Spring 2027
Queer Art: In Theory and Practice LO8/LO6 (Dahl鈥� ART) - New Seminar
- This course explores key concepts in queer theory through artistic practices that challenge what and how we see. 鈥淨ueering鈥� is an act of questioning, a critical and creative method of making strange the assumed naturalness of binary systems. Queer art practices embrace deviance and indeterminacy in their resistance to the status quo, and they demand intersectional analyses of sexuality, embodiment, gender, class, ability, and race. Readings, presentations, and discussions will consider a wide array of works by LGBTIA2S+ artists, writers, and activists. Assigned projects will engage text- and studio-based research with the goal of integrating theory and practice.
Organizations as Sites of Solidarity and Resistance LO2/LO10 (Jackson 鈥� BUSN) - New Seminar
- This course explores what happens to individual freedom when one becomes a member of an organization. Joining an organization does not simply constrain individual freedom through explicit rules. More profoundly, organizations shape an individual鈥檚 understanding of what is true, reasonable, possible, and even desirable. Through the process organizational control can become internalized by its members. In this course, students will explore the processes by which organizational membership converts individuals into roles, how power is used to control meaning, how language becomes an instrument of control, and how authority is most efficient when people participate in all this voluntarily. The crux of organizational reality is that it reveals a tension between solidarity and resistance. We need organizations to accomplish things through collective action that individuals cannot accomplish alone. As organizations enable this, they also constrain the autonomy, dignity, and solidarity that make human action worthwhile. Students will define their personal strategy for navigating the difficult terrain of organizational reality using the coordinates of solidarity and resistance.
Fall 2027
From Pixels to Power-ups: Decoding the Artistic Dimensions of Video Games LO2/LO10 (Gimenez-Berger 鈥� ART) - New Seminar
- In this course, we will explore the significance of video games as dynamic artifacts. Through the lens of art history, we will dissect the visual allure, narrative complexities, and societal values embedded in these virtual landscapes, exploring their role as cultural products that both are shaped by, and reshape, our experience of the world.