Department of the Visual Arts

ARTV 30027. Site-Based Practice: Choreographing The Smart Museum. 100 Units.

This course gives students the unique opportunity to create a collaborative, site-based work that culminates in a final performance at UChicago's Smart Museum of Art. Using embodied research methods that respond to site through moving, sensing, and listening, we'll explore the relationship between the ephemerality of movement and the materiality of bodies and place, and consider how the site-based contexts for dance shift how it is perceived, experienced, and valued. Our quarter-long creation process will begin with a tour of the Smart Museum, guided by curators and members of the Public Practice team, that will provide context to the museum's exhibitions, programming, and its relationship to geography and community. Assigned readings, viewings, and conversations with guest artists will delve into the relationship between dance and the sites where it happens, including museums-from the material relationship between bodies, objects, and architecture to the digital flows of choreography online.

Instructor(s): J. Rhoads     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 20027, TAPS 36280, TAPS 26280, ARCH 26280, CHST 26280

ARTV 30098. Revolutionary Erotics. 100 Units.

This seminar will explore revolutionary erotics as both a modality and site of revolutionary thought and action. We will engage erotics and desire expansively as strategies for sensuous and affective agitation and political resistance, probing topics such spirituality and erotics, as well as erotics and its publics and politics. We will think about how erotics and desire have been central to revolutionary art and politics from anti-imperial and anti-fascist struggles to anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and queer worldbuilding, from revolutionary love to terrorist drag, and from the US to Yugoslavia and Iran. The seminar asks, how has the erotic excited revolutionary action-- challenging at once the taboo and commodity fetish-and how can erotics can help us reimagine agitation today? The Berlin-based seminar will include studio visits with renown contemporary artists, a guided visit of the Gropiusbau's current show: Vaginal Davis: Fabelhaftes Punk, a performance by CHEAP collective, and a series of events and performances surrounding art week. Studio visits will include meetings with Berlin-based artists such as AA Bronson- co-founder of General Idea, Sophie Jung, Piotr Nathan, and Hito Steyerl. While in Berlin students will also have time to explore their own research-based art project in consultation with the instructors, relevant archives, and museums. They will have an opportunity to present their work during the final class review and critique.

Instructor(s): Leah Feldman     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): We invite applications for the inaugural Gray Seminar, Revolutionary Erotics, which will be held September 8-26 in Berlin, Germany and sporadically over fall quarter at the Gray Center. The course will be listed in fall as a graduate seminar (parented in Comparative Literature). The course will be for graduate and MA students in the arts and humanities division with priority given to DOVA, TAPS, Music and Comparative Literature. The course is by application only and flight, housing, and excursions in Berlin will be covered for all admitted students. If you would like to apply, please send a short paragraph introducing yourself and describing your practice and why the course topic and the opportunity to work in Berlin would be fruitful for your research and art practice. Please include a short description of a research-based work that you would like to produce during the 3-week seminar. You may include a few sample works from your portfolio. The Gray Seminar Berlin is a collaborative art seminar, bringing together scholarship, research and praxis for PhD, MA students, and exceptional undergraduates working in visual arts, performance, music, literature and film for a 3-week intensive term in September with professors from the University of Chicago and local artists. The 2025 program will be led by Professor Leah Feldman and Berlin-based artist collective Slavs and Tatars. It will consist of theory seminars, artists studio visits, consultations for research at local archives and museums, and supervision for a final research-based project, which will be presented at a showcase at Slavs and Tatar’s gallery Pickle Bar. Seminar meetings will be held in The Pickle Bar, located in the Moabit neighborhood in Berlin. Dates: September 8-26
Equivalent Course(s): MUSI 39800, TAPS 39800, CMLT 39800

ARTV 30140. Aesthetic Ecologies. 100 Units.

What would an intellectual history of the environment look like when told from the perspective of the literature of art history? The geographer Friedrich Ratzel, who first began using the term "Umwelt" ("environment") in a systematic way, claimed that, up to the end of the 19th century, the idea of environment had been primarily discussed not in scientific contexts but rather in aesthetic ones, by "artistically predisposed thinkers." In this course, we will take Ratzel's claim seriously and aim to recuperate the aesthetic side of theories of environment across diverse areas such as: notions of landscape ("the picturesque"); aesthetic and biological theories of milieu (Haeckel's "ecology," Taine's "milieu," Uexküll's "Umweltlehre"); Warburg's cultural history; the "sculpture of environment" (Boccioni); the "space-body" in modern dance (Laban); artworks-as-environments in spatial installations. This course is about artworks that continue beyond their material confines into the space environing them. We will focus on evocations of air as the material space surrounding an artwork in texts that thematize the continuity between artwork as image and material object. Additional materials include: J.W. v. Goethe, Jacob Burckhardt, Carl Justi, Adolf v. Hildebrand, Camillo Sitte, Alois Riegl, R.M. Rilke, M. Heidegger, and others.

Instructor(s): Margareta Ingrid Christian     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Open to all students. MAPH students welcome. Interested undergraduates please email instructor:michristian@uchicago.edu.
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 35140

ARTV 30207. Introduction to Performance Installation. 100 Units.

This introductory course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the collaborative and theatrical techniques required for staging a performance installation piece. This artistic medium works at the boundaries between visual art, theater, and experiential storytelling. This medium thereby offers the ensemble a dynamic platform for creative expression. Students will create site-specific pieces while also experimenting with various physical and vocal techniques. Students interested in the course should contact Pamela Pascoe (pkpascoe@uchicago.edu) before registering.

Instructor(s): P. Pascoe     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 22290, ARTV 20207

ARTV 30478. Getting the 90s We Deserve. 100 Units.

The aim of this seminar is to help its members recover visions, texts, sounds, concepts, moods and utopian impulses from the 1990s that can help us to see our way out of our current situation, that help us to imagine different worlds. Through a series of readings, viewings, listenings, and conversations, we will engage in an ongoing collaborative project that will culminate with a collectively composed and designed performance and publication at the end of the quarter. Two areas of thematic focus will be 1) the nature and effects of the fall of the Berlin wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War on political situations ranging in scale from the intimate and personal to the global and geopolitical and 2) the emergence of a new queer politics in response to the AIDS crisis and the corresponding emergence of queer theory. Our course title is inspired by a 1999 essay by Douglas Crimp, in which he argued for a return to Andy Warhol's films and art through the methods and concepts offered by cultural studies and queer theory, instead of the ones that a conservative art history had theretofore presented. Crimp's retrospective look at the gender and sexually transgressive underground film and theater scene of the 1960s in order to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of cultural, visual and queer studies motivates our desire to get more out of the 1990s for our troubled present.

Instructor(s): Jonathan Flatley     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 44788, GNSE 24788, CMLT 44788, GNSE 44788, CMLT 24788, ENGL 24788, ARTV 20478

ARTV 30700. Alternate Reality Games: Theory and Production. 100 Units.

Games are one of the most prominent and influential media of our time. This experimental course explores the emerging genre of "alternate reality" or "transmedia" gaming. Throughout the quarter, we will approach new media theory through the history, aesthetics, and design of transmedia games. These games build on the narrative strategies of novels, the performative role-playing of theater, the branching techniques of electronic literature, the procedural qualities of video games, and the team dynamics of sports. Beyond the subject matter, students will design modules of an Alternate Reality Game in small groups. Students need not have a background in media or technology, but a wide-ranging imagination, interest in new media culture, or arts practice will make for a more exciting quarter.

Instructor(s): Patrick Jagoda, Heidi Coleman     Terms Offered: Not offered in 2025-2026
Prerequisite(s): PQ: Third- or fourth-year standing. Instructor consent required. To apply, submit writing through online form: https://forms.gle/QvRCKN6MjBtcteWy5; see course description. Once given consent, attendance on the first day is mandatory. Questions: mb31@uchicago.edu
Note(s): Note(s): English majors: this course fulfills the Theory (H) distribution requirement.
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 25954, ENGL 32314, BPRO 28700, ARTV 20700, MADD 20700, ENGL 25970, TAPS 28466, CMST 35954

ARTV 30702. Posthuman Becoming. 100 Units.

This course introduces recent developments and advanced approaches in critical posthumanist thought. We will explore emerging theories and practices that renegotiate the human condition through critical inquiry into posthuman desires and the complicated relationship between human and non-human 'others,' including animals, plants and micro-organisms, waste and toxins, artificial life, and hyperobjects. By engaging diverse viewpoints that map the stakes of a non-anthropocentric politics of culture, such as new materialism, object-oriented ontology, and speculative realism, but also eco-feminism, queer performativity, and Indigenous epistemology, we will explore emerging techniques of mediation, communication, and representation that surrender to the relational identities of a posthuman becoming. A central premise of this exploration are post-disciplinary ways of knowing that make such imaginaries visible: in addition to discussing a substantial body of contemporary scholarship from the arts, humanities, and humanistic social sciences, the course includes a studio module that introduces a variety of research-creation methodologies for experimentation with curatorial, artistic, and activist practices.

Instructor(s): Andre Uhl     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 32208, KNOW 32208, MADD 12208

ARTV 30805. Framing, Re-framing, and Un-framing Cinema. 100 Units.

By cinema, we mean the art of the moving image, which is not limited to the material support of a flexible band called film. This art reaches back to early devices to trick the eye into seeing motion and looks forward to new media and new modes of presentation. With the technological possibility of breaking images into tiny pixels and reassembling them and of viewing them in new way that this computerized image allows, we now face the most radical transformation of the moving image since the very beginnings of cinema. A collaboration between the OpenEndedGroup (Marc Downie and Paul Kaiser), artists who have created new modes of the moving image for more than decade, and film scholar Tom Gunning, this course will use this moment of new technologies to explore and expand the moving image before it becomes too rigidly determined by the powerful industrial forces now propelling it forward. This course will be intensely experimental as we see how we might use new computer algorithms to take apart and re-experience classic films of the past. By using new tools, developed for and during this class, students will make new experiences inside virtual reality environments for watching, analyzing, and recombining films and that are unlike any other. These tools will enable students, regardless of previous programming experience, to participate in this crucial technological and cultural juncture.

Equivalent Course(s): CMST 37805, CMST 27805, ARTV 20805

ARTV 30807. Adaptation Laboratory: Staging Berlin at Court Theatre. 100 Units.

From 2000-2018, the graphic novelist Jason Lutes published Berlin, a sprawling, formally inventive, & idiosyncratic account of life in the German capital city during the years just prior to National Socialism. Court Theatre, the Tony award winning professional theater on the UChicago campus, has commissioned the playwright Mickle Maher to prepare an adaptation of Lutes' novel for Court's 2024-25 season; David Levin is the collaborating dramaturg. This interdisciplinary team-taught seminar invites students into the process of adaptation, exploring a range of practical, conceptual & artistic challenges. The course will take place in two locations: at Court Theatre (where we will attend rehearsals for the world premiere production, from first rehearsal through opening) and in a theater lab on campus, where we will consider a range of critical and creative materials - e.g., Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori's adaptation of Alison Bechdel's graphic novel Fun Home or Walter Ruttmann's 1927 film "Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis" - to establish a dialogue between Lutes' novel, its progenitors, and the work in Court's rehearsal room. An additional & significant component of our work will involve creative exercises. Students will prepare adaptations of their own - first, of Lutes' novel, then of works of their own choosing. Artists from Court's production will join us for workshop sessions. The seminar aims to serve as a creative and critical forum, exploring the challenges of adaptation.

Instructor(s): David Levin and Mickle Maher     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): An interest in the graphic novel and/or 20th century German history & culture is welcome but not required. An active interest in – and a willingness to think critically and creatively about – the practices of interpretation on stage is essential.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 20807, CDIN 35050, TAPS 25050, CDIN 25050, GRMN 35050, TAPS 35050

ARTV 30812. Advanced Typography. 100 Units.

Typography generally refers to the arrangement of type on a surface. It often goes unnoticed, because the way words look - their shape and typographic form - is secondary to the meaning they carry. Typography is one of the richest areas for formal exploration in graphic design. This course explores major shifts in the reproduction of the written word: from type foundries and linotype to bitmap fonts, open type, and variable type. Working in Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, students will experiment with the layout and appearance of letterforms, words, and text in multiple scripts and languages. Typographic history and theory will be discussed in relation to course projects. (Theory)

Instructor(s): Danielle Aubert     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 20308, ARTV 20312, ENGL 40308, MADD 20308

ARTV 30944. Painting with Light in Space. 100 Units.

This course explores projected imagery as a medium to paint ephemeral ideas in the real world through installation and theatrical design. Utilizing visual iconography, architectural forms, objects, and cinema, this course will explore the practical and theoretical applications of video on unorthodox objects and spaces. Using software as an instrument, students will investigate the visceral extents of images both historical and generative to create living light. The course will culminate in student presentations that illustrate and illuminate the ideas and techniques presented throughout the course.

Instructor(s): R. Davonté Johnson     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 20944, MADD 20420, TAPS 27420

ARTV 30945. Performance Art Installation: Imagining the End. 100 Units.

Perhaps the most important American play dealing with the prospect of the end of the world is Thorton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (1942). This class will use this strange and remarkable play that moves through human and geological time to explore contemporary concerns about the end of life as we know it. Our work will culminate in a site-specific performance piece making use of the skills, talents, and experience of the members of the group.

Instructor(s): P. Pascoe     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 22315, TAPS 32315, ARTV 20945

ARTV 31001. Figure Drawing: Trans/Figuration. 100 Units.

Figure drawing is an experience that engages us visually, physically, emotionally, and psychologically. This many-faceted relationship is examined through the use of a variety of traditional and experimental materials, set-ups, and drawing methods. Assignments and class critiques investigate different models of stylistic invention, ranging from realism to comic expression. This studio class includes readings, field trips, and class projects that address the human form as source for developing your own visual responses to related issues-such as identity, narrative, and social critique.

Instructor(s): K. Desjardins     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 21001

ARTV 31501. Introduction to Printmaking. 100 Units.

An introduction to basic printmaking techniques, including monoprint, intaglio (drypoint), planographic, and relief printing. Printmaking will be explored as a "bridge medium": a conduit between drawing, painting, and sculpture. Emphasis will be placed upon investigating visual structures through "calculated spontaneity" and "controlled accidents," as well as on the serial potential inherent in printmaking, as opposed to the strictly technical aspects of this medium.

Instructor(s): K. Desjardins     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 21501

ARTV 31702. Drawing Concepts. 100 Units.

This course will focus on expanding the definition and practice of drawing. Studio work will engage traditional, spatial and process-oriented mark making in order to materialize thematically driven projects. Emphasis will be placed equally on the formal concerns of subject, material, and technique as well as the ability to effectively convey one's concept. Projects will include weekly and longer-term assignments, in addition to critique. Participation in field trips is required.

Instructor(s): B. Collins     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 21702

ARTV 31800. Studio Practice. 100 Units.

This course considers a variety of methods, processes and media to explore conceptual issues pertinent to a contemporary art practice. Through research, material investigation, experimentation and revision, students will develop their own approach to a daily self-directed practice. Projects will include weekly and longer-term assignments, individual and collaborative work. We will also look at the practices of established artists for possible models. Participation in several field trips is required.

Instructor(s): B. Collins     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 21800

ARTV 31900. Color Theory and Practice. 100 Units.

This course will introduce students to practical aspects of color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color combinations through a series of studio exercises and projects. Conceptual and theoretical investigations into optics, the science of color, and psychological and symbolic effects will contribute to an overall understanding of color in relation to visual culture and perception.

Instructor(s): S. Wolniak     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 21900, MADD 22900

ARTV 32000. Introduction to Sculpture. 100 Units.

This course introduces the technical fundamentals of sculptural practice. Using basic introductions to welding, basic woodworking and metal fabrication students will undertake assignments designed to deploy these new skills conceptually in their projects. Lectures and reading introduce the technical focus of the class in various historical, social and economic contexts. Discussions and gallery visits help engender an understanding of sculpture within a larger societal and historical context.

Instructor(s): C. Bradley     Terms Offered: Spring Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 22200

ARTV 32200-32202. Introduction to Painting I-II.

This studio course introduces students to the fundamental elements of painting (its language and methodologies) as they learn how to initiate and develop an individualized investigation into subject matter and meaning. This course emphasizes group critiques and discussion. Courses taught concurrently.

ARTV 32301. Utopia: Alternative Worlds, New Spaces. 100 Units.

Periods of profound transformation and crisis often lead to new visions for future worlds. From monumental and experimental sites to grassroots urban farms, this class will examine different modes of futuristic projects that re-imagine the existing reality of particular sites to propose new environments. Through individual and collaborative projects, this studio course engages with the legacy of utopian imagining as a critical tool and a strategy to unlock potentialities in alternative futures. Students will engage with texts, theories, architectural designs (built or unbuilt), artworks, and counter-sites in the city to explore the work of imagination in creating the world anew. Modes of learning include studio projects, writing exercises, lectures, readings, discussions, and field trips.

Instructor(s): N. Lotfi     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300.
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 22301, ARTV 22301

ARTV 32318. Nine Exigent Times. 100 Units.

This discussion-based seminar will engage deeply with the form and context of nine works of art spanning the timeframe of 1810 to our contemporary moment. With this broad horizon line, the class will take up questions the question of how artists across time and space have responded to situations of emergency in culture. Seminar format open to DoVA majors and minors, DoVA MFAs, and MA students in MAPH. This class can be counted as a studio class toward the DoVA major or minor with consent of instructor.

Instructor(s): G. Oppenheimer     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 22318

ARTV 32321. Untidy Objects. 100 Units.

In this experimental course, students will use the lens of "untidy objects" to unravel the relationship between self and other, self and world. The concepts we normally use to think tend to take for granted, on the one hand, tidy objects, and on the other hand, tidy subjects coming to know tidy objects. We will undertake to challenge distinctions between subject and object through a multi-faceted set of sculptural and horticultural practices that bring us into close contact with plants and trees.The aspirations of this project are to question the conceptual ground from which we think about environmental justice and politics with an emphasis on practices of proximity to living others. Through readings, guest speakers, discussions, and practicum, this course and project provide an opportunity to re-habituate ourselves and lean differently into the world, to perceive, conceptualize, and represent living processes in ways that are oblique to common-sense.

Instructor(s): A. Ginsburg     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 22321, CHST 22321

ARTV 32322. Sensing the Anthropocene. 100 Units.

In this co-taught course between the departments of English (Jennifer Scappettone) and Visual Arts (Amber Ginsburg), we will deploy those senses most overlooked in academic discourse surrounding aesthetics and urbanism--hearing, taste, touch, and smell--to explore the history and actuality of Chicago as a site of anthropogenic changes. Holding the bulk of our classes out of doors, we will move through the city seeking out and documenting traces of the city's foundations in phenomena such as the filling in of swamp; the river as pipeline; and the creation of transportation and industrial infrastructure--all with uneven effects on human and nonhuman inhabitants. Coursework will combine readings in history and theory of the Anthropocene together with examples of how artists and activists have made the Anthropocene visible, tangible, and audible, providing forums for playful documentation and annotations as we draw, score, map, narrate, sing, curate and collate our sensory experience of the Anthropocene into a final experimental book project. Admission is by consent only: please write a short paragraph briefly sketching your academic background and naming your interest in the course. Send this submission to: jscape@uchicago.edu, amberginsburg@gmail.com

Instructor(s): J. Scappettone, A. Ginsburg     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): PQ: Third or fourth-year standing; room for several graduate students
Equivalent Course(s): ARCH 22322, BPRO 27200, CEGU 27700, CHST 27200, ENGL 47700, CRWR 27250, ARTV 22322, ENGL 27700

ARTV 32323. Ceramics: Material as Performance. 100 Units.

This course delves into the use and practices around ceramics as a materials and focuses on the intersection between culture, habit, and performance. By examining the histories of clay, we will think through our patterns and speculate on interactions with this material into the future. Ceramics offer us the opportunity to examine material history across uses, from the architectural, to the fillings in our teeth, to behaviors around the table, allowing for a broad range of materially performative contemplations. This studio course will be iterative, working towards large scale final projects.

Instructor(s): A. Ginsburg     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 22323

ARTV 32326. The Thinking Body. 100 Units.

This studio course focuses on how the body creates art through movement, intuition and embodied knowledge. Through experimental approaches to making by hand and working with materials, we explore how the mind is distributed across the body and not limited to abstract ratiocination. Students will probe the boundaries between the arbitrary and the intentional, and the subjective and the objective through projects including 2D collage, creative writing, and 3D mixed-media. We will examine a variety of resources from rituals and ceremonies to contemporary art practices that fuse intuition and intellect and will read about sensory responses in non-human cognition (e.g. plants and animals without centralized brain).

Instructor(s): N. Lotfi     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 22326

ARTV 32327. Unto Thee: Sculpture and Ritual Practices. 100 Units.

With the forthcoming exhibition, Unto Thee, as its academic anchor, this course will examine the ways that sculpture is deployed in ritualized and religious performance, theatre, and other daily activity. Unto Thee is about the development of a personal lexicon of sculptural devices that expose our need to surrender. This class will explore sculpture from the perspective of sacrifice, rites, consecration, libation, vows and offerings. With these key words as a platform for the production of new work, we will interrogate both the ease and complexity of letting go in the 21st century, given our ability to amass the number of things we hold on to. In this course, we will create new sculptural work toward the purposes of deepening one's own personal, ritual-based knowledge.

Instructor(s): T. Gates     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 22327

ARTV 32501. Art & Machine Intelligence. 100 Units.

Artists have long used autonomous processes to aid in the creation of their work. From 18th century parlor games to contemporary visual culture, creators have applied stochastic methods, automation, and simulation to generate music, text, and imagery. In the last five years, as machine learning has matured into broadly applicable artificial intelligence, artists have turned towards neural networks as a new frontier for creative practice. This studio course will explore the history and uses of autonomous creative tools and focus, more specifically, on leading edge artistic applications of AI. Students will receive exposure to a breadth of methods in this domain and produce multiple projects engaged with these topics. Software development experience is not required, though it may be useful.

Instructor(s): J. Salavon     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 22501, MADD 25201

ARTV 32526. Aby Warburg and the Memory of Images. 100 Units.

Trained as an art historian with an expertise in Renaissance art, Warburg morphed into a historian of images (i.e., Bildwissenschaft) and - more broadly - into a historian of culture. We will trace Warburg's cultural historical method as it develops primarily from philology, but also art history, anthropology, the comparative study of religions, and evolutionary biology. How does Warburg read culture? What is his methodological approach for examining a wide variety of cultural artifacts ranging from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Poliziano's poetry, and Dürer's etchings to postal stamps and news photographs? How can these artifacts be vehicles for cultural memory? And how does the transmission of cultural memory in artworks manifest itself in different media such as literary texts, religious processions, astrological treatises, photography, and painting? Moreover, how does Warburg's work help us contextualize and historicize "interdisciplinarity" today? This course explores Aby Warburg in the context of other thinkers of the time including Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Alois Riegl, and others. Readings and discussions in English. Undergraduates and MAPH students welcome.

Instructor(s): Margareta Ingrid Christian     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 32526, GRMN 32526, MAPH 32526

ARTV 33804. Experimental Animation: Exploring Manual Techniques. 100 Units.

Individually directed video shorts will be produced in this intensive studio course. Experimental and improvised approaches to animation and motion picture art will focus on analog and material techniques, with basic digital post-production also being introduced. Early and experimental cinema, puppetry and contemporary low-tech animation will be presented as formal and technical examples.

Instructor(s): S. Wolniak     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 23804, CMST 23804, ARTV 23804

ARTV 33808. Introduction to 16mm Filmmaking. 100 Units.

The goal of this intensive laboratory course is to give its students a working knowledge of film production using the 16mm gauge. The course will emphasize how students can use 16mm technology towards successful cinematography and image design (for use in both analog and digital postproduction scenarios) and how to develop their ideas towards constructing meaning through moving pictures. Through a series of group exercises, students will put their hands on equipment and solve technical and aesthetic problems, learning to operate and care for the 16mm Bolex film camera; prime lenses; Sekonic light meter; Sachtler tripod; and Arri light kit and accessories. For a final project, students will plan and produce footage for an individual or small group short film. The first half the course will be highly structured, with demonstrations, in-class shoots, and lectures. As the semester continues, class time will open up to more of a workshop format to address the specific concerns and issues that arise in the production of the final projects. This course is made possible by the Charles Roven Fund for Cinema and Media Studies. Students will need written permission to enroll in the course. To bid for entry into the class, please email the instructor with your name, major and year -- and please list any other media production or photography experience.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students will need written permission to enroll in the course. To bid for entry into the class, please email the instructor with your name, major and year -- and please list any other media production or photography experience. Enrollment priority will be given to graduate and undergraduate CMS students, beginning with seniors, then to DoVA graduates and undergraduates, then to students in other departments.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 23808, CMST 38921, MADD 23808, CMST 28921

ARTV 33834. Adaptation Laboratory: Staging Berlin. 100 Units.

From 2000-2018, the graphic novelist Jason Lutes published Berlin, a sprawling, formally inventive, & idiosyncratic account of life in the Weimar Republic. Court Theatre has commissioned the playwright Mickle Maher to prepare an adaptation of Lutes' novel; David Levin is the collaborating dramaturg. The production is slated for Court's 2023-24 season. This interdisciplinary seminar invites students into the process of adaptation, exploring a broad range of conceptual & artistic challenges. We will consider works in a host of genres - e.g., Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori's adaptation of Alison Bechdel's graphic novel Fun Home or Walter Ruttmann's 1927 film "Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis" - to establish a dialogue between Lutes' work, its progenitors, and a range of theoretical materials. An additional & significant component of our work will involve creative exercises. Students will prepare adaptations of their own - first, of Lutes' novel, then of works of their own choosing. We will invite collaborators from the production to join us for workshop sessions. The seminar seeks to serve as an adaptation laboratory, exploring & investigating theoretical stakes and practical problems while seeking to reshape those stakes and problems into diverse forms of practice.

Instructor(s): David J. Levin and Mickle Maher     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): An interest in some combination of theater & performance practice, translation, adaptation, German culture and/or German history would be welcome. Note: Undergrads admitted by permission
Equivalent Course(s): CDIN 40500, CMST 40500, TAPS 40500, GRMN 35523

ARTV 33861. Expanded Cinema. 100 Units.

Though often overlooked, the act of projection is at the heart of cinema (the act or process of causing a picture to appear on a surface). This studio course focuses on the creation of moving image-based work, exploring how time and space are used as materials to create form and inspire content within the contemporary film genre known as expanded cinema. The technical, historical and political aspects of the projected image will be studied in order to re-think cinema as a group and investigate how the projected image can find meaning outside the black box of theaters or the white cube of galleries. Two personal experimental video projects will lead to a third final collective video installation that will use the environment within the vicinity of UChicago's campus to inspire the work while also become the location of the final outdoor projection event. Note(s): Students will need written permission to enroll in the course. To bid for entry into the class, please email the instructor with your name, major, year, and list any other media production experience. Enrollment priority will be given to graduate and undergraduate CMS students, beginning with seniors, then to students in other departments.

Instructor(s): Marco Ferrari     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 23861, CHST 28925, CMST 38925, CMST 28925

ARTV 33920. Drawing II: Exploded Drawing. 100 Units.

This intensive studio course will explore wide-ranging strategies in drawing and two-dimensional composition. Interrogating conventions of representation and pictorial space, students will develop new formal and conceptual possibilities that relate to the complexities and changing perspectives of contemporary life. Drawing will be addressed as an expansive, open-ended outlet for thought and action. Emphasis will be on innovation within the fundamental structures of the medium, including its history, materials, and techniques.

Instructor(s): S. Wolniak     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300 and at least one ARTV class numbered 21000 and above.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 23920

ARTV 33930. Documentary Production I. 100 Units.

Documentary Video Production focuses on the making of independent documentary video. Examples of various modes of documentary production will be screened and discussed. Issues embedded in the genre, such as the ethics, the politics of representation, and the shifting lines between "the real" and "fiction" will be explored. Story development, pre-production strategies, and production techniques will be our focus, in particular-research, relationships, the camera, interviews and sound recording, shooting in available light, working in crews, and post-production editing. Students will work in crews and be expected to purchase a portable hard drive. A five-minute string-out/rough-cut will be screened at the end of the quarter. Students are strongly encouraged to take CMST 23931 Documentary Production II to complete their work. Consent of instructor is required to enroll.

Instructor(s): Marco Ferrari     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Prior or concurrent enrollment in CMST 10100 recommended for undergraduate students.
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 23930, CHST 23930, HMRT 35106, HMRT 25106, ARTV 23930, CMST 23930, CMST 33930

ARTV 33931. Documentary Production II. 100 Units.

Documentary Production II focuses on the shaping and crafting of a non-fiction video. Enrollment will be limited to those students who have taken CMST 23930 Documentary Production I. The class will discuss issues of ethics, power, and representation in this most philosophical and problematic of genres. Students will be expected to write a treatment outline detailing their project and learn about granting agencies and budgeting. Production techniques will concentrate on the language of handheld camera versus tripod, interview methodologies, microphone placement including working with wireless systems and mixers, and lighting for the interview. Post-production will cover editing techniques including color correction and audio sweetening, how to prepare for exhibition, and distribution strategies. Consent of instructor is required to enroll.

Instructor(s): Marco Ferrari     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): CMST 23930, HMRT 25106, or ARTV 23930
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 33931, CMST 23931, HMRT 35107, ARTV 23931, HMRT 25107, MADD 23931, CHST 23931

ARTV 34000. Introduction to Black and White Film Photography. 100 Units.

Photography is a familiar medium due to its ubiquitous presence in our visual world, including popular culture and personal usage. In this course, students learn technical procedures and basic skills related to the 35mm camera, black and white film, and print development. They also begin to establish criteria for artistic expression. We investigate photography in relation to its historical and social context in order to more consciously engage the photograph's communicative and expressive possibilities. Course work culminates in a portfolio of works exemplary of the student's understanding of the medium. Field trips required.

Instructor(s): E. Hogeman     Terms Offered: Autumn Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300.
Note(s): Students need their own 35mm film camera. Some film and paper are provided, but students need to purchase additional supplies. More details will be provided on the first day of class and on Canvas.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 24000

ARTV 34004. Introduction to Color Photography. 100 Units.

Photography is a familiar medium due to its ubiquitous presence in our visual world, including popular culture and personal usage. We all have photographic habits and ample experience taking and consuming images. In this course, we will use photography as a means toward developing an aesthetic and theoretical language for creating art. Through readings, slideshows, and discussions, we will investigate color photography in relation to its historical and social context in order to more consciously engage the contemporary photograph's communicative and expressive possibilities. Students will be given constraint-driven assignments to help them unpack their habits and develop an understanding of the principles of photography and color editing workflows. Students are recommended to have their own DSLR camera with manual settings, but all camera formats are welcome.

Instructor(s): E. Hogeman     Terms Offered: Spring Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 24004

ARTV 34112. Advanced Problems in Sculpture. 100 Units.

This course is open to all manifestations of sculptural practice broadly defined, including performance and film/video. A particular focus of the course will be considering issues of presence/the index, material histories, economic determination, and societal legibility. Readings on sculptural history from the 19th through the 21st century will be used to illuminate contemporary concerns and issues.

Instructor(s): G. Oppenheimer     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300 and ARTV 22200 or consent of instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 24112

ARTV 34118. The Score. 100 Units.

The performance score is a visual/textual work unto itself. Scores also provide performers and audiences with a language to understand the work. In this way, scores are documents of performative world-building while at the same time offering pathways into those worlds. This is a course about producing writing, drawing, and trace-making for the purpose of some other action - the performance of some unknown. Students will consider, in particular, how diasporic artists and writers have used writing, drawing, and mark-making as tools for inhabiting and re-enlivening performances of the past, theoretical performances, and those performances difficult to transcribe or translate. Students will have several opportunities over the course of the term to create and perform scores including their own in various media.

Instructor(s): A.M. Whitehead     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): PQ: ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 24118, TAPS 34118, TAPS 24118

ARTV 34709. Experimental Drawing. 100 Units.

This course takes an expansive view of drawing. We will begin with traditional techniques and materials, while moving beyond observational frameworks to examine the relationship between drawing and other disciplines, including performance and sculpture. Our focus will be non-objective drawing, non-traditional materials, and process-based works. Lectures, slide presentations, readings and dedicated studio time will familiarize students with contemporary drawing practices through less traditional means and a wide variety of drawing media. Critiques will follow each of the four longer-duration projects.

Instructor(s): B. Collins     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 24709

ARTV 35118. 27 Contact Hours. 100 Units.

27 Contact Hours will explore the complexities of Black artistic life on the South and West Sides of Chicago. In this immersive and intensive laboratory class, modeled on the legendary CalArts seminars of Michael Asher, students will spend nine weeks immersed in a representative swath of contemporary artistic practices. Organized by thematic clusters, each seminar will reflect a specific set of concerns of paramount importance to contemporary artistic practices and theoretical discussions. Students are encouraged to bring their own artistic practices and theoretical engagements into dialogue with the Laboratory's thematic orientations. Active and concentrated participation will be essential. The Laboratory will be open to a small cohort of students. All disciplines are welcome to enroll but preference will be given to students in DOVA and RDI.

Instructor(s): T. Gates     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Consent only. Students who would like to register for the class are invited to send a brief (2-3 sentence) request to theaster@uchicago.edu expressing their interest.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 25118

ARTV 37200. Painting. 100 Units.

Presuming fundamental considerations, this studio course emphasizes the purposeful and sustained development of a student's visual investigation through painting, accentuating both invention and clarity of image. Requirements include group critiques and discussion.

Instructor(s): M. Eastman     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300; and 22000 or 22002
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 27200

ARTV 37207. Painting Studio Intensive. 100 Units.

TBD

Instructor(s): K. Desjardins and M. Eastman     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300 and at least one ARTV class numbered 20000 and above, ARTV 22000 preferred.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 27207

ARTV 37210. Intermediate/Advanced Painting. 100 Units.

The goal of this course is to literally expand your painting practice and your definition of painting. Through a series of studio projects, we will consider fundamental issues surrounding 21st-century painting such as: figuration/abstraction, the body, digital/analog, painting's expanded relationship to itself and to other media. In the studio we will frequently subject painting to juxtaposition with other 2-D. 3-D, and 4-D media as we come to terms with the actual physical properties of paint. A final project serves as a culminating experience.

Instructor(s): K. Desjardins     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300 and 22000 or 22002 or consent of instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 27210

ARTV 37314. Writing Art Criticism. 100 Units.

This course is a practicum in writing art criticism. Unlike art historians, art critics primarily respond to the art of their time and to developments in the contemporary art world. They write reviews of Chicago exhibitions that may be on view in galleries or museums and that may focus on single artists or broad themes. Importantly, art critics often produce the very first discourse on a given art, shaping subsequent thinking and historiography. Accordingly, art criticism is a genre that requires particular skills, for example, identifying why and how artworks matter, taking a fresh look at something familiar or developing a set of ideas even if unfamiliar with a subject, expressing strong yet sound opinions, and writing in impeccable and engaging ways. Students will develop these skills by reading and writing art criticism. We will examine the work of modern art critics ranging from Denis Diderot to Peter Schjeldahl and of artists active as critics ranging from Donald Judd to Barbara Kruger. Class discussions will be as much about the craft of writing as about the art reviewed. We will deliberate the style and rhetoric of exhibition reviews, including details such as first and last sentences, order of paragraphs, word choices, and the like. This seminar is writing intensive with a total of six exhibition reviews, four of which will be rewritten substantially based on instructor, visitor, and peer feedback and general class discussion. Off-campus field trips also required.

Instructor(s): C. Mehring     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, modern (post-1800), Theory and Historiography
Note(s): Permission of instructor required. Preference given to students with background in visual arts or architectural practice or writing. Please email mehring@uchicago.edu explaining relevant background.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 27314, CHST 27314, ARCH 27314, ARTV 27314, ARTH 37314

ARTV 37920. Virtual Reality Production. 100 Units.

Focusing on experimental moving-image approaches at a crucial moment in the emerging medium of virtual reality, this class will explore and interrogate each stage of production for VR. By hacking their way around the barriers and conventions of current software and hardware to create new optical experiences, students will design, construct and deploy new ways of capturing the world with cameras and develop new strategies and interactive logics for placing images into virtual spaces. Underpinning these explorations will be a careful discussion, dissection and reconstruction of techniques found in the emerging VR "canon" that spans new modes of journalism and documentary, computer games, and narrative "VR cinema." Film production and computer programming experience is welcome but not a prerequisite for the course. Students will be expected to complete short "sketches" of approaches in VR towards a final short VR experience.

Instructor(s): Marc Downie     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Film production and computer programming experience is welcome but not a prerequisite for the course. Students will be expected to complete short "sketches" of approaches in VR towards a final short VR experience.
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 24920, CMST 27920, CMST 37920, ARTV 27920

ARTV 37921. Augmented Reality Production. 100 Units.

Focusing on experimental moving-image approaches at a crucial moment in the emerging medium of augmented reality, this class will explore and interrogate each stage of production of AR works. Students in this production-based class will examine the techniques and opportunities of this new kind of moving image. During this class we'll study the construction of examples across a gamut from locative media, journalism, and gameplay-based works to museum installations. Students will complete a series of critical essays and sketches towards a final augmented reality project using a custom set of software tools developed in and for the class.

Instructor(s): Marc Downie     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Not offered in 2024-25.
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 37911, CMST 27911, ARTV 27921, MADD 22911

ARTV 37923. Experimental Captures. 100 Units.

This production-based class will explore the possibilities and limits of capturing the world with imaging approaches that go beyond the conventional camera. What new and experimental image-based artworks can be created with technologies such as laser scanning, structured light projection, time of flight cameras, photogrammetry, stereography, motion capture, sensor augmented cameras or light field photography? This hands-on course welcomes students with production experience while being designed to keep established tools and commercial practices off-kilter and constantly in question.

Instructor(s): M. Downie     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Not offered in 2022-23.
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 37011, CMST 27011, MADD 21011, ARTV 27923

ARTV 38818. Institution/Critique: Within, Against, Beyond. 100 Units.

Students in this course will study creative applications to institutional engagement and institutional critique via material, social, scholarly, and embodied/movement research. This course will be scaffolded by conversation/debate around art and funding systems, ideologies, carceral culture, tricksterisms, and statecraft. In studying historical and contemporary approaches to making and presenting art vis-à-vis institutions of all kinds, students will gain a sense of artist and artistic approaches to working within, dreaming beyond, and targeting (through strikes, interventions, and walk-outs) institutions. We'll think about institutional engagement, refusal, and intervention as a series of tactics and strategies rooted in space, generosity, and research, and our class projects will reflect these primary concerns. We will play throughout the course with interpretations of work, production, and resolution, but students should be prepared to spend the quarter making sketches (quick works) in response to readings, viewings, visits, and conversation, and eventually develop and complete a final collaborative project. This course will be of particular interest to students working collaboratively or in social practice, engaging in social or institutional critique, participating in the programming and administrative side of the arts, and those who generally find themselves feeling awkward in whatever they understand as The Art World.

Instructor(s): A.M. Whitehead     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): PQ: ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Note(s): Consent Required
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 28818

ARTV 39200. Graduate Seminar: ARTV. 100 Units.

Only MFA students in the Department of Visual Arts may register for this class.

Instructor(s): J. Phillips, G. Oppenheimer     Terms Offered: Autumn Winter

ARTV 39700. Independent Study in Visual Arts. 100-300 Units.

Students in this course should have already done fundamental course work and be ready to explore a particular area of interest much more closely.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter

ARTV 39903. Push/Pull. 100 Units.

This seminar will explore how perceived positive and negative forces, both internal and external, shape individual artistic activity, as well as the broader contemporary art landscape. Through a series of readings and discussions, reflections on influence, and experimental presentations such as topical debates and an art critique in the form of a jury trial, students will develop awareness around the choices and priorities, attractions and aversions that guide their research and studio practice.

Instructor(s): S. Wolniak     Terms Offered: Spring

ARTV 40000. Graduate Studio Project. 100-300 Units.

Only MFA students in the Department of Visual Arts may register for this class.

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter

ARTV 40310. Technology and Aesthetics. 100 Units.

New technologies regularly enable new mediums, styles, genres, and narrative forms as they offer us new ways to record the world, express ourselves, and tell stories. But the advent of each new artistic and literary form raises anew fundamental theoretical questions: what is the difference between an objective record of the world and an artistic rendition of it? Is what makes something art the creator's intent or the viewer's perception of it as art? That is, can something be experienced as art if it is not intended as such? What, even, is a narrative, given our minds' tendency to resolve any random pattern into a coherent series of cause and effect? And, finally, as new technologies offer endless new creative possibilities, how can we continuously recalibrate how we define art and engage with it? This class will span the 19th through the 21st centuries to explore how technological innovation has produced new literary and aesthetic forms while addressing the above questions. Its aim is two-fold: to offer a deeper understanding of literary and artistic movements and (often-canonical) texts by relating them to technoscientific concerns and contexts, and to strengthen students' foundation in literary and aesthetic theory. Thus, we will read key works of fiction that represent new aesthetic paradigms alongside scholarship that puts them into context and theoretical texts, including those of Walter Benjamin, Michael Saler, Catherine Gallagher, and Henry Jenkins.

Instructor(s): Anastasia Klimchynskaya     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 40310, ARTH 40311, CHSS 40410