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.
Days: TU TH  05:00-06:20 PM

Classics 160: Roman Epic

This course will explore the breadth and vitality of epic poetry in late Republican and early Imperial Rome. While a close reading of Virgil’s foundational Aeneid will be the centerpiece of this course, Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and selections of Ovid’s Metamorphoses will offer evidence of the achievements of Roman epic beyond the mythico-heroic narratives often associated with the genre. The beginnings of the epic tradition in Rome will be examined through the fragments of archaic poets such as Ennius, and Catullus’ epyllion, poem 64, will provide insight into aesthetic and ideological variations on epic tropes. These readings will be informed by critical texts that examine the historical and social context in which they appeared, as well as broader considerations of the genre’s relation to notions of gender, history, and national identity.
Days: TU TH  11:00-12:20 PM

ES 100B / GLBCLT 191/ HIST 114
How Nations Remember | Winter 2025
Professor Anke Biendarra (abiendar@uci.edu)

Just as different nations have individual histories, they select and organize what they want to remember about their pasts in different and often specific ways. This seminar takes a comparative look at models of remembrance and the memorialization of specific historical and political events, mostly of the 20th century, in various countries and regions (Germany, France, Poland, and South Africa). We will ask how these events are represented in political discourse, public art works and museums, as well as in literature and film. What happens when different historical and political perspectives and memories confront each other in the public sphere? How can different groups stake their own claims for recognition and justice within a given national and political framework? What role do memorials, museums and public artworks play in the process, and how democratic are they?
Days: TU TH  11:00-12:20 PM

Italian 150 Spring 2025
How to Do It: Advice for Good Living from the Renaissance

This class will study the Italian Renaissance through the period’s how-to books. Italians wrote, read, and kept in their homes books to help them face life’s great challenges: how to study, how to court and be courted, how to conceive a child (or not), how to run a good family, how to throw a banquet, how to keep yourself beautiful, how to cast a spell, how to behave in the city, how to be (or serve) a prince, how to cure illnesses, how to live long and even how to die well. This course will peer into the lives of Renaissance Italians through the things they taught each other to do, and reveal a past behind one of today’s most popular ways of sharing knowledge.
Days: TU TH  12:30-01:50 PM

Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies, Inter-Area Studies
Just as different nations have individual histories, they select and organize what they want to remember about their pasts in different and often specific ways. This seminar takes a comparative look at models of remembrance and the memorialization of specific historical and political events, mostly of the 20th century, in various countries and regions (Germany, France, Poland, and South Africa). We will ask how these events are represented in political discourse, public art works and museums, as well as in literature and film. What happens when different historical and political perspectives and memories confront each other in the public sphere? How can different groups stake their own claims for recognition and justice within a given national and political framework? What role do memorials, museums and public artworks play in the process, and how democratic are they?
Days: TU TH  11:00-12:20 PM