Special Course Offerings
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Fall 2026 Courses
New & Special Topics Courses
ARGD 4210/7210 Special Topics in Photography: The Photographic Portrait
Jacobsen | Undergrad CRN 38791 | Grad CRN 38792 | see Grad courses here
The Photographic Portrait examines portrait-making as both a technical discipline and a critical, ethical, and social practice. Through hands-on lighting workshops using both studio and natural light, students will develop the technical skills needed to create intentional and compelling portraits. Alongside these practical exercises, the course will engage how contemporary portraiture intersects with questions of representation, visibility, power, and identity. Lectures, readings, and discussions explore critical texts on portraiture and examine historical and contemporary tensions within the genre—such as In the American West by Richard Avedon and The Ninety Nine and the Nine by Katy Grannan—as well as contemporary notions of post-documentary portraiture through projects by Kristine Potter, Rahim Fortune, Tommy Kha, José Ibarra Rizo, and others. Students may work in analog and/or digital formats, exploring how camera choice and format shape the portrait experience. We will compare the intimacy and slowness of large-format portraiture to the speed and volume afforded by digital approaches, for instance. By the end of the course, students will understand portraiture not simply as image-making, but as a relational practice rooted in care, consent, and responsibility.
ARED 7230E Topics in Art Education (Online)
Bustle | Grads CRN 65888 | see Grad courses here
Course description TBA
Thematic Inquiry Courses
ARST 4915/6915 – Thematic Inquiry in Contemporary Art: Research & Creative Practice
Wallace | Undergrads CRN 38789 | Grads CRN 38942 | see Grad courses here
This non-media specific course provides an opportunity for visual artists and designers to develop a research practice centered on primary source materials. We will delve deeply into the resources of the special collections libraries to investigate primary source materials as inspiration and content for studio artists & designers.
Students will work in all three special collections libraries to develop and refine their research skills. We will combine the history of materials and methods with our interpretations, reactions, and perceptions of these materials to create new works of art. Students will have the opportunity to identify their research topic and develop a body of work around their original research. Research outside of special collections will also be discussed. While our primary source materials will be books, letters, photographs, audio and video recordings, archives and manuscripts, students may choose any media for their artwork.
Course Objectives
This course is designed to:
- Introduce students to the materials, concepts, techniques, and processes necessary to accessing and researching the special collections libraries at the University of Georgia
- Enhance the ability of students to generate ideas and explore the narrative and formal means of developing content via primary source research and interpretation
- To integrate a research practice with a studio practice for both formal technique and conceptual foundations
ARST 4915/6915 – Thematic Inquiry in Contemporary Art: Speculative Futures – From Utopia to Dystopia
Marshall| Undergrad CRN 35501 | Grads CRN 35502 | see Grad courses here
This course is an upper-level studio course that invites students to imagine the world in the year 2100 through the lens of contemporary art. Working in any medium of their choosing, students will explore how environmental change, technology, culture, and social systems shape possible futures, from the optimistic to the catastrophic, and everything in between. The course begins with a close examination of, and visual response to, a research study conducted in Iceland, a region warming four times faster than the Northern Hemisphere average. Students will engage directly with survey responses from Icelandic residents reflecting on their expectations for the future. Using this study as a model, students will then design and conduct their own surveys, either self-reflective or community-based, and translate these collective hopes, fears, and projections into a series of conceptually driven artworks. Emphasizing research, experimentation, and critical dialogue, the course positions art-making as a speculative tool for understanding and questioning the trajectories of our shared future.
Last updated: February 19, 2026