School of Visual Arts

• 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.
• 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 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 655: Elementary Methods of Art Education
  Taken in the final year before a student's classroom teaching Practicum experience, this course provides an introduction to the methodologies of teaching art to children in grades pre K-8. In the course, students develop a personal philosophy of teaching and accompanying strategies that support children's learning in the visual arts. Topics of study include the artistic development of children in relation to cognitive, emotional, and social growth; approaches to studio pedagogy and general communication skills; and lesson planning that addresses national, state, and local curriculum standards. Students must pass components of a Gateway Assessment in CFA AR586: Child Growth and Development and CFA AR 559: Contemporary Issues in Art Education to begin their practicums. Students enroll concurrently the one-credit CFA AR656: Elementary Pre-practicum. This course meets with CFA AR 455; syllabi differ.
• CFA AR 656: Elementary Pre-Practicum
  The elementary Pre-practicum course offers a supervised field-based experience in a PreK-8 visual art classroom setting in a public school, for a determined number of hours per week. Students develop abilities for an active engagement with students and practice elemental teaching skills. Students must pass components of Gateway I in CFA AR586: Child Growth and Development and CFA AR 559: Contemporary Issues in Art Education to begin their practicums. Students enroll concurrently the three-credit CFA A6655: Elementary Methods in Art Education.
• CFA AR 660: Secondary Methods of Art Education
  This course is designed to prepare future educators to create and implement art curricula for students in grades 5-12, based on an understanding of the cognitive, sociocultural, and physical characteristics of diverse pre-adolescent and adolescent learners, and how those characteristics guide teaching and impact learning. By applying a knowledge of contemporary and historical practices, gained from readings, pre-practicum experiences, and discussions of theories and trends in teaching art, pre-service teachers develop their own philosophies and approaches. Course participants examine and content to the 5-12 state and national art standards and explore frameworks for integrating arts education with other content areas. A variety of 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. As a culmination, the students develop unit and lesson plans. Taken in the final year before a student's practicum experiences, students concurrently enroll in the 1-credit CFA AR 662: Secondary Pre-practicum. Students must pass components of a Gateway Assessment in CFA AR586: Child Growth and Development in Art Education and CFA AR 559: Contemporary Issues in Art Education to begin their practicums. This course meets with CFA AR 460; syllabi differ.
• CFA AR 662: Secondary Pre-Practicum
  The Secondary Pre-practicum course offers supervised field-based experience in a 5-12 visual art classroom setting in a public school, for a determined number of hours per week. Students develop abilities for an active engagement with students and practice elemental teaching skills. Students must pass components of a Gateway Assessment in CFA AR586: Child Growth and Development and CFA AR 559: Contemporary Issues in Art Educationto begin their practicums. Students enroll concurrently the three-credit CFA AR660: Secondary Methods in Art Education.
• 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)