Fall 2006 Undergraduate Courses
Lectures
(BC 1001) Introduction to the History of Art II
K. Moxey
First in two-term series; either term may be taken separately. Brief examination of the techniques of visual analysis, followed by a chronological survey of the major period styles of Western European art. Emphasis on the introduction of form and content in the works studied and on the correlation of the visual arts with their cultural environments. BC1001: Greek and Roman art; medieval art. BC1002: Renaissance to modern art.
(ACLG W3002) Introduction to Archaeology
J. Smith
An exploration of past and present knowledge that exists because of the field of archaeology. Individual site-based and cultural studies from around the world combine with rediscoveries of systems of communication, such as languages and belief systems, to make for a broad-based introduction to archaeological discourse.
(AHIS V3201) The Arts of China
R. Harrist
Introduction to the arts of China—ceramics, bronzes, sculpture, and painting—from the time of the earliest farming cultures (ca. 5000 B.C.) through the end of the traditional period.
(AHIS V3203) The Arts of Japan
A. Watsky
Introduction to the painting, sculpture, and architecture of Japan from the Neolithic period through the 19th century. Discussion focuses on key monuments within their historical and cultural contexts.
(AHIS W3230) Medieval Architecture
S. Murray
Developed collaboratively and taught digitally spanning one thousand years of architecture.
(AHIS V3248) Greek Art and Architecture
F. De Angelis
Introduction to the art and architecture of the Greek world during the archaic, classical, and Hellenistic periods (11th - 1st centuries B.C.E.).
(AHIS W3420) Italian Renaissance Sculpture
J. Beck
Surveys the principal Renaissance sculptors operating in Italy, including Jacopo della Quercia, Donatello, Ghiberti, Desiderio da Settignano, Niccolò dell'Arca, Verrocchio, and Michelangelo, with an introduction to the early masters, including Nicola and Giovanni Pisano.
(AHIS W3600) Nineteenth-Century Art
J. Crary
Painting and sculpture in Western Europe, 1789-1900. The neoclassic, Romantic, Realist, Impressionist, and post-Impressionist movements.
(AHIS BC3642) North American Art and Culture
E. Hutchinson
Examines North American painting, sculpture, photography, graphic art and decorative arts from the colonial period until World War I. Artists discussed include West, Copley, Cole, Spencer, Powers, Aragon, Duncanson, Church, Homer, Eakins, MacNeill, Whistler, Cassatt, Moran, Tanner, and Muybridge.
(AHIS BC3658) The History and Theory of the Avant-Garde
R. Deutsche
Examines the practice of artistic avant-gardism from the mid-19th to the late 20th century. Explores the relationship between the avant-garde, the institutions of art, and political radicalism. Studies art-historical theories of the modernist, historical and neo-avant-gardes as well as critiques of avant-gardism from feminist and democratic points of view, discussing the charge of "elitism" often leveled against avant-gardism.
(AHIS BC3680) Postwar Art 1948-1978
(AHIS W4870) Minimalism/Postminimalism
B. Joseph
This course examines minimalism—one of the most significant aesthetic movements—during the sixties and seventies. More than visual art, the course considers minimal sculpture, music, dance, and "structural" film, their historical precedents, development, critical and political aspects. Artists include: Carl Andre, Tony Conrad, Dan Flavin, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Anthony McCall, Yvonne Rainer, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson.
Seminars and Colloquia
(AHIS W3888) Pop Art
B. Joseph
This seminar reevaluates Pop art, focusing not only on painting, but on performance, happenings, writing, and other media and multimedia. Canonic artists Rauschenberg, Johns, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rosenquist and Oldenburg are examined and contrasted with West coasters Conner and Ruscha, the Baroque "pop" of Jack Smith, the political narrative of Fahlstrom, and later revisions by Pettibon, Kelley and Graham.
(AHIS W3895) Major's Colloquium: the Literature and Methods of Art History
Z. Bahrani
Prerequisites: the department's permission. Students must sign up in 826 Schermerhorn. Introduction to different methodological approaches to the study of art and visual culture. Majors are encouraged to take the colloquium during their junior year.
(AHIS W3961) Major's Colloquium: Architectural History Focus
B. Bergdoll
Prerequisites: the department's permission. Students must sign up in 826 Schermerhorn.
This course will combine practical training in visual analysis and architectural historical research with a close reading of key works of architectural historians since the emergence of the discipline as a free-standing field of inquiry in the late 19th century. In addition to course meetings one or more site visits will be arranged in the city and further a field.
(AHIS W3893) The Japanese Print
A. Watsky
(AHIS W3900) The Archaeology of Greek Colonization
T. Jackman
This seminar explores the art, architecture and archaeology of the Greek colonies of the eighth through fourth centuries B.C. We will examine the organization of urban and ritual space, the relationship of city and territory, the emergence of regional architectural and artistic styles as well as the relations between the Greeks and the native peoples they encountered during the colonial process.
(AHIS BC3927) Gender & Sexuality in Roman Art
N. Kampen
Attendance at first class mandatory. Instructor determines class roster on first day of class. No application required. Description to follow.
(AHIS BC3944) Americans in Paris
A. Higonnet
Attendance at first class mandatory. Instructor determines class roster on first day of class. No application required. Description to follow
(AHIS C3948) Nineteenth-Century Criticism
J. Crary
Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing and the instructor's permission. Application required.
This course will allow art history majors to examine a heterogeneous selection of texts that have a crucial bearing on the formation of concepts of modernity and new aesthetic practices in 19th-century Europe and North America. Using works of fiction, poetry, art theory, philosophy and social criticism, the seminar will trace the emergence and development of new models of subjective experience and their relation to social and historical processes.
(AHIS BC3949) The Art of Witness: Memorials and Historical Trauma
R. Deutsche
Attendance at the first class is mandatory. Limited to 15 students. Instructor determines class roster on first day of class. Examines aesthetic responses to collective historical traumas, such as slavery, the Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima, AIDS, homelessness, immigration, and the recent attack on the World Trade Center.
(AHIS BC3968) Art Criticism
J. Miller
Please attend the first day of class if interested. No application required. Contemporary art and its criticism written by artists (rather than by art historians or journalistic reviewers). Texts by Dan Graham, (Art and Language), Robert Smithson, Brian O'Dougherty, Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper and others. Considers the art and writing of each artist together.
(AHIS W3969) Collage and its Histories
G. Bader
This seminar will examine the importance of collage for European and American art of the past century. Of particular concern will be the diversity of forms that collage-inflected practice has taken and artists' interest in collage and its corollaries as a means of historical and political analysis. Artists considered include Picasso, Arp, Schwitters, Eisenstein, Höch, Rauschenberg, Kaprow, and Hirschhorn, among others.
(AHIS W3970) The Histories of Photography
T. Sheehan
This seminar critically explores the history of the history of photography, as it has developed between the 1840s and the present. We will examine how major histories of the medium have defined photography's artistic, social, ontological, and institutional identity. Authors include Root, Newhall, Benjamin, Taft, Gernsheim, Barthes, Tagg, Krauss, Batchen, Frizot, and others.