Emily Shapiro

Lecturer - History of Art & Visual Culture

Emily Shapiro is a designer, writer and design historian based in Providence. She specializes in 20th-century design, popular culture and material culture, with special interests in narratives of identity, myths of collective experience and inquiry into the ways in which designed spaces like the home, the city and the built environment can connect and inform both personal and collective identity. Her courses unpack the importance of objects in both memory- and identity-making, examining the connections between visual culture, artifact and ideology in order to reveal their impact on the sociopolitical processes of identity creation and the visualization of the self as a collective, both local and national.

Courses

Fall 2024 Courses

THAD H101-11 - THAD I: GLOBAL MODERNISMS
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2024
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H101-11

THAD I: GLOBAL MODERNISMS

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2024
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2024-09-04 to 2024-12-11
Times: TTH | 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM; M | 2:50 PM - 4:20 PM Instructor(s): Emily Shapiro Location(s): Auditorium, Room 132; Washington Place, Room 018 Enrolled / Capacity: 20 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

This is a required course for all first year and transfer students to introduce them to global modern and contemporary art, architecture and design in the period between 1750 and the present. The course addresses modernism as a global project, presenting several case studies from across the world that unfold to show how multiple kinds of modernism developed in different times and distant places. By presenting alternate, sometimes contradictory stories about modern and contemporary art and design, along with a set of critical terms specific to these times and places, the class aims to foster a rich, complex understanding of the many narratives that works of art and design can tell. With this grounding, students will be well positioned to pursue their interests in specialized courses in subsequent semesters.  

Registration process:

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

Incoming transfer students and sophomore, junior, and senior undergraduates should register into section 27.  

Major Requirement | BFA

THAD H101-12 - THAD I: GLOBAL MODERNISMS
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2024
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H101-12

THAD I: GLOBAL MODERNISMS

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2024
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2024-09-04 to 2024-12-11
Times: T | 11:20 AM - 12:50 PM; TTH | 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Instructor(s): Emily Shapiro Location(s): Washington Place, Room 018; Auditorium, Room 132 Enrolled / Capacity: 20 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

This is a required course for all first year and transfer students to introduce them to global modern and contemporary art, architecture and design in the period between 1750 and the present. The course addresses modernism as a global project, presenting several case studies from across the world that unfold to show how multiple kinds of modernism developed in different times and distant places. By presenting alternate, sometimes contradictory stories about modern and contemporary art and design, along with a set of critical terms specific to these times and places, the class aims to foster a rich, complex understanding of the many narratives that works of art and design can tell. With this grounding, students will be well positioned to pursue their interests in specialized courses in subsequent semesters.  

Registration process:

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

Incoming transfer students and sophomore, junior, and senior undergraduates should register into section 27.  

Major Requirement | BFA

Wintersession 2025 Courses

THAD W251-101 - DESIGN WRITING
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Wintersession 2025
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD W251-101

DESIGN WRITING

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Wintersession 2025
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2025-01-03 to 2025-02-06
Times: TH | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM | 02/06/2025 - 02/06/2025; W | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM | 02/05/2025 - 02/05/2025; M | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM | 02/03/2025 - 02/03/2025; TH | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM | 01/30/2025 - 01/30/2025; M | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM | 01/27/2025 - 01/27/2025; TH | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM | 01/23/2025 - 01/23/2025; W | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM | 01/22/2025 - 01/22/2025; TH | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM | 01/16/2025 - 01/16/2025; M | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM | 01/13/2025 - 01/13/2025; TH | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM | 01/09/2025 - 01/09/2025; W | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM | 01/08/2025 - 01/08/2025; M | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM | 01/06/2025 - 01/06/2025 Instructor(s): Emily Shapiro Location(s): Washington Place, Room 302 Enrolled / Capacity: 20 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

This writing-intensive course helps students consider the relationship between writing and design, examining language and writing as an active component of a dynamic studio practice. We will explore contemporary culture and issues that affect designers through reading, writing, and discussion, and will examine several different types of design writing in the process. Exercises train students in essential tasks such as conducting formal analyses, writing catalogue entries, and making visual presentations, and we will discuss methods for idea generation, research and writing about our work and our selves, as well as engaging with professional design writing practices like reviews and interviews. We will hone strategies for gathering, organizing, and archiving research material, and will discuss the ways in which writing, as well as self reflection, researching texts, reading arts publications and reviews, and studying like-minded artists can contribute to a critical, engaged, and continually evolving body of work.

Spring 2025 Courses

THAD H102-16 - CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H102-16

CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2025-02-13 to 2025-05-23
Times: TTH | 11:20 AM - 12:20 PM; M | 9:40 AM - 11:10 AM Instructor(s): Emily Shapiro Location(s): Auditorium, Room 132; Design Center, Room 208 Enrolled / Capacity: 20 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

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

THAD H102-17 - CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H102-17

CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2025-02-13 to 2025-05-23
Times: TH | 8:00 AM - 9:30 AM; TTH | 11:20 AM - 12:20 PM Instructor(s): Emily Shapiro Location(s): College Building, Room 424; Auditorium, Room 132 Enrolled / Capacity: 20 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

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

THAD H234-01 - PERFORMANCE AS SUSTAINABALE PRACTICE: CONTEMPORARY ART IN THE LIVING LANDSCAPE
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Workshop
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H234-01

PERFORMANCE AS SUSTAINABALE PRACTICE: CONTEMPORARY ART IN THE LIVING LANDSCAPE

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Workshop
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2025-02-13 to 2025-05-23
Times: M | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM Instructor(s): Emily Shapiro, Leora Maltz-Leca Enrolled / Capacity: 20 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

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