, this critical studies course introduces students to the layered methods in which queer bodies claim space, fight for basic rights, and spurn cultural assimilation. Inclusive of race, gender, and class along with visual and cultural privilege, the class will formulate a queer lexicon of creative strategies for resistance, mourning, and ecstasy.
The Precarious Body in Contemporary Art
This seminar examines how the idea of precarity (from the early 90s onwards) has taken central stage as a way of thinking through, and taking action against, the kinds of structural oppression that deems certain groups of people vulnerable to repeated forms of aggression, poverty, illness, and displacement without protection.
Art & Activism
When can art be activism? When can activism be art? This course will ask you to investigate the relationship between art and activism through investigating artists’ participation in broader social movements, direct action, institutional critique, political art in unusual contexts, everyday acts of dissent, and metrics for success across fields.