ARTS 308
Contemporary methodologies in History and Practice
Last Offered Fall 2022
Division I
Cross-listed ARTH 307
This course is not offered in the current catalog

This course explores contemporary methodologies that traverse both collective research and artistic production, providing an overview of theoretical and practical frameworks in contemporary art through case studies, close reading, and interdisciplinary artistic projects. We will speculate on the role of the artist, the curator, and the critic as “host” in order to foreground how a care-centered and collective approach to knowledge production can run counter to existing power paradigms, such as patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. Building on existing exchanges between disciplines–from feminist thought, queer theory, disability studies, visual and media studies–this hybrid studio and critical theory course presents contemporary art as a field uniquely suited to imagine alternative structures of institutional support and mutual aid. Through engagement with critical and creative texts, as well as a series of making exercises, we will experiment with practices of care and resource-sharing through art production, and imagine how arts practitioners can take a critical position that counters prevailing logics of individualism and enclosure.