Contemporary art can seem perplexing, yet when viewed as a progression of ideas and aesthetic strategies that respond to societal shifts, a certain logic emerges. This course traces movements in North American and European art from 1945 to the present through a study of primary and secondary texts, artwork examples, and historic context. In lectures, discussion and activities, we will investigate how artists went beyond primarily object-based works to explore expanded notions of what art can be and the interaction between the artwork and the viewer. The ways institutional frameworks, media and technology, politics, and social relations, informed contemporary art practice will also be examined. At the end of this course, students should be able to identify contemporary art movements, key artists, and relevant artworks and create compelling arguments around these works. They will also be able to articulate the conceptual and visual strategies employed in these pieces, recognize connections and differences across movements and have a basic knowledge of the milieu in which they were produced. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory course (18-19: survey).
This course examines how ideas of gender and sexuality have shaped the production and consumption of visual culture from the late nineteenth century. We will examine a variety of visual and material texts that shape, criticize, and/or negotiate with contemporaneous gender and sexual norms. Focusing on these expressions’ cultural and historical specificities, the students will assess gender and sexuality—and as an extension, the notions of normality, healthfulness, and self—as ideas that continuously evolve in response to social discourses. The course proceeds roughly chronologically. It starts with the nineteenth-century Euro-American context, in which modern ideas of gender and sexuality began to circulate authoritatively in medical and legal terms. It then moves onto more globalized contemporary perspectives that critique and/or expand the pronouncedly “Western” conceptions of identity and identity categories. Prerequisite: None.
This course is an introduction to Science and Technology Studies (STS), an interdisciplinary field treating science and technology as socially embedded enterprises. We will examine how social, political, cultural, and material conditions shape scientific and technological activity and how science and technology, in turn, shape society. You will become familiar with the basic concepts and methods developed by STS scholars in history, sociology, and anthropology and explore how the scope of the field has expanded to include a variety of empirical case studies, theoretical arguments, and scholarly debates. The kinds of questions we will explore include: What counts as scientific knowledge? How is it produced? How do scientists establish credibility? Can there be a scientific study of scientific inquiry? To what extent are science and technology shaped by historical context? Prerequisite: None.
Considers the trajectory of changes in the production, circulation, and reception of Korean popular music from the turn of the twentieth century to the latest K-pop hits across successive political, social, and economic junctures, with regard for major themes such as nationalism, race, gender, technology, and globalization; and investigates music culture in relation to hybridity, authenticity, transculturation, cyber-culture, and fandom, among other subjects Prereq: None Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory Course (18-19 Topic Courses).
A site for IMA NY Students to find equivalent courses outside of IMA NY
For most students joining IMA in Fall 2022 and beyond, there is a new program structure that affects the categorization of courses on this site:
Any class in any IMA major elective category (ie "Art & Design") refers to the IMA program structure previous to those entering in Fall 2022. If you are in the class of 2026 (most entering Fall 2022 or later), any course in an IMA elective category are generic IMA electives in the new structure.