Undergraduate Courses

 

FALL & WINTER COURSES 2018-2019

Timetable: please click here

Visual Arts History

Course descriptions: please click here

Note: Course outlines for 2018-2019 will be available in August-September.

  • Click the course number to download the outline as a pdf.

 

Course Number

Course Title

Instructor

VAH 1041B

Art, Visual Culture, and Power
Plus Tutorial Sections 002, 003, 004, 005, 006, or 007

C. Sprengler

VAH 1042A

Art, Science and Technology
Plus Tutorial Sections 002, 003, 004, 005, 006, or 007

J. James

VAH 2241F

Theories and Practices of Art History and Visual Culture

J. James

VAH 2242G

History of Photography

S. Bassnett

VAH 2247E

Greek Art

D. Wilson

VAH 2259G

Italian Renaissance Art

C. Barteet

VAH 2292G

Introduction to Gallery, Museum & Curatorial Studies

K. Robertson

VAH 2293F

Art and Mass Media

C. Sprengler

VAH 3388F

Histories of Architecture and Urbanism

VAH 3392G

Special Topics in Art History: Baroque Modalities in Modern and Contemporary Art

J. Hatch

VAH 3394G

Special Topics in Art History: Making Art with Environmental Awareness

K. Wood

VAH 3395G

Special Topics in Art History: Forms of Narrative

N. Ricci

VAH 3396F

Special Topics in Art History: Greatest Shows on Earth: Exhibitions That Changed Art History

K. Robertson

VAH 4477F

Seminar in 20th Century Art: Mobility in Architecture

C. Barteet

VAH 4478G

Seminar in Contemporary Art: Globalization and After

S. Bassnett

VAH 4482G

Seminar in Photography: The Photograph and the Archive in Contemporary Art Practice

J. James

Visual Arts Studio

Course descriptions: please click here

  • Click the course number to download the outline as a pdf.

  • Note: Course outlines for 2018-2019 will be available in August-September.

Course Number

Course Title

Instructor

VAS 1020

Foundations of Visual Arts
Plus Studio Lab 002, 003, 004, 005, 006, 007, 008 or 009

T. Johnson

VAS 1025

Advanced Visual Arts Foundation Studio

A. Madelska

VAS 2100A

Image Explorations

K. Moodie

VAS 2100B

Image Explorations

G. Shepherd

VAS 2204A

Introduction to Drawing

D. Merritt

VAS 2210

Drawing/Painting

 N. Klassen

VAS 2216A

Introduction to Painting

 K. Moodie

VAS 2222B

Sculpture, Installation and Performance I

VAS 2236A

Introduction to Printmaking

T. Johnson

VAS 2236B

Introduction to Printmaking

T. Johnson

VAS 2246A

Digital Photography

VAS 2246B

Digital Photography

VAS 2252A

Introduction to Contemporary Media Art I

VAS 2254B

Introduction to Contemporary Media Art II

D. Sneppova

VAS 2276Y

Art Now!

 L. Eurich

VAS 2282A

Honors Studio Seminar I

D. Merritt

VAS 3300

Advanced Drawing

K. Moodie

VAS 3310

Advanced Painting

S. Glabush

VAS 3330

Advanced Printmaking

P. Mahon / T. Johnson

VAS 3340

Advanced Photography

K. Wood

VAS 3356A

Advanced Media Art

D. Sneppova

VAS 3382B

Honors Studio Seminar II

D. Merritt

VAS 3394B

Special Topics in Art History: Making Art with Environmental Awareness

K. Wood

VAS 4430

Practicum

S. Glabush / A. Madelska

 

Special Topics (Fall & Winter 2018-2019)

Special Topics (Fall / Winter 2018-2019)

VAH 3392G – Special Topics in Art History: Baroque Modalities in Modern and Contemporary Art
Professor John Hatch
Tuesday 8:30-11:30am

Revivals are a matter of course in the history of art, the most common being classical ones that look back to the art of the Greeks and Romans. The twentieth century embraced a return to the classical with the famous ‘retour à l’ordre’ in Europe during the First World War, but this was soon accompanied by an interest and revival of the Baroque that had festered since the publication of the German art historian Heinrich Wölfflin's Renaissance and Baroque (1888). Artistically this interest manifested itself initially 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 a 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, Jean Baudrillard, 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 many others.  This attraction persists and has spread to a variety of media including film and has become a significant undercurrent in Post and Hyper-modernism.  This course outlines the development of this interest in the Baroque up to the present day, examines the possible reasons for it, and highlights its contemporary importance and relevance under the banner of the Neo-Baroque.

 

VAH 3394G / VAS 3394B – Making Art with Environmental Awareness

Professor Kelly Wood
Wednesday 2:30-5:30pm

 

Organized as a creative research group for artists, curators and historians, Making Art with Environmental Awareness explores artistic responses to ecology, sustainability and related social issues. This year, the course will focus on the materiality and consequences of plastics use in our culture and physical world.

 

VAH 3395G – Special Topics in Art History: Forms of Narrative

Professor Nino Ricci
Wednesday 11:30-2:30pm

This workshop course will allow students to explore writing in a range of narrative forms, from the traditional short story to metafiction, micro-fiction, podcasts, graphic novels, fan fiction, and others. Students will be encouraged to consider how narrative informs other disciplines (visual arts, business, the sciences) with a view to creating new forms relevant to their own educational backgrounds and interests.

 

VAH 3396F – Greatest Shows on Earth: Exhibitions That Changed Art History

Professor Kirsty Robertson
Tuesday 11:30-2:30pm

This course considers exhibitions from around the world, from the nineteenth century to the present, that have profoundly altered the study of art history and impacted the ways museums function. Students will gain a broad overview of influential exhibitions that have launched art movements, have led to new methods of display, collecting, and archiving, and have changed relationships between museums and their publics.

 

VAH 4477F – Seminar in 20th Century Art: Mobility in Architecture

Professor Cody Barteet
Thursday 11:30-2:30pm

 

Movement through architectural and urban spaces has long been common place for people. Over the millennia theories and practices have developed to allow for the easy movement of supplies, peoples, and other commodities the build form as well as provide sites for elaborate displays of state and spectacle. In modern and contemporary society, these practices have continued as people commute to and from work, school, errands, and leisure (whether going to a movie or traveling). Added to this, the large migration of peoples due to war, natural disaster, and the like, thus contributing to our continuous and evolving understanding of movement through architecture. So too are the means by which we observe the movements of peoples through architectural spaces as overarching ideas of safety and security come to the fore. In this course we will examine various topics related to the observation and movement of peoples through permanent and temporary architectural spaces. Specific consideration will be given to ideas of surveillance, defense, terrorism, migration, and memory. We cover these range of topics by drawing upon theoretical texts and case studies as well as through guest lectures.

 

VAH 4478G – Seminar in Contemporary Art: Globalization and After
Professor Sarah Bassnett
Tuesday 11:30-2:30pm

This seminar examines themes in art since 1980 through the lens of globalization. Globalization has been described as one of the most important changes in human history, and although difficult to define, it is typically associated with an increase in the movement and connectedness of people, goods, information, and knowledge, along with new systems and networks to regulate or expedite their flow. In this course, we focus on the work of artists who have explored issues connected to globalization and after. This includes themes such as: migration and cultural displacement, human rights, inter-cultural exchange, surveillance capitalism, and the Anthropocene. We also consider how artists are responding to the current wave of authoritarian populism and state protectionism. Students will develop their own research projects in relation to the course theme.

 

VAH4482G – Seminar in Photography: The Photograph and the Archive in Contemporary Art Practice

Professor Joy James
Monday 2:30-5:30pm

 

This fourth year seminar in photography focuses on art practices that engage the photographic as archive. Within this foundational framework, the course will examine contemporary artists’ multiple archival encounters across a range of concerns, objects and ideas. The course is designed around experiential learning with an emphasis on field trips to archives and galleries, group discussion, discussions with artists who actuate the model of the archive in their work, and critical readings on the histories and practices relevant to this area of study.  Course evaluation is based on: active participation, reading, writing, and short presentation assignments, and the collaborative conceptualization, construction and exhibition of an archive by seminar participants.