| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| ART HIS 42A | ARTS OF INDIA | PATEL, A. | This course explores the art and architecture of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka from ancient through contemporary times. We will learn about the Indus Valley, the Bamiyan Buddhas, Hindu temples, the Taj Mahal, and other architectural masterpieces. We will explore modern and contemporary works of art and the effects of nationhood on cultural and political identities. Our study of the Indic visual traditions will include the world’s great religions, such as Islam, and the wide pantheon of gods and goddesses of Buddhism and Hinduism. No prerequisite. Fulfills GE IV & VIII. |
| ART HIS 42B | ARTS OF CHINA | STAFF | This course offers an introduction to art history through the art and visual culture of China from prehistoric times to the 20th century. We will examine how the religious, political, philosophical, and cultural traditions of China are expressed, created, and communicated by visual images and objects, proceeding chronologically and thematically. |
| ART HIS 44 | IMAGE COLLISION | BETANCOURT, R. | What is an image? How do images operate? What do images do? Focusing on the central role of images in contemporary culture as mediators and active participants in issues of race, gender, sexuality, and socialization, this course pays close attention to how these basic questions about images and their socio-cultural powers in the age of social media can be inform by historical works of art from antiquity to the early modern period. Each course will be structured through a series of central image collisions. These collisions serve as critical comparisons between two representative images (one from a distant past and another from a near present), which exemplify the tensions and themes addressed by the course. For example, medieval cults around images will be collided with contemporary fandoms and their practices, representations of minorities in the Classical world will be collided with modern representations of minority groups in film, and images of early modern trade and discovers will be collided with contemporary manifestations of globalization and social networking. |
| ART HIS 100 | PERSIAN ART | CANEPA, M. | Art, archaeology of ancient Persia and the wider Iranian world from the rise of the Achaemenid empire in 550 BCE to the coming of Alexander in 330 BCE. The course will examine the creation of a Persian imperial art and architecture under Cyrus the Great and its revision and expansion under Darius I and his successors. In addition, we will study the mutual influences of Persian visual culture and those of their provinces and subject peoples, including Egypt, the Greek World, Mesopotamia, Anatolia and India. Topics include the development of the Persian palace, paradise gardens, urbanism, court culture, religion, seals and archives. We will consider sites of major dynastic importance and their development (e.g. Persepolis, Susa, Babylon); 'institutions' (e.g. palace, paradise, city, sacred spaces); media (rock reliefs/inscriptions, painting, coinage, seals and sealings etc.). The lecture will put the ancient material into dialog with select theoretical readings on such themes as power, time, memory, the body, although the focus will be on the ancient material/problems |
| ART HIS 134C | IMPRSSNSM TO FAUVES | HERBERT, J. | Paris, it is has been said, was the capital of the nineteenth century. Surely that claim stands true when it comes to painting. Over a handful of decades French painters produced some of the most stunning, complex, and beloved works in the history of art. We will attempt to grapple with the great richness of art in this period art by, paradoxically, focusing down on a mere handful canvases, paintings by the likes of Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Monet, and Seurat. In most cases, we will devote the full lecture period to a single work of art. This approach will allow us to view individual canvases from a wide variety of perspectives, placing paintings within their historical context, comparing them to other works, studying their formal properties, honing in on details with near-microscopic precision. In similar spirit, for your assignments you will select a single painting from the Norton Simon or the Getty, conduct a deep and varied analysis of your own, and then report on your findings in an oral presentation, a written essay, and an exhibition design or website. |
| ART HIS 145A | MODERN ARCHITECTURE | DIMENDBERG, E. | The emergence of the industrial revolution and large cities permanently changed the relation of human beings to nature and created the modern built environment. This course will introduce the principal developments in architecture, urbanism, and design from the French Revolution to 1935. It will treat advances in engineering, rapid scientific progress, the emergence of the railroad, and later, the automobile, as preconditions for the development of the metropolis, the skyscraper, the factory, public housing, and the suburb. We will consider canonical designs by international architects such as Ledoux, Boullée, Berlage, Schinkel, Sullivan, Behrens, Gilbert, Wright, Gaudi, Sant’Elia, Rietveld, Le Corbusier, Melnikov, Ginzburg, Mies, Gropius, Mendelsohn, Speer, and Aalto. The aesthetic projects of William Morris, art deco, futurism, the German Werkbund, De Stijl, the Bauhaus, streamlining, and Russian constructivism will be approached as varied responses to the perceived need for an appropriate style in the machine age. Finally, we will track the shifting agency of the architect, a figure often associated with change and social improvement, in a period marked by war, colonialism, revolution, totalitarian society, the onset of consumerism, and large-scale patronage by government and institutional clients. Course requirements: Take-home midterm and final research paper. The course will include a field trip. Instructor: Edward Dimendberg |
| ART HIS 155B | MEDIEVAL INDIA | PATEL, A. | This course will explore some of the world’s great religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Islam) and their artistic traditions, challenging modern notions of religious and national identities. Beginning with the Guptas’ aesthetic legacies in the architecture, sculpture and painting of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (South Asia), we will continue with the dissemination of religious ideas and artistic practices in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam (Southeast Asia) in the 8th-10th centuries. The course will also examine the dispersal of Islam in South Asia, beginning with the settlement of early Muslim commercial communities in the 8th century, continuing with the Islamic Sultanates of the 12th-15th centuries, and culminating in the magnificence of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857). |
| ART HIS 164A | MODERN AFAM ART | COOKS CUMBO, B. | Investigates the history of African American art with a focus on the politics of representation. Begins with the arrival of Africans to the British colonies and ends with the modern New Negro Movement. Material culture and fine art are explored. |
| ART HIS 164D | AFAM WOMEN IN ART | COOKS CUMBO, B. | Examines depictions of and by African American women in art and popular culture through in a variety of media including textiles, painting, sculpture, photography, and installation. Focuses on African American women’s experiences, perspectives, and strategies for contemporary representation. |
| ART HIS 190W | ART HISTORY METHODS | WUE, R. | This seminar offers an overview of major approaches and methodologies in the study of art history; it is also a writing-intensive course that seeks to improve students’ writing skills as they relate to thinking about, analyzing, and researching visual works of art. |
| ART HIS 198 | AFTER ALEXANDE | CANEPA, M. | This seminar explores the art, archaeology and history of Western, Central and South Asia after Alexander's destruction of the Persian Empire. It will concentrate on the development of architecture and urbanism under the Hellenistic kingdoms that emerged on the Iranian plateau, Central Asia and India after the fall of the Achaemenids, and the Iranian-speaking peoples who eventually overthrew these kingdoms and established their own empires. Thus seminar will focus first on the Seleucid and Arsacid (Parthian) empires, but we will also consider coeval and competing developments in the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Kushan India, and the Perso-Macedonian kingdoms of Anatolia. Among other major themes, we will consider the role of Hellenistic Asian art as a transcultural idiom of communication and exchange; common/competitive court cultures that emerged among the Seleucid, Parthian, Greco-Bactrian and, later, Kushan courts; appropriation and transformation of Hellenistic culture in Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Central Asia kingdoms such as Commagene or Pontus; the interplay between Greek and Indian traditions under the Indo-Greek kingdoms of N. India; the interplay between nomadic and sedentary Iranian culture; and the use of post-Hellenistic forms to image early Kushan Mahayana Buddhism. In addition to an in-depth examination of the ancient sites and sources, this seminar will put the ancient material into dialogue with a select body of theoretical material stemming from archaeological, art historical and cultural studies discourse. |
| ART HIS 298 | IRAN AFTER ALEXANDE | CANEPA, M. | |