Special Topics Fall

AH 2690F - Special Topics: Art and Science Unbound, A Global Perspecitve: From Renaissances to Modernity

Imagine a world where art and science mesh, creating a rich, inclusive tapestry of knowledge woven from diverse cultural threads. This course offers you the opportunity to journey through space and time and discover little-known tales of cross-cultural collaboration. We will begin with the vibrant exchanges of the Renaissance, move through the revolutionary ideas of the Enlightenment, and continue into the innovations of the nineteenth century and the groundbreaking collaborations of the twenty-first century. Our exploration will highlight the invaluable contributions of Indigenous and Global South communities to scientific knowledge and artistic expression, challenging the traditional Eurocentric narratives that have long dominated these fields. By uncovering the rich scientific and artistic traditions of marginalized communities, we will discover alternative ways of understanding the world that expand contemporary paradigms. We will also examine the impact of colonialism on knowledge production and discuss ongoing efforts to recover and reframe scientific and artistic practices in decolonial and postcolonial frameworks.

AH 3676F - Lessons by Design

This course examines through a number of key texts differing aspects of design ranging from the technical to the theoretical, from the practical to the utopian, from typography and fashion to design thinking in business. It offers a broad survey of the contemporary design landscape, aimed at showing how pervasive design is in our everyday lives.

AH 3692F/MCS 3692F - Special Topics: Collecting Art and Culture: Accessibility and the Senses

Museums should invite and intrigue more than just the eyes, which usually have all the fun in a museum. The other senses too can teach us things that the visual alone cannot. We will look for encounters between people and culture that use all the senses, investigating how this move also opens up the museum to visitors with a variety of needs and abilities. We will expand, analyze, and hopefully implement novel ways to collect, curate, and exhibit artwork.

AH 4640F/MCS 4690F - Special Topics: Queer Archives

"The archive is not simply a repository; it is also a theory of cultural relevance, a construction of collective memory, and a complex record of queer activity. In order for the archive to function, it requires users, interpreters, and cultural historians to wade through the material and piece together the jigsaw puzzle of queer history in the making.” - Judith Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place, 169-70.

This course investigates art practices that consult, challenge, intervene in, or respond to archives using a queer theory lens. Students will:
-examine sources on the interdisciplinary fields of archives, public history, and queer theory to gain a familiarity with local, national, and international case studies.
-explore how 2SLGBTQI+ artists, activists, and scholars engage with archival materials and spaces to disrupt dominant narratives, decolonize and reclaim erased histories, and imagine alternative futures and worlds.
-develop skills in archival research strategies, the application of methodologies, engage with primary source materials, and develop new knowledge of queer and queering history through community-based projects.  

AH 4670F - Seminar in Architecture and Urbanism or Design: Architecture, Crime, Conflict, and Authority

This course examines the complex relationship between architecture and the built environment, exploring how they are intertwined with crime, punishment, and disciplinary control while also serving as backdrops to conflict, rebellion, resistance, and other forms of violent and non-violent actions. Most often, the built environment visualizes the authority and dominance of institutional bodies through buildings and urban designs. In our course, we will explore the interconnections among authority, resistance, and architecture during the Early Modern period, drawing direct correlations to contemporary practices. We will begin by exploring theoretical premises that explore the disciplining of urban spaces. Next, we will explore selected examples in Western Europe and the colonial world through extant examples of the built form or through surviving visual artifacts (paintings, manuscripts, prints, written accounts, etc.). These historical precedents serve as a foundation for considering how these practices continue to manifest in our current contexts.

 Special Topics Winter

SA 3674B - Alternative Approaches to Creative Methods

More information of how it will be run this year by the incoming Indigenous Artist in Residence:

Focussed topic: Haudenosaunee Material Culture in Practice: Relationship to Place, Making as Medicine and Responsibility to the Land

In this hands on studio course, students will engage with not only Haudenosaunee materials, material culture and skills, but Haudenosaunee philosophies and worldviews utilizing the Ohenton Karihwatehkwen (Thanksgiving Address) as the basis for understanding our responsibility to creation, our personal relationship to place, and reframing the interaction between medium and maker. This course is designed for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students alike. Students will work with ancestral and more recent Haudenosauee skills, materials and forms including but not limited to plant fiber processing, deer hide tanning, corn processing, clay and fish skin tanning. Students are expected to complete a final project that utilizes these materials and skills in potentially new ways that incorporate the students personal relationship to place as well as their preferred medium of choice. Students from all practices and backgrounds are welcome.

AH 3690G/MCS 3690G/SA 3690B - Special Topics: Net.art and the Born Digital: Internet Art Practices 1990-Present

This class will combine an overview of Internet Art history from 1990-Present, and a studio-based component that encourages students to parse through the material qualities and conceptual framework of art that lives online. Beginning with a survey of net.art, Nasty Net forums, email chains and the disruptive virtual actions of artists working online in the 1990s, through to the pervasive influence of Silicon Valley and digital capitalism in contemporary Internet Art, this course will investigate how the accelerated evolution of the Internet has informed those making art online. Alongside a study of Internet Art history and contemporary practices, students will create two net-based projects. During the course, students will gain a knowledge of the history of Internet Art from 1990-present, as well as, an introduction to coding, DIY website hosting, datamoshing and other hacker methodologies.

AH 4636G/MCS 4693G - Seminar in Art of the Americas: Brazilian Art in Canada

This seminar will focus on art from Brazil in Canadian collections, exhibitions of Brazilian art in Canada, and art from the Brazilian diaspora in Canada. Students will be exposed to important artistic trends in Brazil since the 1920s, cultural relations between the two nations, and migration from Brazil to Canada. The seminar is aligned and will engage with Museum London’s exhibition Tropi-X: Brazilian Art in Canada, from the 1970s to the Present and some of the classes will take place in the museum. The course will combine lectures by the instructor, guided discussions, and other active learning activities.

AH 4660G - Seminar in Film or the Moving Image: Paracinema

“Paracinema” refers to works that attempt to generate the effects of cinema without using the traditional materials or physical support of film. Art historically, the term has been used to describe sculpture, installation, and video works from the 1960s and 1970s (including, for example, Anthony McCall’s “Line Describing A Cone” [1973]) that encourage analysis of “cinema” as an idea or concept by recreating its aesthetic, spectatorial and technological dimensions through a variety of creative strategies. This course will begin with a brief survey of paracinema’s early twentieth-century precedents, followed by a more in-depth exploration of its post-1960s manifestations. It will also consider the extent to which the term facilitates productive engagements with a variety of practices since the “cinematic turn” in contemporary art.