The aim of this course is two-fold: First, to develop an understanding of the extraordinary variety of ways meaning is produced in visual culture; secondly, to enable students to analyze and describe the social, political and cultural effects of these meanings. By studying examples drawn from contemporary art, film, television, digital culture, and advertising we will learn techniques of analysis developed in response to specific media and also how to cross-pollinate techniques of analysis in order to gain greater understanding of the complexity of our visual world. Grades are based on response papers, class attendance and participation, and a midterm and a final paper. Occasional film screenings will be scheduled as necessary in the course of the semester.

Location

Morey Room 504 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course introduces students to the theory and practice of media studies. We will look at a range of both media and historical tendencies related to the media, including manuscript culture, print, and the rise of the newspaper, novel, and modern nation-state; photography, film, television and their respective differences as visual mediums; important shifts in attitudes towards painting; the place of sound in the media of modernity; and the computerization of culture brought about by the computer, social networks, video games, and cell phones. In looking at these, we will consider both the approaches that key scholars in the field of media studies use, and the concepts that are central to the field itself (media/medium; medium-specificity; remediation; the culture industry; reification and utopia; cultural politics). By the end of the class, students will have developed a toolkit for understanding, analyzing, and judging the media that shape their lives in late modernity.

Location

Meliora Room 203 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Buildings are among the most public, visible, and long lived artifacts that a culture creates.  The built environment serves as both a repository of cultural information and exerts an influence that extends beyond the society that created it.  Architecture is art in a physical, three dimensional reality; it responds to the limitations of technology, design, and space while materializing ideals of aesthetics and beauty.  Famous designers, trained architects, anonymous craftspeople, and laypeople alike create architectural forms. 

This studio art course will introduce the ways in which we design, create, study, and convey architecture.  We will investigate practices of architectural design, history, building craft, and engineering in this class through lectures, research, in-class exercises, and thematic assignments.  The course will culminate with a fully realized design for a small building of your own invention.  This course will challenge you to recognize precedent forms and to create designs of your own, from sketch to 3D model making, that explore basic design elements.  Skills explored in this course can be used to gain a better understanding of the built world around us and pursue further studies in architecture.

This course is open to all majors, and prior architecture study is not required. If the course fills and you would like to be added to the waitlist, fill out the form found at this link: https://www.sageart.center/resources.

Location

Sage Arts Center Room 103 (MW 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

The objective of this course is to provide the necessary tools to enable critical reflection on the respective values and mutual relationships of comics, art and film. The first weeks will be spent acquiring the technical and historical context that will enable us to begin to recognize the breadth and depth of word/image narrative practices. After developing a core vocabulary for thinking about comics as a medium we will then look at how artists and directors have drawn on that vocabulary in a range of different contexts. Retaining a sense of the specificity of both comics and film as artistic mediums, we will closely consider topics ranging from cross-cultural translation, ontologies of otherness, and modes of mediated history. Course requirements include class participation, an autobiographical comic, weekly wordless posts, a vocabulary quiz and a final paper/project.  

Location

Gavett Hall Room 301 (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This course will introduce students to the art, architecture, and archeology of ancient Egypt, from the Predynastic Period until the country’s inclusion into the Roman Empire. This course will highlight the wide range of materials encountered in Egyptian archaeology—architectural remains in secular, sacred, and funerary contexts; material culture (pottery, stone and wooden artifacts, artistic creations); human and faunal remains; written documents; iconographic material—and will evaluate how they reflect the cultural, social, and political organization of each major period of Egyptian history. Special attention will be given to both Egypt’s interconnections with its neighbors—Nubians, Libyans, and inhabitants of Syria-Palestine—and the impact of religion on the artistic production. Material will be presented to the students in the form of lectures, student-led discussions on specific readings and topics, and guest lectures.

Location

Hylan Building Room 101 (MW 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

This course introduces students to art made from the late 19th century to the present. We examine the various movements in their historical contexts, from Impressionism and post-Impressionism through Cubism, Abstraction Expressionism, Pop and Minimalism, as well as contemporary developments like installation and performance art. We consider how issues of gender, technological developments, and wars and social movements have affected art. The course is taught through a combination of lecture and discussion, and we will be constantly looking at images to understand how ideas, social change, and history are refracted in works of modern art.

Location

Hylan Building Room 102 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

This course surveys the art and architecture of the Islamic world from the seventh century to the present. It investigates a wide range of artifacts, buildings, and cities from Spain to India around three interrelated themes: piety, power, and propaganda. This class discusses key monuments, from religious buildings such as the Ka‘ba in Mecca to the architecture of leisure in palaces and gardens. It introduces students to the significance of text on sacred artifacts such as the Qur’an and religious buildings such as mosques to ceramicware of everyday life. It explores the transformation of prominent capital cities of Isfahan, Istanbul, and Cairo under dynastic development, as well as the production of luxurious textiles and glassware in their court workshops as reflections of political power and glory. By studying royal patronage of lavishly ornamented history books, the course shows how kings propagated their legitimacy to rule during political crises. In this class, students will develop a clear sense of the history of the Islamic world through studying its objects and buildings. They will also improve their analytical skills through visual analysis and critical writing.

Location

Meliora Room 205 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

As the recent destruction of archaeological sites in Syria and the removal of Confederate statues in the U.S. show, historical objects, monuments, and sites are not relegated to the past; instead, they are the building blocks of modern identities and politics. This course examines current issues concerning the ownership, protection, and presentation of cultural heritage, including particularly archaeological and historical objects, monuments, and sites.  The course begins with introductory information about archaeology, museum studies, and cultural heritage law.  We then consider such questions as: Who decides what cultural heritage is significant? Who should determine how archaeological and historical sites are presented to the public?  Should private individuals be allowed to purchase objects of historical or archaeological significance?  What moral and ethical responsibilities do museums have?  Who owns cultural objects taken in the context of warfare? There are no prerequisites for this course.

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room 442 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

The second of a sequence of two, the course approaches 'The Divine Comedy' both as a poetic masterpiece and as an encyclopedia of medieval culture. Through a close textual analysis of the second half of 'Purgatorio' and the entirety of 'Paradiso,' students learn how to approach Dante's poetry as a vehicle for thought, an instrument of self-discovery, and a way to understand and affect the historical reality. They also gain a perspective on the Biblical, Christian, and Classical traditions as they intersect with the multiple levels of Dante's concern, ranging from literature to history, from politics to government, from philosophy to theology. A visual component, including illustrations of the 'Comedy' and multiple artworks pertinent to the narrative, complements the course. Class format includes lectures, discussion, and a weekly recitation session. Intensive class participation is encouraged. No prerequisites. Freshmen are welcome. Part of the Dante Humanities Cluster.

Location

Morey Room 501 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Cities of the World explores the histories of a selected group of global cities during notable moments in their social, economic, and political lives. It spans roughly 40 centuries from ancient Mesopotamia to post-world war South America to investigate how cities have been made by, and have made, humans. This course will focus on one or two cities based on a theme each week and discuss the urban built environment and monumental architecture in their historical context. In this course, students will learn about the history of major cities such as Rome, Cairo, Tenochtitlan, Angkor, Paris, Beijing, Isfahan, New York, and Brasília. More importantly, they will comprehend critical social, economic, and political themes from the “Agricultural Revolution” to Capitalism. Finally, they practice how to “read” urban spaces by developing their spatial analytical skills in historical contexts.

Location

Morey Room 525 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

According to art historian Roberto Longhi, it was Dante who first spoke, in Purgatorio XI, of the two languages of the Italians: the language of images – painting/art – and the language of words – poetry/literature – innovated in the 13th century respectively by Giotto and Dante himself. Starting from the premise that understanding Italian culture means to acquire fluency in these two “languages,” the course, complements Italian 203 (Introduction to Italian Literature) by exploring “the historic and artistic patrimony of the nation” (the wording comes from the Italian Constitution), the natural and urban landscape in which this patrimony is integrated, its historical significance and contemporary resonance, and its role in shaping an Italian identity that is by nature and tradition diverse, open, inclusive, and ever changing. At the center of this course project is the civic funtion of art as the privileged instrument to construct meaningful temporal and spacial relationships – among them the relationship of the Italian cities, “the cities of stone,” and the human communities that inhabit them: the cities as the spaces of political life in the sense of active, participatory citizenship. A regular exchange with Italian scholars, specialists in the field, will be scheduled as an integral part of the course. Knowledge of Italian is required for Italian majors. However, the course is open to non majors as well and will be conducted in both Italian and English.

Location

Lattimore Room 413 (T 3:25PM - 6:05PM)

Controversies about the sites, meanings, and relevance of memorial structures in the public sphere have once again summoned the age‐old issue of the monument. This course is interested in monumentality as both a cultural polemic and a methodological problem. Aside from looking at architectonic presences, what does monumentality – understood as a historical condition, as a value system, as an aspiration, as a felt presence, a mode of art making – mean for the current practice of art and architectural history? We will extend beyond the traditional scope of the monument understood as a building or thing, to examine diverse forms and modalities, including: urban infrastructure, grassroots memorials, the filmic image, natural topography, the portable object, the remains of war, dispossession, and persecution, as expressions of, and reactions to, monumentality.

Location

Hylan Building Room 203 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

An examination of the physical remains of ancient Roman civilization, with an emphasis on architecture, sculpture, painting, and other visual arts, in order to understand Roman culture and society.

Location

Lechase Room 141 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters,” said C.S. Lewis, “of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” In recent years, Korean film and television has taken the world by storm in what is no small miracle of marketing, technology, and story-telling, but what does contemporary Korean film and television render visible that would otherwise be difficult to see? Onscreen interactions with the supernatural, divine, or horrific provide a unique medium for myth-making, identity formation, and world-building. In this course students will explore the ways in which religion in Korean film and television confront mortality and collective anxieties, and how the interaction between the religious and nonreligious serve as sites for the construction and interrogation of nation, race, gender, identity, modernity, cosmology, and moral discourse.

Location

Frederick Douglass Room 420 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This class will consider the relationship of art exhibition and production in contemporary art practices as part of a gallery practicum. This course is an introduction to art exhibition practices including research, curation, planning, art handling, installation, and hands-on experience in galleries. Students will install exhibitions in the teaching galleries and spaces on campus, including (but not limited to) Hartnett Gallery and Frontispace Gallery. Students will visit galleries and museums and attend exhibition openings, studio visits, and artist lectures. Studio Art lab fee applied.

Location

Sage Arts Center Room 108 (M 10:25AM - 1:05PM)

Lorraine Hansberry, on March 1, 1959, delivered the closing address of the American Society of African Culture's “First Conference of Negro Writers.” Hansberry advocated for transnational black solidarity, rooted in her belief “that the ultimate destiny and aspirations of the African people and twenty million American Negroes are inextricably and magnificently bound up together forever.” On October 25, 1963, Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana, in a speech at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, called for the study of Africa to be African-centered and be concerned with peoples of African descent in the Americas and the Caribbean. Nkrumah was mandating the African scholar with duty of becoming an active agent in the production of knowledge about the Black Diaspora of the Americas and the Caribbean. Shortly before his death, Malcom X articulated the “importance of realizing the direct connection between the struggle of the Afro-American in this country and the struggle of our people in the world”. Representing African Americans in the African Imagination invites the student to be attentive to the forces that are shaping global black studies, a field that encompasses a wider scope of expression of Africans and people of African descent arising out of shared historical determinants such as the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, and other racialized oppressive ideologies. Representing African Americans in the African Imagination acknowledges the centrality of the African American experience in the construction of a global blackness shaped shared experiences of oppression struggle, and emancipation. Representing African Americans in the African Imagination focuses on the representation of the Black American experience in the literary and cultural productions of Africans, Antilleans, and Black Europe. Taught in English.

Location

Lechase Room 163 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

This course will review the prehistory of ancient societies in the Andes, which will begin from the peopling of the continent to the conquest of the Inca Empire by the Spanish. Students will become familiar with Andean chronologies as well as the prehispanic cultures of Chinchorro, Caral, Chavin, Pukara, Paracas, Moche, Nasca, Wari, Tiwanaku, Chim, and the Inca, among others. Special attention will be paid to how these societies adapted to the diverse ecology of the Andes. Topics include the history of Peruvian archaeology; plant and animal domestication; the development of social complexity, the emergence of religion; prehispanic art and symbolism; ancient technology, economies and trade; and urbanism. The course includes material from archaeological investigations and interpretations as well as ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources.

Location

Meliora Room 224 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

The short-lived Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) produced some of the best works of Chinese painting. Exquisite details were left in the images, many of which have been overlooked in the agendas and methods of current scholarship. We will study scholarly writings about Yuan paintings (topics include the lives and work of the “four masters,” the political tensions between Mongol rulers and the literati painters, and the aesthetics of brushwork, to name a few) and the Complete Collection of Yuan Paintings our library recently acquired, which will allow for a patient examination of these works, so that we might better reflect on their conceptions and renditions. For the final assignment, students will be required to select and write about a recurring detail or technique in the works of a specific painter, embedding it within existing scholarly frameworks, or questioning them with new perspectives.

Location

Morey Room 524 (R 9:40AM - 12:20PM)

This course provides students with knowledge and understanding of the places, people, events; historical and cultural factors; and technological innovations that have influenced the development of graphic design into the practice that it is today. This course examines both the dominant cultural ideas embodied by Graphic Design, as well as the counter-narratives it generates to express diverse cultural identities. Students in this course will question the meaning and form of graphic artifacts.

Location

Rettner Hall Room 307 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

This course examines the foundational texts of photography theories, those that give photography the potential significance to be a “theoretical object” (Michael Fried, 2008) for  art and art history. We will read photography from the perspective of the history and theory   of modernism (Baudelaire, Benjamin), photography’s autonomy and ontology in formalist criticism (André Bazin, John Szarkowski, Beaumont Newhall, Peter Galassi), photography and the question of medium (Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Rosalind Krauss), with reference to competing theoretical models that include but are not restricted to Marxism, semiotics and psychoanalysis, as well as postmodernist critiques of photography’s identity and essence (John Tagg, Allan Sekula, Victor Burgin).

Location

Morey Room 524 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

The Art New York Field Studio course will utilize the resources of New York City as a starting point for creative production. The course will be conducted primarily online, with face-to-face meetings with the professor spread throughout the semester. Projects will take students outside into the city to make art with a rotating variety of media, including photography, video, sound, and installation, with an emphasis on collaboration. Studio Art lab fee applied.

As an integral part of the internship program, all students participating in ANY will meet weekly with the program's resident director. The class will visit museums, art galleries, film & media screenings, & learn from these visits through readings, papers, presentations & discussions. The colloquium will also serve to provide an intellectual framework for understanding the operations of the NY art world & to allow students to discuss with one another their experiences at the various institutions where they intern. Each student will be expected to make a presentation about their internship to the ANY group. There will be an entrepreneurial component which will introduce the students to a wide variety of entrepreneurial activity & innovative practices within arts and culture. Through guest speakers, seminars & field trips the students will learn how entrepreneurial endeavors develop. By the end of the semester, the students will create their own proposal for an entrepreneurial project.

This course provides a detailed examination of the French filmmakers of the New Wave, from

1959 to 1967. We will examine the work of Jean-Pierre Melville, Claude Chabrol, Francois

Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Agnes Varda, and Jacques Rivette. We will also explore

the films' historical context and influence through some attention to their predecessors and

successors. Knowledge of French helpful, but not necessary.

Location

Morey Room 504 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

What does dignity look like? Before the Modern period, dignity—the state of being worthy of honor and respect—was largely conceived as a quality that was either hereditary or earned. Modern values, particularly those indebted to the Enlightenment and Kantian philosophy, upended that notion and put forth the tenet that all human life—irrespective of class—deserves dignity. This class will explore human dignity as a problem germane to the study of the history of art, which includes architecture. Dignity provides a rich terrain for theoretical inquiry, as demonstrated first and foremost by a number of popular and scholarly writings in the area of philosophy, as well as disciplines like law, economics, and sociology. However, this class will also explore the topic of dignity as one that is not merely theoretical. Amidst the myriad catastrophes that we and our built world now face because of the climate crisis, it has become clear that many of us in the Global North can no longer live the way we do. Climate change and the migrations and demographic changes it has already set into motion make it clear that radical alterations to our material world, and our expectations thereof, are urgently needed, and this is where dignity comes into the picture – quite literally – in art and architecture. This class will position dignity as the most important ecocritical tool for understanding how to balance the fallout that climate change brings to everyday life while maintaining a commitment to human dignity and the rights it confers.

Location

Morey Room 524 (W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

Trans studies is an interdisciplinary field that addresses questions of gender, sexuality, and embodiment through the lens of transgender experiences. How does this field change both the ways we look at objects and their forms, and how we consider subjectivity —the ways in which we are overdetermined by not only our individual and interpersonal experiences, but the many frameworks (race, class, etc.) that tell us who we are? In other words, how do we understand a field that is about “who” we are but also about change and transition to fundamentally alter the concept of subjectivity? Further: how can we understand the process of transition as a question inside not only subjectivity, but also form? What terms—from “becoming” to “the body,” from “capacity” to “visibility”—lend trans aesthetics a specific usefulness to thinking about form, and make it an urgent set of methods and methodological challenges for the present? Objects from film and television to contemporary art and media will be the main focus, along with texts by Susan Stryker, Eliza Steinbock, Marquis Bey, Kay Gabriel, Paul Preciado and others; a background or some prior readings in queer theory or queer studies is recommended.

Location

Morey Room 524 (R 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

While the land art movement in the 1960s/1970s changed many understandings of conceptualism (and landscape) in Europe and America, little attention has been paid to its cultural precedents. This seminar surveys the famous enterprises and writings of artists like Robert Smithson, but interprets them through current (and past) "environmental" discourses. Weekly meetings, discussion, and a final paper.

Location

Morey Room 524 (T 9:40AM - 12:20PM)

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

See 'Requirements for Honors in Art History.'

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

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