“Creative Citizens” courses build students' skills in creative activism and civic engagement. Course topics may include social justice, environmental activism, civic or political engagement, activist movements, forms of protest, social practice, community engagement, design activism, and more.

Architecture

Neeraj Bhatia

MARCH-6800-1: UR: Urban & Landscape Elect: Forming Life in Common

ARCHT-5800-1: UR: Urban & Landscape Elect: Forming Life in Common

Forming Life In Common is a seminar that examines the histories and theories of how people have lived collectively—linking the physical form, underlying protocols of land tenure and ownership, and questions of governance. Centered on the political negotiations required to live together, the seminar will unpack how different experiments in commoning, sharing, caring, maintaining, and forming life together might provide lessons for a more collectivized future wherein precarious individuals find solidarity and power.

Critical Ethnic Studies

Pallavi Sharma

ETHST-2000-3: Catalyst for Change

We investigate how present-day Asian American artists are contesting societal assumptions and subverting stereotypes through their socially engaged art practices and participation in local as well as global social movements. The students will create art projects with strong sociological and political bends, which address the undercurrent problems related, but not limited to, class gender and ethnicity. Through virtual gallery/studio visits, reviews, online exchanges, and discussions with the members of cultural and artistic Asian American collectives, students will learn a critical and conceptual framework to examine the body of works of selected artists and will learn to understand the strategies of resistance and empowerment movements.

Jack Leamy

ETHST-2000-6: Mural Project

This course explores murals as public living spaces, visual geographical multi-layered zones for political activism, expressing cultural identity and liberation, social/cultural awareness and aesthetic advancement. The overarching goal is to inform the students rapidly into the domain in which they will create. By using a series of documentary films, starting with Mexican social realist painters from the early 1930s to the present murals brought forth from the BLM movement, we will look at these movements as sources of meaning and forms of social justice activism.

Shylah Pacheco Hamilton

ETHSM-2000-7: Tryin to Get Free: Foundations and Futures of Intersectionality

Representation, equity, diversity, and inclusion are all words that characterize contemporary perspectives on racial, gender, economic, and other forms of social justice. Cutting across all justice-oriented movements is another keyword: intersectionality. Many identify as having an intersectional approach, but not everyone shares an understanding of what the term means, its historical origins, and present-day debates about it. By the end of this course, students will develop deeper historical, philosophical and political literacies of diversity and inclusion through the lens of intersectionality.

Ernest Jolly

ETHST-2000-9: Radical Redesign

Decolonizing design and architecture practices starts with understanding the roots and steadfast legacy of colonization to resurface narratives that have been hidden, erased and forgotten. We can disrupt our biases and blindspots towards anti-racism and decoloniality by taking time to learn about forgotten history, and reflect on the unreconciled impacts of colonization. How might we acknowledge the injustices, colonial practices and racism in design and architecture, and acknowledge the resulting long lasting and harmful impacts? This studio begins by identifying areas of Radical Redesign within the traditional design process starting with researching colonization and its correlation with issues of diversity, identity, race, gender and culture.

Amana Harris

ETHST-2000-11: Your Art, Your Impact: Education & Community Development

This course takes a new look at community based and contemporary art practices from a self-exploratory, education, social justice and civic engagement lens. We will investigate values, ethics and self-development concepts; explore education from a historical and present day context; learn about activist artists; and infuse all of these concepts to inform and push the boundaries of your own art practice. Art that incorporates spiritual and ethical renewal, as well as social responsiveness and environmental transformation is a primary focus as we investigate methods employed by a growing movement of activist artists. Students will work in the ways they are accustomed to as studio artists, while also developing arts projects that address local social and environmental concerns.

Valencia James

ETHSM-3000-1: Collective Practices and Resistance

How are contemporary artists using their creative work to gather momentum for freedom struggles throughout the United States, and beyond? Is there a place in our current political climate for creative critique by systematically marginalized voices? Drawing on lessons from historical organizing practices of BIPOC, immigrant, queer, trans and disabled communities, this class will explore how collective practices by artists on the frontlines of creative engagement are transforming our relationships with power, identity, and voice.

Marcel Pardo Ariza

ETHSM-3000-3: Caring Futures: Trans Power

This course explores the radical power of trans history, movements, and futures through the lens of care. Together, we will examine how trans communities have shaped—and continue to shape—the world through activism, art, mutual aid, and collective resistance. We’ll engage with histories that are often erased, looking at trans lives, culture, and art across time and geography. Grounded in the principles of disability justice, the course honors the leadership of disabled trans and queer folks who have long shaped practices of revolution, resistance, and care. Through readings, media, and personal reflection, students will investigate: What does it mean to imagine and build caring futures rooted in trans liberation?

Graduate Architecture

Margaret Ikeda

MARCH-6600-2: MAAD Research Workshop

History of Art and Visual Culture

Nicholas Gamso

HAAVC-3120-1: History of Art and Visual Culture - Vision and Visuality: Art and Geo-Politics

Art both reflects and shapes political realities, giving form to human wants and needs, spurring popular movements, and determining social perceptions. This course will explore how film, interactive media, public art, and performance confront the major challenges of our time, from the rise of authoritarianism to forced migrations to anxieties over climate change, acceleration, and financial booms and busts. Drawing on important theoretical writings, we will study interventions by artists such as Tania Bruguera, Harun Farocki, Zhang Huan, Petr Pavlensky, and Oraib Toukan, as well as collectives like Forensic Architecture, ryangrupa, and MTL. Of special interest are post-national formations, often conceived by refugees and other groups expelled from existing political spaces.

Illustration

Michael Wertz

ILLUS-2100-3: Tools: The Illustrated Poster

PRINT-3120-2: Advanced Screen Printing: The Illustrated Poster

PRINT-2120-2: Screen Printing: The Illustrated Poster

This comprehensive and rigorous studio class will design and produce a set of hand made screen printed posters, blending image and typography to communicate ideas, events or political causes. This studio will be a crash-course in illustrated poster design as well as a complete introduction to the screen printing process. Students will develop digital and screen printing skills, including both hand created film separations of colors as well as digital film output. The focus of this class is hands-on experience and studio time with numerous forays into the poster scene with examples shown and guests invited. Additional outside studio time will be required to complete the assigned poster projects.

Literary and Performing Arts Studies

Joseph Lease

LITPA-2000-2: Literary & Performing Arts: Postmodern Poetries of Resistance

Most artists agree that art matters but often disagree about how and why it matters. Does art change society by changing consciousness? And if so, how does that happen? Does art and poetry create effective opposition by stating political positions? By challenging the structures of language? By exploding conventional ideas about reality and the self? In this course we'll explore how different poets and poetry communities (avant gardes) have imagined what socio-political and artistic resistance is and how (whether) it works. We'll look at Surrealist Poetry, Black Arts Poetry, Beat Poetry, Feminist Poetry, and Language Poetry and explore the work of poets like Amiri Baraka, Wanda Coleman, Allen Ginsberg, Lyn Hejinian, Bob Kaufman, Adrienne Rich, and Sonia Sanchez who challenge and transform conventional ideas about identity, capitalism, art, and reality.

Aimee Phan

LITPA-2000-5: Literary Forms: Fantastic Fiction: Writing Beyond the Tropes

WRLIT-2040-1: Literary Forms: Genre Fiction Workshop

In this prose writing workshop, we will read, write and explore the traditions, tropes and techniques of contemporary genre fiction, including young adult, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, romantasy and more.

Sculpture

Taro Hattori

SCULP-1000-1: Sculpture 1

SCULP-2100-1: Sculpture 2

This hands-on studio course investigates ways of making meaning using any medium imaginable, challenging you to engage material, craft, form, space, time, site, action, and context. Structured by technical demos, presentations, independent research, readings, writings, group critiques, visiting artists, and field trips, it will provide a forum for the discussion and exploration of a diverse range of sculptural practices and the possibilities made available by such an expansive field. Sculpture courses equip you with a diverse variety of materials, processes, and tools to develop a professional, critical, safe and sustainable studio practice.

Social Science and History

Lydia Nakashima Degarrod

SSHIS-3000-2: Social Science/History: Migrants, Exiles, Refugees

ETHSM-3000-2: Migrants, Exiles, Refugees

The United Nations has reported that the number of displaced people, due to war conflict, persecution, and poverty, in the world has surpassed 60 million, larger than the populations of many countries of the world. This anthropological course will examine the roots of these forms of forced migration, the new formations of identity, and the emergent concepts of home and belonging.

Upper Division Interdisciplinary Studio (UDIST)

Taro Hattori

UDIST-3000-4: Upper Division Interdisciplinary Studio: Dissonance-Music and Conflict

We experience many forms of conflict in our personal, social and political lives. "Dissonance – Music and Conflict" explores how we integrate our experience of conflict in our creative work by applying Musical ideas into our visual art, design and writing practices. We will learn how Music envelops various forms of conflicts and surpasses the impact of the clash, and create in-class, site-specific and socially engaged projects both individually and collaboratively. The interdisciplinary nature of Music lets us research and practice a wide variety of activities including performance, video, sound, multimedia installation, spatial design and public space interventions.

Christopher Treggiari

UDIST-3000-6: Upper Division Interdisciplinary Studio: The American Dream

“The American Dream” class is an interdisciplinary class that combines 4D principles and techniques with design thinking, fine arts, and critical thinking. Utilizing research, interviews, and production, “The American Dream” class will explore the concept and reality of the American dream, while uncovering the forces, systems, and barriers that exist when looking at this concept. The “American Dream” class will study the history and impact of the American Dream on marginalized groups. We will analyze data and statistics surrounding what it takes to be successful and live the American Dream. Ultimately we will question the legitimacy, and existence of the American Dream. “The American Dream” class will work in collaboration with external community partners who will be identified per semester. The partner collaborations combined with the CCA students will strive to uncover the reality of the American dream on their own lives and their families lives.