New Genres

New Genres is a philosophical, interdisciplinary approach in which the artist’s concept and intentions determine the best means for actuating each individual work.

Drawing on its legacy as the country’s first Performance/Video Department, its application of rigorous dialogue and questioning parameters of art forms to time-based work, quickly expanded to include installation, social practice, site specific work, and other trans-disciplinary media and approaches. No longer a medium specific department, the New Genres Department was born.

New Genres courses are cross-disciplinary laboratories for experimentation, discovery, and radical boundary-pushing. Through dialogue, critique, and practice, students learn to hone and better articulate their own visual language.

Sample Course Descriptions >>

Past Courses

  • Internet Killed the Video Star
  • Athletic Aesthetic
  • Photoworks: Conceptual Photography
  • Embodiment for Artists
  • We Want the Airwaves
  • Conceptual Drawing
  • The Temporary: Performance, Interventions, Installation
  • Advanced Video: The Moving Image
  • Issues in Contemporary Art: Conceptual Landscape

Studios & Equipment

Studios, classrooms, and various locations across campus can be reserved by students for production, performances, installations, and post production.

  • Fully stocked, multi purpose production studios
  • Installation rooms availible for individual checkout
  • The Tower Radio station broadcast studio
  • Private editing suite with 4K displays
  • Audio recording suite
  • Analog to digital capture suite (super8, 16mm, VHS, DV/miniDV)

Equipment:

  • Canon DSLRs
  • Digital video cameras
  • Comprehensive studio lighting kits
  • Tripods

Curriculum

See a sample four-year academic plan in the BFA in New Genres program to help you decide what courses to take when.

Summary of Required Credits

TitleUnits
Liberal Arts Requirements (Examples: Global Social Movements, Un/Natural Ideologies, Concepts of Creativity, Mathematics: A Visual History, Extinction)33
Studio & General Elective Requirements 72
Art History Requirements15

New Genres Studio Requirements

TitleUnits
Contemporary Practice3
New Genres I3
New Genres II3
Issues in Contemporary Art3
Installation Distribution3
Keeping Record3
New Genres Electives (Ex: Advanced Video, Experiments in Narrative, What's Cooking?)15
Senior Review Seminar3
Electives in any Studio Discipline (Ex: Bookbinding, Intaglio, Three Dimensional Collage)24
General Electives (Ex: Sacred and Profane, Sound Installation)9
BFA Graduate Exhibition0

Art History Requirements

TitleUnits
Topics and Foundations in Global Visual Culture3
Topics and Foundations in Contemporary Art3
History of the Major3
Art History Elective3
Art History Elective3

Faculty

Sharon Grace (Professor Emerita)

Doug Hall (Professor Emeritus)

Paul Kos (Professor Emeritus)

Tony Labat (MFA Program Director)

Mads Lynnerup (New Genres Department Chair)

See the full list of current faculty.

Program Learning Outcomes

  • Students engage a broad cross section of local, national, and international artists, scholars, and communities in mutual exploration of art, and the roles, responsibilities, and integrity of art and the artist in society.
  • Students gain the ability to think critically and develop creatively as a result ongoing, intensive critiques.
  • Students develop working methods that reflect their individual personalities within the framework of contemporary practice and dialogue.
  • Students gain the ability to conceive of works through interdisciplinary thinking and production, promoting non-media specific approaches to artistic practice.
  • Students gain the ability to demonstrate some historical and theoretical understanding of relevant practices as they pertain to the student’s work, and develop the ability to utilize this knowledge as part of a studio practice.
  • Students gain the ability to research and generate conceptual ideas and then go on to connect these ideas to a material practice.
  • Students gain the ability to identify the most suitable form for one’s ideas. Mastery in this form is expected.
  • Students gain the ability to take conceptual risks.
  • Students gain the ability to understand and articulate the conceptual basis of the work in terms of content, methodology, and intended audience.