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4000 Level Undergraduate Division Course
Descriptions
UGDIV 4006
Art of Crossing the Street
This course asks the question, “How can artists cross the street
without leaving their art behind?” Team-taught by studio and liberal
arts faculty, in collaboration with students involved in the “Artists
as Citizens” initiative, this class hopes to raise issues of citizenship,
creativity, collaboration, community, environment, and the changing
roles of artists at the end of the twentieth century and the start of
the twenty-first. Students will study historical and contemporary examples
of how artists have found the time, space, and resources to create and
present their work, and how they make alliances with other artists and
communities to achieve professional, cultural, and political goals.
Students will help plan curricular innovations at SAIC and participate
in related activities such as visiting artists programming. They will
explore the possibility, in part through on-site visits, of establishing
or strengthening ties between SAIC and various communities throughout
Chicago. Students will further develop course themes through substantial
written assignments and through applications of these ideas in their
studio practice. The goal of the course is to give students the motivation,
knowledge, and tools to take an active role as citizens in a multicultural
democratic society.
UGDIV 4007
Interdisciplinary Deluxe
Interdisciplinary Deluxe is a seminar for upper-level undergraduates
from all studio areas. The seminar will include a mix of activities:
readings and discussion, the production of artists’ statements,
visits to museums and galleries, meetings with artists and curators,
and presentations of work by seminar participants. The emphasis of the
course is on expanding the idea of audience to include work that has
a non-institutional framing. Community-based work and public projects
will be closely examined to further extend concepts of art-making. This
seminar is open to junior and senior undergraduate students and can
be taken for art history or studio credit. Students who wish to earn
Art History credit should take ARTHI 4006.
UGDIV 4008
The Working Artist: Life After School
This interdisciplinary, upper-level seminar will help students develop
methods for sustaining a studio practice, deepening a theoretical and
critical understanding of one’s work, and understanding the changing
role of the artist in today’s society. The class will include:
readings and discussions, individual and group critiques, writing an
artist’s statement, developing student presentations, and discussions
with visiting artists and curators. Other discussions will include graduate
school (yes, no, and how to proceed), traditional and alternative strategies
for exhibiting and self-promotion, earning a living (inside and outside
of the art world), and creating a support system as a working artist.
UGDIV 4010
Still Going: Artist, World, Art World
This class is intended to serve as a capstone experience for graduating
seniors, providing them with opportunities to further develop skills
of introspection, self assessment, and critique that are crucial to
sustained creative work. The class will consist of individual and interdisciplinary
group critiques, selected readings and discussion, and visiting artists
who will be asked to focus their talks on the psychological, emotional,
and intellectual motivations, challenges, and rewards of the varied
paths that they have taken. This course can be taken for Art History
or Studio credit. Students who wish to earn Art History credit should
take ARTHI 4010. This seminar is open to junior and senior undergraduate
students.
UGDIV 4015
Why Make Art, Now?
What motivates artists or an artist to make art? Moreover, why do artists
continue making art? What has motivated and impacted cultural practice
in the last century, and what will motivate it in the next? This course
will explore both contemporary and historical contexts and their implications
on future developments in creative production, dissemination, and ideology.
Students will investigate and analyze their own production and dissemination
within the current environment, as well as founding movements and prospective
achievements. This seminar is constructed to be both a practicum and
a think tank. Students will explore ideas in a series of critiques and
writing assignments to bring practical and theoretical approaches together,
and to further define the knowledge and expertise of the upper-level
undergraduate with a focus on context, philosophy, history, methodology,
and presentation of art and artists in the twentieth century and beyond.
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