Courses
The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.
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CFA AR 512: Architectural Design 2
This course builds upon the foundational knowledge that is covered in the introductory level and aims to achieve a higher degree of architectural design sophistication through a series of projects. These design challenges increase in complexity and duration over the course of the semester. You are expected to have advanced skills in drawing and model making, which enable you to devote your time to developing and critiquing your own design process. You will delve deeper into issues of form, program, and space, and you will be expected to draw upon previous design work from related courses such as architectural history, sculpture, drawing, and others. This course is intended for students who have already taken Architectural Design or its equivalent at another institution. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Oral and/or Signed Communication, Creativity/Innovation. -
CFA AR 515: Digital Photo
Throughout this course you will gain a basic technical and conceptual understanding of the medium of photography. Students will learn the basics of RAW image capture using a 35mm DSLR camera, non-destructive image file management, input and output resolution management, establishment of a digital workflow, adjustment and editing in Adobe Photoshop and high-end archival inkjet printing. Lectures will also introduce historical and contemporary photographic practices. Students will have weekly photographing and printing assignments, and you should be prepared to develop your own ideas. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Critical Thinking. Effective Fall 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation, Critical Thinking. -
CFA AR 517: Digital Printmaking: Ink & Pixel 4 credits Spring term
Digital media as a communicative tool in printmaking - digital imaging, mixed media processes, multimedia documentation, transformations with traditional print media. Course explores digital design/color, conceptual/technical skills, critique, and process-oriented project development through demonstrations, studio assignments, presentations, and critiques. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Digital/Multimedia Expression. -
CFA AR 518: Silkscreen Print 4 Credits
This course focuses on contemporary fine art silkscreen prints, the incorporation of fluid, solid and digital stenciling methods of silkscreen printing and the use of multiple approaches to the print. Drawing will be emphasized, and studio work will focus on formal visual issues and resolving visual ideas with an originality of approach. Through a coordinated sequence of projects, students will synthesize their conceptual and technical skills with this medium and study the application of hand printmaking. -
CFA AR 521: Site Specific Art
This elective will be interdisciplinary and open to students in all majors, both in the Visual Arts program and all other schools in the university. The course aims to instruct students in the professional practice of making site-specific art commissions for public and private clients. The students will gain professional skills in the development of a site-specific work of art that will require the utilization of a variety of media, an interdisciplinary approach and team work. Students will also learn how to work and negotiate with prospective clients who wish to contract site-specific art for particular settings and architectural environments. 4.0 credits. -
CFA AR 524: Business Information Design
A hybrid lecture and studio course that explores presenting information visually. Students learn to process, organize, symbolize, and structure complex quantitative information. The coordinated business aspect of the course addresses how data visualization drives effective business decisions. Graphics are designed and evaluated from a visual and strategic point of view. This course meets 2x/week during summer session 4cr. Effective Summer 1 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Quantitative Reasoning I, Research and Information Literacy, Creativity/Innovation. -
CFA AR 527: Drawing into Animation
This course provides a convergence of contemporary performance, dance music, new media and visual arts projects that draw artists from across many traditional disciplines. The course will equip students with an understanding of how time based thinking can provide a natural extended practice, translating ideas through story boarding and scripting. Drawing concepts will range from informal sketches to full narrative graphic novels. Stop motion will be taught for sculptural ideas and time-lapse photography for painting and mix media production. Extensive use of Wacom tablets, mobile app based cameras, and the Adobe Suite will be utilized. This course is meant to bring digital technologies and 4D projects into the traditional studio practice. 4 credits. -
CFA AR 528: Architectural Site Design 2
This course builds upon the foundational knowledge that is covered in the introductory level and aims to achieve a higher degree of architectural design sophistication through a series of projects. These design challenges increase in complexity and duration over the course of the semester. You are expected to have advanced skills in drawing and model making, which enable you to devote your time to developing and critiquing your own design process. You will delve deeper into issues of form, site, program, and space, and you will be expected to draw upon previous design work from related courses such as architectural history, sculpture, and drawing. A deeper understanding of program and user needs will be elaborated to best respond to the given context. Students will also discuss different materials, textures, and tectonics (the artful assembly of building elements). -
CFA AR 531: Advanced Projects in Photography
This course gives students the opportunity to create and develop an extensive body of images. Students will work independently on projects with a range of critical and technical approaches that may include analog or digital and span subject matter from the personal to the more abstract. Student work will be discussed in formal critiques and informal work shares. Assigned readings, guest artists, and visits to area museums and archives will be chosen based upon the students's research focus. -
CFA AR 532: Word And Image
This studio course focuses on the interplay of word and image in contemporary visual art practice. There is an extensive history of the relationship between text and visuals, ranging from the Dada movement to contemporary social media platforms. Throughout this course, we will utilize observational methods and visual concepts that are fundamental to describing, analyzing and manipulating two-dimensional imagery through various mediums, including drawing, printmaking, photography, bookmaking, and sculpture. You will explore the elements of visual language, including typography, photography and graphic production in the creation of meaningful artworks that touch on the fundamentals of your studio practice. Through readings, discussions, written presentations, critiques and studio projects, you will investigate the structure of visual and written language. -
CFA AR 533: The Photograph as Story
This course explores the different ways in which a story can be told through the medium of photography. Through collaborative and personal lens-based projects students will consider a range of storytelling practices from linear to nonlinear and fiction versus nonfiction. Issues related to photography and narrative will also be addressed, including myth and fantasy, archetypes and typologies and the constructed image as well as documentary photographic essays and the artist book. Materials will be presented through lectures, readings, technical demonstrations, guest artists, group discussions, and visits to area museums and archives. Student work will be discussed in formal critiques and informal work shares. -
CFA AR 535: SP Tps: Vis Art
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CFA AR 545: Performative Text and Design
Intersections of text, design, performance, publishing, and activism. Examinations of techniques, forms, media, and theoretical ideas--asking about the political potential of such practices. Students develop an interdisciplinary approach to thinking about the form a text might take as a spatial appearance (page or environment), through materials (costume, flags) or how it might be used as a performative object. Themes include: labour, liveness and documentation, ephemeral vs. permanent, alternative publishing, activist archiving. Lectures, project based, field trips, and studio visits. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Creativity/Innovation. -
CFA AR 547: Principles of Painting Techniques 1 credit Fall term
Lectures, studio demonstrations, and workshops concerning materials and techniques for oil painting: selection of tools and studio equipment; preparation of traditional and modern supports and grounds; principles of oil and alkyd painting; properties and interactions of pigments, binding oils, solvents, and protective coatings; paint-making and tubing procedures, toxicity of materials, safety issues and precautions; introduction to a variety of direct and indirect techniques; presentation of completed artwork, including photographing and framing completed artwork. -
CFA AR 548: Principles of Painting Techniques 2 credits Spring term
Lectures, studio demonstrations, and workshops concerning materials and techniques for painting: selection of tools and studio equipment; preparation of supports and grounds; principles of egg tempera, distemper, encaustic, watercolor, gouache, buon fresco, acrylic polymer, PVA, and vinyl painting; properties and interactions of pigments, binders, solvents, and protective coatings; paint-making procedures; toxicity of materials, safety issues and precautions; introduction to a variety of direct and indirect painting techniques; introduction to water gilding; presentation of completed artwork, including matting, photographing, and framing. -
CFA AR 551: Processes and Structures I (2 credits; fall semester)
This sequence of two courses provides future artist educators an opportunity to investigate and develop rich, contextualized artmaking experiences for students in grades preK to 12+ in schools and in other settings. It is designed to encourage reflective, practice-based research into art-making activities and curricula that support the objectives of the art education program; lessons developed demonstrate an understanding of diverse learners at different stages of development, global and cultural proficiency, art history and contemporary art, and interdisciplinarity. For students pursuing licensure in art education, it accompanies the development of students' capstone projects and is taken while completing their practicums, serving to enhance the development of the lessons and units they are creating and implementing in the schools. This course also provides students in other degree programs an opportunity for arts-based and/or pedagogy-related research. -
CFA AR 552: Processes and Structures II (2 credits; spring semester)
This sequence of two courses provides future artist educators an opportunity to investigate and develop rich, contextualized artmaking experiences for students in grades preK to 12+ in schools and in other settings. It is designed to encourage reflective, practice-based research into art-making activities and curricula that support the objectives of the art education program; lessons developed demonstrate an understanding of diverse learners at different stages of development, global and cultural proficiency, art history and contemporary art, and interdisciplinarity. For students pursuing licensure in art education, it accompanies the development of students' capstone projects and is taken while completing their practicums, serving to enhance the development of the lessons and units they are creating and implementing in the schools. This course also provides students in other degree programs an opportunity for arts-based and/or pedagogy-related research. -
CFA AR 553: Art Education Seminar: Curriculum and Instruction I (4 credits; Fall semester)
The Art Education seminar accompanies students through their first semester of practicum internship in a PreK- 12 school, providing community, structure, and opportunities for growth and reflection. It is aimed at guiding students understanding of educational philosophy, facilitating the setting of goals, and increasing skills and strategies for best practice in the art classroom. Students examine the visual art curriculum and its design as a vertical and horizontal sequence of learning established from a philosophical base aligned with National and State standards. Students begin the initial phase a curriculum document/thesis, generating a rationale for their thematic research, developing a teaching philosophy, describing district demographics, addressing 21st-century skills, and providing adaptations for the inclusion of all students in art classes. The curriculum document serves as the capstone project for those enrolled in the BFA in Art Education and the MA in Art Education with Initial License. The course is taken concurrently with Practicum I. -
CFA AR 554: Art Education Seminar: Curriculum and Instruction II ( 4 credits; Spring semester)
The Art Education seminar accompanies students through their second semester of practicum in a PreK- 12 school, providing community, structure, and opportunities for growth and reflection during their final semester in school. It is aimed at guiding students' understanding of educational philosophy, facilitating the setting of goals, and increasing skills and strategies for best practice in the art classroom. Students further develop their understanding of the visual art curriculum and its design as a vertical and horizontal sequence of learning established from a philosophical base. Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Writing-Intensive Course. -
CFA AR 555: Practicum I (4 credits; Fall semester)
The practicum I course serves to ground the theory and knowledge acquired in previous coursework to practical field application within the art classroom in a PreK-12 school, at Elementary or at Secondary level. The practicum I course provides pre-service candidates with experience in planning, implementing and assessing art experiences for children and youth, while developing classroom management skills and a reflective practice, as they work alongside a licensed art teacher/supervising practitioner. With their mentor's guidance, students develop and teach art lessons, completing a minimum of 300 hours of internship in the art classroom of which 100 are in full responsibility of the class. The practicum is overseen by a program supervisor who observes the teaching practice of the candidate, advising and reporting on the candidate's progress. A successful practicum culminates with an endorsement for an initial license in the teaching of visual arts (preK-8 or 5-12 depending on the practicum placement) as established by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. This course is taken concurrently with CFA AR 553: Art Education Seminar: Curriculum and Instruction I.
