Undergraduate Seminar (390-0-1)

Topic

Slowness

Instructors

Jessica Ann Hough

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-410: Mon, Wed 11:00AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

One of art history's foundational tools is the practice of close — or, slow — looking. Yet, the institutional economies and media ecologies in which we live, work, and look push us at a punishing pace toward productivity and efficiency. In this course, we will consider slowness as both object and mode of inquiry, attending to its possibilities as feeling, action, and praxis. And we will do it slowly. We will spend extended periods looking at a single artwork. We will sift through archives. We will read one text—whether theory, poetry, or fiction—and then read it again. We will become bored and investigate that boredom. We will contemplate the deep time of the ground beneath our feet. In doing so, we will reconsider what comprises art and its histories, and what we might see, do, and feel by slowing down.

These explorations will be informed by theories of temporality, movement, and duration drawn from Black studies, disability studies, environmental studies, new materialism, and phenomenology. Through sustained engagement with performance, video art, conceptual art, land art and earthworks (and the works of the earth), we will investigate questions of embodiment, objecthood, and animacy.

This seminar is intended for upper-level undergraduates with coursework in the arts or humanities interested in developing original research questions and pursuing sustained, independent inquiry. Students will benefit most if they are prepared to invest time in reading and looking, and are curious about developing their own scholarly and/or creative practices.

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression