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Graduate Programs
Graduate Courses for 2012-2013
9500A Art Theory and Criticism in Western Culture
Prof. Joy James
TBA
9600A PhD Seminar: Theory and Methods
Prof. Sarah Bassnett
The PhD seminar in theory and methods is the foundation course for the PhD program in Art and Visual Culture. The theoretical component of the course is focused on studying a selection of theoretical texts from the PhD minor comprehensive lists. This concentration on theory aims to develop proficiency and serves as preliminary preparation for the minor comprehensive exam. The methods component of the course is concerned with research methods and professional development. The emphasis here is on grant writing, pedagogy, scholarly writing, and research methodology.
9521B / 9621B Recycler: Revision and Re-use in the Visual Arts
Prof. Kelly Wood
In this course, students will broadly investigate the scholarly and creative practice of recycling and creative re-use in the field of the visual arts. The course will primarily focus on the modern and contemporary era of art and art history. Students will also study the history and prevalence of revivals. Theoretical concepts such as historical revisionism and revivalism will be introduced and discussed in relation to creative and materialist practices in the arts. Art movements such as; Nouveau Réalisme, Pop art, Neo-avant guarde, Assemblage, Neo-baroque, Unmonumental, other Neo-isms and collective authorship, will be explored. The class will be exposed to, and critically examine, the work of a number of Canadian and International artists who employ various techniques and artistic strategies which involve aspects of re-mixing, appropriation, creative re-use and/or recycling.
9540A / 9543A Graduate Studio Seminar
Prof. Patrick Mahon
This course is designed to provide an opportunity for MFA students to participate in an exchange dedicated to the research and development of their studio practice. Students will be asked to participate by contributing to informal studio reviews that will be scheduled throughout the term. These group meetings may review work-in-progress; access ongoing technical concerns; assist with immediate needs of a projects concept and execution; develop an appropriate language for evaluation and critique; and involve discussion on related issues. Each student will be required to submit a detailed dossier that will provide information about studio visits with faculty as well as meetings with visiting speakers. Students will be required to present their work for critique to a committee at the end of the year.
9541B / 9544B Graduate Studio Seminar
Prof. Kelly Jazvac
This course is designed to provide an opportunity for MFA students to participate in an exchange dedicated to the research and development of their studio practice. Students will be asked to participate by contributing to informal studio reviews that will be scheduled throughout the term. These group meetings may review work-in-progress; access ongoing technical concerns; assist with immediate needs of a projects concept and execution; develop an appropriate language for evaluation and critique; and involve discussion on related issues. Each student will be required to submit a detailed dossier that will provide information about studio visits with faculty as well as meetings with visiting speakers. Students will be required to present their work for critique to a committee at the end of the year.
9554B / 9654B Documentary, Mockumentary, Forgery and Hoax
Prof. Bridget Elliott
What is the difference between reality and reality effects? Looking at projects like David Wilson’s Museum of Jurassic Technology (founded in 1987) and Iris Haussler’s He Named her Amber (2008), this course will examine what is at stake for both artists and audiences when the boundaries between “fact” and “fiction” are deliberately blurred. The creation of credible worlds will move from the physically immersive to the cinematic as we also examine mockumentaries such as Peter Greenaway’s The Falls (1980) Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap (1984) and Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sachez’s The Blair Witch Project (1999).
9555A / 9655AEchoes of the Baroque in the Last Century
Prof. John G. Hatch
Classical revivals are a fairly common occurrence and the twentieth century experienced one such revival with the famous 'retour à l'ordre' after the First World War. However, this past century may have borne witness to a less obvious, yet possibly more pervasive revival gravitating around the Baroque. When the German art historian Heinrich Wölfflin published Renaissance and Baroque in 1888, he focused attention on a period that had largely been forgotten since the Enlightenment. This fostered an interest that appears to have germinated artistically with the Secession movement in Vienna, and possibly spread to other art nouveau centres. By the 1920s, the Baroque surfaced in Holland and conspired in instigating the breakup of De Stijl, while suffering some frightfully bad press amongst the Polish Constructivists, who nonetheless found the idea of the Baroque a useful critical tool for understanding their own work. However, other Constructivists would not be so damning of the Baroque, finding its approaches to the description of time and space pertinent. Shortly after World War II, there would be something of larger and more positive explosion of interest in the Baroque; starting in the field of literary criticism, this fascination would soon surface in the cultural studies of Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Michel de Certeau, and find an artistic outlet in the work of Francis Bacon, Emilio Vedova, Lucio Fontana, and the Arte Povera group, amongst others. This attraction persists in the work of later artists like Pat Steir and David Salle, and has become a significant undercurrent in Postmodernism.
9566B /9666B The Archive in Contemporary Culture
Prof. Tony Purdy
“What isn’t an archive these days?” asks Rebecca Comay in her introduction to Lost in the Archives (2002). “In these memory-obsessed times–haunted by the demands of history, overwhelmed by the dizzying possibilities of new technologies–the archive presents itself as the ultimate horizon of experience.” This course, which may be cross-listed with Comparative Literature, will explore that horizon through an engagement with a range of archival figures and motifs as they appear in contemporary visual (and possibly literary) culture. From the hypermnesic fantasies of imaginary archives and encyclopedias, through archives of place and archives as place, to the inherently hypomnesic reality of the archive as death-driven institution, the relationship between memory and mourning will be consistently foregrounded. Serving as a heterotopian site of exchange and negotiation between memory and history, life and death, the state and the individual, the archive–whether real or imaginary–invites a reflection both on the hypertrophic effects of totalizing systems and on subversive strategies of collection and commemoration. While the first few weeks will allow a collective exploration of theoretical questions around the archive, collecting and memory work of various kinds, the subsequent approach will be through case studies selected by the students, and works will be seen as generative, rather than illustrative, of theoretical perspectives. The following is merely an indication of what might be included in a corpus for study; students will have the final say.
Installation, Photography, Video, PerformanceThe work of some contemporary artists, such as Christian Boltanski, Mark Dion, Diana Thorneycroft, or Bernd and Hilla Becher, seems intrinsically archival. Other projects that would make good case studies include:
Iris Häussler, “He Named Her Amber” (2008-09) & “The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach” (2006)
Shimon Attie, “The Writing on the Wall” (1991-93)
Emily Jacir, “Material for a Film” (2005-)
Susan Hiller, “The J. Street Project” (2002-05)
Michael Blum, “A Tribute to Safiye Behar” (2005)
Peter Greenaway, A Walk Through H, Vertical Features Remake (1978)
Walid Ra’ad, “The Atlas Group” (1998-2004)
Ivan Moudov, “Fragments” (2002-07)
Peter Greenaway, The Falls (1980)
Stephen Poliakoff, Shooting the Past (TV, 1999)
Wolfgang Becker, Goodbye, Lenin! (2003)
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Lives of Others (2007)
9551A / 9651A Medieval/Modern: The Middle Ages in Early Twentieth-Century Visual Culture
Prof. Kathryn Brush
This seminar will explore some of the complex and often contradictory ways in which a wide range of medieval and medieval-inspired forms and philosophies were employed to articulate the “modern” in avant-garde cultural discourse during the early twentieth century. While some progressive thinkers believed that the Middle Ages offered valuable social, moral, and spiritual models for emulation in an age of “ugly” materialism and the machine, others were fascinated by the abstraction and anti-naturalism of early medieval, Byzantine, and Romanesque visual culture, which they frequently interpreted through the lens of “primitivism.” Conversely, Gothic cathedrals were lauded for their technological sophistication as skyscrapers began to dominate the urban landscape. Countless buildings in “medieval modern” styles were constructed during these years. The currency of the Middle Ages was also expressed in such cutting-edge media as film.
Why was medieval visual culture particularly attractive to the early twentieth-century imagination, as evidenced by the work of such diverse individuals and institutions as Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Ralph Adams Cram, and the Bauhaus? How might we envision the construction of discourses on the Middle Ages and on “modernism/contemporary visual culture”—discourses which are conventionally separated in art historical scholarship—as having been vitally and complexly linked? The seminar, which will include a field trip to related sites and/or museums, aims to analyze critically a wide array of medieval modernisms that continue to inflect our twenty-first-century society and cultural production.
GRADUATE COURSES - 2011-2012 9500: Art Theory and Criticism in Western Culture 9600: PhD Seminar: Art Theory and Criticism 9540A/9543A - Graduate Studio Seminar 9541B/9544B Graduate Studio Seminar 9551/9651 Visualizing Race and Class in the New World 9554/9654 Museums, Marginality and the Mainstream 9555/9655 That Thinking Feeling: Engaging the Affective Capacities of Art 9581/9681 The Turn to the Object
GRADUATE COURSES - 2010-2011 VAH/S 9500B: Art Theory and Criticism in Western Culture 9600B: PhD Seminar: Art Theory and Criticism 9540A/9543A - Graduate Studio Seminar 9541B/9544B/9641B - Graduate Studio Seminar 9521A/9621A - Studio Elective - Work Ethic: Looking Like You’re Not Trying and Looking Like You Mean It 9551G/9651G - Graduate Seminar - Monuments 9555G/9655G - Art in Time and Space as Seen through a Telescope: Artistic Journeys through Modern Science VAH 9578F/9678F - Modern - The Animal in Modernism 9579F/9679F - Phenomenology and Art 9554F/9654F Seminar - Paper Politics: Printed Matter, Political Engagement and Avant-garde Practices 9566G/9666G - Cultures of Memory
GRADUATE COURSES - 2009-2010 VAH/S 9500A/9600A: Art Theory and Criticism in Western Culture VAS 9521B/9621B Studio Elective Course: Why make pictures? VAS 9540A/9543A/96640A Graduate Studio Seminar VAS 9541B/9544B Graduate Studio Seminar VAH 9551G/9651G Medieval Art- Mapping Medievalism at the Canadian Frontier VAH 9554/9654F Modern Art – A Stitch in Time Saves . . . Textiles, Technology and Contemporary Art VAH 9555G/9655G Modern Art – Photography’s Discursive Spaces VAH 9566F/9666F The Archive in Contemporary Culture VAH 9578F/9678F Modern – The maison d’artiste, 1880-2009 VAH 9579G//9679G The Forensic Imagination: Evidence, Testimony, and the Material Witness
GRADUATE COURSES - 2008-2009 VAH/S 9500A / 9600A
Art Theory and Criticism in Western Culture VAS 9521B / 9621B
Studio Elective Course: Extemporal VAS 9540A / 9543A / 96640A
Graduate Studio Seminar VAS 9541B / 9544B
Graduate Studio Seminar VAH 9551G / 9651G
Medieval Art and Its Modern Interpreters VAH 9554 / 9654G
Modern Art – Economizing Culture: Globalization, Art and the Creative Industries VAH 9556G / 9656G
The Palace in Latin America VAH 9578F / 9678F:
Modern Art - Rediscovering Nature andthe Body in a Post Industrial World:
The Adventures of Arte Povera VAH 9579F / 9679F VAH 9551F / VAH 9651F
Transformations: the impact of the Women’s Movement on art and art history VAH 9594F / 9694F
Survey of Chinese Visual Art
GRADUATE COURSES - 2007-2008 VAH/S 500A/600A Art Theory and Criticism in Western Culture VAS 521A/621A Sonic Fictions 526B/626B Studio Special Topic: Adaptation Nation: Modernism, Canadian Design and the Artist Multiple 540A/543A/640A Graduate Studio Seminar 541B/544B/641B Graduate Studio Seminar VAH 561F/661F Baroque Constructions: representation in the 17th century 567B/667B Special Projects in Studio VAH 584B/684B - After Images: Photography and Literature VAH587A/687A Collecting Cultures VAH 594B/694B Special Topic: Embodied Information: Researching the Sensuous and the Immaterial
GRADUATE COURSES OFFERED IN 2006-2007 VAH/S 500A Art Theory and Criticism in Western Culture VAS 521B Studio Elective – Cultivators of Culture VAS 540a/543a Graduate Studio Seminar VAS 541b/544b Graduate Studio Seminar VAH 551G - Seminar in Medieval Art VAH 566B – Nineteenth Century Art History Seminar VAH 577G – Modern – Icon/Fetish VAH 578F - Modern - Paracinema
GRADUATE COURSES OFFERED IN 2005-2006 VAH/S 500A Art Theory and Criticism in Western Culture 521B New Studio Elective - Vampire Picnic: A Reference Manual VAS 540a/543a Graduate Studio Seminar VAS 541b/544b Graduate Studio Seminar VAH 551G/ VAH 451G (Seminar in Medieval Art) VAH 554b Modern - Ars Memoria VAH561F Baroque Art: Baroque Constructions VAH 587G La Maison d'Artiste
GRADUATE COURSES OFFERED IN 2004-2005 500a Art Theory and Criticism in Western Culture 526b Graduate Special Topics Course: Creative Critters Commune 540a/543a MFA Graduate Studio Seminar 2004 541b/544b Graduate Studio Seminar 551G Reading Medieval Art 577F A is for Art, H is for Heterotopia |
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