41 courses with the subject FA, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
An introduction to the physical aspects of working with wood, metal, plaster, and plastics, as well as an introduction to on-campus computer facilities and resources. A basic introduction to the Adobe interface, specifically Photoshop and Illustrator will be provided. Fall 2025/Spring 2026. Required for first-year students. Pass/Fail.
A study of the physical, perceptual, art historical and cultural aspects of color. The phenomenon of color and principles of light are explored in various media towards an understanding of color application in all of the fine art disciplines and architecture. Spring 2026. Required for first-year students.
Exploration of the visual and intellectual aspects of form on the two-dimensional surface, in a variety of media. Investigations into the relationships of perception, process and presentation. Spring 2026. Required for first-year students. *During the 2024-2025 Academic Year, FA-102.1 (Two-Dimensional Design) was offered in the Fall semester. Beginning the 2025-2026 Academic Year, FA-102 (Two-Dimensional Design) will be offered in the Spring semester.
A course in freehand drawing designed to emphasize perceptual and inventive skills in all drawing media. Fall 2025. Required for first-year students. *During the 2024-2025 Academic Year, FA-104.1 (Basic Drawing) was offered in the Spring semester. Beginning the 2025-2026 Academic Year, FA-104 (Basic Drawing) will be offered in the Fall semester.
This course investigates the properties of time and movement and the fundamentals of four-dimensional design. Students explore duration, condensation, expansion, interruption, simultaneity, stillness, action and situation through a wide range of materials. Fall 2025. Required for first-year students.
A studio methods and theories course for foundation students with a focus on the development of multiple lines of visual competency helping to prepare students for advanced study. This course works in conjunction with technical labs through a set of offerings in shorter lab/studio seminars. In this sense, the technical or craft learning necessary for visual practice, and the beginning of a personal conceptual or research methodology, merge. Spring 2026. Required for first year students. credits. 103
Students work on projects that explore the fundamentals of forms and space and investigate the properties of materials, structure, mass, scale, light and motion. Fall 2025. Required for first-year students.
This course is centered around the material, conceptual and historical concerns of painting media within a group setting. The course is intended to give foundational technical and theoretical instruction in preparation of advanced study in painting. There is an emphasis on group learning with in-class and out of class assignments. Group critiques and instruction will enhance the development and articulation of individual ideas and build relationships with paint media. This hands on approach to painting will be supported by readings, films, lectures and field trips that expand the historical and contextual understandings in the area of painting. Fall 2025. May not be repeated. 109
LSP I Lens/Screen/Print I is the first section of a two-semester trajectory. This is an immersive foundation course in the practice of photography focusing on a critical engagement with lens technology, color theory/management and combined analog/ digital workflows. Topics include: exploratory and technical knowledge of 35mm analog cameras, DSLR cameras, lenses and lighting conditions, fluid movement through digital black-and-white and color processes, such as digital imaging editing software, scanning analog color, and digital printing in black-and-white and color. Exposure to critical theory and major philosophical arguments central to lens, screen and print based practices will be explored. This is an assignment driven class. Fall 2025. May not be repeated.
Lens/Screen/Print II is the second half of a two-semester trajectory. This course builds upon the foundations of LSP I with an emphasis on post-production and a critical engagement with lens technology, color theory/management and combined analog/digital workflows. Technical knowledge of the tensions and possibilities found between “digital” and “analog” spaces in relation to critical theory and major philosophical arguments central to lens, screen and print based practices will contribute to student development. Topics include advanced digital editing and printing techniques, analog black-and-white production methods, such as shooting with black-and-white film and darkroom printing, advanced medium-format cameras and scanners, as well as introduction to new technologies and modes of display. A distinction in LSP II is a focus on experimentation, articulation and acumen. Students are encouraged to begin to develop semi-autonomous ways of working over the course of the semester, this includes supervised independent or collaborative projects. This course will afford students the opportunity to build a coherent body of work in preparation for advanced study. Fall 2025. May not be repeated. Pre-Req: L/S/P I.
An introduction to the techniques and visual language of graphic design. Weekly projects explore fundamental concepts in form, composition, and typography. Presentations and readings in graphic design history will complement weekly assignments. Students will explore basic imagemaking processes as well as be instructed in digital production techniques. Fall 2025. May not be repeated. 107
An introduction to the core principles of typography. Students will explore how typography influences language and communication and gain a foundation for purposeful and expressive typography. This course will emphasize the formal qualities of typography, the implications of typeface selection, adapting to various contexts, visualizing concepts using only type, and attention to detail. Fall 2025. May not be repeated. Pre-Req: GD I and Pre/Co-Req: GD II.
The course is designed to explore the phenomena of drawing as basic to the visual language of all disciplines. The fundamental notion of observation and analysis in drawing is investigated. As preparation for work in an advanced level, the course involves further development of drawing skills and techniques, as well as an emphasis on individual aesthetic development. Assignments and group critiques are central to the course. Fall 2025. May not be repeated.
This introductory course covers all aspects of contemporary Screen printing as a photomechanical stencil printing method. In a series of demonstrations, lectures and projects, students will become familiar with stencil making, color separation, printing, color mixing and image registration with the goal of building a broad knowledge of Screen printing. Methods for producing images by hand and by computer output are both addressed. Attention will be paid to the use of Screen printing within fine art, design and popular culture spheres as a way of discussing the history and current use of the process. Fall 2025. May not be repeated.
This is a comprehensive course covering the full range of lithographic techniques. Instruction begins with hand working processes on lithographic stones and progresses through to contemporary approaches of digital image preparation for output to photographic printing plates. A series of projects and critiques are targeted to develop command of the material process and place the use of Lithography in contemporary visual practice. Fall 2025. May not be repeated. 112
This course is an introduction to the process of etching and printing from metal plates. Topics covered are the full range of platemaking techniques, from traditional wax grounds to contemporary photographic grounds, and printing techniques, including chine-collé, multi-plate color work and surface rolling. Lectures and critiques will place the practice of Etching in historical and contemporary context. Fall 2025. May not be repeated.
This studio course explores making paper from traditional to contemporary approaches. The course incorporates specified instruction and experimentation driven by student independent projects. The exploration of the structural and historical uses of Western and Eastern methods including contemporary issues of recycled and alternative fibers will frame an understanding of the potential uses and appearances of handmade paper. From a basis in sheet forming, pigmenting, sizing, and the use of additives, the class will move into an emphasis on paper as a visual and sculptural object, covering paper casting and other three-dimensional approaches. Fall 2025. May not be repeated.
Audiovisual I is the first semester of a two-semester trajectory. In semester one, students will be introduced to concepts, production techniques, and multiple histories of artists’ sound and moving image work, exploring origins and evolutions of animation, film, video, and audio recording. Alongside a historical and theoretical framework, a wide range of practical tools will be introduced, including pre-cinematic image capture, 16mm film and digital cinema production, stop action animation, sound recording, and lighting. This is an assignment-driven class where students will work independently and in groups, supported by classroom instruction, screenings, workshops, and one-on-one meetings with the professor. Each of these modes will also contribute toward student development of critical thinking and language in which to conceptualize, make, and share with the class their time-based work. Fall 2025. May not be repeated. 104
Audiovisual II is the second semester of a two-semester trajectory. The course is designed for students to further their exposure to important concepts, production techniques, and histories of artists’ sound and moving image work, while developing the tools to work independently in the audiovisual realm. With an emphasis on students developing longer form prompted and self-generated projects, AV2 will delve further into both conventional and experimental techniques of moving image and sound recording, assembly, editing, post-production, lighting, and installation. Through classroom instruction, screenings, guest artist visits and group critiques, students will experiment with multiple modes of making, while also evolving critical thinking and language in which to conceptualize, make, and share with the larger class and school community their time-based work. Fall 2025. May not be repeated. Pre-Req: AV I.
This class will introduce strategies for understanding and participating in the aural world. The course is divided into specific weekly topics including acoustic ecology, radio transmission, and others. Screenings, readings, and discussion are supported by hands-on workshops in capturing, manipulating, and reproducing sound in unconventional ways. Grading is based on student projects and participation in class discussions. Fall 2025. May not be repeated.
This class will explore a range of concepts that govern typographic form, from the geometric shapes that make up an individual letterform to the way words and sentences behave in a composition. Projects will address the modular systems that generate typefaces along with the ways that principles from the physical world can influence the way letters and words look, act, and engage in space. Students are encouraged to think expansively—outside conventional typography—and to incorporate purposeful play into their experiments. Fall 2025. May be repeated. Pre-Req: GD I, GD II, and Typography.
Advanced Studio: Ethics in Design is an advanced course in graphic design. Classes are a blend of conversation and creating. We’ll use a loose framework of working backwards to help us complete projects. Students are encouraged to work in whichever medium they feel most comfortable in. We’ll work together as if we were in a real studio. The teacher (that’s me) will work as a creative director and the students (that’s you) will work as designers, owning and delivering on creative work. Storytelling is the core theme of this course. We’ll use our time to investigate the answers to these questions: What is the story you want to tell? What do you want the audience to take from your work? What does your visual voice look like? You are encouraged to drive each other’s work through discussion and critique. Fall 2025. May be repeated. Pre-Req: GD II and Pre/Co-Req: Typography. 108
This class gives students an opportunity to conduct investigations of their own choosing through a series of open-ended prompts. We will look at the wide range of methods used in contemporary design practice and investigate ways they can be used to generate your own work. Projects include expanding on a past project, accumulating a series of daily acts of design, and creating a format to house contributions solicited from classmates. We will discuss a variety of techniques for creating self-generated work with a focus on how projects can be presented and circulated. Students will be required to share their explorations in carefully designed and clearly articulated presentations. Visiting lectures, videos, and readings will complement group critiques and one-on-one meetings. In this course students will complete two fully realized independent projects. Emphasis will be placed on contemporary graphic design and typographic practices and on developing a personal voice and aesthetic. Students are expected to regularly present their works-in-progress and to participate actively in class discussions. Visiting lecturers, readings, and individual meetings with the instructor will complement group critiques. Fall 2025. May be repeated. Pre-Req: GD II and Pre/Co-Req: Typography.
An exploration of the nature of interactive design and how it informs and transforms experience. Information structures, navigational issues, design strategies and social implications of interactive experiences using traditional as well as electronic media will be examined. Over the course of the semester, students will learn how data influences how AI functions and apply the basics of game design to explore, design & prototype solutions for the issues they collectively wish to address at the intersection of contemporary culture & digital media. The goal of the class is to dive into our ideas and biases surrounding technology and humanity and create something meaningful through it. The key takeaways from this interdisciplinary course are cultivating an understanding of the AI & Data, system biases, human-centered design process and game design. Students will develop systems thinking skills and the ability to work collaboratively in an interdisciplinary environment, challenge and solve problems that they encounter. Also, learn the practice creating by iteration and explore different prototyping and testing methods within aesthetics, engineering and structural design. Fall 2025. May be repeated.
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to digital fabrication and is designed to augment existing practices through access to new tools, materials, and concepts for art production. Students will learn fundamental skills and will utilize a variety of digital fabrication methods including 3D printing, laser cutting, and CNC machining, along with software & capture methods such as: Rhino 3D and 3D scanning. In the first half of the course, students will learn fundamental digital fabrication skills through technical demos and technique-oriented projects. In the second half of the course, students will develop a body of work utilizing these tools. We will move between computer classrooms, the AACE lab, and individual studios to explore topics such as built environments, sculptural methods, and medium specificity. As background, we will explore the history of digital fabrication, and ask critical questions about its relevance and impact on creative industries and society more broadly. Fall 2025. May be repeated. 115
Students will explore the conceptual and technical challenges of design for the television screen. All aspects of industry video/ broadcast production are introduced and integrated into a design core focused on strong communication. Projects include identity design, combining kinetic typography, animation, sound and video. The course includes workshops in After Effects, Final Cut Pro and Protools. Fall 2025. May be repeated. Pre-Req: GD II and Pre/Co-Req: Typography.
This course offers students individual and group contexts to discuss their work and personal development as an artist. Students engage with relevant, practical, historical and contemporary discussions around painting. There is an emphasis on personal development. Clarification of interests, content, material processes center students within the context of advanced study. Individual and group critiques offer students opportunities to further locate their practice and voice as an artist. Various media and experiences such as lectures, films, reading and field trips expand classroom and individual studio space learning. Fall 2025. May be repeated. Pre-Req: Painting I and Pre/Co-Req: Painting II.
The Katz Chair is a distinguished artist working in the fields of Painting and Drawing invited to teach for one term. The style and objectives of this course vary and build in relationship to the Katz Chair, their work, research and experiences as an artist. The flexible nature of this course is for highly self-motivated students who wish to collaborate and/or work closely with a distinguished practitioner in the field. The course offers students opportunity for further growth within the context of advanced study. Individual critiques and group critiques guide individual studio development. Media such as readings, films, lectures and field trips support the course objectives. Fall 2025. May be repeated. Pre-Req: Painting I and Pre/Co-Req: Painting II.
The Katz Guest Artist Series is named after and funded by Cooper Union alumni Alex Katz. This course introduces contemporary emerging and established artists in the fields of Painting & Drawing guided by a Cooper Union faculty. The course offers students opportunity for further growth within the context of advanced study through conversations around professional practices and individual development. Students interact with each guest in lectures, one-on-one studio visits and group critiques. Lectures introduce students to a wide range of practice and perspectives in Painting or Drawing within a classroom setting or field trips to guest artist studios. There is time for critical discussion about the material presented. Individual studio spaces become sites for creation, research, presentations and meetings with faculty and guest artists. In this way, the course reflects the professional space of the artist studio. Students develop a deeper connection to their personal language and practice through a rigorous studio visit and lecture schedule. Students experience the “real world” model of studio visits in which visitors not familiar with their work or immediate concerns engage them. In this way students develop the communication of their work and interests outside of the traditional classroom structure. Group critiques and media such as readings and film expand and clarify student development and course objectives. Fall 2025. May be repeated. Pre-Req: Painting I and Pre/Co-Req: Painting II. 110
This course is for students seeking further growth in drawing, either as individual studio focus or as a tool for ideation and methodologies within other disciplines. Advanced study in drawing interrogates historical notions of traditional draftmanship and the contemporary contexts of the discipline. Students are encouraged to explore and experiment with drawing as a way to further develop visual understandings of pictorial, sculptural or temporal space. The course is intended to help students use drawing as a critical and procedural tool within individual art practice. Group critiques and drawing sessions as well as individual meetings with the instructor are integral components of the course. Fall 2025. May be repeated. Pre-Req: Drawing. *Beginning Spring 2026, Drawing will no longer be a pre-requisite for Advanced Drawing.
This course is focused on advanced studies across all forms of print media toward the development of individual student work. Instruction will build on the introductory level courses, covering color separations, extended techniques, experimental approaches, and additional print media forms. Student development will be driven by individual meetings and a series of group critiques. Fall 2025. Pre-Req: 2 Printmaking Classes (Etching, Lithography, Relief, Paper: Materiality and Sustainability, or Screen P
This course provides an introduction to Relief printing techniques. Projects will cover hand carving wood and alternative surfaces, with specific attention to the Japanese water-based woodblock tradition and the western oil-based tradition. Instruction will cover printing by hand, as well as printing on Etching presses, hydraulic presses and Letterpresses. Fall 2025. May not be repeated. 113 COURSE CATALOG 2025–26 rinting). Credits: 3
Students will advance their practice by producing work using photographic material(s), cameras or any photographic device of their choice. Work will be discussed in group critiques as well as individual conferences with the instructor. Photographic issues and representation will be the subject of readings and class discussions. Fall 2025. May be repeated. Pre-Req: L/S/P I and Pre/Co-Req: L/S/P II. 111
This course breaks the barriers between digital and analog photography, transforming meaning and content through various forms of manipulation. Fastpaced hands-on demos include hand-applied photographic emulsions (such as cyanotype, Van Dyke, palladium, and liquid light) and digital printing/transferring options (beyond emulating the traditional print, on surfaces such as paper, wood, metal, fabric, etc.). Eco-friendly options will be discussed and explored. The production of large-format analog and digital negatives will also be explored. Student work will be discussed in relation to contemporary art issues. Fall 2025. May be repeated. Pre-Req: L/S/P I and Pre/Co-Req: L/S/P II.
This course is intended to help students clarify and further the growth of their own work through group and individual critiques, classroom presentations and discussions with a contemporary photo based artist in the position of the Wolf Chair. Fall 2025. May be repeated. Pre-Req: L/S/P I and Pre/Co-Req: L/S/P II.
This course explores the intersections of contemporary art, sonic technologies, performance, and the social responsibility of science, with a critical focus on the ethical dimensions of empiricism, genetic surveillance, and histories of quantification. We will examine how 19th-century systems of knowledge—emerging alongside industrial capitalism—produced categories of difference through accounting mechanisms that determined what counted as material reality. These theoretical assumptions continue to shape human biomonitoring and genetic sampling, where the bodies of workers have served as chemical sensing devices for polluted environments and sites of extraction. The metabolic entanglement of human populations with their surroundings reveals how biotechnologies function not only as tools of environmental assessment but also as mechanisms of control and surveillance under the guise of objectivity. Against these structures, we ask: What are the moral and political implications of these empirical systems? How do plantocratic logics persist within contemporary scientific and technological frameworks? Can the racializing assumptions embedded in these methodologies be interrupted by a poetics of science? Black Secret Technology, an album by A Guy Called Gerald, offers one possible counterpoint—a coded system of knowledge that, like alchemy, demands processes of decoding and distillation. This course embraces interdisciplinarity by thinking across the natural sciences, technoscience, media geologies, Black Studies, aesthetics, and bioethics. We will engage with the works of Moor Mother, Butch Morris (“Conduction”), Aki Sasamoto, mayfield brooks, and artists employing DNA and biotechnical processes. Readings will include texts by Ramon Amaro, Katherine McKittrick, Stuart Hall, Lorraine Daston, Jussi Parikka, and others. The course includes weekly project exercises, class discussions and a culminating project that invites students to develop an artistic practice or work informed by these ideas. Fall 2025. 116
Editing isn’t just a means to an end – it’s an artform in itself. The many processes involved in editing literally sculpt your recordings and found material to yield something entirely new. In this course, we will focus on the techniques, theories and histories of editing. We will work on story building, and the strategic use of transitions, effects and compositing to create meaning and affect the emotions of viewers. We will consider the following questions: How does editing create a sense of a real or imaginary space? How does editing create dramatic tension or a sense of the poetic dimension of everyday life? Who are the key figures in the conceptualization of film and video editing and what are their most important ideas? How have certain technical innovations transformed editing practices? Students will be encouraged to develop their own projects in the course and strengthen their editing techniques so that they can take their moving image work to a higher level. Fall 2025. Pre-Req: AV I and Pre/Co-Req: AV II. 105
This course will be focused around viewing, discussing, and producing audio/visual works that, through experiencing them, deform you. These are works that distort the norm, disrupt convention, and disregard expectation to produce effects both physiologically and psychically altering. If Transformers are “More Than Meets the Eye,” Deformers contort the eyes and the mind, in ways both transitory and lasting, ever so slightly warping what was there before. Deformers Too will focus explicitly on these themes in comedy, material behavior, and (infra)structural films. Students will work independently on self-directed projects after proposing a work or set of works that directly engage with the course topic. Class time will be used for screenings and listening sessions, discussion and analysis of works and related writing, artist visits, individual presentations, and one on one visits with the professor. Fall 2025. Pre-Req: AV I and Pre/Co-Req: AV II. 106
This course will emphasize a balance between craft and concept in making Sculpture as creative acts that produce physical interventions in the world. Unlike other courses, we will work closely with the 4th floor Shop facilities to explore how a combination of woodworking, metalworking, casting, as well as other fabrication methods (plastics, sewing, new technologies, etc.) can facilitate and expedite each student’s vision. Students are expected to be self-driven and self- motivated with their projects. they are interested in working on over the semester. This class will help reinforce their technical and material research in completing complex fabrication. Skills will be learned as well as built upon, and workdays will be integrated into class time to get as much hands-on experience as possible. Fall 2025. May be repeated.
This is a sculpture studio course. While all media are welcome, we will approach the course with sculptural concerns. The theme of the class is Narrative and Sculpture with a focus on Relationships to Systems. This class is loosely defining a system as a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. The class is broken into three ways of exploring this theme: artists intervening within existing systems; artists reinventing or creating their own systems; artists displacing or circulating material from one system to another. Together we will look at examples of artists practice which fall within these themes, visit related exhibitions, and host visiting artists. Throughout the class, students will make their own works or projects with these themes in mind. Fall 2025. May be repeated. 114
Do institutions need therapy? Yes, they probably do. This class explores the concept of institutional therapy in relation to art making through field trips, visitors, discussions, presentations, readings, class critiques, and a collaborative assignment. We will approach institutional therapy as a creative, nonhierarchical practice for transforming systems within institutions in order to generate change from within. Originally a term used in alternative psychiatry, we will consider its use in relation to broader societal institutions that have developed throughout history, as well as the art system. This class will ask questions such as: Which institutions are in need of remediation and what might an art practice that can do that look like? How does institutional therapy compare to institutional critique as an art practice? Can art ‘heal’ or even shift systemic issues, and if so how could desire be an important component of that practice? Fall 2025. 117
Source: The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
