Graduate Courses
This course will provide a sampling of the various roles that a carefully designed methodology can play in production, criticism, and curatorial practices, with a view to expanding the possibilities in students’ research and research-creation projects. The goal is to assist the student in developing innovative but rigorous approaches in their research. We will develop responses to some fundamental questions regarding method. While familiar and clearly defined methodologies have indisputably proven their worth, are there other approaches which might contribute to research results? Is it always best practice to have a single, clearly defined methodology? Is it ever appropriate to entertain several different, and perhaps even competing methodologies in a single project? Can too much attention to controlling methodologies restrict research outcomes?
This course will explore emerging and to some extent experimental methodological approaches: the merging and hybridization of academic and artistic methods (research-creation); how changing views on the role and status of the author can effect method; how the careful use of constraints can paradoxically liberate research results; the relationship between the manifesto, and manifesto-like articulations, effect artistic and critical production, etc. Instructor: Gary Kibbins
This course is designed for students with active creative practices. The course will facilitate structured peer feedback opportunities for students as they complete a self-directed project in the medium of their choice. Each student will be expected to take a single project from concept to completion during the semester. The project should be new at the start of the course, and should build on the student’s existing body of work. While students will be self-directed in the technical production of their projects, they will be accountable to the class for an introduction to their creative practice and background, a clear presentation of their production plan, well-prepared in-progress updates, a polished final presentation, and high-quality final documentation. Traditional studio-critique models will be consciously interrogated; students will be asked to reflect on the purpose and benefits of critique, and strive to develop a common language in order to communicate as creative peers with diverse practices and approaches.
There are no official pre-requisites for this class at this time. However, it is recommended that students have one of the following:
- a portfolio of creative work;
- a CV with evidence of creative practice;
- a transcript with at least one course in any area of creative practice (writing, filmmaking, studio art, drama, music, digital media, dance, etc).
If none of those are available, students who wish to take this course are advised to attend an extra-curricular workshop in media production basics before taking the class. Instructor: Emily Pelstring
Taking advantage of the context of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre’s specialist staff, collections, facilities and artistic networks, students will undertake a guided team-driven project to explore and experience curatorial practice through developing an exhibition, screening, festival program or public-facing extra-mural or online artistic project. The course objective is to provide hands-on experience within an institutional context, while engaging in critical issues of curatorial practice under the instruction of a professional curator.
This course considers the ways in which curators develop, manage and engage with artists, audiences, collections, pragmatic mobilization of resources, aesthetic integrity and expressive potentials, while responding to diverse institutional and non-institutional contexts and histories, as well as geo-political and social conditions. What are the drivers that inform and shape the work of curators today? Through what strategies of curatorial practice can the context of presentation be mobilized? Instructor: Sunny Kerr
SCCS-899 Master's Thesis or Project
SCCS-999 Ph.D. Thesis or Project
FILM MA Option Courses: FILM 400/3.0; FILM 416/3.0; FILM 420/3.0; FILM 435/3.0; FILM 445/3.0; FILM 456/3.0
For detailed descriptions of Film and Media courses click HERE.
CUST MA Option Courses: CUST 806/3.0; CUST 892/3.0; CUST 816/1.0; CUST 800/3.0; CUST 804/3.0; CUST 807/3.0; CUST 893/3.0; CUST 817/1.0; CUST 815/1.0
For detailed descriptions of Cultural Studies courses click HERE.