From the post-mortem body to the mourning body, this course centers the aesthetic and somatic practices that mediate relationships between the living and the dead. Tracing significant shifts within personal and cultural narratives of death we will turn to studio materials and processes as opportunities to commune with the dead. We will tend to themes of loss and liberation with ritual gestures, writing exercises, critiques, readings, and discussion on topics including post-mortem performances, spirit possession, ancestral lineage, grief work, public mourning, and melancholy objects. Fine Arts Seminars are intended to broaden and clarify students' perspective on contemporary art practice. Each semester these seminars shift in focus and subject matter. Seminars may concentrate on art from the perspectives of art history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and so forth, or may take the form of a discipline-based critique focusing on the history, theory, and practice of painting, sculpture, and photography, among others.

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