Assistant or Associate Professor, Film/Animation/Video

Posting Details

Position Information

Title
Assistant or Associate Professor, Film/Animation/Video

Department
Film/Animation/Video

Division
Fine Arts

Employment Type
Full-Time

Critical Review Track (similar to tenure track)
Yes

Position Description

The Department of Film/Animation/Video in the Division of Fine Arts at Rhode Island School of Design invites applications for a full-time faculty appointment at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor, to commence fall 2025. Rank will be dependent on professional status and teaching experience.

RISD recognizes principles of social equity, inclusion, and diversity as fundamental to its academic mission as an art and design school. We understand these principles to require ongoing attention to difference and expansion of the forms of knowledge from which our curricula originate. RISD is engaged in the collective work of institutional transformation and would value applicants whose pedagogical and professional experiences have prepared them to foster equitable teaching and learning environments. We encourage applicants whose teaching and professional work (creative practice and/or academic scholarship) centers on bodies of knowledge from historically underrepresented communities. We are eager to welcome applicants who can help advance the institution’s social equity, inclusion, and diversity goals and those from groups whose underrepresentation in the American professoriate has been severe and long standing, including Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other People of Color, people who identify as LGBTQIA+, veterans, people with disabilities, and first-generation college students.

Area of Focus: Animation

Animation is an ineffable connection between discrete images that results in a sensation of life. It shapes and creates time. It also requires an implicit collaboration between maker and viewer. Animation’s materials are vast – almost every kind of object and substance. These materials include time itself, movement, and space. At RISD, faculty and students continually augment not only their skills and knowledge of animation, but also work to expand animation itself.

The RISD FAV Department seeks candidates with deep knowledge of Animation and the ability to transform that knowledge into creative work, innovative teaching, curricular development, and engagement with our multilayered department.

Required Qualifications

• Active research in animation as an ever-evolving field; expanding its practice, techniques, and applications
• MFA in Animation or related discipline, or equivalent professional experience
• Practice centered in animation demonstrated by personally-authored works
• At least 5 years of teaching experience at the college level
• Ability to teach across a range of animation studio courses, from sophomore through senior level, including hand-made and digital animation skills, and the ability to contextualize that knowledge both critically and historically within the larger field of art practice

Preferred Qualifications

Valued Research Interests Include – but are not confined to one or more of the following:

• both hand made and digital animation techniques
• sound design for animation
• stop motion animation
• 3D CGI softwares
• artificial intelligence and machine learning as it pertains to animation
• creative computer programming for animation

RISD/ Department Description

Rhode Island School of Design ( RISD ) is an undergraduate and graduate college of art and design with approximately 2,500 graduate and undergraduate students. RISD has a critical review process, which is very similar to the tenure process. RISD supports faculty professional practice with sabbaticals, pre-critical review leave, conference funds, and professional development grants. For more information about RISD, please visit www.risd.edu .

As a department, FAV values experimentation, critical thinking, broad socio-cultural awareness, and a deep understanding of art-making concepts alongside technical skills.

In a rigorous foundation year, all RISD students take Experimental and Foundation Studies, which focuses on drawing, design, and spatial dynamics and cultivates a commitment to art-making. Sophomore-year introduces students to film, video, animation, and digital practices, fostering conceptual thinking and technical skills. Juniors concentrate in one or more of the program’s learning branches—Live-Action, Animation, and Open Media (OM)—creating more extended projects and showcasing their work in a Junior Show. Seniors go through a year-long sequence of classes in which they undertake extensive research and work on a single project around a specific area of inquiry – culminating in an end-of-year presentation.

FAV has three learning branches: Animation, Live-Action, and Open Media —pathways of study that intersect, intertwine, and sprout subdivisions. Expanding on this metaphor, we envisioned the core elements of the moving image—time, light and sound—as the “tree trunk”.

The Animation branch is a two-and-a-half year curriculum designed to expand the field of animation itself. Our classes are laboratories in which students experiment with the languages and materials of frame-by-frame movement to help them understand, extend, and question the narrative, poetic, essayistic, educational, and aesthetic potentials of the medium.

Much of the work in the program features screen-based filmmaking, but our students also explore interactivity, animation integrated into other art forms, and animated objects or installations. Our students tend to be technologically “bilingual”—easily combining digital and hand-based techniques. They work in all forms of stop-motion, all forms of drawing and painting, 2D digital work, 3D CGI, collage, and pixilation.In addition, sound design for animation is given careful attention in all required classes.

Faculty Responsibilities

The full-time faculty teaching load is five courses a year. In addition to teaching, full-time faculty are expected to maintain a dynamic professional practice, serve on college committees, advise students, participate in curriculum development and other departmental and/or divisional activities and projects, and contribute to the vibrancy of the intellectual life of the college.

Union
Yes

Salary Information

For information about base pay for this position, please refer to Article XII “Salaries” (p. 19-22) in the Faculty Association Collective Bargaining Contract 2022-2025 . The contract indicates the minimum base salary for each rank.

Pre-employment Requirement

The successful candidate will be required to meet our pre-employment background screening requirements.

Special Instructions to Applicants

Please attach the following to the appropriate links in the section labeled “Documents Needed to Apply”:

1.) Letter to the Search Committee. In lieu of a Cover Letter, please describe the role of animation in your artistic life and professional pathway. (Two pages maximum) (Attach to the section labeled “Cover Letter")
2.) Curriculum vitae. Please include all dates of employment, academic and professional service, committee work, and community engagement.
3.) Teaching Principles. Describe why teaching animation is meaningful to you. Tell us about your approach and methods, and how you define successful teaching. (One page maximum) (Attach to the section labeled “Teaching Philosophy")
4.) Portfolio of personally authored films not to exceed a total of 17 minutes to be uploaded on password protected Vimeo or YouTube Link. You may include excerpts. You may also submit 10 images from non-time-based work. (Please put such images into a pdf with descriptions, titles, rough size specifications, and media specifications) Supplemental: You may include a link to your website and links to full versions of personal works, however these may not be reviewed.
5.) Three examples of student work (Not to exceed a total of 15. Upload via a password protected Vimeo or YouTube link.
6.) Three original syllabi for courses taught or proposed. If courses were team taught, highlight your contribution.

Applications may not be edited once they are certified and submitted.

File size is limited to 10 MB per file.

Only materials that have been requested will be considered.

Names and contact information for three references are requested as part of the application process at the finalist stage.

Review of applications begins immediately and continues until the position is filled. Candidates who submit their materials by December 2, 2024 are assured full consideration.

EEO Statement

RISD is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetics, or any other protected characteristic as established by law.

Posting Detail Information

Posting Number
F00111P

Open Date

Close Date

Open Until Filled
Yes
Supplemental Questions

Required fields are indicated with an asterisk (*).

Documents Needed To Apply
Required Documents

1. Cover Letter
2. Curriculum Vitae
3. Portfolio of Professional Work
4. Portfolio of Student Work
5. Teaching Philosophy
6. Sample Syllabi

Optional Documents