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New Course Descriptions: Summer 2003
(new courses only)
Art Education
ARTED 5107
Public Spaces/Critical Sites
This course will explore public space in Chicago and how artists, artists’
collectives, schools and community art organizations create new contexts
for socially engaged art education. This includes community based media
production; collective mural making; and site-specific, collaborative
installations. In order to closely experience and experiment in these
new practices, students will visit 3–4 sites and participate in
hands-on workshops. The course will culminate in the production of a
site-specific art education project.
ARTED 5210
Cyberpedagogy Laboratory
Cyberpedagogy Laboratory provides students who have basic skill in digital
media production, as well as a working knowledge of art education theory
and practice, with an opportunity to develop projects. Based on the
integration of critical pedagogy, media studies, and visual culture,
students will create lesson plans, collaborative projects, and new text(book)s
that address the new possibilities and problematics of art education
within global information technology systems. Media forms to be studied
and supported include video production, multi-media authoring, and website
construction.
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Art History, Theory,
and Criticism
ARTHI 3313
Landscape Painting 1950 to the Present
The genre of landscape has proved to be among the most fertile territory
for contemporary representational painters who do not wish to abolish
their ties with tradition yet still employ post-modernist approaches
and vocabulary. This class will focus on landscape paintings from mid-century
to the present. The class will explore W.J.T. Mitchell’s assertion
that “Landscape is a natural scene mediated by culture.”
Around 1950 in America, both the East Coast “Painterly Realists”
and the West Coast “Bay Area School” tapped into the techniques
and scale of Abstract Expressionism. These two groups of painters were
soon followed by the photorealists who adapted the pop artists’
interest in photography and contemporary consumer culture. Although
useful for anyone interested in the subject of landscape, this class
is especially recommended for those students enrolling in Introduction
to Landscape (PTDW 2020)
this summer. Prerequisite: ARTHI
1001 and ARTHI
1002.
ARTHI 4381
Learning from Las Vegas: American History, Culture, Kitsch &
Beyond
Using Robert Venturi’s seminal Learning From Las Vegas a starter
text, this course will examine Las Vegas as an American cultural phenomenon.
We will use this site of pop culture, fantasy, voyeurism and consumer
desire as a way to explore the history of these elements in America.
The elaborate casino architecture and displays that have brought much
of the world to America, such as the Excalibur (Medieval Europe), the
Luxor (Egypt), Caesar’s Palace (Antiquity), are as much about
national perceptions of these places as they are about gambling. Las
Vegas has also been experiencing a cultural explosion in the last decade
with the opening of many galleries and art collectives. The intersection
of commerce, art making, kitsch and representations of history and cultures
will be essential issues in this course. The recently opened casino,
Belaggio even confronts the dichotomy between high and low cultures
head on by featuring original art masterpieces as part of its theme.
This course will culminate in a three-day trip to Las Vegas where students
will experience this American playground first-hand. Prerequisite: ARTHI
1001 and ARTHI 1002.
ARTHI 4382
Contemporary Art in the City: Chicago Hosts the International
Scene
This course will take place in the galleries, museums, and corporate
and private collections that make Chicago one of the leading centers
for art. The class will focus on international contemporary art, as
it is showcased in important Chicago venues, and as collected by major
Chicago collectors, including the Renaissance Society at the University
of Chicago and the Refco collection of contemporary art. Art and the
body, Found Object Art, simulated nature, Post-minimalism, community-based
practices, appropriation strategies, the society of the spectacle, gender
construction, cybertechnology and the return of beauty are but some
of the contemporary issues the course will observe and study. On-site
lectures and discussions will be drawn from a set of readings from art
history, theory and criticism literature. Students will be expected
to keep up with the readings and write either several short critical
reviews or one long research paper. Prerequisite: ARTHI
1001 and ARTHI
1002.
ARTHI 4803
Dissidents? Art Before, During, & After Communism
This class will explore art’s relationship to Soviet Communist
doctrine, particularly in its totalitarian function. Although political
structures in (especially) the 60s, 70s, and 80s served to constrain
artistic and intellectual circles, they also served to encourage underground
artistic and cultural activity. This course will explore art’s
response to Communism before, during, and after its totalitarian phase(s),
including literary, performance, and journalistic endeavors. Prerequisite:
ARTHI 1001 and
ARTHI 1002.
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Ceramics
CER 2010
Vessel Construction: Contemporary Content, Contemporary Container
This course is designed to investigate different ideas and methods to
produce interpretations of the vessel as a form and metaphor to explore
artistic possibilities.
This 6-week course is an open and multilevel class structured to provide
instruction and development on the wheel and construction techniques
off-wheel (extrusions, coil, slab, press- mold) The vessel as a container
of space is the departure point of the discussion that will include
historical and contemporary references: personal metaphor, utilitarian,
and conceptual.
CER 2051
Ceramic Sculpture Workshop: Material Thinking
An investigation of ceramics as a contemporary medium of artistic expression.
This 3-week concentrated course is an open and multilevel class structured
to investigate sculptural ideas, methods, and materials that are central
to the practice of ceramics. Students will explore how the unique characteristics
of clay can contribute to the content of the work. Construction strategies
will be examined in a conceptual context, investigating issues of space,
colour, and form; and the pursuit and possibilities of meaning. Emphasis
is placed on individual development through a complex integration of
technology, content and information. Students should have basic knowledge
of ceramics.
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Designed Objects
DESOB 2001
Designed Objects Studio
The realm of designed objects will be studied within the conceptual
frameworks of “Information,” “Environment,”
“Body” and “Event.” Students will be encouraged
to work between and across these contexts. Students will be introduced
to the roles of the designers of the things and systems. Projects will
encourage thinking, researching and making in equal proportions within
the context of a studio/seminar setting. Students will be encouraged
to respond to the built environment, to collaborate with others, to
research ideas and materials and to understand the impact of production
and distribution choices.
Designed Objects Studio: Writing and Marking
Our bodies find themselves deeply immersed in a world of words and marks.
Nearly every surface we see has been inscribed in one form or another.
This class will investigate the instruments which make the marks, the
styli which perform the writing. Bolstered by short readings and class
discussions, students will have the opportunity to make a series of
objects designed to connect our bodies to the world via our hands.
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Historic
Preservation
HPRES 4001
Introduction to Historic Preservation
This course introduces the technical and practical issues of preserving
buildings, sites, landscapes, and structures. Included are presentations
by experts in the legal and scholarly aspects of the four disciplines
of historic preservation: Planning, History, Design and Conservation.
But techniques and laws are not the essence of historic preservation—simply
saving buildings—their preservation must be justified and the
importance of allowing buildings, sites and structures to speak to future
generations communicated to the public. Students will prepare a final
project that examines how a site is restored and interpreted to the
public.
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Interior
Architecture
INARC 1010
Introduction to Architecture
Architecture shapes our experience of the social world. This course
introduces the processes and practice of thinking and making architecture
to students interested in the built environment. Thinking through architecture
provides opportunities to envision change, physically and virtually,
and demands that standards develop in relation to working in the public
realm. Topics covered include negotiating between the artificial and
the natural, the imagined and the built, structures, materials, and
technologies exemplified in historical practices. Field trips, on site
lectures,and class projects will give students an overview of the science
and art of architecture.
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Liberal Arts
English
ENGLISH 1001
Essay Writing: The Classic Essay
Since the word was coined by Michael Montaigne for his highly personal
and experimental short prose form, essay has come to mean anything from
a casual meander through a given subject, with surprisingly serious
turns along the way, to a formulaic student composition, five paragraphs
long and impersonal as dust. In this course we will read, analyze, and
savor a number of classic essays that should deepen our understanding
of the form, and stretch the expectations we bring to it as readers.
We will also study the essay as a tool of analysis and persuasion, in
the hands of such writers as Swift, Thoreau, George Orwell, and Susan
Sontag—essayists known as much for the impact of their ideas as
for the influence of their style. Written assignments will include a
series of five short essays, in which students will apply these lessons
in thought and craft, and one longer work of inquiry or argument, requiring
research and documentation.
ENGLISH 1005-001
First Year Seminar: Going to Hell
From Homer, who sent Odysseus down to visit the babbling, brainless
wraiths of the heroic dead, to Sylvia Plath, who walked the horrific
passages of her own infernal body, people have been going to hell and
issuing mostly grisly reports. Alice, though, found a tea party and
called it “Wonderland,” and in the fairy tale “Twelve
Dancing Princesses” tireless young men wore out their partying
shoes. Dante tells us all the details of bubbling rivers of blood and
sinners gnawing each other’s ears, but (alas!) all Orpheus wanted
to look at was his love, Eurydice. Marlow found the Heart of Darkness
on the other side of the world, but Kathy Acker only went to Haiti,
and Dr. Seuss recommends you check under the pond out behind your house.
ENGLISH 1005-002
First Year Seminar: Chocolate, Sweat & the Artist’s
Eye
Why do we crave chocolate? What are some of the different cultural attitudes
toward kissing? Toward sweat? What are the limits of sound? Is there
something physically different about the artist’s eye? Find the
answers to these questions and others like them in this seminar, which
focuses on Diana Ackerman’s masterpiece, A Natural History of
the Senses. In a series of short essays, Ackerman takes the reader on
a grand tour of the realm of the senses, drawing on psychology, anthropology,
art, science, and history. As we enjoy Ackerman’s wealth of engaging
information and thoughtful insights, we will also analyze the beauty
and craft of her writing. Students will write a series of short papers;
class activities will include viewing videotapes, discussing the book,
and critiquing early drafts of papers.
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Humanities
HUMANITY 3110
Masterworks: Fidgeting is Destiny
Why are all of us alone and crazy? Whence this unbridgeable gap between
humans? How can we make our innermost torment comprehensible? And why
is it so hard to sound cool? The books in this course explore the ways
we construct reality, or fail to, and how the history of fictional characterization
has paralleled our rueful acceptance of life’s essential solitude.
Texts include William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,
Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose, the stories and plays of Chekhov, The
Waves, by Virginia Woolf, Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, and the poems
of Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery. Prerequisite: Completion of the
first year English requirement.
HUMANITY 3111
The Short Stories of Kafka, Borges, & Calvino
Franz Kafka wrote stories of despair and longing narrated by apes, mice,
and bridges. Italo Calvino wrote love stories narrated by mollusks,
fish, and dinosaurs. Jorge Luis Borges wrote stories about secret sects
and invented languages. There is a certain lightness to these writers,
which makes them an easy read. Yet this lightness is counterbalanced
with a moral seriousness about the mystical powers of literature. Each
was a master stylist who endlessy searched to find new forms and possibilities
without ever abandoning the joys of traditional stories. The short stories
of these writers are some of the most sublime fictions ever created.
In addition to regular reading assignments, students will be required
to write short papers throughout the semester. Prerequisite: Completion
of the first year English requirement.
HUMANITY 3115
Satire & Comedy
This course examines the development and variety of the two forms of
literature. Examples range from the ancient invention of comic drama
to modern forms, and from the ancient satires of Horace and Juvenal
to the present. To further examine the themes and techniques of comedy
and satire in literature, we will view several films. Prerequisite:
Completion of the first year English requirement.
HUMANITY 3140
Advanced Writing Workshop: Thought into Language
A multidisciplinary approach to fiction, poetry, and the written word.
In this workshop we examine and explore the possibilities in moving
creative writing beyond the written page and into other realms as a
methodology for increasing personal options in writing. We write, transplant,
and transform our own work into new contexts as a means of focusing,
augmenting, and strengthening our conceptual intentions and for the
elaboration of content. Using this operative philosophy we concentrate
on the generation of poetry, prose, and new forms through the examination
of the work, strategies, and systems of cross-disciplinary writers and
artists whose initiating focus is the written word. We review the work
of writers, visual artists, composers, filmmakers, and others who have
actively transformed writing into a multisensory experience. A possible
list of the diverse artists we examine includes poet Amy Gerstler, experimental
opera composer Robert Ashley, poet-artist Kenneth Goldsmith, director
Derek Jarman, radio artist- essayist Gregory Whitehead, and sound artist
Lou Mallozzi. The workshop consists of class writing exercises, the
discussion of out of class readings, and the presentation of student
projects. Prerequisite: ENGLISH
1003.
HUMANITY 3352
Philosophy of Religion: Scriptures of the Middle East: Torah,
Gospels & Koran
Over the centuries the Middle East has produced three major scriptures:
the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament), the New Testament, and the Koran.
Following a brief examination of the notion of “scripture”
in general and of the origins and histories of these three scriptures
in particular, this seminar course will focus on reading and discussing
the core of each. Our goals will be to begin to understand each text
in its own right, in comparison with the others, and as a starting point
for understanding the larger scriptures of which they are the central
parts. (If time permits, we will supplement our reading by screening
three classic films: The Ten Commandments, The Greatest Story Ever Told,
and The Message.) Prerequisite: Completion of the first year English
requirement.
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Natural Science
SCIENCE 3221
Color Science
Color is examined through the two elements that determine our concept
of color: the psychology and physics of color. The goal of this course
is to measure color. The production, three-dimensional space, and light
of color are covered. Color blindness, color adaptation, imaginary colors,
and color reproduction are explored. The main examples will be of color
in art and color in nature. Lab. experience is a strong component. Prerequisite:
Completion of the first year English requirement.
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Social Science
SOCSCI 3520-001
Historical Studies: Black Chicago: History, Politics and Culture
African-Americans have lived in Chicago since its founding. The man
credited with being the first non-native settler was a fur trader of
African descent named Jean Pointe DuSable. More Africans and African-Americans
followed, coming first as traders, and then as workers and sailors.
During and after WWI, Blacks, fleeing the terror and discrimination
of the Jim Crow South, came in large waves, bulking up the population
to what it is today.
This course examines the impact of African-Americans on the cultural
and political life of Chicago. The black migration patterns and the
worker (union) and cultural (music, literary, art) movements that emerged
out of it will be studied. The great political campaigns of African-Americans,
which culminated in the election Harold Washington, are explored as
are the impact of Chicago’s newer black immigrants from Africa,
the Caribbean, and Latin America on black politics. In addition, the
beauty shop, the union hall, the church, the restaurant, the small business,
and the tavern are viewed as places where culture and politics meet.
For people who have a history of marginalization, these non-traditional
sites of struggle cannot be ignored.
Much of this class will take place outside of the classroom, visiting
the cultural and political sites mentioned above and meeting people
involved in Black Chicago life throughout the city. Students should
be prepared to take the “L” see the city. Prerequisite:
Completion of the first year English requirement.
SOCSCI 3520-002
Historical Studies: The Palestinians: History & Current
Narrative
The course will look at Palestinian history as widely as possible, covering
the Palestinian Christian as well as the Palestinian Muslim communities.
It will include cultural heritage, some folklore, and literature; and
will address the idea—controversial in some circles—of Palestinian
identity. The course will also look in some depth at modern Palestinian
history, the political struggle of the Palestinians, and the two emerging
Palestinian narratives of exile and occupation. Prerequisite: ARTHI
1001 and ARTHI
1002.
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Performance
PERF 4008
Site Practice
This studio course investigates how performance works in different sites
offer a variety of opportunities and present varying challenges to the
performance practitioner. In an intensive three-week format, participants
will create works in three distinctly different environments: the conventional
artworld settings of clubs, galleries and theaters, the urban terrain
of Chicago’s public spaces, and the natural environment of the
wilderness. Such issues as audience, duration, interactivity, responsibility,
materials and documentation will be addressed.
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Sculpture
SCULP 3011
Large Scale Constructions and Collaborations
This course examines the transformation and definition of space through
materiality, light, and scale. Students will use the Sculpture Courtyard,
a large outdoor space located in the Columbus Drive building, as a specific
site to develop these ideas into a large scale collaborative installation.
Strategies for constructing three-dimensional forms in a range of conventional
and non-conventional materials will be explored. Students will have
access to wood/metal/moldmaking shops to develop their projects. Both
collaborative and individual direction will be emphasized.
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