5000 Level Master of Fine Arts Course Descriptions

MFA 5001
Graduate Painting Seminar
This seminar explores important changing issues for the artist. The present re-evaluation of values and questionings serve as subtext for class discussions. Potential subjects include troublesome words as they appear in art discourse and writing (i.e., authenticity, truth, quality, transcendence, etc.); the problems of making judgements and issues of quality; the content of abstract painting; the shifts in the definitions of “mainstream,” “outsider,” and “other;” how the modernist canon is faring; whether art can effect political, ethical, and psychic change; the uses to which art is put; and the contemporary discourse on the “primitive” in modern art.

MFA 5002
Graduate Sculpture Seminar
An open forum designed to address issues confronting the three-dimensional arts and artists. Content of the course and its structure varies annually and is largely determined by those enrolled. This course often dovetails with a lecture or visiting artist series.

MFA 5003
Graduate Seminar: Image/Text/Collaboration
In this course students investigate the possibilities of collaborative work utilizing text and visual images. The course includes a study of the history of collaboration with an emphasis on the principles unique to the collaborative process between written and visual art. Students develop image and text projects, and participate in individual and group critiques.

MFA 5004
Graduate Fiber Seminar
This seminar focuses on relevant historical and contemporary issues and concerns that take different thematic forms each year. The seminar is always developed in conjunction with visiting artists’ presentations and critiques, as well as readings, discussions, student presentations, and in-depth studio critiques by both faculty and students.

MFA 5006
Graduate Photography Seminar
Students have the opportunity to discuss their personal work and meet with other students in the program. Students and faculty may also provide relevant materials, articles, literature, and criticism for discussion.

MFA 5007
Graduate Video Seminar
Fatigue from routinized work or the tedium of assigned and assumed identities, experiences that we commonly refer to as “boring,” imply a wide range of conditions. Clearly, however, a pervasive boredom has come to be a defining characteristic of modernity. From Baudelaire to Akerman, from Breton to Warhol, artists have explored the destructive and creative potentials of boredom. The aim of the graduate seminar is to understand boredom in its historical complexity: as a set of metaphysical problems, political issues, and as specific aesthetic strategies, particularly with regard to film and video.

MFA 5008
Graduate Visual Communication Seminar
Topic: Communication and Technology
This seminar explores various themes in visual communications. Past seminars include topics such as the effects of computer-based technology on design, the information media and culture; the use of typography and language in nontraditional art forms, fairy tales, and in everyday life; and the shaping of cultural beliefs through design, art and the media. The seminar topic may change with each semester.

Topic: Narrative and Disrupted Narrative
This seminar examines the use of typography and language in nontraditional art forms, fairy tales and in everyday life. This course involves readings, lectures, personal writing and creative visual projects.

MFA 5009
Graduate Film, Video, and New Media Seminar
An open forum designed for graduate filmmaking students to screen and discuss their work with other students, faculty, and visiting filmmakers. Critical issues in contemporary film are addressed through readings, films, and discussions.

MFA 5010
Graduate Art and Technology Seminar
The computing medium is one of information, processing, and communication. This course explores the nature of this environment and examines the ramifications and implications of creating art in this context. The history of computer-related artwork is studied, providing students with a background necessary to view their own work in a broader perspective. The objective of this course is to develop a basis for critical thinking in computer-related artwork and to stimulate new directions in the development of student work.

MFA 5011
Interdisciplinary Seminar
The purpose of this course is to provide an informal critique situation where students from various disciplines meet once a week to present and discuss their work. The faculty leader facilitates the discussion, which is designed to help students articulate a critique of their own work as well as the work of other students.

MFA 5013
Context and Concept: Issues in Contemporary Sculpture
This course centers on the displacement of meaning in art from the object to its uses of language, social critique, and historical reference beyond the feigned neutrality of the purely formal space of the gallery. Through lectures, discussions, outside readings, and the studio work of its participants, the course raises issues of audience specificity and interaction on the basis of gender, sexual preference, race, class, etc. Emphasis is also placed on how work seeks critical legitimacy through current theoretical debates. Alternative strategies for making art that confronts or subverts is explored through the work of ACT UP, Dennis Adams, Jenny Holzer, and the Guerrilla Girls, among others.

MFA 5014
Graduate Printmaking Seminar
The objective of this course is to unite graduate students in a colloquium about printmaking. This seminar functions as a critique group. Students also examine historically significant art and information about the function of printed matter in society and discuss the work of participants and invited guests. The seminar also examines career options and develops a resource network for jobs and exhibition opportunities. Permission of the instructor is required for undergraduate students.

MFA 5016
Graduate Performance Seminar
This open forum investigates contemporary performance issues as they apply to each student’s work. Through the forum, participants seek to establish a performance community and address thesis projects. Students have the opportunity to help select and meet with visiting performance artists.

MFA 5017
Machine Shortcuts
This course is designed for graduate students whose focus has been primarily invested in painting or other particular traditional procedures to enable them to directly utilize highly technical media resources (video, sound, film) and employ them where needed to expand the functions of their work, without the full involvement necessary for mastering these kinds of extensions. The class will students’ particular problems with enacting plans, the variety of options available, limitations, and costs, as well as the conceptual framework in which these inter-media connections occur.

MFA 5018
Writing about Work
In this class, students will write about visual artwork (their own and/or that of others), engaging with theory and developing creative approaches. Readings in cultural criticism, critical theory, experimental prose, and artist(s) writings will provide cross-disciplinary immersion in issues and texts relevant to contemporary culture. The class may also provide an opportunity to develop texts as independent works, or as elements in multidisciplinary projects. There will be regular writing and reading assignments.

MFA 5019
Graduate Research Seminar: Immersive Environments
This graduate research seminar will undertake significant research and exploration into current theory and practice involving the creation of immersive environments. The interdisciplinary inquiry will be led by faculty investigators, each working directly with teams of graduate students to pursue advanced-level independent and collaborative research in specific areas of interest within the broader topic of “immersive environments.” The faculty leaders may represent a wide range of disciplines including interior architecture, art and technology studies, sound, sculpture, video, and others. Each leader and a small band of students will investigate specific areas of research or production, interspersed with regular “plenary” sessions where the individual groups can present their work/findings to the entire class. In addition to research projects, all members of the seminar will engage in critical reading and discussions of relevant material, critiques of work, and the overview of technologies and techniques used in the creation of interactive immersive environments.

MFA 5020
Graduate Visual Communication Seminar: Spaces, Structures and Semantics
This interdisciplinary seminar explores alternative theories and strategies for the development of articulate forms and spaces. The semantics of construction—derived from formal theories of architecture, urban design, art, and communications juxtaposed with informal, collective memories and associations—will create a conceptual framework and a forum for collective discussions. The general objective will be to deconstruct and analyze each student’s individual creative process and resulting work. This seminar will be of interest to students in visual communication, interior architecture, sculpture, and others involved in the creation of installations and environments.

MFA 5024
Introductory Graduate Fiber and Material Studies Seminar
This seminar introduces incoming graduate students to each other and their work, to the School community and resources, to the urban community and resources, to a dialogue based on disciplinary and interdisciplinary concerns/issues, and to critical evaluation. Relevant historical and contemporary issues and concerns will take different thematic forms each year. The seminar is always developed in conjunction with visiting artists’ presentations and critiques, and involves readings, discussions, student presentations, and in-depth studio critiques by both faculty and students.

MFA 5310
Graduate Visual Communication Seminar: Process and Community
This seminar explores diverse methodologies to assist each designer/artist in the development of an individualized design process through analytical frameworks within which self- and community-generated work may be engaged. Constructing discourses about social, cultural, and political phenomena, designer/artists derive content and voice to produce process artifacts that may range from a communications tool (a singular, interactive element) to a communications scenario (a system of environmental elements). This course provides a forum for the necessary, critical dialogues that enable the transition to independent, self-directed design investigations.

MFA 5320
Graduate Visual Communication Seminar: Meaning and Structure
This seminar introduces issues of contemporary design and art theory including rhetorical models of argument and audience, the role of cultural belief systems in communication, and the special dynamics that occur in the communication process with the creation of new technologies. Students will learn new analytical tools for evaluating electronically-based information design in terms of structure, function, and goals. Based on a developing point of view that occurs through reading, discussion, and criticism, students choose an area of focus, and create prototypes of electronically-based design objects, such as CD-ROMs.

MFA 5330
Graduate Visual Communications Seminar: Design and Writing
In the course students will develop skills needed to present and sell design projects (both corporate and independent), write grants, and write critical essays on design. Students will write a series of short papers in these three areas aided by constructive critique from the instructor and other students. Handouts of writing examples are also studied. The goal of the course is to increase the designer’s impact on culture by developing writing skills needed for dialogue with copywriters and clients, as well as writing skills for developing independent projects.