Spring 2009 Course Offerings

Graduate

ArtHist 589: African Art and Architecture Since 1500

Kasfir--------------------------Tu, TH 10:00 - 11:15 AM ---------------------------- Max Enrollment. 5

Contents: This course introduces students to the visual and performative arts of West Africa with primary emphasis on sculpture, leadership arts, vernacular architecture and arts of the body. The time frame extends from the 9th c ACE to the present, though most of the forms we will study originated prior to the 20th c and have undergone varying degrees of transformation under colonialism . The first part of the course will examine the development of artisanship in iron, terracotta and bronze in Nigeria from 500 BCE to the end of the nineteenth century. The second part will consist of five case studies of art in contrasting cultural and environmental settings in Nigeria, Mali, Ghana, Niger and Sierra Leone/Liberia . We will see several films or videotapes of performances, enactments or processes (eg, forging iron, brasscasting) There will be a Blackboard website of representative images for study purposes and a discussion board.

Texts: Library and online readings, others TBA.

Particulars: TBA

ArtHist 592: Textiles of the Americas
(crosslisted with LACS 385)

Stone--------------------------Tu, Th 1:00 - 2:00 PM ---------------------------- Max Enrollment. 5

Contents: This seminar concerns the technique, design, and iconography of fiber arts in the Americas, with special emphasis on the ancient Andean textile traditions and those of the modern Maya of Guatemala. Works of art from the Carlos Museum will be featured, especially new acquisitions.

Text:

• Stone-Miller, To Weave for the Sun, 1994.
• articles on reserve.

Particulars: Research project, consisting of a 30 minute presentation and 20 page final paper; one hands-on project (weaving, embroidery, fiber sculpture). No prerequisites.

ARTHIST 592: Introduction to Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

Shpuza---------------------Tuesday 6:00 – 9:00 PM ----------------------Max: 2

Content: This course is designed to provide students interested in architecture with a basic understanding of computer-aided design and graphic analysis. Emphasizing a hands-on approach, the course is structured around two projects which are designed to let students explore the potential of the computer, not merely as a drafting and presentation instrument but as an active analytical and design aid.

Texts: TBA

Particulars: TBA

ARTHIST 596R: Internship

Coordinator: Meyer

May be repeated with permission from the director of internships. Interns must be nominated by the department for internships at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, the High Museum of Art, and elsewhere. Variable credit.

ARTHIST 597R: Directed Study

Faculty; variable credit.

ARTHIST 599R: Thesis Research (Permission only)

Faculty

ARTHIST 719: Exploring Function and Meaning in 18th Dynasty Non-Royal Theban Decorated Tombs

Robins ---------- Tu 9:00 AM -12:00 PM ---------- Max: 10

Content: Some of the most famous pieces of ancient Egyptian art come from eighteenth dynasty, non-royal, Theban decorated tombs. Although modern viewers can easily appreciate the high aesthetic quality of these paintings, it is impossible to understand their original meaning without knowing how an ancient Egyptian tomb functioned. In this course, we will examine the eighteenth dynasty, non-royal, Theban decorated tomb as a complete unit, and explore the meaning of the architecture and decorative program to see how they worked together for the benefit of both the dead and the living.

Texts: Selected readings.

Particulars: Presentation and discussion of readings; oral presentation of research topic; research paper.

ARTHIST 729: The Column of Marcus Aurelius

Varner ------------------------------ Tu 1:00 - 4:00 PM ----------------------------Max: 10

Content: Although it is often overshadowed in scholarly assessments by its predecessor, the Column of Trajan, the Column of Marcus Aurelius is a distinctive monument in its own right and is stylistically and thematically innovative.  This seminar will offer a close visual reading of the column’s narrative which will seek to situate it in its social, political and historical context.  In addition, the column’s relief sculpture will be compared to that on the Column of Trajan, as well as the reliefs from the Arch of Septimius Severus in the Roman Forum, created two decades later.

Texts:        

• F. Coarelli, La Colonna di Marco Aurelio/The Column of Marcus Aurelius (Rome 2008)
• F. Coarelli, The Column of Trajan (Rome 2000)
• M. Galinier, La Colonne Trajane et les Forums Imperiaux (Rome 2007)
• J. Scheid and V. Huet, eds. La Colonne Aurélienne.  Autour de la colonne Aurélienne.  Geste et image sur la colonne de Marc Aurèle à Rome (Brussels 2000)

Particulars: Presentation, paper.

ARTHIST 729: Decorative Arts of the Classical World

Gaunt ------------------------------ Th 1:00 - 4:00 PM ----------------------------Max: 7

Content: This seminar examines the rich traditions that surround the creation of the decorative arts in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Many media, from precious metals to pottery, from textiles to panel paintings will be considered. An attempt will be made to understand how these strands relate to one another; to more familiar traditions such as monumental sculpture and architecture; and how they fit into their historical and social contexts. The class meets in the Carlos Museum to enable hands-on study of objects in the collection, to which prime importance is attached.

Texts: TBA

Particulars: This course will consist of object examinations; slide lectures; small weekly assignments and a research paper on an object in the Museum.

ARTHIST 735: Inka Art and Architecture

Stone ------------------------------ W 9:00 - 12:00 PM ----------------------------Max: 15

Content: This seminar concerns the art and architecture of the largest empire in the world in the 15 th and early 16 th centuries. Stonework, textiles, and goldwork are featured media. Issues such as the link between language and art, royal and provincial expressions, abstraction and statecraft will be explored.

Texts: articles and books on reserve.

Particulars: Reading, discussion, major research project, consisting of a 50 minute presentation and 20 page final paper. No prerequisites.

ARTHIST 739: Approaches to Medieval Studies
(crosslisted with HIST 585)

Pastan/White ------------------------------ M 1:00 - 4:00 PM ----------------------------Max: 5

Content: How might one study visual arts, chronicles and legal documents, and literary works concurrently to understand a period as different from our own as the European Middle Ages? In this course we explore this question through specific case studies concerning such topics as: the Bayeux Tapestry, conflict and concord in Vézelay, the promotion of the cult of Sainte Foy of Conques, and the uses of different pictorial and textual representations of Charlemagne. Readings from 'classic' literature as well as very recent interdisciplinary scholarship will be paired so as to allow for a thorough consideration of Medieval Studies as a field.

Texts: TBA and select e-reserves.

Particulars: Evaluation will be based partly on the student’s contributions to the weekly discussions, including response-papers and in-class presentations, and partly on two shorter papers, 5-7 pp and 8-10 pp.

ARTHIST 759: Seventeenth-Century Still Life Painting

Hildebrecht----------------------------W 1:00 - 4:00 PM-------------------------- Max: 5

Content: This seminar investigates the art of still life painting and book illustration during the seventeenth century with special emphasis on the Dutch and Flemish painters whose cultivated skills and innovations made this kind of artistry a locus for questions about craft, knowledge, and the nature and function of pictorial representation. We will begin by considering the origins of still life, its rise to prominence in the seventeenth century and how this genre is identified and discussed both then and today. In the late 1960s art historians began to focus serious attention on this once neglected genre, and by the 1990s, still life had become the locus of intense scholarly interest. This process reached a pinnacle in the joint exhibition held at the Rijksmuseum and The Cleveland Museum of Art in 1999-2000. This important exhibition gave rise to a number of more specialized exhibitions devoted to still life painting that we will consider including the 2008 exhibition of Jan van Kessel at the Rijksmuseum and the exhibition devoted to fish still lifes held at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht in 2004. This seminar will approach still life by recovering the seventeenth century vocabulary used to describe this kind of artistry and then turn attention to how these pictorial skills generated meaning(s), innovation and value. We will consider still life painting from several perspectives, looking at its place not only within the discourse and practice of art, but also in relation to relevant social, rhetorical and experimental practices.

Readings:

• Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing (Chicago, 1983).
• Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age (Chicago, 2007).
• Hanneke Grootenboer, The Rhetoric of Perspective: Realism and Illusionism in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still-Life Painting (Chicago, 2005).
• Julie Berger-Hochstrasser, Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven, 2004).
• TBA

Particulars: Written assignments based on readings, in-class presentations and discussions, culminating in a research paper.

ARTHIST 775: Art and Globalism

Meyer ---------------------------- M 4:00 - 7:00 PM -------------------------- Max: 10

Content: This course explores the theme of globalism in the visual arts. We will address such topics as economic globalization and its effects on production and distribution, the maturation of an international exhibition circuit of central and "peripheral" Biennals, the physical expansion of the museum and of artistic scale, and the emergence of the artist-traveler and a nomadic subjectivity in recent practice. Our readings will draw from theoretical, sociological, and art critical sources.

Texts: TBA

Particulars:One short paper; final presentation and research paper.

ARTHIST 791: Teaching Art History

Fletcher------------------------ W 12:50 AM - 2:50 PM----------------------- MAX: 12

CONTENT: ARTHIST 790/791 is designed to meet the Graduate School (TATTO) requirement for a teacher training course for students in art history. It is required of those graduate students serving as TAs in ARTHIST 101/102, and is offered in concert with their teaching experience in those courses.

TEXTS:

• Stokstad, Art History, 3rd ed.
• Davis, Tools for Teaching

PARTICULARS: none

ARTHIST 792: Visual Arts in the Making of Black Britain

Chambers ------------------------ F 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM ----------------------- MAX: 5

CONTENT: One of the most interesting developments in the demographics of post-war Europe is the emergence of Black Britain. That is, British people whose origins (or whose parents’ origins) lie in the post-war period of African and African-Caribbean immigration that the UK experienced from the late 1940s through to the early 1970s. This seminar will look at the various ways in which Black painters, sculptor, film-makers and other artists created fascinating bodies of work that effectively reflect the development and emergence of Black Britain as a vibrant, culturally complex element of the wider community, albeit an element constantly beset with formidable challenges. The seminar will look at issues and examples of how some Black British artists (that is to say, artists of African and African-Caribbean origin and background) have contributed to debates about history, identity and nationality in Britain and beyond over the past several decades. The seminar will also seek to put their work into a variety of international and artistic contexts.

British artists of the African/Caribbean Diaspora have often attempted to position themselves within a wider international context, and yet, simultaneously, they have to some extent become an integral component of the British art scene. These artists’ work frequently embraces debates about what it means to be both Black and British - conditions that have often been regarded by many as being mutually exclusive. Many of these artists have produced work that exposes and highlights the often-uneasy state of being critically distanced from ‘British’ history and cultural sensibilities. And yet, at the same time, being very much an integral component of that very same history. The seminar will chart the development of why and how Black Britain came to be.

TEXTS: Required Reading (four publications):

• Rasheed Araeen, The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War 
  Britain, exhibition catalogue, South Bank Centre, London 1989.
• David A. Bailey, Ian Baucom and Sonia Boyce (eds.), Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain, Duke University Press, Durham, NC 2005.
• Kobena Mercer, Keith Piper: Relocating the Remains, inIVA, London 1997.
• Franklin Sirmans and Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd (eds.), Transforming the Crown: African, Asian, and Caribbean Artists in Britain, 1966-1996 Caribbean Cultural Center New York, 1997

PARTICULARS: Students are required to produce 750 word response papers, relating to the previous week’s seminar. Students are also required to make presentations, of between 30 – 45 minutes’ duration. A 6000-word paper, relating to some aspect of the seminar, must be submitted towards the end of the semester.

ARTHIST 796R: Internship
Meyer

ARTHIST 797R: Directed Study
Faculty

ARTHIST 799R: Dissertation Research
Faculty

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