School of Visual Arts

• CFA AR 581: Web Design
  This course addresses the principles, problems, and applications of web design. HTML and CSS will be taught, giving the students the ability to control the design and presentation of online information in its most basic form. Emphasis is on content, usability, site architecture, navigation and interactivity.1st and 2nd semester.
• CFA AR 582: Web Design 2
  This course will explore web design through various web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Figma). While applying your design skills to this medium, you will develop an understanding of the technology behind the web and understand how to navigate the constraints and opportunities of the medium, and become comfortable executing your ideas in code.
• CFA AR 586: Child Development through Arts
  What are the theories of artistic development of children, and how do these build on or differ from each other? How have these theories changed over time'? What is the relationship between child development and cultural context'? We will examine the role of the senses, emotions, and cognition in shaping artistic development and of the layered integrations these form over time. Qualitative and arts-based research, presentations, discussions and written reflections will provide the various forms through which demonstrate one's understanding of the artistic development of children and youth. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Research and Information Literacy
• CFA AR 587: Information Design
  This course explores ways of graphically structuring information. Students will learn process, organize and ultimately symbolize and visualize complex and quantitative information. Focus is on information graphics that reveal multiple hierarchies of data, through which new relationships are made visible. Representation (determining an appropriate form language for an idea) and narrative structure (main organizing principle) are the frameworks that will be studied in order to create precise, clear, legible and efficient communication. Open to undergraduate and graduate graphic design students. 2 cr.
• CFA AR 589: Interactive Design
  This course opens the door to different ways of thinking and making forms, and adding interactivity through computer programming and looks at how it can be used for creative projects by creating a new context or extending what we already know. Class time will be split between lectures, work sessions, discussions, presentations and critiques. 2cr
• CFA AR 590: Elementary and Secondary Methods in Art Education
  This course prepares future educators to create and implement curricula for diverse children, pre-adolescents, and adolescents based on understanding the cognitive, emotional, social, and physical characteristics of diverse children and how those characteristics guide teaching and impact learning. Pre-service teachers in the Methods course develop their philosophies and approaches by applying knowledge of contemporary and historical practices from readings, pre-practicum experiences, and discussions of theories and trends in teaching art. Course participants examine the state and national visual art standards and explore frameworks for integrating arts education with other content areas. Various media and concepts are introduced and explored, and the participants engage in arts-based research, using their insights to design learning experiences that enhance critical and creative development.
• CFA AR 591: Curriculum Design and Pre-Practicum Seminar
  Corequisite: CFAAR592 - The Pre-Practicum Seminar accompanies students through their semester of pre-practicum fieldwork experiences in PreK- 12 schools, providing structure and opportunities for growth and reflection. Students develop increasing skills and strategies for best practice in the art classroom, examining the visual art curriculum and its design as a vertical and horizontal sequence of learning aligned with the State standards. Students begin the initial phase of a curriculum document, learning to generate a rationale for thematic research, developing a teaching philosophy, addressing 21st-century student needs, and providing adaptations for the inclusion of all students in art classes. CFA AR 591 is a co-requisite with CFA AR 592.
• CFA AR 592: Pre-Practicum
  Corequisite: CFAAR591 - The Pre-Practicum course offers supervised field-based experiences in visual art classroom settings in public schools for a few hours per week. Students complete seven weeks in Pre-K-8 and seven weeks in 5-12 schools. Students develop abilities for active engagement with students and practice elemental teaching skills. Students must pass components of two DESE-required Gateway Assessments during the Pre-Practicum course, a co-requisite with the CFA AR 591 Curriculum Design & Pre-Practicum Seminar.
• CFA AR 593: Design Lab
  CFA AR593 Design Lab is an elective course open to all students in the School of Visual Arts. Design Lab is an in-house design studio providing professional quality graphic design solutions to the College of Fine Arts and Boston-based non-profits. The course will facilitate and regulate work flow, student/designer-client relationships, art direction, and finalization of the production process. Open to undergraduate and graduate design students. To be considered for a position, students must submit a portfolio (5 work samples) and a 200-word written statement explaining their interest in Design Lab. 2 credits. 6 contact hours per week. Fall or Spring semester.
• CFA AR 594: Graphic Design Theory
  Utilizing their understanding of design history, principles, and approaches, students enhance their lexicon for critical design. By observing, defining, and analyzing various design disciplines including typography and typeface design, visual identity, experience design, information design, sustainability, decoloniality, and anthropology. Through a blend of writing, reading, discourse, and imaginative tasks, students engage with substantial writings by designers, critics, and theoreticians. This class equips students with the skills necessary to conceptualize a unique thesis project or self-directed body of work.
• CFA AR 595: Visual Systems
  This course is focused on research and application of visual systems. Student investigations of components, modules, relatedness and grids will form how visual systems direct and influence a creative process. While most design assignments require a visual or typographic system, this course will address systems as a conceptual inquiry. Students will conduct a holistic exploration of abstract and physical systems to consider speculative solutions grounding visual systems in context. Design problems will approach analysis of systems and form as a visual response related to object, material and space.
• CFA AR 596: CFA AR 596 Graphic Design Theory II
  This seminar course builds on the critical insight students develop in Design Theory I, and challenges students to develop their own theoretical perspective, methodology, and critical practice. Students use this discourse as the foundation for their Thesis inquiry, further defining what they think, how it applies to the work they make and their future professional trajectory. This course will consist of both reading and writing, students will discuss the readings and consider weekly readings and brief written / visual responses.
• CFA AR 597: Experience Design
  Students will study and design interactive experiences in physical space. Emphasis is on how user experience shapes design. Projects include designing usable, interactive environments across a range of scales from mobile devices to social networks to museum displays and finally full scale architectural spaces. Work will be generated and discussed in terms of: concept development, media production, prototyping and implementation.
• CFA AR 600: Contemporary Issues in Art Education
  With an arts-research approach, this course allows students to explore and respond to contemporary issues while developing their own craft and building a creative learning community. The course surveys the roots of contemporary art and pedagogy and the shift to postmodernism, including influential figures, theories, and trends and their impact on art education. A deep-dive investigation into masks as universal but complex, culturally-embedded phenomena provides students in the course with a unique lens. Students investigate the popularity of masks in global contemporary art and the roots of these masks that speak to culture, identity, privacy, and other issues of the moment. Responding to course content by creating art, students stretch and expand their knowledge of the mask form and use it as a tool to examine pressing issues in the contemporary art classroom. The in-depth focus enriches the background, ideas, and approaches teachers can bring to mask making, a valuable but often challenging project, but also use as a model. Through e-portfolio and online discussions, students create a community of learners. A culminating project, such as a unit plan or autoethnography, synthesizes traditional research methods with arts-research insights and tackles the complexities that arise in a multi-cultural curriculum, such as appropriation, transnationalism, and ahistoricism.
• CFA AR 601: Graduate Typography
  The ability to communicate graphically and typographically sits at the forefront a successful graphic design practice. Graduate typography presents an opportunity for advanced study of the relationship between form and language in order to develop a strong typographic acumen for print and screen. Students will build upon fundamental elements of typography to explore advanced practical and hypothetical applications. Projects rely on a mastery of traditional typographic methods as a basis to discover innovative typographic forms and concepts for print and screen. 4 credits. 3 contact hours per week. Fall or spring semester.
• CFA AR 602: Graduate Typography 2
  This course builds on Graduate Typography 1, continuing an exploration of advanced practical and theoretical typographic applications. Expanding previously developed skills, students will study methods and develop new modes for shaping language and meaning using text. Students should be aware of historical and contemporary typographic styles, movements and practices and use this knowledge to imagine a typographic future.
• CFA AR 605: Introduction to Research Methods in Art Education
  This course offers an overview of creative qualitative research design and methods relevant to the field of art education. In this course, students will be introduced to essential tools used in the research process. The modules include an overview of fundamental research terminology, and help students gain familiarity with the methods and ethics involved in conducting research. Students will examine their positionality as researchers and learn how issues of validity, subjectivity, and positionality impact their research. Important topics will be examined through readings, presentations, live classrooms, online discussions, and written assignments, culminating with a mini research proposal. Although this is not a required course, it is highly recommended and will be very useful to students preparing to take their Capstone Research Project course.
• CFA AR 610: The Inclusive Art Classroom (4 credits)
  This course will introduce the historical, legal, and educational facets of protected populations in the United States with a focus on art education. Discussed populations are those with needs that require individualized attention, awareness and considerations in an educational setting including students with physical, intellectual and cognitive special needs as well as other underrepresented student groups. The goal of this course is to introduce and explain characteristic behaviors, strengths and weaknesses of various disabilities and discuss strategies for differentiation of instruction, classroom management, and accommodations for the art classroom. Existing and emerging technologies and pedagogical methods will be discussed in order to make the artistic process accessible and meaningful to all students regardless of their emotional, intellectual, or physical capacities.
• CFA AR 620: Curriculum Planning
  This course offers the study of contemporary techniques for the implementation of goals and the use of essential questions when planning curricula and programs of education at all levels, such as PreK-8 and 5-12. The instruction includes consideration of enduring understandings and planning for knowledge transfer appropriate to students' stages of development, and community as well as individual needs. A substantial written curriculum document is submitted as a final requirement, at the completion of the course.
• CFA AR 621: Site-spec. Art
  This graduate level 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. Credit amount varies.