4000 Level Visual and Critical Studies Course Descriptions

VCS 4006
Undergraduate Thesis: Research and Writing II
This course is a continuation of Undergraduate Thesis: Research and Writing I. Students will continue to work on the drafts developed during the first semester and will meet at times as a group and at times individually with the instructor. By the end of the semester, each student will have a 20–30 paged superbly written paper, which will most likely (although it is not required) have visual content. Students will also be encouraged to develop their essays for the publication Research Writing and Culture, which is released annually by the Liberal Arts Department, the Visual and Critical Studies Program, and the Office of Publications and Graphic Design Services. Students who elect to participate in the publication will learn the final stages of publishing; checking sources, seeking copyright permissions, and developing the images for publication. Class meetings are used to discuss readings, share research methods and techniques, discuss research and writing problems and ideas for critique. Guest speakers and group visits to university libraries, bookstores, and writers’ readings will also be part of the class. Students are required to attend all meetings.

VCS 4711
Things: Objects, Meanings, and Memories
How and why do “things” evoke responses in human beings? Why do we choose to live with certain things, and reject others? This course addresses these and similar questions with reference to examples of “things” and their relationships with people at different times and in different cultures, and focuses specifically on “cultural objects,” “gendered objects.” and “memory objects.” Theoretical context is provided by texts from a range of scholarly disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, design history, and cultural studies. Students are encouraged to draw on examples from their own fields and experiences.

VCS 4890
Extreme Arts Administration
This class is an investigation into new (as well as some old, but overlooked) ways of organizing cooperative cultural spaces; interactive public-art projects; art actions for political demonstrations; as well as community gardens and recycling centers. The course will critique and re-think contemporary administrative practices, fashioned from select readings, class discussions, media presentations that will culminate in the development of new organizational prototypes. Frequent guest seminars by noted and unorthodox arts innovators and cultural activists will provide a variety of working models from which to travel to the edge of the known organizational universe, where art, politics, and institutional planning converge. Throughout the course, participants will ground the critique of contemporary institutional practices in historical and sociological analysis with a strong materialist bent.