The contemporary concept of the Anthropocene envisions humanity as a geological force of nature that is uniquely responsible for and complicit in the extreme transformations of the planet’s ecologies. In this hybrid seminar and studio course, we will use writing, research, and making to investigate the ways that art and visual culture have profoundly shaped humans’ knowledge of and relationship to the more than human world. With a focus theory, this course brings together a multitude of disciplinary perspectives including art history, deep ecology, eco-feminism, Marxist ecology, indigenous knowledge systems, new materialist theory, and posthumanism to critically examine the ways that diverse human cultures have defined nature and the human relationship to it. Using the frameworks of eco-aesthetics, eco-poetics, and eco-fictions, we will explore new ways in which contemporary art and design can interact with and become immersed in ecological contexts and develop practices that envision and shape new possibilities for cultivating an ecologically sustainable and socially just relationship to the Earth’s diverse eco-systems. In Meaning + Making: Theory, we address the relationship between theory and practice. This long-standing debate will be addressed through some of its historical and contemporary expressions. You will be challenged to develop their own balance between theoretical and practical work in text and making. We will ask, “what makes something a theory? What kind of a hierarchical relationship do you think exists between theory and practice? Why?” We will assess social, political, and historical phenomena of the material world through a critical framework of writing and making. In Making+Meaning classes, students are encouraged to integrate the knowledge they acquire from their studio and seminar pathways into this sequence.

This course explores the implications of voice as property in politics, identity, law, culture and relationships. Examining a range of questions — What does it mean to find or lose one's voice, to raise one's voice, or to give voice? Whose voices are recognized? Is voice only human? Through readings, art and performance work, we will consider what it means to voice and be silent, to listen and to be heard. We will think about hesitations, interruptions, screams and sighs, noise, clarity and accents as well as growls, purrs, and insect and machinic hums. Students will be encouraged to explore the possibilities and limits of our mouths and ears. As part of the Making and Meaning sequence, this course opens the range of engagement and translation—that is, we will explore questions using a variety of sources and research methodologies and experiment with outcomes that could be textual, visual, performative and time-based. We will engage with theoretical and historical texts as well as art in a variety of modes and media, including literature, visual and performance art.