Graduate Liberal Arts Curriculum

Maryland Institute College of Art

Graduate Liberal Arts Seminars

Course	Credits
AH 5412 - Aspects of Contemporary Art	3	Show Details Hide Details
3 credits. Amor. Offered occasionally. This course will approach postwar art (1960s to the present) from a topical point of view. While a chronology will be followed, the course will not survey the period as a linear narrative but as a field of problems, questions and events. Rather than focusing our analysis on the successive emergence of artistic movements and styles in Europe and America, it will pose questions about the dynamics of modernity and postmodernity, and the analogies and differences between artistic practices in the center and the periphery. The course will also investigate how the legacies of the prewar avant-garde were assimilated in different locations and why it becomes increasingly difficult to speak of artistic categories such as "movement" and "style," as the century advances and globalization sets in. What is the relationship between art and culture, art and critical theory, art and new media, and how this relationship has influenced the reconceptualization of the art object, are questions that will be addressed in class. Graduate students only.
AH 5472 - Women in the History of Art	3	Show Details Hide Details
3 credits. King-Hammond. Offered occasionally. This course explores the role women have played in the visual arts as artists, patrons, critics, and historians.
CRT 5524 - Crisis Century I	3	Show Details Hide Details
3 credits. Druckrey. Offered fall, spring. As the millennium nears, the frenzy to re-evaluate the 20th century (no less the other 9 centuries in the millennium!) is reaching fever pitch. Apocalyptic, celebratory, sobering -- the descriptions cover the gamut. From the point of view of the arts the 20th century has been one of crisis aesthetics beginning with the explosive works of Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism and ending with post-deconstruction, post-post-modernism and even celebrations of "bad art" (as hailed recently in the NY Times). Yet, a serious look at the various cultures of the century demonstrates that the inter-relationship between creativity, science, and technology are linked in an on-going battle over representation and expression. This course focuses on the "permanent revolution" in the arts of the century in a multidisciplinary way attempting to provide a framework for understanding both the destructive framework and the imaginative potential that emerged from some of the most rapacious and revealing works ever produced. As such it looks at the intertwined links between art, music, photography, cinema in the light of literature, philosophy, and critical theory. Graduate students only. Required for MA in digital arts students.
CRT 5525 - Crisis Century II	3	Hide Details

AH 5573 - The Medium in Contem Art	3	Show Details Hide Details
Beginning with an examination of the debates that shaped the definition of the medium and "medium specificity" within European and American modernism, this class will proceed to investigate the recent, expanded concept of the medium in contemporary art. Clement Greenberg posited that the task of modernist self-criticism was to "eliminate.the effects borrowed from another art," such that "each art would be rendered 'pure'." Subsequently, postmodern artists and the artists associated with "institutional critique" contended that the medium-no longer pure, but rather imbricated in the world of commerce, society, and mass culture-was not a viable object of investigation. Yet, a concern about the medium has emerged again. Contemporary artists-for example, William Kentridge , Tacita Dean, Thomas Hirschhorn, Reena Spaulings (Bernadette Corporation), Steve McQueen, and Isaac Julien-employ new and obsolete media, often in combination, in order to explore their specific formal and conceptual possibilities, but also to rethink the concerns of identity, gender, race, colonial power, war, and memory within late capitalism. Moreover, recent art criticism (Alex Potts, Juliane Rebentisch, Hal Foster, and Rosalind Krauss, most notably) has attempted to redefine the medium after a hiatus within art historical discourse. Additionally, we will read theoretical and philosophical texts on perception and media that emerged within the twentieth century. Further, through a series of case studies, we will consider how new explorations of the medium might shed light on, and learn from, the notion of the medium as it was defined by marginal practices and groups earlier in the twentieth century.
CRT 5600 - Perspectives in Criticism	3	Show Details Hide Details
3 credits. Yau. Offered fall, spring. This course explores multiple dimensions of criticism as it functions in mainstream of current art trends. A distinguished guest critic will establish a theme for the semester's focal point. Guest critics will play central role in discussions, seminars, and workshops, as additional critics are brought in to present their perspectives on the thematic topic for the semester. Graduate students only.
AH 5622 - Visual Culture & the Holocaust	3	Show Details Hide Details
This graduate seminar will focus on a variety of visual cultural forms that address events surrounding the Holocaust and its aftermath. The central questions guiding our inquiry will revolve around notions of history, memory, and the ethics of representation. As such, this course will examine diverse media ranging from painting, sculpture, and film (propaganda, documentary, and feature) to graphic novels/autobiographies, photography, monuments/memorials, museums, individual curatorial projects/exhibitions, installation, television, video, and performance. We will consider works by artists and architects including Christian Boltanski, Rachel Whiteread, Art Spiegelman, Shimon Attie, David Levinthal, Renata Stih & Frieder Schnock, Daniel Liebeskind, Peter Eisenman, Charlotte Salomon, Anselm Kiefer, and Gerhard Richter as well as writings by Primo Levi, Sigmund Freud, Theodor Adorno, and Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich. The readings for this course therefore deliberately draw on a variety of disciplines and include art-historical, historical, theoretical, psychoanalytic, and philosophical texts engaged with visual culture and the Holocaust. Discussions will focus on questions related to genocide, representation, cultural memory, mourning, and commemoration. Graduate students only.
AH 5668 - Art, Domestic Space/Int. Desgn	3	Show Details Hide Details
3 credits. Amor. Offered occasionally. This course will explore recent proposals in the visual arts which attempt a dialogue between the architectural interests of the sixties and seventies (among artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark and Dan Graham) and the more recent fascination with design of the last fifteen years. A desire to foreground new ways to interact with everyday space characterizes the work of artists such as Pedro Cabrita Reis (Portugal), Andrea ZIttel (USA), Jorge Pardo (Cuba-USA), and Atelier Van Lieshout (The Netherlands). In the work of these artists, an interdisciplinary impulse that mixes the realms of design, art, and architecture attempts to redefine conventional ideas about the production, circulation, and reception of works of art. Oscillating between the more public/collective work of artists such as Atelier Van Lieshout and the more private/subjective proposals of Absalon (France-Israel), the course will engage concepts dealing with contemporary space and place, the institutions of art and architecture, and the public and the private.
L 5100 - English Language Intensive	3	Show Details Hide Details
3 credits. Poppleton. Offered occasionally. This course is an intensive language study seminar for international graduate students who need preparation in English reading, speaking, and writing skills in order to continue their study in the United States. This class may be required for student whose score on the TOEFL test is less than 550 and is strongly recommended for all graduate students who are not confident in their English language ability. Emphasis is on reading and understanding academic and art critical discourse, both in writing and in oral forms. The course meets as a seminar and requires frequent written and oral reports. Substantial work outside of class is also required. No prerequisites. Credits do not count toward the MFA, but may count toward the Post-Bac certificate.
L 5533 - Erotica in Literature	3	Show Details Hide Details
3 credits.Thompson. Offered occasionally. This course uses literature (in both a creative and historical sense), to question the relationship between erotica and sex to develop definitions of each concept. Beginning in the ancient perios=d with Egyptian Love poems, Gilamesh, and the ancient Yoruba Orisha parable (from the 16 Roads of Ifa, the Oracle) - translated into play as The Imprisonment of Obtala, the Chou Dynasty's Book of Songs, and India's Kama Sutra the course examines the philosophy of sex which under-girds the creation of different types of erotica in different countries. The History Channel's series "THe History of Sex" is also a part of the work to be studied. Other texts include "THe Wife of Bath" from the Canterbury Tales, poetry by Sappho of Mytilene from the Greek period, Hugh Morris' 1904 classic The Art of Kissing, CLarence Major's novel All Night Visitors, Ann Shockley's Loving Her and the still controversial Story of O by O and the Left-Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin. Sue Sharpe and Michael O'Donnell's Uncertain Masculinitites: Youth, Ethnicity & Class in Contemporary Britain and Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance and Redefinition by Kamala Kempadpu and Joe Doezema put a more modern face on this discussion; that also looks at Playboy/Playgirl, and the Kinsey reports on the sexuality of Americans in the 20th century. The Kinsey Reports are still religiously in medical schools all over America. Ora presentaions, assigned writing and consistent attendance are required.
LA 5528 - Reading/Writing/Making Media	3	Show Details Hide Details
3 credits. Druckrey. Offered occasionally. Current media practices are enveloped by a growing number of histories and theorists struggling to make sense of both the development and critical issues it evokes. This situation involves a both a great deal of speculation supported by a history that has yet -if it ever will-to be completely conceptualized. From the early 1920s a media theory has been evolving in forms that touch specifically on issues of aesthetics and the development of 'media art.' In the post-war period these theories have emerged as an essential aspect in the reciprocity between communication. information and art-making. Rather than focusing on the development of media historically, this seminar will aim at creating a discourse with emerging theory as a way to encounter and frame what some identify as 'new media,' others as collective intelligence' (among other ideas). As a working seminar it will aim more directly at reading and writing about media by examining specific works and texts in an analytical form. As a seminar, it will require regular reading and participation in class discussions.
CRT 5530 - Issues in Photo History	3	Show Details Hide Details
3 credits. Druckrey. Offered spring.
L 5548 - Psychoanalysis and Film	3	Show Details Hide Details
When around the turn of the last century Sigmund Freud theorized the unconscious and questioned "cogito ero sum," the dictum declaring that we are because we are aware of ourselves, and granted children instinctual urges toward pleasure and violence, he threw into crisis much of the worldview of his time. Today, we are still influenced, and often burdened, by much of what psychoanalysis theorizes. In an age where identities are conceptualized as increasingly fragmented, we still, and importantly, ask ourselves what happens when desire gets directed into social imperatives and corporeal drives are disciplined into cultural moulds? How do language and image, metaphor and metonymy, serve to facilitate the rules that contain, define, and create desire and its bodily manifestations? Is the unconscious free of the cultural and socio-political imprint, or can we theorize it as deeply intertwined with issues of gender, sex and sexuality, race, age, and zeitgeist? What is the function of sexuality in defining identity? In this course, these are some of the questions we will address and relate to the ways in which film partakes in the discourse of psychoanalysis. We will study theories of Freudian and id-psychology, ego psychology and object-relations theory, and study writings by some of the critics of psychoanalysis: feminists, post-structuralists, cultural and post-colonial critics, queer theorists and last but not least, film critics. The films we will view include Vertigo, Blue Velvet, Track 29, Mona Lisa, Until the End of the World, The Exorcist, and A Song of Ceylon, among others.
L 5581 - Jean-Paul Sartre	3	Show Details Hide Details
An in-depth examination of Sartre's philosophy and art, focusing on such topics as freedom, contingency, choice, guilt, the imagination, the relation to others, art, revolt, family and society, history, alienation, solitude, and political engagement. One thread we will be following throughout the semester is a question that Sartre kept asking in different works throughout his career: How is it possible to know and understand a person's life as the freedom Sartre believed each one's life to be? We read from Sartre's plays, novels, philosophical works, essays, biographies of artists, as well as from Sartre's autobiography.
L 5680 - Gender/Sexual Theory	3	Show Details Hide Details
3 credits. Morrison. Offered occasionally. This course looks at western theories of sexuality and gender with the aim of exploring how sex/gender/bodies have been constructed, especially since the mid-19th century, and what the social and political implications of those constructions are. Students also read art, literature, and popular culture across those theories. The readings vary each year but may include the works of such writers, theorists, artists, and philosophers as: Freud, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Jeannette Winterson, Kate Bornstein, Judith Halberstam, Leslie Feinberg, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Alfred Kinsey, Joan Nestle, Arthur Danto, Robert Mapplethorpe, Susan Stryker, Sandy Stone, Wilhelm Reich, Gayle Rubin, Eve Sedgwick, Jeffrey Weeks, Kathy Acker, Walt Whitman, Monique Wittig, Jean Genet, Valerie Steele, Alfred Hitchcock, Marlon Riggs, John Boswell, Adrienne Rich, Havelock Ellis, Jacqueline Rose, Bob Flanagan, Jonathan Goldberg, Lee Edelman, Luce Irigaray, and Roland Barthes. Assignments may include class presentations and reading papers. Graduate students only.