ART 101: First Year Colloquium: The First Year Colloquium is a zero credit Fall semester requirement that will address a wide range of contemporary issues and topics in the fields of art and design. The format for the course will include: visiting artist and designer presentations, SOAD alumni/student/faculty lectures, presentations, panel discussions, and films. (starting Fall 2007)

ART 111: Twentieth to Twenty-First Century
Art in Context: An introductory course
investigates art from 1900 to present. Through
lecture, discussion, and assignments the students learn to examine art within its historical, social, and cultural context.

ART 113: Twentieth to Twenty-First Century
Design in Context Design from 1900 to present.
The objective of this course is to provide an introduction to the history of design in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This course will acquaint students with important designers, key movements and theories, and specific objects across a variety of media. It will also situate these ideas within an appropriate historical context, examine different methods for looking at and analyzing design, and introduce artistic and art historical terms.

ART 112: Special Topics in Art/Design History: Art and Politics Prehistoric to 1899
We start our discussions with the earliest known prehistoric images made about 35,000 years ago and end with the 19th century.  The images and objects we examine had an active place in their respective cultures.  They were as necessary and as important as a carton of milk, as rich with cultural information as the nightly TV news. All serve as documents that can report on human life in another era.  In this semester we examine art through a political lens to understand the complex interaction of images with human society.  

ART 114: Special Topics in Art/Design History: History of Ceramics This course will examine the development of the ceramics from Neolithic times to the present, looking at examples from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America.  This course will situate the ceramic medium in an appropriate historical and cultural context in order to explore what ceramics tell us about the people who created them. 

ART 114: Special Topics: Japanese Art and Design
A survey of Japanese art and design, with a focus on how theJapanese "see" and how this differs from the West.  We will look at painting and sculpture, but spend a majority of the course looking at Japanese design and decorative arts and the impact they had on Western Design, architecture, and decorative arts.