Courses

This course is designed to promote the development & application of interdisciplinary, collaborative approaches to evidence-based management of patients with complex needs. Through the use of case studies, student led discussions & learning exercises, students will work as a team to review & critique treatment & management practices. Discipline-specific standards of care, problem-solving approaches to ethical decision-making & case management, & skill sets central to competent health care will be emphasized. Understanding & valuing the contribution of each discipline is essential for effective interdisciplinary case management.

Introduces students to analyzing artworks through semiotics, psychoanalysis, and related topics. Students engage with images, objects, sounds, and artistic production in the context of language and communication, exploring how meaning is layered and conveyed. Students challenge conventional ways of reading art, question material choices and methods, and articulate systems of influence at play in their work. Through creating artworks and participating in group critiques, students apply concepts from class to support their artistic development.

Builds on Interdisciplinary Art Practice I, with a focus on new ways of approaching 2D, 3D, and 4D disciplines. Students explore new possibilities for artistic practice, contextualizing formal and conceptual experiments within larger histories of thought and cultural production. Students engage more deeply with theoretical frameworks, analyzing and challenging how meaning is constructed and communicated through art. Through creating artworks and participating in group critiques, students apply concepts from class to support their artistic development.

Through the use of case studies, student-led discussions and learning exercises, students work as a team to review and critique assessment and management practices for individuals with swallowing impairments and compromised nutrition and hydration. Students examine discipline-specific and person-centered standards of care, problem-solving approaches to ethical decision-making and case management, and skill sets central to competent health care. Students also participate in an interactive testing and cooking lab as a culminating experience.

Global migration and displacement of peoples is at a scale unprecedented in human history. This interdisciplinary course examines immigration in the US and globally through the lenses of race, law, psychology, education, and economics. Students explore case studies of out migration and internal displacement through a variety of media including texts, films, podcasts, and personal narratives and examine the isomorphic conditions--as well as differences--in immigration debates, policies, processes, and outcomes. Meets Liberal Arts Core for Societies & Social Sciences for Steinhardt students.

Course ​will provide a forum in which to explore & engage the relationship between photography, performance & contemporary art. Through class assignments & readings in contemporary theory we will develop a critical vocabulary for an understanding of the relationship between photography & performance & a forum in which to challenge & push our individual art practice to the next level.

This course focuses on the processes that inform “how one makes the object”, thereby helping students better understand their personal visual language and how to effectively employ it. The lens of history is used to stimulate dialogue, identify influences, and ultimately integrate the individual student’s point of view. Emphasis is on the examination of the larger continuum of historical & contemporary art. Studio meetings and individual critiques form a fundamental aspect of this course. Readings include Thomas Allen nelson, “Kubrick, Inside a Film Artist’s Maze”; Roberta Bernstein, “Jasper Johns, Paintings and Sculpture, 1945-1974, The Changing Focus of the Eye”; Kathy Halbreich, “Social Life”; Yves Alain Bois, “Painting as Model”.

This course explores art making using a variety of media and materials in relation to thematic and inquiry-driven methods.The conceptual focus for this interdisciplinary studio course is that all art is created in dialogue, referencing art history and process, and in response to specific societal, environmental or political issues. Students are involved in independent and collective artistic inquiry and participate in studio critique formats and discussions focused on relevant contemporary artists and select readings.

Articulating Visual Arts is designed to help students express & sharpen their thinking & writing about visual art. Topics will include how to write an artist’s statement, exhibit reviews as well as catalog essays. Additionally students will explore how artists apply creativity, in thinking & writing, as part of their practice in visual arts & other media. Readings include texts by contemporary & past visual arts masters such as Frieda Kahlo, Richard Prince, Robert Smithson, Andy Warhol, Barbara Kruger, among others.

Picasso famously said: "Art is the lie that tells the truth." Students will read and discuss texts exploring such topics as personal myth/legend and fictionalized confession. Questions of authenticity and personal revelation will be discussed as they relate to contemporary art practice. Students will complete three studio projects that reflect these and related issues. Because this is an interdisciplinary studio course, any medium, e.g., painting, photo, performance, installation, video, sculpture, drawing, digital, is acceptable as a means to explore class content. Regular visits to galleries are not only encouraged, they are expected.

This course is constructed around the belief that artists are highly adaptable & flexible, & that their role in an arts community (& the community at large) is fundamental to their practice. To that end, this intensive MFA-only course will serve as a communal laboratory investigating the meaning of “contemporary practice.” The course will pose the question: how does a young artist find community in the art world? As a result, the course is cursory experiment in community building.

This course provides space and guidance for students to work
on self-driven, individual and group projects in art and media. Course
content consists of texts, site visits, presentations, workshops, and
critiques built around each student's individual practice. Faculty and
guest critics will hold regular studio visits, to help guide students
through their process. Students’ material and technical investigations and
theoretical inquiries will be addressed in group workshops and
demonstrations. This course will culminate in a public presentation of
students’ work.

The artist's body measures the world. In this class student/artists use their own body as a starting point to make art through painting, digital photography, video, and/or performance as well as a mixture of these mediums. These media interchanges allow student/artists to incorporate painting and photography / video into their art at once. Art processes and their mixtures will be taught along with the contemporary history and conceptual ideas of interdisciplinary art to help frame juxtapositions.

This interdisciplinary studio course focuses on a wide variety of creative producers and practices which dissolve the boundaries between art and design. Design is explored as inherently impactful on our experience of the material world and our experience of reality. Focusing on broad areas of culture including fashion, the museum, the store, the government, and the home, we will look at how creative producers employ design tactics to change the way we experience life and living. Each week will be geared towards a specific topic within culture, presented through slide lectures, film screenings, field trips, and guest artists. There will be presentations and critiques of student work created in response to related assignments.

Contemporary environmentalism is an issue dominated by scientific, technical and policy discourse. The terms of this political environmental discussion begs the questions; what role does and can art practice play in the contemporary environmental movement? What have artists contributed to contemporary urban environmentalism? To explore these questions we will use the local urban street as our site of ecological analysis, intervention and exhibition. Building on a history of ephemeral political actions of the “Reclaim the Streets” and other political movements the focus will be on durable or sustainable interventions in urban ecosystems involving both human institutions and infrastructure, and the work of other non human organisms. Students will work on projects that re-imagine our relationship to natural systems.

Course explores Participatory Art and Creative Placemaking.Students will develop site-specific artworks in collaboration with The Prattsville Art Center in Prattsville, NY a small rural Catskill community still recovering from the devastating floods associated with Hurricane Irene. Socially engaged artwork as well as critical ideas institutions, and funders that have been central to these art movements will be discussed within this process. Through this course and collaboration students will explore art in relationship to town planning, social activism, entrepreneurship, and community revitalization.