Fall 2024 - CA 314 D100

Readings in the History of Art, Performance and Cinema (3)

Art in the Anthropocene

Class Number: 6600

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    Sep 4 – Oct 11, 2024: Tue, 2:30–5:20 p.m.
    Vancouver

    Oct 16 – Dec 3, 2024: Tue, 2:30–5:20 p.m.
    Vancouver

  • Prerequisites:

    CA (or FPA) 117 (or 167), 186, and 210W (or 210).

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Investigates a selected topic in the history of art, performance and cinema. This course can be repeated twice for credit if the topic is different.

COURSE DETAILS:

Defined as a new human epoch, an effect of “feral” ecologies, and as “an aesthetic event,” the Anthropocene compels us to rethink the modern period. It offers a new framework to view the last 500 years of colonialism and capitalism. While the term Anthropocene has been heavily criticized, it has nevertheless “administered…a massive jolt to the imagination” (Robert Macfarlane). In this seminar, we will study historical and contemporary works of art and visual culture in and about the Anthropocene. How might aesthetics, in the sense of its original Greek meaning, “to perceive or to feel,” serve as a means of thinking about the concept of the Anthropocene? How do works of art and visual culture lead us to new ways of thinking, feeling, and responding to our new material and temporal reality? What can art do to enact change?

In this seminar you will engage with a wide range of images, objects, and practices, from early nineteenth-century landscape painting to twenty-first-century visual art and performance. Through critical readings, databases, blogs, screenings, field trips, and class discussions, we will consider fresh approaches, including ecofeminist, ecocritical, Black, and Indigenous scholarship, that address the intersections between the climate crisis and histories of imperialism and industrialization. One of the aims of the course is to provide a space for reflection on how art and visual culture envision fictitious new worlds of human and more-than-human ecologies. To this end, you will be encouraged to expand conventional notions of art and visual culture as you search for new ways of analyzing and apprehending the Anthropocene. Together, through the embodied observation of artworks and the close study of critical interdisciplinary texts, we will endeavour to respond more attentively and collectively to the urgent environmental challenges of our times.

Grading

  • Blogs 20%
  • Paper prospectus (abstract and annotated bibliography) 20%
  • Facilitation of a reading 10%
  • Presentation 10%
  • Final paper 40%

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

Course readings will be available on pdfs through Canvas.

REQUIRED READING NOTES:

Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.

Registrar Notes:

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS

SFU’s Academic Integrity website http://www.sfu.ca/students/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating. Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.

Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the university community. Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the university. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the university. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html

RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION

Students with a faith background who may need accommodations during the term are encouraged to assess their needs as soon as possible and review the Multifaith religious accommodations website. The page outlines ways they begin working toward an accommodation and ensure solutions can be reached in a timely fashion.