Courses Taught
ART HIST 100: Intro to Visual Culture & Cultural Studies
This course explores visual representations across cultures and various media from prehistory to the present. Emphasis is placed on postmodern forms of visual communication, which include art, advertisements, film, YouTube, the Internet, fashion, music videos, and posters. Situating the visual contextually requires investigation into other forms of cultural constructs, including the study of ideology, commerce, power, religion, diaspora, gender and sexuality, politics, and memory.
CRIT 150: Histories of Art, Design, and Visual Culture
A loosely chronological, thematic survey of art, visual culture, design, and critical theory from the early modern period through modernism (1500–1950). An issues-driven course, emphasis will be placed on how art and design have been shaped by, and in some cases have helped to shape, social, political, and economic phenomena, including colonialism, industrialization, revolution, war, national identity, urbanization, and the development of capitalism.
ART HIST 201: Museum Studies Internship
This internship course requires lab hours on site at a participating museum and the sponsorship of a research project or paper with a faculty mentor. Internships and areas of research may include, but are not limited to: Curatorial, Collections and Registration, Communications; Education; Public Programs; and Management.
ART/LAT 371: Modern and Contemporary Latinx Visual Culture
A study of Latinx art and visual culture from 1900 to the present. Topics include Mexican and Chicano muralism; histories of Chicano and Nuyorican art and activism; Chicano film and photography; borderlands history and theory; popular culture and media studies; Afro-Latinx and Caribbean diasporas; Queer Latinx/Jotería studies; the role of visibility and archives; and contemporary art practices today. Emphasis will be placed on the greater Los Angeles area.
ART/ANTHRO 285: Art and Environmental Justice
This course explores the impacts of art and human agency with respect to social and environmental justice issues. This course addresses the intersections of art and environmental justice from the perspective of several communities across the Americas. Topics include: Contemporary art and activism; Climate change and its solutions; Indigenous knowledge, science, and technologies; and U.S. and Latin American history, critical theories, and environmental justice movements.
ART 453A/B: Gallery & Exhibition Design
Art display is a key component of the contemporary museum experience. Exhibitions, either permanent or temporary, tell stories and create value by staging art and ideas mediated by design. This course thinks critically about how exhibitions are designed and how exhibitions designers, curators, and artists can influence the visitor's experience.