In this Making + Meaning course we will discuss the burgeoning philosophy of materialism and consider where contemporary artist practices intersect. As a seminar course we will read historical texts from those who have considered “What is matter?” while looking at artistic practices which ask “What can my materials say about me?”. Our semester will look back at the varied philosophical history of materialism as it has led to the Marxist informed pluralist reading of materialism; from the Greek Atomists to Robin Wall Kimmerer, Jane Bennett to Kadji Amin. The artists we study will be working within the realms of sculpture and craft and have a developed relationship to a material practice. This course is designed at the intersection of philosophy, and visual art. Students will be required to read weekly critical theory, lead one class discussion, and develop their own materialist philosophy to create a final project. We will study the contemporary practices of artists such as Nicki Green, Jes Fan, Lotus L. Kang, and Gordon Hall. 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.

Carcerality, or logics of policing, imprisonment, and surveillance, is often conceptualized within the parameters of the Prison Industrial Complex and the United States. However, when considered through a global context, carcerality takes on numerous manifestations, frequently appearing at the margins and outskirts of society. This course intends to (1) explore subjugated selves beyond the idiom of suffering; (2) Turn to carceral geographies and spaces of detainment as forms of meditation, as well as systematized practices of dehumanization; (3) Navigate methodologies that not only represent epistemological ruptures but also challenge the boundaries between theoretical and practical knowledge. Together, we will traverse forms of writing and thinking that explore varying textual and artistic utterances produced in and through contested spaces. This course's conceptual framing aligns with feminist, decolonial, and critical race theory writ large. We will study thinkers and artists such as Saidiya Hartman, Jasbir Puar, Alexander Weheliye, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Nicole R. Fleetwood, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Adrian Piper, Jackie Wang, TT Takemoto, Sable Elyse Smith, and others. Integrating these methodologies, students will critically engage themes of detainment, scenes of subjugation, and figurations of freedom through their art and design practices via embodied research, spatial interventions, and the creation of new propositional works. In Making + Meaning: Theory, we address the relationship between theory and practice. This long-standing debate will be addressed through some of its historical and contemporary expressions. Students will be challenged to synthesize theoretical and practical work in text and making. We will ask, “what constitutes 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. Students will be encouraged to integrate the knowledge they acquire from their studio and seminar experiences in the Making + Meaning courses.

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. 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.

Avery Gordon defines haunting as an alteration of time where what appears to have been concealed from the past is no longer avoidable and becomes present. It demands your attention, stating what has been “repressed, blocked or confined” is still alive, near and producing a distinctive “something-must-be-done.” If time haunts, what does it ask of us? How does the act of interrogating time require a simultaneous consideration of the role of power, empire and the limits of representation? How might texts, performance, and art offer entry points into working with, against and beyond time? Through the writing, photography, film, performance and social histories of artists and thinkers across the Black Atlantic, Haunted Time: Black Aesthetics, Archive and the Repertoire critically examines how we intervene in and work with tools used as keepers of time: the material archive, the body and memory. This course will explore histories of enslavement, colonialism, imperialism and its legacies today to cultivate a praxis of intervention into the past to consider what we can or must do with it. Part studio, part seminar, we will read, watch, critique and dissect work from writers and artists who turn to our distant or recent past as a material of analysis. Readings will range across topics but will explore fiction, opacity, queer studies, built and natural environments, Black performance practices, surrealisms, futurities and the role of the camera as witness. 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.