Course Descriptions
Spring Quarter
| Dept | Course No and Title | Instructor |
|---|---|---|
| ART HIS (S25) | 42C ARTS OF JAPAN | WINTHER TAMAKI, B. |
| This course examines compelling images and objects of spirit and power created in Japan over many centuries, presenting an overview of developments in art in the Japanese archipelago from the prehistoric period to the present day. Topics include Buddhist icons, narrative illustration, popular prints, architecture, manga, and the avant-garde. Japanese interactions with Korea, China, and Europe are emphasized. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 46 INTRO EGYPT ARCH/AR | OSORIO G. SILV, L. |
| This course will examine the archaeology, art, and architecture of ancient Egypt, ranging in time from the prehistoric cultures of the Nile Valley to the period of Roman control. While we will cover many of the well-known features of ancient Egypt (think the Great Pyramids of Giza, King Tut, and mummies!), this course will go well beyond them to provide a wide-ranging review of the archaeology and art of this remarkable place and its people. Themes covered include kingship and monumentality, the materialization of religious beliefs and practices, and non-royal and non-elite cultural expression. Throughout the quarter, we will discuss how archaeological remains and art help us to understand diverse facets of ancient Egyptian society, as well as the types of information that remain lost to us in the sands of time. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 101 EGYPTIAN AFTERLIVES | OSORIO G. SILV, L. |
| We often think of the ancient Egyptians as obsessed with death — but were they? In this course, we will explore the extensive evidence of mortuary practices from ancient Egypt, including royal and elite tombs, grave goods, ritual practices and mummification, and religious beliefs, to understand the ancient Egyptian worldview regarding life after death. There was no strict separation between life and death, and we will discuss how living Egyptians engaged with the dead by visiting tombs and presenting offerings. Beyond learning about ancient funerary beliefs and practices, we will reflect on how those practices are understood — and often misunderstood — in modern times. To do so, we will not only consider our own understandings of death, but also how ancient Egyptian funerary material culture, including human remains, is engaged with today, primarily in museums but also in popular culture (such as mummy movies!). | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 110 MEDIEVAL MATERIALTY | ZIAII-BIGDELI, L. |
| This course introduces students to the visual cultures of the Mediterranean during the centuries of the Crusades, emphasizing the critical role of visual media in shaping and communicating ideologies, experiences, and historical narratives. It approaches the distinct local, religious, and imperial visual traditions of the Mediterranean as interlocking units within a larger regional system, shaped by the dynamic networks of patrons, merchants, objects, and artisans. Covering Spain, North Africa, the Middle East, Anatolia, and the Italian Peninsula, the course explores a wide array of visual sources, including illuminated manuscripts, architectural structures, sculptures, and visual ephemera. Students will engage with theoretical frameworks such as hybridity, appropriation, hegemony, and exoticism to critically analyze how Medieval Mediterranean art and architecture reframed, exceeded, or challenged textual accounts. Special attention is given to the significant artistic and cultural connections among the Islamic, Byzantine, and Western Medieval worlds, highlighting how the Crusades facilitated the exchange of artistic styles and techniques, resulting in a unique hybrid visual language. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 120 LANDSCAPE & ECOCRIT | MASSEY, L. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 145B MODERN ARCHITECTURE | DIMENDBERG, E. |
| Art History 145B Modern Architecture from 1933 to 2024 This course will survey principal developments in architecture and urbanism from 1933 to the present. It will begin with a consideration of the role of architecture in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia and then explore the global diffusion of western modernism, the development of the metropolis and megalopolis, suburbanization, the emergence of postmodernist and critical regionalist traditions, architectures of the welfare state, the quest for sustainability and green buildings, and the imbrication of the built environment in the political, social, and cultural changes accompanying the coldwar, the civil rights and anti-war movements, the counterculture, and decolonization. Architects and urbanists to be studied include Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, Walter Gropius, Oscar Niemeyer, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown, Gunther Behnisch, Alvar Aalto, Alison and Peter Smithson, Archigram, Superstudio, Frei Otto, Alvaro Siza, Gunnar Asplund, Sigurd Lewerentz, Jorn Utzon, Frank Gehry, Carlo Scarpa, Buckminster Fuller, Clorindo Testa, Lina Bo Bardi, Charles and Ray Eames, Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano, Richard Meier, Aldo Van Eyck, Peter Eisenman, Bruce Goff, Paul Rudolph, Norman Foster, Tadao Ando, Charles Correa, Arthur Erickson, Paolo Solieri, Constant, Jean Nouvel, James Stirling, Wang Shu, Charles Moore, Michael Graves, Kongjian Yu, Balkrishna Doshi, Kenzo Tange, Steven Holl, Kengo Kuma, Francis Kere, Herzog and de Meuron, Peter Zumthor, Arata Isozaki, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Enrique Norton, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Candilis, Josic, and Woods. Assignment structure: Weekly reading assignment questions, take-home midterm, and final research paper. Instructor: Edward Dimendberg. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 150 ART, DESIGN, NATION | JUNG, G. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 165D AM ART NAT'L & IDEN | ROBEY, E. |
| Differences, sometimes contentious, about what the United States should stand for are nothing new. National identity is not a stable given, but a dynamic construct, defined by many segments of society with often competing interests. This course will investigate some key questions of national identity in 19th- and early 20th-c. century America, many of which still rankle contemporary culture, through the production and rhetorical uses of the fine arts. Among the topics covered are the relationship of American identity to the land itself and concomitant debates about the responsible use of the environment. Do depictions of wild and settled landscapes indicate a simple celebration of “conquest,” a critique, or an ambivalence about economic development? We will consider the pervasiveness of White supremacy in American self-definition, and ways that art can complicate and challenge formulations of national identity. What do depictions of Indigenous Americans reveal about the Euro-American artists themselves and their audience? How has art been used by disempowered populations as a site of resistance, or as a competing self-definition. We will examine, for example, the dilemmas faced by both White and Black artists in representing the Black body, both enslaved and free. Along similar lines, the course will also consider constructions of American masculinity and femininity in the fine arts, often racially charged as well. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 185 HIST MODERN DESIGN | ROBEY, E. |
| This course will study the meanings of ordinary and extraordinary objects of daily life, from the late 18th century to the present. We will look at furniture, interiors, graphics, appliances, ceramics, and other ornamental and useful goods in Europe and America within their aesthetic, historical, economic, social, and political contexts. Among other issues, the course will consider the effects of technological change on means of production, distribution, and consumption, and the effects of new processes and materials on the shapes and uses of objects themselves. We will also discuss the relationship of style and tastes to social systems, for example how objects can solidify social hierarchies or express a utopian egalitarianism, or how gender roles are encoded in, defined, and redefined by objects. Another theme of the course will be habits of consumption: how meaning is attached purchases and products become linked to the articulation of a social self. From the master furniture-makers of the late 18th century, through Victorian debates on the morality of ornament, through the revolutionary austerity of Modernist design, through the decadent excess of 1950s American pop culture, to designers working with algae-based polymers and other sustainable materials today, classes will introduce students to a variety of object types and notable designers, and situate them within major art and design movements. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 190W ART HISTORY METHODS | ZIAII-BIGDELI, L. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 198 ART AND FIRE | WINTHER TAMAKI, B. |
| Increasingly destructive and frequent wildfires in California and elsewhere demand a rigorous reassessment of the aesthetics of fire, past and present. How do recent images of fire in photography, painting, anime build on and depart from historic prototypes? How do fire image makers distinguish between contradictory values of fire such as cooking hearth, beguiling metaphor and myth, or apocalyptic destruction? This seminar will explore the changing modern and contemporary anatomy and iconography of flame in Asian and American visual cultures. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | ACOSTA, C. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | BETANCOURT, R. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | CANEPA, M. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | COOKS, B. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | JUNG, G. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | LAPIN DARDASHT, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | MASSEY, L. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | NISBET, J. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | OSORIO G. SILV, L. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | PATEL, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | WINTHER TAMAKI, B. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| ART HIS (S25) | 199 INDEPENDENT STUDY | WUE, R. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
For the most up-to-date information, check the Schedule of Classes.