Grad Wide Electives are interdisciplinary courses that explore advanced research topics often spanning multiple fields of knowledge. Each course is situated in a home program but any graduate student is eligible to take a grad wide elective. The content of the course options varies from semester to semester. Section DescriptionExploring dialogues between environmental theory and creative practice (art, design, curation, writing, architecture, …), this class posits ‘pieces of nature’ as a consideration of environmental subjects as conceptual and/or literal encapsulations, bounded and defined by human design. The class analyzes how historical positions regarding the natural environment as an untamed expanse or “formless substance to be molded into whatever shape we desire” (Katz) persist along with contemporary discourses on conservation, entanglement, kinship, etc. It also examines the increasing understanding of ‘encapsulations of and within nature,’ from 19th c. awareness of pollution, to NASA’s first image of the globe, to countless bounded forms varying in scale, degree of human control, and produced after effects. Creative practice consistently responds to contemporaneous cultural and scientific understandings of the environment. Engaging current environmental discourses and crises, contemporary practices experiment with methodological approaches, agenda, and altered roles, producing works ranging from populist forms of environmental advocacy, experimental archiving/curating, the ‘production of wildness,’ speculative environmental futures, critical uses of data visualization, hybrid technological/environmental performance/cultivation and critique, reconsiderations of the aesthetic representation of environment, etc. Half-seminar, half workshop, bi-weekly reading discussions analyze environment discourses and modes of creative environmental practice. Alternate bi-weekly sessions are devoted to the development of individual creative projects. An analysis of one-two creative practices or methods will inform the development of a singular speculative work (a drawing, a mixed media representation, a model, a short film, a text, an app schematic, etc.). To stimulate dialogue, student projects are encouraged (but not mandated) to use a common setting/site. One or two museum or site field trips will be required, and guest speakers are planned. The class is designed for, and has been most compelling with, cross-disciplinary dialogue. Students from any graduate program are encouraged to enroll.

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