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

This course focuses on representations by, of, and for Latinx peoples in the United States, beginning with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, which ended the Mexican-American War and ceded one-third of Mexican territory to the United States, until the present day. Drawing from Glorφa Anzalda's theory of the borderland as a both physical and psychological "in-between space," we will address questions of identity and belonging, assimilation and resistance, and visibility and erasure as they are encountered and debated by (and about) diasporic communities in the United States. Topics of discussion will include nineteenth-century debates of Pan-Americanism, the popularization and critique of Hollywood stereotypes during the Good Neighbor era, and Chicanx activism of the 1960s and 1970s. Issues of racial and ethnic identity will be considered alongside and in dialogue with those of gender, sexuality, class, and immigration status, and our discussions will encompass not only visual art but also music, cinema, literature, and activism. We will ask ourselves, what is the relationship of Latinx art and visual culture to that of the U.S.? What is its relationship to "Latin American" history and identity? And how might we begin to expand our definitions of U.S. art history?

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

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

In this seminar, we will examine the often complex, dynamic relationships between words and images in the book, broadly conceived, from the birth of the codex in the ancient mediterranean to the so-called “death” of the codex and rise of digital illustrated texts today. Working directly from RISD’s Special Collections and the collections of the RISD Museum, we will attend to the history of the illustrated book, the materials and techniques of its production, and the distinct means by which books tell stories beyond words. A series of critical essays—in psychoanalysis, Black studies, thing theory, among other methods—will enrich our perspective on picture books of all kinds.

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

This course provides an introduction to the built environment of the Middle Ages. From the fall of Rome to the dawn of the Renaissance, a range of architectural styles shaped medieval daily life, religious experience, and civic spectacle. We will become familiar with the architectural traditions of the great cathedrals, revered pilgrimage churches, and reclusive monasteries of western Europe, as well as castles, houses, and other civic structures. We will integrate the study of architecture with the study of medieval culture, exploring the role of pilgrimage, courts and civil authority, religious reform and radicalism, crusading and social violence, and rising urbanism. In this way we will explore ways in which the built environment profoundly affected contemporary audiences and shaped their lives. Throughout, we will also reflect on how medieval architecture is still present with us today—whether through medieval revivals here in Providence, museum collections, or tragedies such as the burning of Paris’ Notre-Dame Cathedral in 2019.

Elective

This course will show how the ideas of the historical French avant-garde movement founded in Paris in 1924 have spread across borders and influenced artists of central Europe. It will also focus on the relationship between surrealist European artists of the 20th century and Mexican art. Our goal will be to see how certain ways of thinking and seeing the world can be shared by artists living in different places and under different political regimes.

Elective

While definitions of “performance art” remain vague and contested, this introductory class examines the practice as it emerges in the early 20th century as a tool to explore shifting understandings and experiences of embodiment. We will return to the open questions of how artists engaged the locus of 'the body' to evaluate and reevaluate the rapid changes of the 20th and 21st centuries, in all of their ethical unclarity. We will consider recurrent themes of ephemerality, time, technology, documentation, and the shifting roles of artists, cultural institutions, and audiences. Students will develop the skills to describe languages of the body, both in stillness and in movement, interrogate theoretical texts and frameworks of performativity, and develop a sense of historical narrative to contextualize the thematic questions broached by “performance art.” We will keep a journal to ground interpretations of key works and readings in close analysis, attend a performance artwork and write a critical response, and craft a final project with the option for a research paper or performance work.

Elective

In recent years, the idea of decolonizing museums, academic institutions of art, and the narrative and curricular spaces of art history has gained increased urgency. But the concept and practice of decolonization have a much longer history than their recent (re)emergence in the art world. As a response to colonial and imperial orders of the world, decolonization set new boundaries for thought, knowledge, and for “being” itself. This seminar asks whether these boundaries have been effectively translated into the recent challenges that are posed against institutional practices of art and art history. It also asks about the ways in which postcolonialism, with a genealogy different from decolonization, is situated vis-à-vis the historical origins of decolonization in the writings of Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon and its resurgence in art history and museology. We will read texts by Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, C. L. R. James, Aníbal Quijano, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Audre Lorde, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Edward W. Said, Geeta Kapur, and Walter Mignolo among others.

Elective

This course grounds contemporary eco-art in histories of performance, exploring how global contemporary artists, from Asuncion Molinos Gordo and Otobang Nkanga to Hiwa K, use restorative interventions in the environment, and extended experiments with farming as urgent modes of artistic practice. In so doing, they blur the performative with the lived, aesthetic protest with agricultural interventions. They also build on the legacy of earlier artists (like Ana Mendieta and Anna Halprin, Richard Long and Hamish Fulton) whose work grew out of the environmental movement of the 1960s. Whereas earlier performances in the landscape and its fragile ecologies were fleeting gestures, contemporary artists have embraced prolonged, often permanent, projects in agriculture and subsistence which provocatively erase the line between art and life. In refusing this age-old metaphor – which lies at the heart of Western representation – numerous contemporary artists draw on the transgressive potential of performance to elucidate the urgency of making art amidst rapid global warming.

The transdisciplinary course will be a confluence of artistic output and ecological investigation, an experiment in learning from the land in order to develop and foster a performative art practice deeply rooted in reciprocity, sustainability, and ecological repair. With a conceptual focus on stewardship, observational skill, and practiced craft, coupled with critical thinking around sustainable farming and social and ecological justice, students will draw from the lineage of performative eco-art to explore the possibilities of performance as a restorative practice. We will also consider kinship, regenerative agriculture, the histories and philosophies of gardens, and models of collective and cooperative living. Students will investigate restorative interventions as artistic practice, make site-responsive, on-farm work, and create hybrid artistic/agricultural projects in order to foster a deeper consciousness about our interconnectedness with the earth, contemplate artistic methods of ecological repair, and envision art as a means for sustainable living. We will reflect on our engagement with the physical and social environment; what we value and why; and learn to document and record our physical interventions within the landscape. The class is based at RISD, though some sessions will take place on the instructor’s farm; in other sessions, the class will visit permacultural farms, gardens, parks and arboretums.

Elective

This course discusses developments in architecture, painting, and sculpture in Southern Europe, Northern Africa, and the Western Asia, in the Hellenic sphere of influence between 900 BCE and CE 400. Topics include Greek and Hellenistic Art, Etruscan and Roman Art, and the archaeological methods used to investigate these civilizations. Emphases will include the importance of cultural exchange in the development of what would become Greek culture and the immense plurality seen in those regions during that period.

Elective

Many histories of 20th century Modernism privilege discourses of individuality, the avant-garde, and (ersatz) breaks with the tradition, but threads of contemplative and spiritual practices can be traced through artwork both familiar and lesser known, whether in the divine feminine imagery of Ana Mendieta, John Cage's Zen Buddhist-influence writings, or the traces of Adrian Piper's dedicated yoga practice. This class explores case studies from the 19th century to contemporary art at the intersection between contemplative practices and image-making. Students will develop definitions of "contemplative practice" and engage different methods in class to explore the "purpose" of contemplation in pursuit of the numinous in art. They will also cultivate a personal contemplative practice outside of class. We will read primary sources and critical texts and keep a journal to ground interpretation of key visual and performance works in close observation. Students will write an analysis of work that asks contemplative attention of its audience and craft a final project with the option for a research paper or experiential work. This class will involve playing close attention to breath and body in addition to external stimulus (including sound and image), and will include periods of silence that some may find challenging.

Elective

What does it mean to be Post-Soviet? And what does it mean to be a Post-Soviet and (Post-)colonial? What does it mean to be a Post-Soviet and (Post-)Colonial woman? The course would attempt to talk about the variety of female voices from the Post-Soviet spaces of the Eurasian borders and will engage in theorizing the Post-Socialist (Post-)Colonialism through fiction, art and theory. We will look at the texts of Madina Tlostanova and explore how artists such as Taus Makhacheva, Aidan Salakhova, Almagul Menlibayeva, Umida Akhmetova and others resist and rethink their Soviet past. The course will include readings, a field trip and Zoom visits from artists/curators.

Elective

With the publication of Society of the Spectacle in 1967, Situationist theorist and filmmaker Guy Debord famously declared that images had entirely replaced lived existence. In the decades since, spectacle's domination of everyday life seems only to have intensified. Yet how exactly might we understand spectacle today? How has its role been affected or redefined by radical changes in media, technology, labor, and politics? In this class, we will consider these questions in broad critical perspective. Foregrounding contemporary art but looking as well at film, architecture, design, and new media, we will trace the development of spectacle from the postwar period to our present moment, emphasizing in turn the ways that politics, violence, sexuality, racial difference, and everyday cultural life have all been increasingly mediated and spectacularized. Against this background, we will examine the diverse aesthetic and political counter-practices that have arisen to confront, challenge, or otherwise disrupt spectacle in its varied forms. In so doing, we will attempt not only to rethink the effects and function of spectacle today but also to understand how --in response to the growing spectacularization of culture --visual artists, filmmakers, theorists, and others have attempted to reimagine and remake contemporary life itself.

Elective

The artists who travelled in the wake of Christopher Columbus were by no means objective in their depictions of the "New World." European artists came already equipped with well-defined ideas about savages and wilderness that they could conveniently fit to the Americas. These colonial tropes had been worked out for centuries by Europeans in conquest and expansion at the borders of Europe and across the Mediterranean—from Ancient Greek and Roman colonies to the settler expansion of medieval Christian kingdoms in Iberia, the Baltic, and the Middle East. In this seminar, we turn to a range of pre-modern colonial settings in order to understand how art and architecture operate within hegemonic colonial rhetoric. We will also consider comparative examples outside Europe-from Tang China to Tawantinsuyu (The Inca Empire)-and place these in dialogue with modern scholars of colonialism like Edward Said, Patrick Wolfe, and Ann Stoler to better understand the historical relationship of art to colonization.