Spring 2007 Graduate Courses

Lectures

(AHIS G4650) Post-War Critical Theory
J. Rajchman

(AHIS W4155) Mesopotamian Art & Archaeology
Z. Bahrani 
Introduction to the art and architecture of Mesopotamia beginning with the establishment of the first cities in the fourth millennium B.C.E. through the fall of Babylon to Alexander of Macedon in the fourth century B.C.E. Focus on the distinctive concepts and uses of art in the Assyro-Babylonian tradition.

(AHIS G4073) African Art, Architecture and Ideas
S. Vogel 
An introduction to arts of Sub-Saharan Africa focused mainly on the rich traditions of Western and Central Africa in social context. Includes art in many media and of all periods from Neolithic to present, concentrating on the 20th century. We will address the tension between the object as conceptualized and experienced in African cultures, and the masterpiece as object of admiration and study in Western culture.

(AHIS G4385) Renaissance Architectural History & Theory
F. Benelli 
A survey of Renaissance Architecture in Italy through its buildings and its theory, from Brunelleschi to Palladio and the influence to other European country.

(AHIS G4085) Andean Art & Architecture 
E. Pasztory
Survey of the art of the Andes from earliest times until the Spanish conquest. Emphasis on the nature of Andean tradition and the relationship between art and society.

(AHIS G4660) The Idea of the Modern Artist
D. Harkett
This course surveys conceptions of the artist that emerged in Europe between the late-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Focusing on representations of the artist in paintings, prints, and literature, we will ask: What is the relationship between artistic identity and the conditions of modernity? Contexts we will consider include modern urban experience, popular culture, art institutions, constructions of gender, politics, and colonialism.

(AHIS G4600) Identities and Resistances in Contemporary Non-Western Architecture
B. Taylor 
Junior & Senior Art History Majors and Art History and GSAPP Graduate Students only. Limited Enrollment.
The proposed course is a critical introduction to the issues and personalities that are shaping the built environment today in much of the postcolonial, non-Western world. It is a cultural approach to the architecture, urban planning and design produced in Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and certain countries of Latin America.

(AHIS W4657) Russian Art 1860-1910
E. Valkenier

(AHIS G4278) Family in Roman Art
N. Kampen
If necessary, preference is given to students working in Roman art history, Roman history and in Latin literary history. Knowledge in one of the following required: Latin, French, German, Italian. An introduction to the representation of family in Roman art, this lecture course uses a wide range of visual material from the Republican period through the late Empire as well as primary texts and the theories and methods of family historians.

(AHIS G6120) Copies, Replicas, and Allusions in Chinese Art
R. Harrist
Please note, this course will run from March 23-April 30, 2007.
An examination of how artists in China have copied, imitated, and alluded to earlier works of art. Topics include the role of tracings and rubbings in the transmission of calligraphy, copying in pedagogy and workshop practice, the tradition of fang or creative imitation in painting, and the use of allusions and appropriation in contemporary Chinese art. 

Seminars and Colloquia

(AHIS G8040) History of Architectural and Design Exhibitions at MOMA taught at MoMA
B. Bergdoll
Application form required by December 1, 2006. Held at MoMA.
From it's first seminal exhibition on the International Style curated by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in 1932 to the "Light Construction" and "Un-private House" exhibitions organized by Terence Riley in the 1990s, the Architecture & Design Department at MOMA has played an important role in defining architecture both for practicioners and a wider public. This course will examine the history of the department, of it's role in designing and conceiving exhibitions at every scale from photography displays to the houses built in the garden by Breuer and Ain, and of it's reception and influence. Students will work directly in MoMA's own archives to research seminal exhibitions. Guest speakers and gallery visits.

(AHIS G8550) Poussin
D. Freedberg 
Application form required by December 1, 2006. The paintings of Poussin studied in their social and historical context, their place in the scientific and antiquarian culture of 17th-century Rome, and their stylistic independence.

(AHIS G8795) The Modernist City: Urban Renewal, Urban Design, 1950-70
H. Ballon
Application form required by December 1, 2006. The seminar will consider the vast effort to rebuild America's cities in the post-war period, different approaches to urban renewal, signature projects involving SOM, I.M. Pei, and Mies van der Rohe, including the redevelopment of Southwest Washington; Lake Meadows, Chicago; Society Hill, Philadelphia; and the Gratiot area in Detroit; developers such as William Zeckendorf, Herbert Greenwald, James Scheuer, and Roger Stevens; the impact of redevelopment czars, most famously Robert Moses, Edward Logue, and Edmund Bacon; and the rise of citizen planning. The seminar is coordinated with the three-part exhibition Robert Moses and the Modern City.

(AHIS G8262) Greek Myth in Italy before the Empire: An Investigation in Cross-Cultural Relationships
F. De Angelis
Application form required by December 1, 2006. The course will investigate the diffusion of Greek mythological images in Etruria, Southern Italy, and Rome from the Archaic to the Late Republican period (ca. 630 to 30 BCE). Among the issues which we will address there are: Why were peoples like the Etruscans or the Romans so keen on using Greek myth, and why did they not develop (to the same extent, at least) a mythic imagery of their own? What changes did myth undergo in the process of diffusion from Greece to the indigenous cultures in Italy? How can we use the verbal, narrative dimension of mythological scenes to get information about societies for which we do not have written sources?

(AHIS G8625y) Society and Visual Culture In Britain Since 1945
S. Schama
An examination of (primarily) visual culture in Britain from Hockney to Hirst, with the emphasis on relationship between tradition and innovation in a post-imperial nation and the place of spectacle in modern British life.

(AHIS G8805) Woman, Goddess, Power: India's Images of the Feminine 
V. Dehejia 
Application form required by December 1, 2006. Application form required by December 1, 2006. Students who have not taken formal classes in this material will be expected to acquire a basic level of familiarity with it by reading Vidya Dehejia's Indian Art (Phaidon Press). Explores the representation of the female figure in the artistic tradition of India, making use of literary extracts from the major texts of ancient India, as well as selected modern writings. While inter-disciplinary in approach, the emphasis is on the visual material. No attempt will be made to survey the material across the ages; rather the seminar will focus on specific periods and topics chosen because they present challenges to the viewer-reader. Emphasizing that there is no single over-arching way of presenting female imagery in India, nor indeed a single way of understanding or explaining it, each body of visual material will be placed within its specific socio-economic, historical, religious, and artistic milieu. In the first half of the semester, each class will consist of two sections. A class discussion in which all students will be expected to have read the material and participate, even though individual students may have been assigned the task of presenting prepared critiques, will be followed or preceded by a professorial presentation.

(AHIS G8379) Paris and the Medieval City 
S. Murray
Application form required by December 1, 2006. 
Exploring all aspects of cultural production; focusing especially upon Saint-Denis and Notre-Dame.

(AHIS G8466) Titian
D. Rosand
Application form required by December 1, 2006. Explores the dimensions of meaning in Titian's art. Address problems of interpretation of the work and figure of the artist. Among the issues considered are the readings of pictures; the Venetian contexts of artistic production: workshops, guilds, and patronage; and the phenomenology of painting and critical response.

(AHIS G8686) Methods Seminar: the Post-Medium Condition 
R. Krauss
Application form required by December 1, 2006. Installation art, the orthodoxy of contemporary production, is ballasted by the idea that the aesthetic medium—whether painting, sculpture, or drawing—is dead, absorbed in the multimedia condition of installation. The seminar examines the history of the consolidation of this idea, along with challenges to it, in the form of those contemporary practices that continue to invoke the condition of the "medium specificity." Texts such as Derrida's The Law of Genre are examined

(AHIS G8703) Islam and Contemporary Art
G. Lowry
Application form required by December 1, 2006. In the last decade a number of artists from predominantly Islamic countries have emerged as important figures on the contemporary scene. This course will examine the issues and ideas they address, while exploring the ways in which they deal with questions of modernity and identity, among other topics.

(AHIS G8835) Expanded Arts
B. Joseph
Application form required by December 1, 2006. This course examines the movement of "expanded arts" as they developed in the mid-1960s in the realm of happenings, Fluxus and "expanded cinema" the sixties and seventies. The course considers art/cinema hybrids, the notion of intermedia, and the associated methodological and theoretical challenges their investigation poses.

(AHIS G8991) Curatorial Seminar: Women Artists at MoMA
D. Wye
Required course for first-year Modern Art/Curatorial Track M.A. students. For all other students an application form is required by December 1, 2006; only Art History Dept. Graduate Students may apply. Developed in conjunction with a major publication project which will survey the work of women artists in MoMA’s collections of painting & sculpture, drawings, prints & illustrated books, architecture & design, film & new media, and photography, this seminar is designed for students in the MA-Moda Curatorial program and open to other graduate students with permission of the instructor and the Director of MA programs. Sessions will take place at MoMA. In addition to taking up the issues of researching women artists, students receive instruction in object-based research, produce research dossiers, write practice catalogue entries, and make presentations.Instructors: Deborah Wye, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Chief Curator of Prints & Illustrated Books (contact person); Susan Kismaric, Curator of Photography; Anne Umland, Curator of Painting & Sculpture