Introduction to the History of Architect

INTR HISTORY ARCHITECTURE

This course is required for architectural history and theory majors, but is also open to students interested in a general introduction to the history of architecture, considered on a global scale. Architecture is analyzed through in-depth case studies of key works of sacred, secular, public, and domestic architecture from both the Western canon and cultures of the ancient Americas and of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic faiths. The time frame ranges from ancient Mesopotamia to the modern era. Discussion section is required.

• TR 6:10 p.m.-7:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Eleonora Pistis
  Info
• 4 points

INTRO TO ARCHITECTURE-DISC

Required discussion section for AHIS UN1007

• W 10:10 a.m.-11 a.m.
• W 11:10 a.m.-noon
• W 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
• W 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• R 11:10 a.m.-noon
• R 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Jonah D Gold
  Info
• 0 points

ROME BEYOND ROME

This course will approach the art of the Roman empire from two vantage points. In its first half, it will consider it from the inside. Through a regional survey of the art and architecture produced in the provinces of the Roman empire between the 2nd c. BCE and the 4th c. CE, it will focus on the mechanisms by which models emanating from Rome were received andadapted in local contexts (so-called “Romanization”), as well as on the creative responses that the provincials’ incorporation into the empire elicited. The second half of the course will consider the art of the Roman empire from the outside, i.e., from the perspective of its neighbors in the Middle East and in Africa, as well as its self-proclaimed successors andimitators. On the one hand, we will see how ancient states such as the kingdom of Meroë and the Parthian empire, or regions such as the Gandhara, interacted with the visual culture of Rome and its empire. On the other, we will explore the degree to which the classical roots of the modern colonial empires in Asia, Africa, and the Americas both managed and failed to shape the visual cultures that these empires developed.

CC/GS/CE: Partial fulfillment of Global Core requirement.

• MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Francesco de Angelis
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 4 points

ROME BEYOND ROME-DISC

• W 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
• R 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• R 6:10 p.m.-7 p.m.
• R 7:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Elizabeth G Wickersham
  Info
• 0 points

RENAISSANCE IN IMPERIAL SPAIN

The course will survey Renaissance art in Hapsburg Spain, considered in the wide geographical context of the extended and dispersed dominions of the different crowns of the Spanish monarchy, which connected the Iberian Peninsula with Italy, Flanders and the New World. It will concern visual art in its various media, mainly painting, sculpture and architecture, but also tapestries, prints, armor, goldsmithery and ephemeral decoration, among others. Works of the main artists of the period will be introduced and analyzed, giving attention to the historical and cultural context of their production and reception. The course will particularly focus on the movement of artists, works and models within the Spanish Hapsburg territories, in order to understand to what extent visual arts contributed to shaping the political identity of this culturally composite empire.

• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Diane Bodart
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

Nineteenth-Century Art in Europe

19th-Century Art in Europ

How do you represent a revolution? What does it mean to picture the world as it “really” is? Who may be figured as a subject or citizen, and who not? Should art improve society, or critique it? Can it do both? These are some of the many questions that the artists of nineteenth-century Europe grappled with, and that we will explore together in this course. This was an era of rapid and dramatic political, economic, and cultural change, marked by wars at home and colonial expansion abroad; the rise of industrialization and urbanization; and the invention of myriad new technologies, from photography to the railway. The arts played an integral and complex role in all of these developments: they both shaped and were shaped by them. Lectures will address a variety media, from painting and sculpture to the graphic and decorative arts, across a range of geographic contexts, from Paris, London, Berlin, and Madrid to St. Petersburg, Cairo, Haiti, and New Zealand. Artists discussed will include Jacques-Louis David, Francisco Goya, Théodore Géricault, J.M.W. Turner, Adolph Menzel, Ilya Repin, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Mary Cassatt, James McNeill Whistler, C. F. Goldie, Victor Horta, and Paul Cézanne.

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Meredith Gamer
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Noam M Elcott
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 7 Info
• 3 points

ARTS OF AFRICA

Introduction to the arts of Africa, including masquerading, figural sculpture, reliquaries, power objects, textiles, painting, photography, and architecture. The course will establish a historical framework for study, but will also address how various African societies have responded to the process of modernity.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Zoe S Strother
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

ARTS OF CHINA, JAPAN AND KOREA

Introduces distinctive aesthetic traditions of China, Japan, and Korea--their similarities and differences--through an examination of the visual significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, architecture, and other arts in relation to the history, culture, and religions of East Asia.

• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Yuri Handa
  Info
• 3 points

PRE-COLUMBIAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE

The Western Hemisphere was a setting for outstanding accomplishments in the visual arts for millennia before Europeans set foot in the so-called “New World.” This course explores the early indigenous artistic traditions of what is now Latin America, from early monuments of the formative periods (e.g. Olmec and Chavín), through acclaimed eras of aesthetic and technological achievement (e.g. Maya and Moche), to the later Inca and Aztec imperial periods. Our subject will encompass diverse genre including painting and sculpture, textiles and metalwork, architecture and performance. Attention will focus on the two cultural areas that traditionally have received the most attention from researchers: Mesoamerica (including what is today Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras) and the Central Andes (including Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia). We will also critically consider the drawing of those boundaries—both spatial and temporal—that have defined “Pre-Columbian” art history to date. More than a survey of periods, styles, and monuments, we will critically assess the varieties of evidence—archaeological, epigraphic, historical, ethnographic, and scientific—available for interpretations of ancient Latin American art and culture.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Lisa Trever
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

INTRO LIT/METHODS OF ART HIST

Required course for department majors. Not open to Barnard or Continuing Education students. Students must receive instructors permission. Introduction to different methodological approaches to the study of art and visual culture. Majors are encouraged to take the colloquium during their junior year.

• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Lisa Trever
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

SENIOR THESIS

Prerequisites: the departments permission. Required for all thesis writers.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Barry G Bergdoll
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

The Public Monument in Antiquity

Pub. Monument in Antiquit

This seminar will focus on the invention of the public monument as a commemorative genre, and the related concepts of time, memory and history in the ancient Near East (west Asia), Egypt, and Greece. Public monuments will be studies in conjunction with ancient texts (in translation) as well as historical criticism, archaeological and art historical theories. The seminar considers ancient monuments in relation to, and in the context of, modern concepts of monuments, history and heritage and the debates surrounding them. The seminar also introduces these methodologies and debates to students.

• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Zainab Bahrani
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Bruegel s Comic World: Everyday Life i

We are told, in one of the earliest accounts of the life and work of the Netherlandish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569), that his prints and paintings elicited laughter. From his visualizations of carnival celebrations and children's games to peasant weddings to riotous hellscapes, the comic Bruegel makes his viewers, both in the late sixteenth century and today, question whether any of it should be taken seriously. This advanced undergraduate seminar examines Bruegel's innovative comic practice and the social context of laughter and humor in the era of the Dutch Revolt, a time fraught with social, political, and religious strife. We will explore the reception of Bruegel's work in his time, in particular the possibilities of both entertainment and didacticism for viewers. Our studies of pictorial humor in Bruegel's oeuvre will include broader investigations of the secularization of the image in the Reformation context, iconoclasm, the vernacular artistic mode, print culture in early modern Europe, humanism, global expansion and trade, the relationship between pictorial and literary humor, and the functions of satire in visual art. A field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art will allow us to encounter Bruegel's images in person.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Katherine H Gobel
  Info
• 4 points

REFLEXIVITY IN ART & FILM

This seminar will explore a range of individual works of Western art from the 16th century to late 20th century in which the tension between illusionism and reflexivity is foregrounded. It will focus on well-known paintings and films in which forms of realism and verisimilitude coexist with features that affirm the artificial or fictive nature of the work or which dramatize the material, social and ideological conditions of the work’s construction. Topics will include art by Durer, Holbein, Velazquez, Watteau, Courbet, Morisot, Vertov, Deren, Godard, Varda, Hitchcock and others. Readings will include texts by Auerbach, Gombrich, Brecht, Jameson, Barthes, Didi-Huberman, Bazin, Lukacs, Mulvey, and Daney

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Jonathan K Crary
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Zines by Artists

Most often associated with the explosion of punk rock at the end of the 1970s, self-published booklets, fanzines, or simply ’zines actually arose first in the context of science fiction collectors in the 1930s.  Beginning in the early 1970s (independently of, and before the advent of punk music), artists adopted and developed the format as a vehicle for visual expression, drawing from precedents in pop art, artists’ books, mimiographed literary magazines, historical avant-garde movements such as dada, and more contemporaneous developments in conceptual art and mail art.  Overlooked in favor of artists’ books and artists’ magazines, on the one hand, and in favor of various types of music- or personal expression-based zines, on the other, the artist’s zine forms a rich and multifaceted genre spanning over five decades of practice.  This course will examine the artist’s zine in the contexts of both art and music history, issues related to the expression and exploration of race, gender, and sexaulity, and the notions of networking and community building.  Although distinct from the development of punk rock, artists’ zine practice has forged and maintains a close connection to it and to its evolution into Queercore, Riot Grrrl, and Afropunk, all of which are covered in the course readings.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Branden W Joseph
  CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Handicraft and Contemporary Art

Handicraft & Contemporary

This seminar examines the resurgence of craft within contemporary art and theory. In a time when much art is outsourced — or fabricated by large stables of assistants — what does it mean when artists return to traditional, and traditionally laborious, methods of handiwork such as knitting, jewelry making, or woodworking? Though our emphasis will be on recent art (including the Black feminist reclamation of quilts, an artist who makes pornographic embroidery, a cross-dressing ceramicist, queer fiber collectives, do-it-yourself Indigenous environmental interventions, and anti-capitalist craftivism), we will also examine important historical precedents. We will read formative theoretical texts regarding questions of process, materiality, skill, bodily effort, domestic labor, and alternative economies of production. Throughout, we will think through how craft is in dialogue with questions of race, nation-building, gendered work, and mass manufacturing. The seminar is centered around student-led discussion of our critical readings.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Julia Bryan-Wilson
  Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Pastel in 18th-Century Europe

Pastel in 18th-C Europe

This seminar focuses on the practice of pastel in eighteenth-century Europe. Known for its luminosity and fragility—two characteristics linked to its powdery essence—as well as for its practicality, pastel as an artistic medium reached an unprecedented popularity in the eighteenth century. While some painters used it on occasion (Jean-Siméon Chardin, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, John Singleton Copley, to name a few notable examples), others made it their medium of choice, including Rosalba Carriera, Jean-Étienne Liotard, and Maurice-Quentin de la Tour, three of the most sought-after artists of the period. This seminar will examine these dazzling works, many of them portraits but not exclusively, from different perspectives: technique, artists’ manuals, and trade in materials; makeup and the aesthetic discourse; vision and touch; color and the rendition of skin tones; the construction of artistic identity; art criticism; and the commission, collecting, and display of pastels. The seminar will include at least two museum trips, including one to the Frick Madison where the exhibition
Nicolas Party and Rosalba Carriera
is currently on view.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Frederique Baumgartner
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

Narrative in Chinese Art

This course introduces pre-modern Chinese narrative arts, their visual storytelling techniques, and the interpretive questions they raise. What constitutes narrative art and what are its particularities in the East Asian context? How are certain narratives reproduced and translated, and understood in different geographic locales and time periods? We will study popular narratives from the 10th century to the early Qing dynasty, depicted in diverse mediums such as murals, handscrolls and hanging scrolls, ceramic pillows, painted fans, and printed books. The course will be organized thematically and address topics such the influence of Buddhist artistic and liturgical practices, representations of borderlands and the foreign, literati and popular culture, urban life, utopias, and depictions of labor, class, and gender. We will approach narrative from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, including social and cultural history, religious studies, environmental history, and gender studies.

• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Catherine M Zhu
  Info
• 4 points

SUPERVISED INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH

Prerequisites: the departmental consultant or director of undergraduate studies permission, and the instructors permission. Independent research and the writing of an essay under supervision of a member of the Art History Department. Only one independent study may be counted toward the major.

• Instructor: Francesco de Angelis
  CULPA: 10 Info
• Instructor: Lynnette Widder
  Info
• 1-6 points

Medieval Art II: Castles, Cathedral, and

MEDIEVAL ART II

This advanced lecture course is intended for students with little or no background in medieval art of Latin (“Western”) Europe. It provides a comprehensive introduction to a period spanning roughly one millennium, from Pope Gregory the Great’s defense of art ca. 600 to rising antagonism against it on the eve of the Protestant Reformation. Themes under consideration include Christianity and colonialism, pilgrimage and the cult of saints, archaism versus Gothic modernism, the drama of the liturgy, somatic and affective piety, political ideology against “others,” the development of the winged altarpiece, and pre-Reformation iconophobia. We will survey many aspects of artistic production, from illuminated manuscripts, portable and monumental sculpture, stained glass, sumptuous metalworks, drawings, and reliquaries to the earliest examples of oil paintings and prints. While this course is conceived as a pendant to Medieval Art I: From Late Antiquity to the End of the Byzantine Empire (AHIS GU4021), each can be taken independently of one another. In addition to section meetings, museum visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters, and The Morgan Library are a required component to the course. Students must register for a mandatory discussion section.

• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Gregory Bryda
  CULPA: 7 h-index: 1 Info
• 4 points

Medieval Art II Discussion Section

Medieval Art II — Discussion Section

• T 6:10 p.m.-7 p.m.
• M 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• Instructor: Sanja Savic
  Info
• 0 points

Arts of the Silk Road

The term “Silk Road,” coined by German geographers in the nineteenth century, denotes a network of ancient inland routes that traversed between East Asia and the Mediterranean. This course, by focusing on the arts of the Silk Road, introduces cultural and religious exchanges among various regions in Asia, spanning a time period from the sixth century BCE—marked by the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire—to the thirteenth century CE, which saw the rise of the Mongol Empire. The course is organized into three sections: arts of empires, arts of kingdoms, and arts of migrants. Students will examine monuments, objects, and artworks originating from major Asian civilizations and religions, utilizing a comparative and historical perspective. Through this exploration, they will be equipped to understand ancient Asian history as a process of continuous interaction and interconnection between diverse peoples and cultures—a process that precursors globalization in the contemporary age.

• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Jin Xu
  Info
• 3 points

Islam In the Making: An Art and Architec

Art & Arch Hist. of Islam

This lecture course offers an overview of Islamic history through its art and architecture. It spans fifteen centuries and three continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe. Organized chronologically, each session of this course will examine one Muslim city at a particular period of time. Starting with Mecca in the 6th century and ending with the urban and architectural expansions of the same city today. Damascus, Baghdad, Samarra, Kairouan, Cordoba, Bukhara, Cairo, Konya, Istanbul, Algiers, Touba and others will be examined and a critical depiction of urban and architectural monuments, influential artistic schools, and notable artworks that were produced in and around each of these urban centers will be offered. Each session is a snapshot of a city at a specific period of time with a clear emphasis on the broader intellectual, economic, ecological and political contexts surrounding the production of art and architecture in the Muslim world. Turning away from a classical dynastic reading of Islamic arts, this course centers the role theological debates, Sufi mysticism, legal innovations, economic exchanges and migration of people, ideas and technologies played in the birth and developments of a Muslim aesthetic tradition.

• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Iheb Guermazi
  Info
• 3 points

Medieval Illumination in the Low Countri

The course 'Medieval Illumination in the Low Countries: Origins, Sources, Materials' aims to reflect on the place of illumination and the illuminated manuscript in the artistic profile and cultural, literary, political and religious life in the Low Countries and beyond. The development of illumination is closely linked to the cultural and economic situation of the Low Countries during more than eight centuries, but it is also deeply influenced by the intersection of contacts in European artistic, religious and intellectual contexts. The links between artistic networks in other media, the mobility of artists, models and materials are crucial to understanding the production of illuminated manuscripts and to framing them as fully representative of the dynamics of the cultural habitat of the Low Countries. The course will be illustrated with numerous examples and case studies of manuscripts in collections in Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as in collections in US and around the world. A special
file rouge
in the course will be devoted to recent research approaches in material culture and digital access of illuminated manuscripts. The course will be accompanied by PPP and a reading list to guide students ( scans and online resources will be provided). Courses will be held on campus, with several visits to the Manuscript and
Rare Book Collection of the Butler Library
and to the
Manuscript Collections of the Morgan Library
.

• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Lieve Watteeuw
  Info
• 4 points

Art and Theory in a Global Context

Art & Theory in Global Co

What is “globalization”? How does it change the way we think about or show art today? What role does film and media play in it? How has critical theory itself assumed new forms in this configuration moving outside post-war Europe and America? How have these processes helped change with the very idea of ‘contemporary art’? What then might a transnational critical theory in art and in thinking look like today or in the 21st century? In this course we will examine this cluster of questions from a number of different angles, starting with new questions about borders, displacements, translations and minorities, and the ways they have cut across and figured in different regions, in Europe or America, as elsewhere. In the course of our investigations, we will look in particular at two areas in which these questions are being raised today -- in Asia and in Africa and its diasporas. The course is thus inter-disciplinary in nature and is open to students in different fields and areas where these issues are now being discussed.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: John Rajchman
  Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Re/Building the American Dream

The term “American Dream” conjures images of white, middle-class or affluent families inhabiting single-family houses in the suburbs. But the population of the United States is – and always has been – characterized by considerable racial, ethnic, and gender diversity. Those varied populations have imagined, created, and altered domestic environments in ways that don’t fit the stereotypical vision of the “American Dream.” At the same time, the concepts of race, ethnicity, and gender themselves have shaped (for better and for worse) the buildings, landscapes, neighborhoods and cities in which US populations reside. From suburban ranch houses to Southwestern mission landscapes to urban public housing projects, domestic environments have been fundamentally shaped by racial, ethnic, and gendered ideologies that define who can live in what building, in which neighborhood, and in what domestic configurations. This course will explore how the concepts of race, gender, and ethnicity bear upon domestic spaces as well as how power relations embedded in designed environments have disparate impacts on people whether as individuals or in groups.

• F 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Martha McNamara
  Info
• 4 points

Art and Archaeology of Immigrants in Chi

ArtOf Immigrants in China

This seminar examines the art and archaeology of immigrants and immigrant communities in pre-modern China. Since the beginning of China’s dynastic history around the first millennium BCE, people from surrounding regions and even further afield have consistently moved into the Chinese heartland. These groups include not only nomads from the Mongolian steppes and the Tibetan Plateau, but also merchants, missionaries, and Muslims arriving via the so-called “Silk Roads”—a network of land and sea routes connecting China to the rest of the Eurasian continent (India, Persia, Central Asia, etc.). In certain periods, descendants of the Chinese diaspora and refugees in frontier regions also played significant roles in Chinese history. This seminar focuses on the archaeological remains and artistic expressions of these immigrants, as well as their interactions with native Chinese art and culture. Topics covered range from painting, sculpture, and calligraphy to crafts and architecture.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Jin Xu
  Info
• 4 points

Reading Images in Edo-period Books

Edo-period Illustr. Books

A colloquium devoted to reading illustrated books from Edo-period Japan. Texts to be covered will include Saga-bon illustrated tales, illustrated guidebooks and gazetteers (
meisho zue
), painting manuals, and poetry, such as
Ehon Tōshi-sen
, illustrated by Katsushika Hokusai. Reading and translating passages written in premodern Japanese scripts variously called hentaigana, kuzushiji, and sōsho will be the central activity of the course, but we will also consider such themes as the development of woodblock printing, the book as a format, and how the content both reflects and shapes knowledge of the subjects and themes with which they are concerned. If possible we will examine firsthand printed books in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Freer Gallery, and New York Public Library but will also take advantage of ample hi-res interactive resources available through each of these institutions.

Familiarity with Classical Japanese will be useful.

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• 4 points

CURATORIAL COLLOQUIUM

The Curatorial Colloquium is taken in the second semester of study and is required for the completion of the M.A. in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies. The course introduces students to the history, theory and practice of object collection and display as well as to exhibitions such as Documenta and the various international biennials. The course is designed to allow for guest presentations on particular issues by curators and museum professionals, just as it draws on the expertise and participation of Columbia faculty. The aim is to develop students critical thinking and for them to learn directly from leading practitioners in the exhibition and display of modern and contemporary art. In addition to department faculty, curators from MoMA, the Whitney, the International Center for Photography, and other institutions regularly participate in the colloquium.

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Leah E Werier
  Info
• 4 points

MATERIALS & PRACTICES-ART HIST

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Frederique Baumgartner
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

MODA THESIS PREP

The MODA Thesis Prep is a required course for MODA students who plan to commence their thesis in the Fall of the following semester. The course introduces students to the fundamentals of an MA thesis; the process of identifying and developing an appropriate topic; the distinctions between a written/scholarly, or an exhibition-based thesis; formulating a proposal; and an introduction to the research and writing process that will be undertaken during the thesis year. As a central aspect of modern and contemporary art historical writing is determining one’s methodological approach––i.e. the “how” of the argument––during the course of the semester, key methodologies used in modern and contemporary art history will be reviewed, helping students to identify an appropriate approach to pursue with their select topic.

• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Leah E Werier
  Info
• 3 points

ORIGINS OF MOD VISUAL CULTURE

.

• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Jonathan K Crary
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Triumphal Arches: Titus to Ai Weiwei

This seminar will address the many questions posed by arches—an outdated, certainly problematic, and yet everpresent monumental genre—by studying the main extant instances from Roman antiquity and by tackling their historical permutations and parallels up to today. Covered themes include: the arches’ relationship to movement and mobility; arches as boundary markers and as connectors; their diffusion in non-architectural media; the semantics and the pragmatics of the arcuate form; violence, victory, sublimation, and memory. Graduate students from all departments, as well as advanced undergraduates, are most welcome to apply.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Francesco de Angelis
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 4 points

Architecture of Knowledge

Architecture can be both a building and a body of knowledge. This seminar investigates the role of buildings (studioli, private and public libraries, academies, museums, and archives) in the shaping of learning activities, in the organization, selection and preservation of knowledge, and in the collection and display of objects. It also considers the spatial organization of interiors and the creation of customized furnishings, such as shelves and cabinets. At the same time, it analyzes how various kinds of knowledge, especially of art and architecture, were accumulated, stored, and organized through the making and collection of drawings, maps, prints, and books. In doing so, it aims to test how buildings could accommodate and shape different structures of knowledge and how, in turn, taxonomic organization and the “architecture of knowledge” could influence the making of buildings and furnishings. The seminar will also be an effective way to observe how these two spheres contributed to the creation of a dominant knowledge over other types of knowledge. The seminar focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a time characterized by expanding global knowledge through intensified information exchange, colonization, and exploration, all of which prompted an increased proliferation of maps, books, and new media for collecting information. These objects were assembled in European libraries, museum and other types of archives. This was also a pivotal period for the trajectory of such disciplines as history and (pre-)archaeology and for the creation of new institutions devoted to learning and knowledge preservation. Through this seminar, students will learn to put the history of art and especially architecture in conversation with the histories of knowledge, of science, of management of information, of books, and of museums and archives. Some classes will take place at the Avery Library.

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Eleonora Pistis
  Info
• 4 points

Aesthetics and Political Economy

Aesthetics & Pol. Economy

This seminar tries to understand the historical links between two discourses that emerged simultaneously in Europe in the late eighteenth century: aesthetics and political economy. How was land (a source of economic value) conceptually separated from landscape (an object of aesthetic enjoyment) in Europe and in the colonies? What does the history of taste, the aesthetic faculty of discrimination, look like when understood against the background of global commodities (sugar, coffee, tea, etc.) that Europeans came to enjoy in the same period? What is the historical relationship between aesthetic value and economic value? This graduate seminar examines global contexts, texts, and artworks in the long nineteenth century in an attempt to understand concepts that developed in tandem in discourses of aesthetics and political economy.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Zeynep Celik Alexander
  Info
• 4 points

PERIODIZING THE SEVENTIES

Although the 1970s has become an object of cultural nostalgia or ridicule (or both), it remains markedly out of focus in comparison with the 1960s and 1980s. Historians and art historians, both, have found it difficult to summarize and even sometimes to talk about. This course will examine the historical and art historical transformation of this decade and explore new historical and methodological tools by which to approach it. Particular attention will be paid to artistic engagements with the body (including, but not limited to feminist and performance art), to the radicalization of political action (drawing, in part, upon period discussions of violence), and to the emergence of related cultural phenomena such as punk rock. The increased hybridization of media, the heterogeneous mixing of different “movements,” and the unparalleled melding of art with popular culture that mark this period will also be examined, as will the legacies of its cultural production and contemporary artistic practices.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Branden W Joseph
  CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Iterations of Landscape

Inspired by the current rise in scholarship on art in Indigenous and African Diaspora traditions, this course will consider myriad ways of imagining land and life. It will chart pre-twentieth century landscape painting that exercises the picturesque in the time of slavery and imperialism and moves towards ecocritical considerations in our current moment, touching Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. We will then look at how understandings of our world are cultivated in Modern and Contemporary art in multi-media and growing digital practices from the 20th century forward. How do artists see and imagine our emplacement and encode the social world through place? How can we use such ideas to chart our way through a changing climate and world? How does landscape, even in its apparent challenges, function as home/friend/support? In what ways can land symbolize grounds for empathy rather than serve as a site of polarization with distinct interests forever at odds and incommensurable?

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Kellie Jones
  CULPA: 3 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Art History and the Archive

This graduate seminar explores the role of archives and “the archive” in the history and making of art history. How has the discipline defined its archives in the past, and how is it doing so now? How does one identify, navigate, and mine repositories of information for the purpose of art historical study? And what challenges or problems—theoretical, methodological, ethical—does such work raise? Our investigation will be grounded in and guided by readings drawn from a range of fields, including history, anthropology, critical theory, and queer, feminist, postcolonial, Indigenous, and critical race studies. Over the course of the semester, seminar members will also design and undertake an independent research project using one or more archives in the New York City area.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Meredith Gamer
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 4 points

AFRICAN ART& DECOLONIZING

Scholar activists have spearheaded efforts to “decolonize” the discipline of art history since the 1970s, pushed by the Civil Rights Movement. Africanists were among the first to embrace the concept of “art practice” through study of performance, body art, and assemblage; to introduce video and other experimental display strategies into art museums and classrooms; to make the “ethnographic turn.” And yet, for reasons of race, methodology, and medium, the experimental nature of African art history has not been foregrounded in histories of the discipline. The first half of the seminar will analyze the reception of critical and often controversial interventions into art history by Africanists through texts and exhibitions. It will question the power relations that make possible and curtail the generation of alternative art histories. The second half of the course will focus on the latest literature – how does the study of African art continue to push boundaries?

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Zoe S Strother
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

INK PAINTING OF MEDIEVAL JPN

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• 4 points

M.A. THESIS

• Instructor: Alexander Alberro
  CULPA: 12 h-index: 17 Info
• Instructor: Zainab Bahrani
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Frederique Baumgartner
  CULPA: 3 Info
• Instructor: Barry G Bergdoll
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: Diane Bodart
  CULPA: 3 Info
• Instructor: Julia Bryan-Wilson
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Gregory Bryda
  CULPA: 7 h-index: 1 Info
• Instructor: Zeynep Celik Alexander
  Info
• Instructor: Michael Cole
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Jonathan K Crary
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Francesco de Angelis
  CULPA: 10 Info
• Instructor: Dawn H Delbanco
  CULPA: 12 Info
• Instructor: Rosalyn Deutsche
  CULPA: 11 Info
• Instructor: Noam M Elcott
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 7 Info
• Instructor: David A Freedberg
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Meredith Gamer
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: Anne Higonnet
  CULPA: 31 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Elizabeth Hutchinson
  CULPA: 9 Info
• Instructor: Kellie Jones
  CULPA: 3 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Branden W Joseph
  CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Subhashini Kaligotla
  Info
• Instructor: Holger A Klein
  CULPA: 13 Info
• Instructor: Rosalind Krauss
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Janet L Kraynak
  Info
• Instructor: Matthew P McKelway
  CULPA: 6 Info
• Instructor: Ioannis Mylonopoulos
  CULPA: 13 Info
• Instructor: Eleonora Pistis
  Info
• Instructor: John Rajchman
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Jonathan Reynolds
  CULPA: 10 Info
• Instructor: Avinoam Shalem
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Zoe S Strother
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Lisa Trever
  CULPA: 2 Info
• Instructor: Michael J Waters
  CULPA: 5 h-index: 3 Info
• Instructor: Jin Xu
  Info
• 4 points

RESEARCH FOR ADVANCED STUDENTS

• Instructor: Alexander Alberro
  CULPA: 12 h-index: 17 Info
• Instructor: Zainab Bahrani
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Frederique Baumgartner
  CULPA: 3 Info
• Instructor: Barry G Bergdoll
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: Diane Bodart
  CULPA: 3 Info
• Instructor: Julia Bryan-Wilson
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Gregory Bryda
  CULPA: 7 h-index: 1 Info
• Instructor: Zeynep Celik Alexander
  Info
• Instructor: Michael Cole
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Jonathan K Crary
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Francesco de Angelis
  CULPA: 10 Info
• Instructor: Dawn H Delbanco
  CULPA: 12 Info
• Instructor: Rosalyn Deutsche
  CULPA: 11 Info
• Instructor: Noam M Elcott
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 7 Info
• Instructor: David A Freedberg
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points