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Course NewsSpring Semester 2008 Special Topics Courses
Art History 001S This course will consider how traditional and contemporary African art has been presented to the museum-going public for the past two decades. We will look at major African art exhibitions from all over the world and discuss how each exhibition reflects a certain philosophy about African art. Students will also explore how these exhibitions have influenced the common perceptions and assumptions about African art. The course will cover the Dak'Art series(from Senegal), “Africa Explores” (from the United States), “Magiciens de la Terre” (from France), “Miscast” (from South Africa), “Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa” (from the United Kingdom), “Documenta XI” (from Germany). No Prerequisite. No Prerequisite Art History 350W Early historians of Rome traced the roots of the city back to Romulus and Remus, the two twins nourished by a she-wolf, the literary figure Aeneus, and even the goddess Venus. The city was given mythical origins even in antiquity, idealized as the powerful capitol of the Roman Empire, and eulogized when the Empire was under attack and collapsed. In the course of the city's history, the imagery of the pagan empire has been revived as an expression of power and subsumed into a Christian narrative as the city morphed from Imperial capital to seat of Catholic authority. Through architectural, archaeological, and literary sources, we will explore the artistic, monumental, and urban history of Rome. We will look at Rome chronologically, beginning with the earliest settlements on the Palatine, moving to the creation of the Vatican and papal patronage in Rome, and ending with the controversy surrounding the new museum built by Richard Meier to house the Ara Pacis. By the end of the course, students should have an idea of how to evaluate trends in architecture and situate them in a changing social, historical, political, and cultural context. Prerequisite: fifth-semester standing, 6 credits of art history at the 300-level or above. Art History 409 Museum Studies explores the theory and practice of American art museums in the midst of philosophical and theoretical transformation. The Palmer Museum of Art serves as a space wherein students may negotiate both the connections and dissimilarities between theory and practice. This objectives of this course are to introduce current museum philosophy developed by scholars and museum administrators, curators, educators, exhibition designers, and registrars; explore the historical and cultural foundations of art museums in the United States as well as the discursive social and political forces that shape them; develop a critical assessment of both theory and practice in the museum context; facilitate understandings of how each department/position functions as part of an institutional body; and discuss the ethics and accountability standards to which all museum personnel are expected to adhere. Prerequisite: 6 credits of ART H, ART, and/or A ED Art History 410 "Taste and Criticism" is a seminar dedicated to the study of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment aesthetic theory and critical practice. There will be very little emphasis on images. Rather, through readings we will study the ways in which "taste" and the very notion of the aesthetic has developed and changed through history. As we approach these sources, we should pay special attention to the political implications of the theories we read. We'll investigate, for example, the social function that "disinterested pleasure" served in the mid-18th century. Other topics of the course will be: the relationship of aesthetic pleasure to class one's class position; the gendering of aesthetic categories; aesthetic responses to cultural otherness; the changing role of the critic; the political usefulness of the sublime in postmodern theory; possible categories of aesthetic experience beyond the beautiful or the sublime such as cuteness and the grotesque; the debate over the national character of certain aesthetic theories; the (im)possibility of psychoanalytic approaches to the aesthetic. Prerequisite: 6 credits of Art History Art History 414 This course will explore the art, careers, and reputations of three of the most famous artists of the Italian Baroque from a variety of historiographic and critical perspectives through a reading of primary and secondary sources, including contemporary documents and biographies. We shall also consider the way that posthumous reputations of these artists have framed, and re-framed, through a series of shifting interpretive approaches. In the case of Caravaggio, we shall consider the ways his work has been viewed through (sometimes sensationalistic) prisms of sexuality and violence. Violence is also a major theme in the reception of Artemisia Gentileschi's work, which has been the subject of considerable interpretive debate since her "rediscovery" by feminist scholars in the 1970s and 80s. In the case of Bernini, the issue of "reputation" is especially significant, especially as it relates to his status as a prodigy and virtuoso as a sculptor who pushed the boundaries of the "possible" (in his earlier work) and stretched the limits of "authorship" and authenticity in his later, big-scale productions, where he worked with an army of (not always acknowledged) assistants and creative partners. In the end, it is my hope that we, as a class, will approach a clearer understanding of how artistic "personalities" are constructed (and reconstructed) over time. Prerequisite: ART H 100, 112, or 304 Art History 476 Histories / Theories of Digital Art is a very wide and diverse subject. This advanced class focuses specifically on the question of 'aesthetics' of new media art, as it relates to the contemporary art discourses of difference, body, politics and sexuality. Main areas to be covered are: the aesthetics of 'control', 'interactivity', 'machine' and 'the real / virtual', cross-cultural attitudes to technology and art. After a short introduction into 'media art' such as film, video and 2D digital media, we move to focus on new media art forms, such as interactive art, robotic art, bio-art and net-art, Virtual Reality installations, etc. This course intentionally adopts an international and intercultural perspective, as new media reflects the trends in globalization and in what Paul Virilio calls 'collapse of space / time' in the digital age. In the past few decades there have been rapid changes in our perceptions on creativity and the work of art. Simultaneously we observe how latest developments in Information and Communication Technologies have radically affected our lives. One of the main notions that bring contemporary art and information technologies together is that of "interactivity". The course seeks to explore this crucial element of new media art in its historic precedents (such as in avant-garde and performance art) and contemporary manifestations, heavily relying on critical engagements with it and its new exhibition strategies. Our main focus is on individual artists and art groups, and how these works connect to the history of contemporary art both in terms of their use of new materials (such as rapid prototyping, gaming, hacking) and their definition of "art" and the artist's role in today's society (autonomy-responsibility; politics; aesthetic research, etc). Specific artists include Stelarc, cyberfeminist art collective SubRosa, Raqs Media Collective, Roxy Paine, and others. This is a seminar-style class, with students conducting one case study presentation, writing one paper and producing one work in new media as 'hands-on' project. As a part of this class, we will make a trip to one of exciting new media facilities available on campus, such as Virtual Environment Laboratory in Stuckeman Family Building, or rapid prototyping facility. Prerequisite: ART H 100, ART H 112, ART H 307, ART H 325, ART H 326, or ART 211 Art History 497A Commemoration is a multi-faceted process with implications for social, cultural, and religious history. Most early modern commemoration practices indicate that the death of the body did not preclude the participation of t he deceased in social life. Through the commission of a private chapel in a church, for example, or a testamentary request for the recitation of suffrages by the living, the construction of posthumous identity in popular memory could find definition. Using a broad range of interdisciplinary sources including funerary monuments, theological propositions about dying, and legislation, this course will explore artistic and architectural conceptions of death, memorial, and the rituals of dying in early modern Europe. Lectures and discussions will address liturgical rites for the dead, holy and royal deaths, causes for death, and the evolution of the afterlife. Throughout the course of the semester, students will develop and report on their individual research projects as they relate to the major themes of the course. Prerequisite: ART H 100, 112, 202, 303, or 313 Art History 497B In this lecture/seminar course, we will examine the relationship between urban environments and film in a comparative perspective. While the focus of the course remains Asian cities and Asian film, we will begin with an examination of the theories of the Chicago and LA schools of urban sociology through American and European films and through cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Berlin. We will then concentrate on the experience of Asian cities and the processes of urbanization as they unfold in cities such as Hong Kong, Mumbai (Bombay), Istanbul and Banaras. At a broader scale, we will use urban theory to explore the relationship between cinema and the city. Prerequisite: ART H 100, 112, 120, 202, 320, or 340. Art History 497C This course will look at the emergence and evolution of photographic practices among Africans on the continent from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We will review the history of colonialism in Africa and discuss how contact with Europe influenced the technological development of Africa. Specifically, students will learn about the different routes that early photography took from Europe to different parts of Africa. We will also look at how Europeans used early photography in Africa (as postcards, anthropological documents, and colonial records) versus how Africans adapted photography to their preexisting art practices and traditions. Students will also see how later photographs changed with the politico-economic atmosphere of Africa. Overall, this course will look at different photographic traditions in Africa and talk about how they evolved over a period of 150 years. Prerequisite: ART H 100, 112, 120, 130, 202, 325, or 335 Art History 497D This course is a survey of African American art from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. The overarching theme of the course will be the search for identity and the sense of double consciousness arising from the social-political realities of being a hyphenated citizen in twentieth-century America. Topics of particular interest will include the reclamation of African art and culture beginning in the Harlem Renaissance; mainstream modes and the Black Power movement in the middle decades of the century; the role of ancestral legacies, spirituality, and narrative in the work of contemporary African American women; and the confrontation and reinvention of debilitating stereotypes of black Americans evident in a broad range of work produced since the civil rights era. Prerequisite: ART H 100, 112, 307, 325, or 335 Art History 497E Caravaggio, Shakespeare, Rubens, Cervantes, Monteverdi--these cultural icons produced many of their best works in the decade that inaugurated the seventeenth century. This interdisciplinary, team-taught course explores the oeuvres and historical milieux of these and other remarkable artists who flourished in a tempestuous context of world exploration, Catholic Reformation, and scientific discovery. Each week one meeting offers lectures by course professors and eminent visiting scholars, while a second, smaller section concentrates on study and discussion of the visual arts. As part of a larger Institute for the Arts and Humanities initiative, the semester will include an exhibition at the Palmer Museum, performances by visiting companies of Shakespeare and Monteverdi, and other cultural events. ART H 100, 112, 202, 303, 304, 307, 313, or 314 |
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Last Updated: Thursday, May 15, 2008
