Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular term. 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.

• CFA AR 625: Artist and the Book
  'Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some are to be chewed and digested.- ~Francis Bacon, Essays (1625) Bacon's Essays By Francis Bacon, Richard Whately. Artists Books are conceived as works of art in their own right. This course offers graduate students a comprehensive introduction to artist books and bookmaking, both historical and contemporary, utilizing various technical processes for eastern and western book forms, adhesive and non-adhesive bindings, enclosures, and experimental book forms. What truly makes an artist's book is the artist's intent. Artists' books exist at the intersections of printmaking, photography, poetry, experimental narrative, visual arts, graphic design, and publishing. Students will be expected to research how a book augments their studio practice and how word and image are particularly important in expressing ideas that further their goals as an artist. In all cases content, form and materials must work together in creating a complete work. Regular critiques, both individual and group, will emphasize learning goals. Students are encouraged to include various mediums in book format, whether two or three dimensional, and to expand the boundaries of their process in new ways. Guest artists, trips to artist book collections, studio visits, and student presentations will be featured.
• CFA AR 626: Print Lab
  This course introduces students—whether new, relatively new, or already familiar with printmaking—to a wide range of traditional and experimental approaches. We will explore various printmaking techniques, including relief, collagraph, photopolymer plates, monotype and transfer methods, with a focus on innovation and technical understanding. Students will be encouraged to combine multiple processes as the course progresses, fostering creative experimentation. Additionally, we will explore alternative, low-tech methods and investigate how standard techniques can be adapted to unconventional materials.
• CFA AR 630: Child Growth and Development in Art Education
  This course will examine the cognitive and artistic development of children, specifically focusing on the role of environment and culture in shaping the child and the layered integrations they form over time. Artists-teachers need carefully consider the nature of those who will learn, what is to be taught, and the values of the society in which education takes place. The course will offer opportunities to reflect on the various conceptions of a child that will guide educational practices from behavioral psychologists to artists and educators. The learners will engage in discussions, critical reading and writing, visual presentations, and qualitative inquiry to demonstrate their understanding of the psychological, cultural, and artistic development of children and adolescents. The theories of foundational developmental psychologists Piaget and Vygotsky will be considered as well as the theories of artistic development put forth by Lowenfeld, Burton, Golomb, Wilson, and others.
• CFA AR 636: Anatomy and Figure Drawing
  Drawing analysis of the human figure with emphasis on anatomical structure; study of the skeleton and muscle groups as they affect volume and surface definition. Drawing from the living model, prepared skeleton, and anatomical casts; as well as compositional work from memory. 4 cr
• CFA AR 638: Drawing Concepts
  Drawing Concepts is BU’s long-running experimental drawing course designed to introduce non-traditional drawing methods to students working across a broad range of academic levels. These procedures will expand the core technical and conceptual toolboxes of both beginning and advanced students working in a variety of ways. It should be noted that this isn’t an observational (in the traditional sense) figure/still-life-based drawing class but students interested in those techniques will still greatly benefit from this course in surprising ways. What we explore will enrich and complicate whatever work, in whatever medium, you hope to make moving forward. Our format will consist of a collection of weekly assignments that engage both the fundamental visual elements of drawing (mark-making, composition, contrast, balance, tension) and the more subtle, methodological side of the medium (spontaneity, problem-solving, movement, tenor, responsiveness, openness, curiosity, control, risk-taking, and even performativity). This unconventional course introduces indispensable artmaking strategies often overlooked by traditional drawing exercises while also being a passageway into more esoteric and expansive understandings of what drawing is and can be. Simultaneously primordial and utterly contemporary, these are vital techniques for any artist on any level. No prior drawing experience is required to make great work in this class as the fundamental criteria for greatness will be vigorously explored and expanded upon as we go.
• CFA AR 639: Figure Drawing
  The focus of this class will be to teach students to think and understand the principles of drawing as a visual language. Class will involve an in-depth study of the human figure. Students will make a series of drawings and sketches in a variety of mediums, including graphite, charcoal, conté, ink, etc. Students will study from a live model, and will use the human figure as a vehicle to better understand the fundamentals of organic form, proportion, and balance. 4 cr
• CFA AR 647: Etching/Monotype
  This course offers grad students a comprehensive introduction to intaglio print media -- traditional and contemporary - including etching, aquatint, monotype/monoprint, white ground, photoetching, and new alternative techniques. Printmaking encompasses drawing, design, mark making, multiples, sequences, and overlays, using various material substrates such as metals and plastics. Students will be expected to use modes of inquiry and research based on these new methods to determine how they support individual expression and begin to question and further the personal goals in a student's practice. Group and individual critiques will occur; the emphasis is on drawing and image development, technical knowledge, and professional practices. Projects may span media to build a group of related prints. Presentations on the historical and contemporary print and its culture, visiting artists, museum and studio visits provide context to contemporary printmaking.
• CFA AR 648: Lithography 4
  This graduate course is open to those who have lithography experience as well as to those for whom this is a first-time foray into its history, techniques, and processes. Lithography is one of the oldest printmaking mediums, but perhaps the most versatile. It can mimic a pastel drawing, a watercolor, a fine line engraving or a photograph, utilizing both traditional stone as well as aluminum plates and other substrates. The intrinsic nature of a print involves drawing, creating multiples, opacities and transparencies utilizing various materials as drawing tools. Color layering and sequences, building upon an image and taking it away again, all lead to the versatility of the medium. Color mixing, ink modification, registration and the printing of multiple-run lithographs will be taught, with an emphasis on experimentation in size, series, and thinking beyond the flat surface. A disciplined approach to cooperative print shop use, how a professional print atelier runs, and proper care and maintenance of equipment will be covered. Students will build confidence in printing editions, working collaboratively with invited artists, and developing work that supports and extends their overall studio practice. Critiques, both one-on-one and in groups, combined with presentations on well-known artists, visits to professional print ateliers and print collections, and guest speakers will showcase current trends in the medium and its part in the contemporary printmaking landscape.
• CFA AR 669: Graduate Color
  GRAD COLOR
• CFA AR 670: Advocacy & Policy in Arts Education
  This course introduces issues of policy and advocacy that are relevant to arts education practitioners. We explore the nexus between problems in arts education and the systems that influence schools, cultural organizations, and society. We identify and analyze policies that shape our own professional settings as well as the agencies and partners involved. We research stakeholders, socio-political contexts, resources, and strategies for improving arts education with culturally relevant advocacy. The course centers on drafting a policy proposal and advocacy plan that empowers artist-teachers to take stock of their own leadership skills and apply them to contemporary issues.
• CFA AR 675: Spark: Graduate Graphic Design Track
  This course is a meets-with with Hub XC 475, as an opportunity for MFA Graphic Design students to have a leadership role in the UI/UX Design Innovation Fellowship. MFA in Graphic Design students are welcome to apply to the Graduate Design track of the Innovation Fellowship program with instructor approval. Graduate design students work on the project teams with undergraduate students. The graduate students build upon the brainstorming and visual design work of the undergraduates with graduate-level intensive research, including user profiles, interviews, competitive analysis, information architecture, prototyping, presentation, visual design oversight, and testing. This design concept-based research work, combined with the project-based nature of the fellowship, complements the goals and outcomes of the MFA in Graphic Design program.
• CFA AR 680: Art Education Leadership through A Social Justice Lens
  This course is designed to acquaint and prepare in-service art teachers with the basic skills and organizational strategies of leadership and management that are needed to serve within school systems and arts educational organizations. Our goal is to prepare in-service art teachers for insightful and strategic practice of leadership through a social justice lens. (4 credits)
• CFA AR 690: History of Art Education in the United States
  This course is intended to enrich art educators' understanding of the Western origins and on-going development of Visual Arts education in the United States, along with Invisible histories and Non-Western influences. It will acquaint students with the rich histories of their field through discussion, practical application, research and writing a historical paper. Beginning with the emergence of art education through an early apprenticeship model and progressing through the centuries to a post-modern understanding of what Visual Art Education means and is, grounds the content of this course.
• CFA AR 710: Comics
  This is a drawing-intensive class that focuses on comics as a means to self- expression through graphic narrative. In this course, students will be introduced to the basic building blocks of comics language to construct increasingly more personal works. Students develop an understanding of the idioms of the visual form starting with single images and then moving through multi-paneled strips, single page stories, and finally multi-paged narratives. With each step forward, students gain increasing confidence to use the language of comics as their own personal means of expression. Be prepared to write and draw a lot of pages
• CFA AR 747: Advanced Printmaking
  This course offers intensive professional study in printmaking techniques to students who wish to focus on the print as they expand their personal visual statement, through workshop practice, critique and the refinement of critical thinking. Students may also add basic techniques to their vocabulary. Experimentation is encouraged while students develop technical skill and independent problem solving through print. In addition to demonstrations and hands-on guidance, the opportunity to combine printing applications and experimental media will be an option, as well as the opportunity to print at large scale. The class will be introduced to contemporary artists engaged in print practice through presentations, field trips to exhibitions and visiting artists.
• CFA AR 748: Advanced Printmaking
  Prereq: CFA AR 451, 452, or equivalent. Open to graduate students and qualified undergraduates with consent of instructor. Printmaking workshop for intensive professional study of printmaking processes. Emphasis on development of individual methods and projects. 4 cr, each semester.
• CFA AR 756: Practicum
  Corequisite: CFAAR554 - The practicum course applies the theory and knowledge acquired in previous coursework to practical field application within the art classroom in a PreK-12 school at the Elementary or Secondary level. The practicum course provides pre-service candidates with experience planning, implementing, and assessing art experiences for children and youth while developing classroom management skills and reflective practice as they work alongside a licensed art teacher/supervising practitioner. With their mentors' 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 candidate's teaching practice, advising and reporting on the candidate's progress. A successful practicum culminates with an endorsement for an initial license in teaching 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 554: Art Education Seminar: Curriculum and Instruction.
• CFA AR 770: Ceramics 1
  Introduction to methods and strategies for using ceramics as a sculptural medium. The course initiates the students to the process, vocabulary and techniques involved in all the steps of hand-building, glazing and firing. Students explore traditional and experimental techniques: coiling, slabbing, imprints, and molds, extruding, altered throwing, glazing and staining. The class includes experimentation with surface treatments and initiation to glaze chemistry. Lectures, museum visits and research on historical and contemporary ceramics sustain the studio work and provide context. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Oral and/or Signed Communication, Creativity/Innovation.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Creativity/Innovation
  • Oral and/or Signed Communication
• CFA AR 781: Post-Bac Graphic Design 1
  In this course, structured for students with little prior course work in graphic design, students develop visual literacy, and learn a design process and design vocabulary through challenging studio based coursework. Coursework includes foundational exercises in form making and typography as well as comprehensive exercises in graphic design leading to the solution of advanced visual problems through a structured curriculum of both theoretical and practical studies. In addition to computer-aided graphic design, traditional methods, such as letterpress and photography are emphasized. The program is conceived to enable graduates to function in a constantly changing and expanding field.
• CFA AR 782: Post-Bac Graphic Design 2
  A continuation of CFA AR 781. Coursework includes foundational exercises in form making and typography as well as comprehensive exercises in graphic design leading to the solution of advanced visual problems through a structured curriculum of both theoretical and practical studies. In addition to computer-aided graphic design, traditional methods, such as letterpress and photography are emphasized. The program is conceived to enable graduates to function in a constantly changing and expanding field. At the end of this intensive year, students may be considered for matriculation into the two-year MFA program alongside incoming two-year MFA students.