Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 

First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Transfer students should register into the evening section offered in the Spring semester. Pre-registration into this section is managed by Liberal Arts Division.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 

First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Transfer students should register into the evening section offered in the Spring semester. Pre-registration into this section is managed by Liberal Arts Division.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 

First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Transfer students should register into the evening section offered in the Spring semester. Pre-registration into this section is managed by Liberal Arts Division.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 

First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Transfer students should register into the evening section offered in the Spring semester. Pre-registration into this section is managed by Liberal Arts Division.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 

First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Transfer students should register into the evening section offered in the Spring semester. Pre-registration into this section is managed by Liberal Arts Division.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 

First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Transfer students should register into the evening section offered in the Spring semester. Pre-registration into this section is managed by Liberal Arts Division.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 

First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Transfer students should register into the evening section offered in the Spring semester. Pre-registration into this section is managed by Liberal Arts Division.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 

First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Transfer students should register into the evening section offered in the Spring semester. Pre-registration into this section is managed by Liberal Arts Division.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 

First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Transfer students should register into the evening section offered in the Spring semester. Pre-registration into this section is managed by Liberal Arts Division.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 

First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Transfer students should register into the evening section offered in the Spring semester. Pre-registration into this section is managed by Liberal Arts Division.

Major Requirement | BFA

We are so familiar with these three hot drinks but they became commodities and part of our everyday only recently. This course explores what values were attached to these plants before the era of industrialized production, i.e. before ca. 1800. We will survey how Westerners adopted these beverages by looking at medical theories, the issue of morality, and the expansion of sugar production. We will also study how the craving for these products reinforced or even spurred slavery in French, Dutch, and English colonies. Special attention is dedicated to how ritual behavior affects design in terms of the sociability around these beverages, required manners, and the tableware crafted for them. The methodology is based on the analysis of images, discussions of assigned readings, written responses, visits to museums (RISD and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston), and touring the facility of a chocolate artisan.

Elective

This course will trace major developments in contemporary art from the 1960s to the present. Beginning with the shift away from modernist abstraction in the late 1950s and proceeding chronologically, we will examine the diverse array of movements, practices, and events that have come to define the larger field of contemporary art: minimalism, conceptualism, and pop in the 1960s, site specific and performance art in the 1970s, the culture wars and postmodernist debates of the 1980s, and the various forms of "abject," project-based, and "relational" art that followed. Foregrounding problems that have remained central for artists throughout this period - the status of the body, the institutional conditions of artistic production and reception, the politics of representation and difference - we will focus on putting the shifting terrain of contemporary art into broad social, historical, and theoretical perspective. In turn, we will attempt to develop a comprehensive critical framework for understanding the aesthetic and political stakes of contemporary art today.

Elective

This course will trace major developments in contemporary art from the 1960s to the present. Beginning with the shift away from modernist abstraction in the late 1950s and proceeding chronologically, we will examine the diverse array of movements, practices, and events that have come to define the larger field of contemporary art: minimalism, conceptualism, and pop in the 1960s, site specific and performance art in the 1970s, the culture wars and postmodernist debates of the 1980s, and the various forms of "abject," project-based, and "relational" art that followed. Foregrounding problems that have remained central for artists throughout this period - the status of the body, the institutional conditions of artistic production and reception, the politics of representation and difference - we will focus on putting the shifting terrain of contemporary art into broad social, historical, and theoretical perspective. In turn, we will attempt to develop a comprehensive critical framework for understanding the aesthetic and political stakes of contemporary art today.

Elective

From international film festivals to university campuses, from museums of modern art to neighborhood theaters, Iranian cinema has now emerged as the staple of a cultural currency that defies the logic of nativism and challenges the problems of globalization. Hamid Dabashi writes this in the introduction to his landmark study of Iranian cinema, Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present and Future (Verso, 2001). This course introduces you to the history of Iranian cinema, from the Iranian New Wave (1960s) to the present. It examines the ways in it occupies an important place on the scene of global cinema while it defies the logic of nativism. We will watch some of the most prominent movies by acclaimed Iranian filmmakers Dariush Mehrjui, Ebrahim Golestan, Nasser Taghvai, Amir Naderi, Sohrab Shahid-Saless, Forough Farrokhzad, Jafar Panahi, Masoud Kimiai, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Bahram Beyzaie, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Marzieh Meshkini, Asghar Farhadi, Tahmineh Milani, Ebrahim Hatamikia, and Kamran Shirdel. We will also look at the works of diasporic artists, including Shirin Neshat, Marjane Satrapi, Ramin Bahrani, Mitra Farahani, Ana Lily Amirpour, and Granaz Moussavi.

Elective

The arts have always played a central role in social protest. This course examines the arts in five key socio-political revolutions in the modern and contemporary Muslim world. We will focus on arts practices that have emerged from and contributed to political movements, including religious movements, struggles for national liberation from colonial and imperialist domination, and movements for social equality and against state oppression. Students will learn about the cultural politics of revolutionary movements in the Muslim world and will gain skills in analyzing the role of a wide array of art forms, including traditional arts, cinema, poetry, visual and performance arts, zines and protest graphics, and comics journalism. The course will also introduce crucial theories and debates about relationships between aesthetics and politics, the role of artists and other intellectuals in political struggle, and the way governments attempt to control what artists make and who it reaches. Comparative works will be drawn from global social revolutions about disarmament, race and gender equality, indigenous rights, climate action, and more. In addition to regular assignments and biweekly quizzes, students will develop and present their own final project using historical visual strategies to support a social cause of choice. 

Elective

The arts have always played a central role in social protest. This course examines the arts in five key socio-political revolutions in the modern and contemporary Muslim world. We will focus on arts practices that have emerged from and contributed to political movements, including religious movements, struggles for national liberation from colonial and imperialist domination, and movements for social equality and against state oppression. Students will learn about the cultural politics of revolutionary movements in the Muslim world and will gain skills in analyzing the role of a wide array of art forms, including traditional arts, cinema, poetry, visual and performance arts, zines and protest graphics, and comics journalism. The course will also introduce crucial theories and debates about relationships between aesthetics and politics, the role of artists and other intellectuals in political struggle, and the way governments attempt to control what artists make and who it reaches. Comparative works will be drawn from global social revolutions about disarmament, race and gender equality, indigenous rights, climate action, and more. In addition to regular assignments and biweekly quizzes, students will develop and present their own final project using historical visual strategies to support a social cause of choice. 

Elective

This course is designed to be a deep-dive into the liberatory archaeologies of racialized, gendered, and sexual memory(s) articulated by Xicanx, Latinx, Native American, and Africana scholars, artists, creatives, activists, and cultural workers that resist the epistemic regimes of antiblackness, colonialism, and white supremacy. Students have the opportunity to engage scholarly and artistic works that exemplify how Blackness rejects while simultaneously marking in many ways, the limits and logic of gender and sexuality, exposing the colonial underpinnings of "Man" and modern ideas of "human." This course focuses on monuments, maps, and archives as three distinct sites where antiblackness, colonialism, and white supremacy are both sanctioned and defied in the public sphere. Students will examine research from multiple scholars that troubles the assumption that becoming assimilated and included as "human" and "citizen" in the eyes of the State is progress for Black and Native communities. Using the Black Digital Humanities, students will demonstrate their comprehension and command of the thematic foundations of the course by creating their own narratives of memory and resistance via spatial visualization and/or auditory digital software.

Elective

Despite the prevalent self-congratulatory narrative espoused by art institutions in the metropolitan West, proclaiming the transcendence of national boundaries and heralding a prematurely celebrated cosmopolitan world, the enduring significance of “the nation” in contemporary art cannot be overlooked. The consistent reliance of curators, critics, and art historians on national backgrounds as crucial determinants in the curation and interpretation of artistic works suggests a reality far more complex than one might assume from the supposed cosmopolitan capability of art to cross national boundaries. Does contemporary art suggest that works can traverse national and linguistic borders without the need for translation? Is “the national” inherently opposed to “the global” and “the cosmopolitan,” or do these entities coexist? Must artists who engage with national themes necessarily eschew global perspectives? How can art be understood not merely as an expression of national identity but also as a force actively shaping the political and social agendas of nationalist and, at times, decolonial movements?

This seminar addresses these questions through the works of prominent scholars including Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Perry Anderson, Gloria Anzaldúa, Walter Mignolo, Neil Lazarus, Fredric Jameson, Kaya Ganguly, and Timothy Brennan, among others. Students should expect to read approximately 70-80 pages of dense readings per week, write four to eight weekly responses (depending on the grade they are aiming for), deliver an in-class presentation (either individually or in a group), and participate actively in class discussions. The course will employ labor-based grading.

Elective

Japanese brands retain global reputations and Japanese products remain objects of desire. Japanese artistry and design can give even a commonplace utensil immediate cachet. This course will begin by asking what counts as a Japanese object, then use the things we find as a repository with which to question what art, architecture, and design has done -- and can do -- in the world. We will explore how people living in the Japanese islands have used materials, objects, and ideas, often from elsewhere, to address their needs, and how the things they have made have changed over time and migrated overseas. The needs may range from food, shelter, and clothing to status, story, and speed; the objects from Buddhist mandalas to anime celluloids, prehistoric pots to elder care robots, and wooden farmhouses to recycling systems. We will end by asking how we might adopt, adapt, and use Japanese objects, together with the principles and practice of art and design they reveal, in our own lives.

Elective

This course offers an introduction to the history and practice of artists as collaborators, critics, and creators in art museums from the 1960s to the present. Exploring questions concerning the purpose, possibilities, and problems of art museums, students will be invited to consider how artists have responded to museum collections, histories, and spaces. We will discuss different strategies artists have used to offer alternate ways of experiencing, examining or critiquing historic and contemporary art and design and other issues. Students will use a wide variety of interpretive lenses to analyze the interventions of a diverse range of artists, including Andy Warhol, Fred Wilson, Andrea Fraser, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Lee Mingwei, Simone Leigh, and artists of RISD’s own Dorner Prize, among others. Students will also be invited to consider training in studio art as preparation for different ways of working with museum collections—from conservation and curation to education and exhibition design. Through case studies, readings, guest lectures, and field trips, students will explore key issues, debates, and concerns of artists as collaborators and museums as sites of critical and creative production. Coursework includes writing, research, and creative projects inspired by students' own artwork and contemporary and historic objects from the collection of the RISD Museum.

Elective