This class considers the history, theory and practice of Dada in Europe and the United States from its emergence in 1916 through the mid-1920s. We will explore the movement’s radical reordering of aesthetic conventions through its incorporation of graphic design, installation, performance and political activism; its multifaceted connections to Expressionism, Russian Constructivism, the Bauhaus and Surrealism; and, most critically, its direct challenge to traditional notions of painting and sculpture through its use of chance operations, montage and the readymade. As we move geographically through Dada’s various centers, tracing the movement from its beginnings in Zurich to its outposts in Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, Paris and New York, we will also evaluate Dada through a series of themes, including play and politics, ephemera and posterity, and language and nonsense. Artist and filmmaker Hans Richter’s influential book Dada: Art and Anti- Art, recently reissued in a centenary edition, will serve as a key text, as will magazines, poems and manifestos by Tristan Tzara, Hugo Ball, Kurt Schwitters, John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia and others.