Spring 2006 Undergraduate Courses

Lectures

(BC 1002) Introduction to the History of Art II
A. Higonnet
Second 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.

(AHIS C3001) Introduction To Architecture
F. Benelli
Satisfies the architectural history/theory distribution requirement for majors, but is also open to students wanting a general humanistic approach to architecture and its history. Architecture analyzed through in-depth case studies of major monuments of sacred, public, and domestic space, from the Pantheon and Hagia Sophia to Fallingwater and the Guggenheim. Discussion Section Required.

(AHIS BC3123) Women and Art 
Fillin-Yeh  
Discussion of the methods necessary to analyze visual images of women in their historical, racial, and class contexts, and to understand the status of women as producers, patrons, and audiences of art and architecture.

(CLAH V3132) Classical Myth 
C. Marconi, D. Steiner
A survey of major  myths from the ancient Near East to the advent of Christianity, focussing chiefly on their treatment in the literary and visual sources of archaic and classical Greece and imperial Rome.

(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 V3250) Roman Art and Architecture
F. de Angelis
The architecture, sculpture, and painting of ancient Rome from the 2nd century B.C. to the end of the Empire in the West.

(AHUM V3340) Art In China, Japan, and Korea 
A. Tunstall, S. Larrive-Bass
Introduces distinctive aesthetic traditions of China, Japan, and Korea—their similarities and differences—through an examination of the visual significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, architecture, and other arts in relation to the history, culture, and religions of East Asia.

(AHIS BC3673) History of Photography 
S. Laxton
Focuses on the intersection of photography with traditional artistic practices in the 19th century, on the mass cultural functions of photography in propaganda and advertising from the 1920s onwards, and on the emergence of photography as the central medium in the production of postwar avant-garde art practices.

(AHIS BC3675) Feminism and Postmodernism In the Visual Arts 
R. Deutsche
Prerequisites: Course in 20th century art history. Examines art and criticism of the 1970s and 1980s that were informed by feminist and postmodern ideas about visual representation. Places this art in relation to other aesthetic phenomena, such as modernism, minimalism, institution-critical art, and earlier feminist interventions in art.

(AHIS W3833) Architecture, 1750-1890 
V. DiPalma
Major theorists and designs of architecture, primarily European, from the Age of Enlightenment to the dawn of the art nouveau critique of historicism. Particular attention to changing conditions of architectural practice, professionalization, and the rise of new building types, with focus on major figures, including Soufflot, Adam, Boullée, Ledoux, Schinkel, Pugin, and Garnier.

Seminars and Colloquia

(AHIS W3895) Major's Colloquium: the Literature and Methods of Art History
J. Crary
 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 W3907) The Construction of Andean Art 
E. Pasztory
Prerequisites: Course in related field, or equivalent experience. Application required. Explores various ways in which the West has made sense of Andean Art from the 16th century to the present.

(AHIS W3908) Topics in the Mediterranean Bronze Age: Figurines 
J. Smith
Understanding the form, significance, and reception of small-scale, symbolic human and animal figures in Mediterranean Bronze Age art involves the study of images, ancient texts, archaeology, and modern ethnographies in addition to magic, dieties, worshippers, and toys. Students will pursue original research projects, present their work to the seminar, submit papers, and engage in class discussion.

(AHIS W3917) Kings, Caliphs, and Emperors: Images of Authority In the Era of the Crusades
A. Walker
This course investigates how notions of political and social authority were conveyed through the visual and material cultures of Byzantium, the Islamic world, and western Christendom when these groups experienced an unprecedented degree of cross-cultural exposure as a result of Crusader incursions in the eastern Mediterranean. Particular attention is paid to the production of hybrid monuments and objects.

(AHIS W3941) House and Garden In 18th Century England 
V. Di Palma
This seminar investigates the development of the country house in eighteenth-century England, with particular attention paid to the relationship between the house and its landscape setting. The seminar will travel to England for one week, visiting sites including Chiswick, Stowe, and Stourhead.

(AHIS W3942) Turner
S. Schama
An intensive study of how an entirely new form of visionary painting came to be made in the most materialist society in the world; the man who made it and the culture which both supported and balked at him.

(AHIS BC3947) Dada and Surrealism 
S. Laxton

(AHIS BC3948) The Visual Culture of the Harlem Renaissance 
E. Hutchinson
Attendance at the first class is mandatory. Introduction to the paintings, photographs, sculptures, films and graphic arts of the Harlem Renaissance and the publications, exhibitions, and institutions involved in the production and consumption of images of African-Americans.  Focuses on impact of Black northward and transatlantic migration and the roles of region, class, gender, and sexuality.

(AHIS BC3950) Photography and Video in Asia
Phillips

(AHIS W3972) The Collage From Picasso to Richard Prince: Its History and Its Concepts 
P. Schaesberg 
Working primarily with original works in the Museum of Modern Art the seminar will explore how artists throughout the 20th Century—almost compulsively—continue to utilize the collage as a process for generating their work. Analyzing the implied theoretical and artistic structure of the collage as an artistic technique, the main and dominating ideas, key notions and paradigms for modern art will be elaborated. Authors to be read include: Clement Greenberg, Leo Steinberg, Rosalind Krauss, Wendy Steiner, Thomas F. Kuhn, Umberto Eco, Fredric Jameson. Artist will include: Pablo Picasso, Kazimir Malevich, Kurt Schwitters, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Edward Ruscha, Richard Prince.

(AHIS BC3985) Introduction To Connoisseurship 
M. Ainsworth
Instructor permission required. Enrollment limited to 15. Factors involved in judging works of art, with emphasis on paintings; materials; technique, condition, attribution; identification of imitations and fakes; questions of relative quality.

(AHIS W3985) Iconoclasm and Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscapes 
A. Powell
This course explores the relevance iconoclastic acts and attitudes had for production of landscape paintings and prints in the Northern Netherlands of the late 16th and 17th centuries. We'll look at how iconoclasm affected patronage, open markets, and production of landscapes, but primarily be concerned with how and where critical attitudes towards images worked their way into rhetoric of the landscapes, showing up in their omissions, anti-compositions, and monochromy.

(AHHS 4403) Robert Moses and the Modern City
H. Ballon, K. Jackson
No individual had a greater impact on the physical form of New York than Robert Moses. This seminar will examine his transformation of New York, which encompassed parks, beaches, pools, playgrounds, highways, bridges, tunnels, slum clearance and housing projects from the 1930s-1960s. We will consider Moses in a national context, read his critics, and debate about urban renewal, superblock urbanism, highways in the city, and urban segregation. The seminar will involve students in a 2006 exhibition on Moses, and require field trips, group projects, and primary research in local archives