Peqod :: Classes - Columbia University Catalog of Classes

Through an examination of painting, sculpture, decorative arts, photography and the visual culture of the United States from 1750 to 1914, the course will explore how American artists responded to and operated within the wider world. Addressing themes shared in common across national boundaries, the class will consider how American art participated in the revolutions and reforms of the "long" nineteenth century, ranging from Romanticism to Modernism. The period witnessed the emergence of new technologies for creating, using, and circulating images and objects, the expansion and transformation of exhibition and viewing practices, and the rise of new artistic institutions, as well as the metamorphosis of the United States from its colonial origins to that of a world power, including the profound changes that occurred during the Civil War. The class will investigate how American art engaged with international movements while constructing national identity during a period of radical transformation both at home and abroad. In addition to lectures/discussions in the classroom, field trips to the Metropolitan Museum (the American Wing, Nineteenth Century Wing, Galleries of Modem and Contemporary Art, and the Photography Study Collection), the Museum of Modem Art and the Whitney Museum of Art, represent a vital aspect of the course. One of the important questions raised in the class is the recent reinterpretation of American art's interaction with international movements in museum installations and scholarship, moving away from an isolationist approach to one that engages with global influence and awareness. Readings will draw not only from primarily sources, but also from many of the publications of the Terra Foundation, whose exhibitions and research programs work to encourage an understanding and exploration of American Art from a global context.

Department: Summer Session (SS)
TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
Instructor: Page S Knox
CULPA: 14 Info
4 points

Details

AHIS S3442

IMPRESSIONISM IN NEW YORK

Department: Summer Session (SS)
TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
Instructor: Christina R Ferando
CULPA: 7 Info
3 points

Details

AHIS S3443

WHAT IS PERFORMANCE ART?

Department: Summer Session (SS)
MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
Instructor: Gillian T Young
CULPA: 3 Info
3 points

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AHIS S3445

GLOBAL HIST OF THE US MILITARY

Department: Summer Session (SS)
TR 2 p.m.-5:10 p.m.
Instructor: Robert M Jr Neer
Info
3 points

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HIST S3455

RELATIONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN P

Department: English and Comparative Literature
MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
3 points

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ENGL S3483

HIST OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

Department: Summer Session (SS)
MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
Instructor: Stephen J Sullivan
CULPA: 2 Info
3 points

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HIST S3535

HIST OF LATINOS/AS IN THE U.S.

Even before the U.S. existed as a republic, people from "Hispanic" and Indo-America have been incorporated into the culture, history, life, and occupational fabric of the United States. Yet, forces, figures, and factions in larger society frequently perceived Latin American heritage people as members of an "alien" culture. Through histories of coercion, migration, labor recruitment, family networks, religious conversion, wars of occupation, economic need, political exile, education inequities, electoral participation, and unimaginative representations in film, fiction, and broader popular culture, millions of people from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Ecuador, and the rest of Latin America have somehow become American, while still remaining outside the national community. This 3-point undergraduate lecture course will examine the process of departure and arrival-the historical forces pushing and pulling people from Latin America to the United States. We will also examine how "Spanish," "Latins," "Hispanics," and "Latinos" adjust, integrate, assimilate, resist, and adapt to the many forces that affect their lives in the U.S. over the last century and a half, creating new ethnic, racial and local identities in the process. By studying the experience of Latinos/as and Latin American immigrants with an eye toward patterns of second-class citizenship, identity formation, ethnic culture, community maturation, labor struggles, and social mobility, we will map out the heterogeneous mosaic of Latin American and Caribbean diasporas in the U.S. Due in large part to ongoing immigration from Mexico, the Mexican-origin population has grown appreciably from approximately 100,000 at the turn of the twentieth century to thirty-five million today (10% of the overall U.S. population and about 65% of the collective Latino community). We shall therefore pay special attention to what ethnic Mexicans, their offspring, and other Americans have had to say about the Mexican American experience and its effects on Latino/a social life as well as the nation's economy, society, and culture. Naturally, Puerto Rican, Cuban American, Hispanic Caribbean, and Central/South American communities in the United States will be examined as well. The study of Latino history is a young discipline, with many gaps and grey areas. It also exists in a complex and tense dialogue (often a monologue) within broader U.S. history. During the last two decades as the Latino population has ballooned to 56 million (1

Department: Summer Session (SS)
MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
Instructor: Darius V Echeverria
CULPA: 1 Info
3 points

Details

HIST S3596

THE POETICS OF THE WARRIOR

Department: Summer Session (SS)
MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
Instructor: Marianne Giordani
CULPA: 8 Info
3 points

Details

ENGL S3690

ETHICS

Department: Summer Session (SS)
MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
Instructor: Cesar G Cabezas Gamarra
Info
3 points

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PHIL S3701

HAWTHORNE,JAMES,AND CATHER

HAWTHORNE,JAMES,& CATHER: THE

“What is he?” murmurs one gray shadow of my forefathers to the other. “A writer of story-books! What kind of a business in life,—what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation,—may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler! - Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Custom House” (1850) , Fiction is one of the fine arts, deserving in its turn of all the honors and emoluments that have hitherto been reserved for the successful profession of music, poetry, painting, architecture. It is impossible to insist too much on so important a truth. - Henry James, “The Art of Fiction” (1884) , In any discussion of the novel, one must make it clear whether one is talking about the novel as a form of amusement, or as a form of art. […] Amusement is one thing; enjoyment of art is another. - Willa Cather, “The Novel Démeublé” (1922) , Can fiction be an art? While we may be inclined to say “yes” today, in the nineteenth century the reputation of fiction writing – novels, tales, short stories, and sketches – was by no means so secure. Novelists were more likely to be considered entertainers or “story- tellers” than serious artists, and novels were usually thought of as frivolous at best and immoral at worst, and certainly not worthy of serious scrutiny or consideration. How did the reputation of fiction writing in America develop such that novels could be considered certifiably “artistic?”This course examines the novels, short fiction, and critical writings of three important American writers: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, and Willa Cather. While very different in very many ways, these three authors shared a belief that fiction was a serious business, and every bit as much an art as painting, poetry, sculpture, music, or other “fine” arts. They also all shared an interest in representing these various fine arts and the artists that make them in their novels and stories, often using the figure of the painter, the sculptor, the actor, or the singer in order to explore, develop, and justify their own fictional practice. In other words, this class will examine “the art of fiction” in at least two ways: both by looking at the representation of art and artists in the fiction of these three writers, and also by examining how such representations help these writers to make fiction an art in its own right. This course asks: This course asks: What ideas about the “fine arts” led to the exclusion of novels? Are there reliable criter

Department: Summer Session (SS)
TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
Instructor: Zachary J Roberts
CULPA: 9 Info
3 points

Details

ENGL S3714