Before Rome: The Art and Architecture of

Before Rome: Art & Arch.

This course explores the rich artistic traditions of the peoples living in Italy—the Etruscans, Italics, Greeks, Celts—from their emergence in the early first millennium BCE to their eventual absorption within the system of “Roman” art. While the arts of Etruria will form the backbone of the course, its conceptual focus will be on the densely entangled web that connected the diverse visual landscapes and creative practices of the Italian peninsula both to each other and to external centers of artistic production, from Cyprus and Carthage to Syria and the cultures of northern Europe. In addition to intercultural connectivity— imports and exports, convergences and divergences, parallels and unique features—special attention will be paid to the socio-political and religious dimensions of art and architecture. Both iconic and non-canonical objects will be examined, ranging from furniture and weaponry to anatomical votives and mythological paintings. This lecture is the first in a three-year cycle that also includes “Roman Art and Architecture” and “Rome Beyond Rome.”

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

EARLY MODERN ARCHITECTURE (1550-1799)

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

BAROQUE IMPERIAL SPAIN(17TH C)

BAROQUE IMPERIAL SPAIN 17

The course will survey Baroque 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 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Diane Bodart
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

Nineteenth-Century Architecture

19th Century Architecture

This course revisits some of the key moments in the architecture of the nineteenth century with the goal of understanding the relationship between these developments and a global modernity shaped by old and new empires. In doing so, it assumes a particular methodological stance. Rather than attempting to be geographically comprehensive, it focusses on the interdependencies between Europe and its colonies; instead of being strictly chronological, it is arranged around a constellation of themes that are explored through a handful of projects and texts. Reading of primary sources from the period under examination is a crucial part of the course. Students will have the opportunity to hone their critical skills by reading, writing, and conducting research toward a final paper. Discussion section required.

• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Zeynep Celik Alexander
  Info
• 4 points

Visual Activism

How has visual culture played a role within the social movements of the last several decades, such as #BlackLivesMatter and Extinction Rebellion? How, we might ask, is activism made visible; how does it erupt (or disappear) with collective fields of vision?  Drawing upon Black South African queer photographer Zanele Muholi’s term “visual activism” as a flexible rubric that encompasses both formal practices and political strategies, this lecture class interrogates contemporary visual cultures of dissent, resistance, and protest as they span a range of ideological positions.

We will examine recent developments in and around recent intersections of art and politics from around the world, looking closely at performances, photographs, feminist dances, graffiti, murals, street art, posters, pussy hats, and graphic interventions, with a special focus on tactics of illegibility and encodedness. Topics include visual responses to structural racisms, global climate change, indigenous land rights, state violence, gentrification, forced migration, and queer/trans issues.

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Julia Bryan-Wilson
  Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

THE ARTS OF CHINA

This course introduces major forms of Chinese art from the Neolithic period to the present.  It stresses the materials and processes of bronze casting, the development of representational art, principles of text illustration, calligraphy, landscape painting, imperial patronage, and the role of the visual arts in elite culture.  Works of Chinese art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art will receive special attention, as you will be able to study these closely online and see the real things at the museum.  Throughout the course we will attempt to study not only the history of Chinese art but also 
how
 that history has been written, both in China and in the West. Please note that students will be required to keep their webcams on throughout the class sessions. We will take appropriate breaks.

• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Catherine M Zhu
  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.

• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Yeongik Seo
  Info
• Instructor: Yi-Bang Li
  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

Mediterranean Artistic Interactions in t

Mediterran. Artistic Inte

Transcultural studies are, today, part of any undergraduate curriculum in the field of humanities. In our contemporary mobile society, transculturality becomes a major phenomenon for understanding the driving power behind the creation of art, style, fashion and social behavior. The Medieval world was no less mobile, and the idea of the ‘Global’ has its roots in ancient times. In this course the medieval Mediterranean basin as space of interactions and the port/trade cities around it will serve as the exemplary arena, in which the constant interactions between Asia, Europe and Africa contributed to the mobility of aesthetic notions and novel ideas.

• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Avinoam Shalem
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia Info
• 4 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.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Holger A Klein
  CULPA: 13 Info
• Instructor: Michael Cole
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

SENIOR THESIS

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

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Barry G Bergdoll
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

Sacred Spaces & Divine Images Transforme

This seminar will explore the profound transformation of art and architecture connected to the religious practices of both polytheists and monotheists that occurred across the Middle East when much of the region was under Roman rule. Sacred spaces we will focus on include the Temples of Bel and Baalshamin at Palmyra (destroyed in 2015) and Jupiter Heliopolitanus at Baalbek, the recently discovered synagogues at Migdal (Magdala), and the temples, housechurch, and synagogue at Dura-Europos. We will delve into topics such as possible cult continuity between the Iron Age and the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the creation of new deities, the roles of priests, aniconism and figural sculpture, and the construction and adornment of buildings to meet the specific needs of the cults of various deities, Judaism, and Christianity. We will explore and challenge traditional categories such as “Roman” and “provincial” art/architecture. Key questions to consider include the following: how were individuals/communities’ personal, civic, and religious identities expressed in art/architecture that was influenced by interaction with Roman culture broadly, but also highly localized?

The approach is interdisciplinary: we will study architecture, sculpture, mosaics, wall paintings, votive dedications, and inscriptions, and read Jane Lightfoot’s 2003 translation of Lucian’s De Dea Syria (On the Syrian Goddess). Discussion of current and future responses to the destruction of archaeological sites and monuments and looting, as well as the intertwining of cultural and humanitarian crises, will also form an important part of the course and prepare students to engage in contemporary debates. Our visit to the Yale University Art Gallery will provide students with the outstanding opportunity to examine sculptures and wall paintings from Dura-Europos first-hand and give presentations in the gallery.

• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Blair Fowlkes Childs
  Info
• 4 points

BOOKS AND ARCHITECTURE

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Eleonora Pistis
  Info
• 4 points

Introduction to Design History

Intro to Design History

This course offers an introduction to the history of design from the eighteenth century through the twenty-first century, with emphasis placed on the twentieth century. Attention will be paid to a wide range of design specializations, including industrial design and product design, fashion and textile design, automotive design, and graphic design. Proceeding in roughly chronological order, it will explore key themes in the history of design, including matters of taste and etiquette, social reform, the production of value, design education, branding and marketing, and recent trends in sustainable, speculative, and digital design. The course also considers the relationship between design and other modes of material production, including architecture, fine art, and craft.

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Hannah R Pivo
  Info
• 4 points

APPROACHES TO CONTEMPORARY ART

This course examines the critical approaches to contemporary art from the 1970s to the present. It will address a range of historical and theoretical issues around the notion of the contemporary (e.g. globalization, participation, relational art, ambivalence, immaterial labor) as it has developed in the era after the postmodernism of the 1970s and 1980s.

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

American Architecture: Skyscrapers & Urb

Skyscrapers & Urbanism

This course will examine the distinctly American invention of the building type the “skyscraper” and its evolution and impact from the 1870s to today. We will approach the subject through a range of lenses – historiographical, critical, and methodological – exploring tall buildings and their history as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. Throughout, the urban dimension will be key in our critical analysis. 

Classroom sessions, for the most part, will be organized as lectures and discussions of assigned readings. There will also be sessions outside the classroom, including a visit to the drawing collection of Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library and to The Skyscraper Museum, as well as a walking tour of Midtown Manhattan.

• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Carol A Willis
  Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Land and Landscape

How did land—a primary source of economic value—become separated from landscape—an object of aesthetic enjoyment—in Enlightenment Europe and its colonies? This course examines the moment between the mid eighteenth and the mid nineteenth centuries when the physical and conceptual demarcations of land from landscape coincided with the emergence of political economic discourses, on the one hand, and the formulation of aesthetics as a separate branch of philosophical inquiry, on the other. Re-examining well-known moments in landscape history, the course aims to ask: What does a global modernity fueled as much by agriculturalization as by industrialization look like? How can this theoretical recalibration help construct new historical ontologies of such key concepts as nature, culture, and environment? What might this examination reveal about the vexed relationship between politics and aesthetics? And what are the historical interdependencies between economic value and aesthetic value?

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Zeynep Celik Alexander
  Info
• 4 points

Epic India: The Rama Story in Visual Art

The epic story of Rama (
Ramayana
) is one of the most influential tales of the Indian subcontinent. It has been told and experienced in a stunning range of media across time and space: from epic verse and lyric poetry to painting, narrative sculpture, film, graphic novels, and puppet theater. While Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana of ca. 500 BCE is acknowledged as the first, writers have recounted the tale in the polyglot array of Indic languages, from Kashmiri to Telugu, and infused it with the values and interests of their own time and place. The story’s flexibility and capaciousness has encouraged social contestation and given voice to the concerns of disenfranchised social groups, including women and Dalits. This seminar will examine a generous array of South Asia’s visual Ramayana traditions from the ancient to the modern, encompassing temple relief sculpture, painted courtly manuscripts, and comic book and film Ramayanas. Reading a selection of primary texts alongside we consider this tale’s immense capacity to represent the gamut of human experience, both private and public, and its continued resonance for artists, writers, performers, and their publics.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Subhashini Kaligotla
  Info
• 4 points

Greek Sanctuaries

In every culture there exist highly specific features, which, in their interplay, create its quintessence. In terms of Greek antiquity, temples are generally considered one of these significant cultural parameters. One easily tends, however, to forget that temples are simply a small part – and not even an essential one – of so-called sacred or religious spaces. It is the sanctuary with its precinct wall, temples, sacred groves, divine images, offerings, and – above all – the altar or altars that constitutes the central and transcendent spatial element of ancient Greek religion. Nevertheless, despite their primarily religious function, Greek sanctuaries were never simply cultic spaces; every single one of them was to various degrees an integral part of its social, political, and economic context. The occasionally problematic interpretive model of the “polis religion” makes it absolutely clear that Greek sanctuaries cannot be studied and properly understood, if they are not examined beyond the constraints of religion. Aim of the seminar is to understand the forms and functions of architecture and dedicatory objects in Greek sanctuaries while analyzing these religious, social and political spaces as the centers in which Greek aesthetics, Greek identity, and ultimately Greek culture were shaped.

• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Ioannis Mylonopoulos
  CULPA: 13 Info
• 4 points

Pastel and the Enlightenment

Pastel & the Enlightenmen

This seminar takes as its hypothesis that pastel, an artistic medium whose rise to prominence in eighteenth-century Europe was as spectacular as it was short-lived, offers a particularly productive lens through which to consider some of the fundamental aesthetic, social, and cultural debates that helped shape Enlightenment thought. To test this hypothesis, we will study the work of celebrated pastel practitioners such as Rosalba Carriera, Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Jean-Étienne Liotard, and John Russell, in dialogue with primary sources authored by artists, art critics, art theoreticians, and philosophers, whose thought found provocative responses in the luminous, fragile, and ultimately modern surfaces of pastels. Topics of discussion will include: color in the discourse on art; craft in Diderot and d’Alembert’s 
Encyclopédie
; pastel, cosmetics, and identity; the art market and the debate on luxury; and new understandings of the self. These discussions will be informed by recent scholarship on eighteenth-century art engaging with questions of materiality, identity, and consumption, among others.

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

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.
• Instructor: Matthew P McKelway
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 4 points

Historicism & Restoration in European Ar

The aim of this seminar is to explore the relationship between changing theories of historical change and the practice of architecture in the long nineteenth century from the ideas of progress that animated architectural theory and design in the European Enlightenment to the critiques of historicism and of revivalism in the avant-gardes of the early twentieth century.  It is the hypothesis of this seminar that during the period one of the dominant themes of architectural form making  was the notion that all understanding is historically conditioned, that an understanding of the past evolution of architectural form was necessary to defining current practices and preparing for the future, increasingly a subject of anxiety in this crucial period industrializing modernity.  This relationship between theory and practice will not be considered uniquely in the realm of the history of ideas, however.  Rather we will strive to “historicize historicism,” and to examine the political, social and economic stakes and settings of historicist architectural practices primarily in France, Britain, and Germany.  Issues of nationalism, colonialism, the discourses of progress, of natural science, and of evolution must necessarily overlap with our joint research.  A key theme that runs throughout the course is the relationship between ideas of defining an appropriate historically based style for modern practice and the rise of a culture of restoration (rather than repair) of the newly defined category of the historical monument.  As a result the course will be punctuated by a series of pairs that look at a single practitioner’s practices between newly conceived construction and restoration.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Barry G Bergdoll
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 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 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Janet L Kraynak
  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.

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Janet L Kraynak
  Info
• 3 points

Art History Against the Grain

The master discipline for organizing the history of Western art can be said to be  Renaissance art, and within that art, the two master tropes are perspective and workshop. The status of perspective has come into serious dispute both as a historical and a philosophical question. Michael Baxandahl has searched  for the historically grounded  patronage of Renaissance artistic production, only to explain why he has searched in vain. Heidegger has excavated for grounds of the subject onto which technology opens.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Rosalind Krauss
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

MINIMALISM & POSTMINIMALISM

Minimalism, which developed in the 1960s, has been widely recognized as one of the most important aesthetic movements, styles, or tendencies of the later half of the twentieth century.  More than simply of interest for itself, minimalism has served as a pivotal reference or turning point for nearly all the developments in the visual arts that have come after it (including postminimal sculpture, conceptual art, performance art, process art, and institutional critique) and remains a major touchstone for contemporary artistic practices.  This course considers minimalism within a historical and interdisciplinary perspective (including related developments in music, dance, and film) and follows its development into postminimalism.  In addition to providing important historical information, the course and topic allow for important investigations into questions of artistic formalism and its challengers and notions of art’s critical and political role within the pivotal moment of the 1960s.

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

Sumerian Sculpture

This seminar introduces the sculpture of ancient Sumer (south Iraq), with a focus on ancient practices and ontologies of art, the related processes of making and technological innovations, as well as image rituals and the visual manifestation of the divine. Seminar topics include historical monuments, statues of the gods, architectural sculpture and foundation images placed in the ground, and votive portrait statues dedicated in temples. In the fourth millennium BC new technologies of metallurgy, casting, the mechanical reproduction of images, and seal carvings emerged alongside the invention of writing, a technology first documented in the city-state of Uruk, Iraq. Sculpted images and monuments were inscribed with texts that reveal a great deal about the ontological and agentive, the aesthetic and the order of the divine. The seminar will study the genres of Sumerian sculpture alongside their ancient texts. It also explores an important era in the historiography of ancient art and archaeology in the first half of the twentieth century. At the time when Sumerian sculpture was first unearthed and collected, antiquity and ethnography, ruins and ancient statues became subjects of interest for Modern artists and art movements, not only for their aesthetic forms but also as areas of scholarly investigation. Archaeologies of ritual and the sacred, Sumerian and Pre- Columbian antiquity, were topics of great interest in the first half of the twentieth century, among European artists and art movements, but also for Iraqi Modernist groups such as the Baghdad Group of Modern Art and the Ruwad.

Prerequisites: Students will be expected to have previous coursework in art history, archaeology or anthropology. Reading knowledge of French preferred. Applications required. Permission of the instructor is needed for registration.

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

Ecocriticism and Medieval Art

Ecocriticism & Medieval A

In this graduate seminar, we will examine how medieval literary and visual culture shaped and reflected people’s understanding of God’s Creation—animals, plants, rocks, planets—and humanity’s place within it. Nature was seen both as a hostile environment, a place of temporary exile after humankind’s banishment from Paradise, and as a machine, bearing the divine blueprint to be decoded and utilized for nourishment, medicine, and amusement. The Church, in a careful balancing act, had to reconcile the disdain for nature mandated in Genesis with the material world it relied upon for its own survival. To explore these tensions, we will engage with recent ecocritical methods, drawing on the approaches in light of the so-called material and cultural turns, and examine historical texts and images related to Neo-Platonic cosmology, the wood of the cross, agriculture and cultural techniques, folkloric traditions, stones and sedimentation, stargazing, architecture, herbal medicine, indigeneity, and natural theology, among other topics. A key theme throughout the semester will be the extent to which ideas and ideals rooted in the Middle Ages continue to shape the ways we interact with the natural world. Museum visits to the New York Botanical Garden’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Library and The Cloisters’ gardens are mandatory.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Gregory Bryda
  CULPA: 7 h-index: 1 Info
• 4 points

Spolia: Architecture & Reuse c. 300 16

This seminar takes the recent explosion in spolia scholarship as a point of departure to analyze how artists and builders transformed ancient and foreign artifacts and incorporated them into new settings. It also seeks to understand the ways in which reuse has been interpreted and theorized retrospectively by historians, from Vasari who saw spoliation as a pragmatic phenomenon indicative of artistic decline to modern scholars who have argued for a wide range of interpretations—these include, but are not limited to, spolia as aesthetic choice, political gesture, revivalist impulse, religious symbol, triumphalist sign, and apotropaic talisman. While the course will focus primarily on monuments produced Italy and the wider Mediterranean world from late-antiquity to the Renaissance, students will be encouraged to think broadly about reuse as a theoretical problem across art-historical disciplines.

• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Michael J Waters
  CULPA: 5 h-index: 3 Info
• 4 points

Strokes & Lines: On Expressive Mediality

The graduate seminar "Strokes & Lines: On expressive Mediality in Early Modern Art" investigates how the brush stroke and drawn line gained emphasis in art practice in Early Modern Europe and were conceptualized as artistic gesture in art theory. We will discuss how the visibility of the stroke challenged the primary task of mimesis to modify perception and how the artists walked a fine line to express artistic bravura. The seminar will present the many voices that constitute Early modern aesthetic theory and consider the different artistic positions that form the floor for that discourse. The seminar will be held in two groups, on at Columbia University, leaded by Diane Bodart, the other at Yale University, leaded by Nicola Suthor. We will join forces during the semester for the close-looking sessions at the Morgan Library, the Metropolitan Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale Center for British Art, and a three-day fieldtrip/ workshop at Casa Muraro in Venice.

• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Diane Bodart
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

Chinese Painting Connoisseurship: Select

Song, Yuan, Ming& Qing Dy

This seminar will look carefully at masterpieces of Chinese painting in Japanese and American collections. The aim of the course is to develop an intuitive sense of the quality appropriate for different genres, formats, and periods. Special attention will be given to the way paintings are presented from the outside title slip to inner title sheet (
yin shou
) to seals and colophons. We will also consider, or at least speculate on, the artist’s intended audience.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Alfreda J Murck
  Info
• 4 points

RIMPA

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Matthew P McKelway
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 4 points

The Materiality of Things: In Front of t

This graduate level seminar focuses on specific medieval and early modern objects from the lands of Islam while turning our attention to the making of these artifacts. It will cover issues concerning the mining and producing substances and their taming with the help of specific tools, like for example the making and shaping of precious stones and precious materials into objects of art, the working with particular materials such as glass and rock crystals, the carving of ivory and wood, the casting of metals and ceramics, and even the making of copies and forgeries. Yet, this seminar explores also our interactions with art objects in the museum. It does so by studying the object as the subject of our inquiring gaze, while paying attention to its material, production techniques, shape and formation as related to time/science/technology/and style. An emphasis is put on the agency of substances as a no-less important tool than ‘the image’ for producing meanings. Beside the first three meetings, in which theoretical aspects concerning the ‘Material Turn’ in art history are discussed, each of the meetings takes place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the new gallery for the arts of Islam as well as in the Medieval/European show rooms. Each meeting will be devoted to one single object. Discussion about the museum exhibition context as the interactive-educational space, in which art objects are deliberately reinvented to speak (or rather answer) particular cultural demands and narrate stories and histories, will be critically discussed too. Histories of extraction of substance, real or contrived, as well as traces of the ‘hand’ of the maker while taming materials into a masterpieces and marvels will be addressed while observing objects.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Avinoam Shalem
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

The Temple in South Asia

This seminar explores questions, approaches, and emerging directions in the study of the premodern South Asian temple and its related cultures. A freshly published monograph with a specific regional and temporal orientation will direct our focus each week. Our in-depth explorations will consider the particularities of the scholar’s project, their analytical framework and methods, their book’s organization and writing choices, and the ways in which they have expanded the boundaries of the discipline. What can we learn from each approach to the temple, both in terms of scholarly approach and writing? Studies span the medieval and early modern periods and cover the Tamil south, the Deccan Plateau, Central India, Bengal, the Indo-Gangetic plain, and Himalayan lands. We will consider new approaches to such art-historical mainstays as style, landscape, and temple sculpture and painting as well as more contemporary trends such as eco art history, sensory studies, and the digital humanities.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Subhashini Kaligotla
  Info
• 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: Rosalyn Deutsche
  CULPA: 11 Info
• Instructor: Noam M Elcott
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 7 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: 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
• 3 points