Here is a brief look at some of the courses that I am teaching in the 2022-2023 academic year:
Documentaries
Examines the technological and cultural history of documentation a mode of production, expanding the documentary form beyond film alone to asses its artistic and social contexts broadly conceived, spanning literary, photographic, acoustic, and digital culture traditions, from the printed word to contemporary immersive media. In addition to critical discussion and reflection, students create works of documentary media, such as films, podcasts, soundscape recordings, art installations, photographic essays, travelogues, and other experimental forms.
Media & Diversity
Considers how issues of diversity, equity, and inclusivity impact the arts through technologies of expression and representation. This course offers critical discussion around past and current histories of exclusion and empowerment in cultural forms, spanning visual art, music, film, dance, computer/video games, performance, and contemporary digital media.
Art & War
Contextualizes the creation of art during times of war and deep within zones of conflict, past and present. The course provides an overview of how and why people have create art when they are most vulnerable, and takes into account contemporary conflicts as expressed through visual art, music, sculptural monuments, memorials, street art, and more. Modules include: Defining War, Representing War, Declaring War, Protesting War, Surviving War, and Remembering War. In addition to learning about the history/theories of war (and how it has been a subject of cultural expression) students also conceive and design a war memorial of their own.
Perspectives on Interdisciplinary Art & Performance
Provides rich historical and theoretical context to modern and contemporary interdisciplinary art practices, bolstered by critical media studies perspectives that question how systems of power manifest in artistic media and cultural spaces.
20th & 21st Century Art, Performance & Media
Provides an introduction to the history and theory of modern and contemporary art, as well as their connections to adjacent media and techno-material cultures. In this course, students gain fundamental knowledge about modernism and its numerous, sometimes conflicting, transformations over the 20th and 21st centuries. This leads us to examining our present conditions of creating and interpreting art amidst (and at times despite) computational networks, systems, and platforms that comprise and govern how we live and work today.