Click on + for course description and syllabus linked at bottom
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In 1907 the Chinese fiction writer and social critic Lu Xun essayed the thought that making the world depended on attunement towards beauty’s emotional vibrancy and on an imaginative frequency to scientific thought, both. This seminar asks after art and design made in twentieth-century China, mostly by brush-and-ink painters, but also by graphic designers, embroiderers, photographers, cartoonists, taxidermists, mapmakers, and others who worked self-consciously within the arts and sciences, popular or academic. Their pictures and designs carry within them their struggles with the rationalities of science, as well as emotions and imagination, to make the world.
In this course, we will ask the following questions:
What can we learn about ways of seeing the more-than-human world from case studies of art and design in China a century ago?
How do art, design, and science make the world?
What are the boundaries of science? art? design? Are there boundaries? Do the boundaries matter?
Do embodied perspectives towards art and design in China change after the introduction and popularization of imperialist Western scientific technologies such as telescopes, lightbulbs, and clocks? What is lost through that transformation? What is gained?
What is the place of wonder and emotion in the study of scientific “things” and art?
For the seminar syllabus, click here.
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How does art make the world? We will explore work by artists who capture and convey struggles with Western capitalist-scientific rationalities that have prefigured the end of the world; critically, their artwork also embodies the emotions and imagination lodged in our human and more-than-human ecologies that open us––all of us, across the planet––to possibility for renewal.We will analyze brush-and-ink paintings, oil paintings, paper cuts, photographs, new media, interactive design, and video work that engages with crises of extinction, environmental destruction, and social injustice.
We ask:How does art make the world?
How can we live with and make sense of destruction and loss?
What does it mean to be a good custodian for future worlds?
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This course will trace the formation of modes of visual modernity in Shanghai from the final decades of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) through the Republican era (1911-1949). Our exploration will focus on visualities produced in architectural and public spaces such as museums, gardens, and the theater, as well as on cultural and imaginary spaces of representation such as printed books, cigarette posters, paper currency, and handscrolls. We will consider structural conditions for the emergence of distinctly Chinese modes of modern visuality, including perceptions and discourses of change and newness, the prominence of an urban public visuality of reflexive sociability and spectacle, and the role of the state in promoting certain modern modes of seeing. We will take into account the development and understanding of new technologies of vision such as lithography, photography, and film. Readings will be a blend of topical and theoretical texts.
For seminar syllabus, click here
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This course explores the historical and contemporary Chinese city -- as representation, model, catalyst, and socio-political construct. We will study a dynamic field of artistic and design activity that touches on central issues informing urban identity in China of the post-socialist and supermodern present (1989-the present). We will focus on the city as site for artistic performance and the development of a new design culture. Each student will conceive, workshop, research and write a theoretically-informed essay. Students are not expected to have any prior experience with Chinese art and design.
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This course explores Chinese cultures in Europe and European cultures in China during the early modern and modern eras (17th-early 20th centuries). It analyzes the chimeric hybrid forms of art and architecture produced through the flow of people and things across the globe, with an eye to the ways that new material and artistic forms encouraged new modes of seeing and new understandings of subjectivity. Our main interest is in the slippery term "hybridity" and what it means for processes of cultural formation. The course aims, in short, to highlight the question of how non-material and material circulation of ideas, forms, techniques and symbols make us who we are by bringing us into an open and inclusive dialogue. We aim to be historically radical and relative rather than general and universalizing. Students will study paintings, textiles, and prints in the Mactaggart Art Collection. Students are not expected to have any prior experience with Chinese art.
Click here for syllabus.
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From the 17th century, the imperial city walled within the Qing dynasty capital of Beijing was the center of a politically mandated and produced visual and material culture. This seminar will explore the architecture, the city plan, and an array of objects produced at court, from tiny carved walnuts in the shapes of boats to monumental dragons of white marble, from poetic handscroll paintings to equally poetic maps. We will interpret the city in light of classical Chinese theories of city design, theoretical discussion of Manchu ethnicity and the arts, and issues of identity surrounding the patronage and personality of the Qing emperors. The course will ask why and how the city, although forbidden, managed to become and remain the symbolic locus of power in late imperial China, and how it has been reinterpreted and re-presented by the Communist state. During the second half of the semester we will investigate current attempts at visual deconstruction of the city by 21st -century artists and architects. Lecture-seminar. Prerequisite: two previous art history classes or consent of instructor.
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This course is an introduction to art and visual culture produced in China since 1976 — the end of the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of the "open reform" era (though we will take a short 1-week sojourn in Maoist China to give us the history we will need to understand this later body of artwork). We will study the art forms taught in art academies (painting, sculpture, installation, photography, performance, and video) and will also look at popular mediums such as advertisements, billboards, and online videos. We will consider critical issues confronting artists across China, including globalization; urbanization and migration; pollution and the environment; the political legacy of the imperial and Maoist-era past; definitions of gender, sexuality and individual identity, and; political censorship. There is absolutely no expectation that students will have studied China's culture, history, art, or design prior to taking this course.
THEMES OF THE COURSE: globalization; urbanization and migration; pollution and the environment; the political legacy of the imperial and Maoist-era past; definitions of gender, sexuality and individual identity, and; political censorship.
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This course raises the questions: What is sustainable design in 21st-century China? Why and how does it matter to all of us across the planet? The course is structured around things that have long been forms of organizing social and cultural life in China: the "five elemental phases" (wuxing 五行) of metal, earth, fire, water, and wood. It introduces three new phases to the mix: people, garbage, silk + cotton. Students will learn about sustainable design related to each "elemental phase" (and environmental as well as social crises linked to them) through explorations into landscape design, architectural design, interactive design, graphic design, packaging design, industrial design, fashion design. Historical material will be woven into each unit. There is absolutely no expectation that students will have studied China's culture, history, and design prior to taking this course.
QUESTIONS OF THE COURSE:
What are we trying to sustain?
Who has a stake in sustainabilty?
How are historical practices of sustainable design in China being incorporated into contemporary design practices by designers in China and around the world?
Why is it urgent for our Spaceship Earth that we all learn about sustainable design practices in China (historical and contemporary)?
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This course will introduce the history of modern design in the twentieth century. We will decolonize the canon of design and design practices of white Western Europe and North America by situating them within global flows of knowledge, things, and people, focusing on graphic design, industrial design, fashion design, architectural design, and urban planning. This is a course about design as cultural history.
Questions of the course
How do global flows of people, ideas, and design inform the design, manufacture, preservation and cultural understandings of designed objects and things in Europe and North America?
How has the constructed and canonical nature of Design History and Design Studies historically and systematically excluded BIPOC, women, and LGBTIQ+ designers?
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This course will introduce the History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture to first-year university students and build the skills needed for classes at the 200-level and above.
The University of Alberta acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6 territory, and respects the histories, languages, and cultures of the First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our vibrant community, and the spaces in which we live, learn, and work.