Current Graduate Courses
- Times and locations of courses are published in the Public Class Schedule.
- Official Calendar Course Descriptions are available in the Undergraduate and Graduate Calendars.
- Official Course Outlines will be distributed at the first class of the term.
Fall 2025-Winter 2026
ARTH 5010F Theory and Practice of Art and Architectural History – Fall Term & Winter
- INSTRUCTOR: Ming Tiampo and Mitchell Frank
- DESCRIPTION: ARTH 5010 is a full-year course for incoming MA students in Art & Architectural History. The course combines critical theory with practical skills, both aimed to provide students with a solid foundation for graduate study in the field
- METHOD OF EVALUATION: Over the course of the year, students will read widely in current Art & Architectural historiography and participate in class activities; produce a research paper drawing on theory; encounter and utilize key research resources and tools; produce targeted writing for a general audience based on primary and secondary research; write a detailed research proposal; and learn to write and present an academic conference paper
- READINGS: TBA (course readings will be made available through the Library Reserves system, ARES
ARTH 5112F Speical Topics in Historiography, Methodology and Criticism: Sovereignties of the Imagination – Fall Term
- INSTRUCTOR: Ming Tiampo and Wayne Modest
- DESCRIPTION: This course takes Barbadian writer George Lamming’s Sovereignty of the Imagination (2004) as a starting point for imagining more just and equitable worlds through making that would challenge hegemonic conceptions of Being rooted in and worlded from the European Enlightenment (Wynter). It considers how new vocabularies of freedom, of the freedom to be, have been produced through acts of refusal and resistance, by artists and other makers from the multiple geographies of the global majority. We are interested in practices such as beadwork, ink painting, calligraphy, pottery, textiles, protest, music and dance that propose new imaginations of what was and is possible by making and remaking the modern world through objects, artworks and discourses in the context of various degrees of unfreedom. It is through these condensations of cultural feelings in objects or art practices that new sensibilities emerge, which articulate modes of fashioning possible possibles (Escobar), for being otherwise in structures of impossibility. Reimagining modernities other than those which centre progress and a liberal world order, Sovereignties explores the possibilities and limitations of projects that articulate new and wayward worlds (Hartman). The course is being taught in collaboration with Wayne Modest, Director of Content, Wereldmuseum, and Professor, Vrije University Amsterdam. It is part of a larger project, which includes exhibitions, seminars, performances, reasonings, and publications.
- METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
- READINGS: TBA
- CROSS-LISTED WITH: MGDS 5002 and CLMD 6102 F
ARTH 5115F Art Brut! – Fall Term
- INSTRUCTOR: Jill Carrick
- DESCRIPTION: Art Brut (also known as ‘Outsider Art’) is a term coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet to designate art created by untrained, non-professional individuals working outside of ‘official’ art institutions, groups, standards and expectations. This seminar examines new theoretical interpretations of Art Brut. Classwork includes on-site visits to examine artworks and documents held in the Carleton University Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Canadian Museum of History.
- METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
- READINGS: Online readings
- CROSS-LISTED WITH: ARTH 4809F
ARTH 5218F Indigenous Curatorial Practice: An Interrogation of Indigenous Aesthetics – Fall Term
- INSTRUCTOR: Carmen Robertson
- DESCRIPTION: Pathways toward articulating concepts related to Indigenous aesthetics emerge from deep considers of cultural epistemologies and ontologies with regard to Indigenous arts. Develop new understandings of aesthetics through a series of interdisciplinary readings, observations, and oral narratives steeped in interconnected worldviews. Land and story are key components of this seminar, as are the underlying colonial structures that have disrupted Indigenous ways of seeing when researching curatorial and art historical praxis.
- METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
- READINGS: TBA
- CROSS-LISTED WITH: CURA 5003 F/ CDNS 5003 / INDIG 4011B
ARTH 5404F Reconstructing Canada: Postwar Architecture and Design – Fall Term
- INSTRUCTOR: Michael Windover
- DESCRIPTION: The decades following the Second World War witnessed great change in Canada’s designed environment. Cities grew, transportation and media infrastructures expanded, modes of design and planning principles evolved, and new institutions emerged. This course explores architecture and design in the years between World War II and the Oil Crisis of the early 1970s as a way of understanding how policy makers, designers, planners, advocates, and ordinary citizens contributed and responded to the changing built environment of this period. How did architecture and design embody particular values? What do we learn from critically reading histories of architecture of this period? Who and what is in these narratives (and who and what has been left out)?
- METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA, but will include participation, oral presentations, and written work based on engagement with primary and secondary sources.
- READINGS: Readings will be made available through the library’s electronic reserves system (ARES) and/or will be posted on the course’s Brightspace page.
- CROSS-LISTED WITH: ARTH 4002A
ARTH 5500 Topics in Photography: Photography in the National Capital Region: Collections and Cultures – Winter Term
- INSTRUCTOR: Carol Payne
- DESCRIPTION: This graduate-level seminar will explore the National Capital Region’s rich collections ofphotography: from the nineteenth century to contemporary photo-based work and from settler-colonial to Indigenous to transnationalist practices. Through photography’s history we will explore cultural connections, tensions, and negotiations. Assigned reading and discussions will emphasize recent theory, the history of photography, and collecting practices. We will visit collections and hold discussions with curators and photographers. Each student will explore one component of a collection as their key research assignment.
- CLASS FORMAT: Class will be held in person (unless health guidelines suggest otherwise). Visits to collections will be a regular component of the class. Students are expected to be active, guiding participants in discussion and to work respectfully and collaboratively with one another.
- ASSIGNMENTS: The central research assignment—divided into smaller component assignments—will engage with one collection in the NCR. In addition, students will be assigned regular reflection papers and leading discussions. Active and informed participation is important.
- READINGS: Assigned reading will be mainly available through BrightSpace and will not require purchase. (If I decide to order one or two books, I will let you know in advance.)