Professors Abiodun, Courtright, Keller, Kimball*, Morse*, Staller*, and R. Sweeney (Chair); Senior Resident Artists Garand and Gloman; Assistant Professors Levine and Rice; Visiting Artists-in-Residence Ewald; Five College Visiting Associate Professor Falk (spring); Visiting Professors Troyen and Vickery; Visiting Assistant Professor Cohen; Visiting Lecturers Culhane, Meyer (fall) and Young (spring).
* On leave 2015-16.† On leave fall semester 2015-16.‡ On leave spring semester 2015-16
The Department of Art and the History of Art offers students a singular means within the College to develop artistic awareness, historical understanding, critical faculties and practice in the visual arts. Students across the College may accomplish these objectives by taking introductory to advanced courses in art history and studio practice. To identify and serve individual interests and goals, the department major is organized into two distinct programs: The History of Art and The Practice of Art:
History of Art Concentration: Professors Abiodun, Courtright, Morse* and Staller*; Assistant Professor Rice; Visiting Associate Professor Falk.
An intensive and structured engagement with the visual heritage of many culture Visiting Associate Professor Falk. s throughout the centuries, this curriculum requires not only the study of art history as a way to acquire deep and broad visual understanding, but also a self-conscious focus on the contexts and meanings of art. By encountering the architecture, painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and material culture created within a variety of historical frameworks, students will deepen their understanding of political, religious, philosophical, aesthetic, and social currents that defined those times as well. As a consequence, students will face art and issues that challenge preconceptions of our own era.Course Requirements: The concentration consists of a minimum of 10 courses (12 with honors project). With the help of a department advisor, each student will devise a program of study and a sequence of courses that must include:
Many of our courses could count for two of these requirements. For example, an upper-level course in European art before 1800 with a required research paper will fulfill two of the requirements. An introductory course in the arts of Asia will fulfill two of the requirements as well.Honors: Candidates for honors in this concentration will, with departmental permission, take ARHA 498-499 during their senior year. Students must apply and be accepted at the end of their third year, usually the last week in April.
Comprehensive Exam: Majors in the History of Art must satisfy a comprehensive assessment by participating in an undergraduate student conference in the final semester of the senior year.Each student will be expected to prepare a brief presentation that will demonstrate how a text of their choice could expand and develop one research project completed to satisfy the requirements for the major. It should elucidate of the link between their work and future goals. Students seeking department honors will be expected to present on their senior thesis.Practice of Art Concentration: Professors Keller, Kimball* and R. Sweeney; Visiting Assistant Professor Levine; Senior Resident Artists Garand and Gloman; Artist-in-Residence Ewald; Visiting Lecturers Culhane, Meyer (fall) and Young (spring).
The concentration in the Practice of Art enables students to become fluent in the discipline of the practice of visual arts. Students will develop critical and analytical thinking as well as the discipline’s techniques and methods as a means to explore artistic, intellectual and human experience. Students will build towards creating a personal vision beginning with primary studies in drawing and introductory art history, proceeding on to courses using a broad range of media, and culminating in advanced studio studies of a more self directed nature. Working with their advisor, students will be encouraged to nurture the strong interdisciplinary opportunities found both at Amherst and the other institutions in the valley.
Course Requirements: The Practice of Art concentration consists of a minimum of 10 courses (12 with honors project):
• Drawing I (ARHA 102 may be considered as an alternative in special cases.)
• Painting I
• Sculpture I
• Printmaking I
• Photography I
• Studio Elective
• Studio Elective
• Studio Elective
• History of Art Elective
• History of Art or Related Elective (contemporary art history strongly encouraged)
In consultation with their advisors, students in this concentration will be encouraged to take additional courses both in art history and other disciplines. These courses should be broadly related to their artistic interests outside of the studio concentration, enriching their interdisciplinary understanding and engagement within a liberal arts curriculum. This expectation will be especially high for honors thesis candidates.
Honors: Candidates for honors will, with departmental permission, take Art 498-499 during the senior year. Students must apply and be accepted at the end of their third year, usually the last week in April. In designing their year-long projects, students will be encouraged to explore the interdisciplinary implications and opportunities inherent in their artistic directions. Thesis students will also be required to develop a statement that ultimately places their body of work within a historical and cultural artistic discourse. There will be an exhibition of the bodies of work representing the honors theses in the Eli Marsh Gallery, Fayerweather Hall, in May.
Comprehensive Examination
Required of all studio concentration majors, except thesis students. This work should be done in consultation with your advisor. You should meet with them before thanksgiving break.
Creation in the senior year of an independent work/s of art. This project is designed and created independently by the student, can be in any medium or combination of mediums, and may also be interdisciplinary in nature. Students will also develop a concise, written statement that addresses their conceptual concerns, process, choice of materials and media. It should cite influences as well as place the work within a historical and artistic context. The written statement and the work/s of art are due on Monday of the 6th week of the student's final semester. On that day students are expected to hang the work for a week-long group exhibition to be reviewed by the Studio Faculty. A .pdf (Adobe format) or .doc/docx (Word format) of the written component is due as an attachment by email to the Department Coordinator - finearts@amherst.edu on the same Monday.
An introduction to two-dimensional and three-dimensional studio disciplines with related lectures and readings. Historical and contemporary references will be used throughout the course to enhance and increase the student’s understanding of the visual vocabulary of art. How the comprehension of differing visual practices directly relates to personal investigations and interpretations within the covered disciplines of drawing, sculpture, painting, photography and printmaking. This includes applying elements of composition, weight, line, value, perspective, form, spatial concerns, color theory and graphics. Work will be developed from exercises based on direct observation and memory, realism and abstraction. Formal and conceptual concerns will be an integral aspect of the development of studio work. Class time will be a balance of lectures, demonstrations, exercises, discussions and critiques. Weekly homework assignments will consist of studio work and reading assignments. Two two-hour class sessions per week. No prior studio experience is required.
Not open to students who have taken ARHA 111 or 215. Limited to 25 students. Fall and spring semesters: Senior Resident Artist Gloman.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024An introductory course in the fundamentals of drawing. The class will be based in experience and observation, exploring various techniques and media in order to understand the basic formal vocabularies and conceptual issues in drawing; subject matter will include still life, landscape, interior, and figure. Weekly assignments, weekly critiques, final portfolio. Two three-hour sessions per week.
Limited to 20 students. Fall semester: Senior Resident Artist Gloman and Professor Keller. Spring semester: Professor Keller.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025(Offered as ARHA 135, ARCH 135, and EUST 135.) This course is an introduction to painting, sculpture, and architecture of the early modern period. The goal of the course is to identify artistic innovations that characterize European art from the Renaissance to the French Revolution, and to situate the works of art historically, by examining the intellectual, political, religious, and social currents that contributed to their creation. In addition to tracing stylistic change within the oeuvre of individual artists and understanding its meaning, we will investigate the varied character of art, its interpretation, and its context in different regions, including Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands.
Limited to 30 students. Fall and spring semesters. Professor Courtright.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2018, Spring 2023(Offered as ARHA 146, EUST 146, and SWAG 113.) We begin with a long-standing Spanish obsession with dreams, analyzing images and texts by Calderón, Quevedo and Goya. We next will consider a range of dream workers from a range of cultures, centuries, and disciplines--among them Apollinaire, Freud, Breton, Dalí, Carrington, and Kahlo--as well as others working around the globe in our own time.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Staller.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 147 and ASLC 143.) An introduction to the history of Chinese art from its beginnings in neolithic times until the end of the twentieth century. Topics will include the ritual bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the Chinese transformation of the Buddha image, imperial patronage of painting during the Song dynasty and the development of the literati tradition of painting and calligraphy. Particular weight will be given to understanding the cultural context of Chinese art.
Omitted 2015-16. Professor Morse.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2013, Spring 2018, Spring 2022, Fall 2023(Offered as ARHA 148 and ASLC 123.) A survey of the history of Japanese art from neolithic times to the present. Topics will include Buddhist art and its ritual context, the aristocratic arts of the Heian court, monochromatic ink painting and the arts related to the Zen sect, the prints and paintings of the Floating World and contemporary artists and designers such as Ando Tadao and Miyake Issey. The class will focus on the ways Japan adopts and adapts foreign cultural traditions. There will be field trips to look at works in museums and private collections in the region.
Omitted 2014-15. Professor Morse.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 149 and BLST 123 [A].) An introduction to the ancient and traditional arts of Africa. Special attention will be given to the archaeological importance of the rock art paintings found in such disparate areas as the Sahara and South Africa, achievements in the architectural and sculptural art in clay of the early people in the area now called Zimbabwe and the aesthetic qualities of the terracotta and bronze sculptures of the Nok, Igbo-Ukwe, Ife and Benin cultures in West Africa, which date from the second century B.C.E. to the sixteenth century C.E. The study will also pursue a general socio-cultural survey of traditional arts of the major ethnic groups of Africa.
Spring semester. Professor Abiodun.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course is a history of western architecture from Classical Greece to Post-Modern America in the form of relatively detailed considerations of two dozen buildings. After introductory discussions of the nature of architecture and various structural materials and systems, each class will be devoted to a single building. This approach offers the scope to demonstrate that works of architecture can be historically important for different reasons: some conclude a line of stylistic or technical development, others initiate them; some are structurally daring while others are quite unadventurous; some were built to solve standard problems, others to solve new and unprecedented ones.
The lectures are intended as both introductions to particular buildings and examples of the varied ways architecture can be considered. What makes specific buildings great will be emphasized rather than how they fit into an apparently inevitable development.
Among the buildings to be studied are: the Parthenon, the Pantheon, Constantine’s church of Saint Peter, Hagia Sophia, Chartres cathedral, The Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, Sant’Andrea in Mantua, Bramante’s Saint Peter’s, Saint Eustache in Paris, the Villa Rotunda, Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza in Rome, the Petit Trianon at Versailles, the Crystal Palace, the Paris Opera, the Guaranty Building in Buffalo, Villa Savoye near Paris, Fallingwater, the Seagram Building in New York and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
Limited to 30 students. Omitted 2015-16. Visiting Lecturer Lieberman.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 152 and ASLC 142.) This introductory course explores the architecture, manuscripts, painting, textiles, decorative arts, material culture, and popular art of the Islamic world, from the late seventh century C.E., touching on the present. It follows a basic chronology, but is structured primarily through thematic issues central to the study of Islamic visual culture, including, but not limited to: orality and textuality, geometry and ornament, optics and perception, sacred and royal space, the image and aniconism, modernity and tradition, and artistic exchange with Europe, China, and beyond. The class will focus on the relationships between visual culture, history, and literature, analyzing specific sites or objects, for example the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, carved ivory boxes from Spain, luxury manuscripts from Cairo, gardens of Iran, and contemporary art from Pakistan, alongside primary and secondary texts. Films, audio recordings, and field-trips to local museum collections will supplement assigned readings and lectures. Participation in class discussion, a significant component of the course, is expected. No previous background is presumed, and all readings will be available in English.
Limited to 25 students. Fall semester. Visiting Professor Rice.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Fall 2023, Spring 2025
This course is a survey of contemporary art since 1950. It examines the dissolution of high art as a concept and looks at how media, from ceramics and textiles to photography, video and media art, came to contest that notion even while aspiring to it. In light of the convergence of discipline-specific and other cultural histories with modernism, this course considers counter modernisms and the deconstruction and revision of Western art history. Students will also be introduced to the global contemporary art world and begin to explore how art operates aesthetically, politically, emotionally, and intellectually. Through the work of selected artists, critics, curators, historians, and theorists, students will investigate a range of processes, concepts and issues that are important in global culture today.
Limited to 50 students. Omitted 2015-16. Visiting Professor Falk.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 154 and ASLC 154.) This introductory course surveys the architecture, painting, sculpture, textiles, decorative arts, and photography of South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), from 2300 B.C., touching on the present. It considers the role of tradition in the broader history of art in India, but does not see India as "traditional" or unchanging. The Indian sub-continent is the source for multi-cultural civilizations that have lasted and evolved for several thousand years. Its art is as rich and complex as that of Europe, and as diverse. This course attempts to introduce the full range of artistic production in India in relation to the multiple strands that have made the cultural fabric of the sub-continent so rich and long lasting. Films, musical recordings, and museum field-trips will supplement assigned readings and lectures. No previous background is presumed, and all readings will be available in English.
Limited to 25 students. Spring semester. Assistant Professor Rice.
An introduction to intaglio and relief processes including drypoint, engraving, etching, aquatint, monoprints, woodcut and linocut. The development of imagery incorporating conceptual concerns in conjunction with specific techniques will be a crucial element in the progression of prints. Historical and contemporary references will be discussed to further enhance understanding of various techniques. Critiques will be held regularly with each assignment; critical analysis of prints utilizing correct printmaking terminology is expected. A final project of portfolio making and a portfolio exchange of an editioned print are required.
Requisite: ARHA 102 or 111, or consent of the instructor. Limited to 12 students. Fall and Spring semesters. Senior Resident Artist Garand.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024An introduction to the practice of sculpture in a contemporary and historical context. A series of directed projects will address various material and technical processes such as construction, modeling, casting and carving. Other projects will focus primarily on conceptual and critical strategies over material concerns. By the end of the course, students will have developed a strong understanding of basic principles of contemporary sculpture and have acquired basic skills and knowledge of materials and techniques. Further, students will be expected to have formed an awareness of conceptual and critical issues in current sculptural practice, establishing a foundation for continued training and self-directed work in sculpture and other artistic disciplines. Two three-hour class meetings per week.
Requisite: ARHA 102 or 111 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 14 students. Both semesters. Visiting Lecturer Culhane.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024An introduction to the fundamentals of the pictorial organization of painting. Form, space, color and pattern, abstracted from nature, are explored through the discipline of drawing by means of paint manipulation. Slide lectures, demonstrations, individual and group critiques are regular components of the studio sessions. Two three-hour meetings per week.
Requisite: ARHA 102 or 111 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 18 students. Fall semester. Professor Sweeney.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025This course is an exploration into the shared territories of drawing, architecture, and sculpture, and the hybrid spaces that may be created between those disciplines. An improvisational and responsive approach, in the spirit of experimentation and open inquiry, frames the studio-based course work. We will consider potentials and challenges of space, light, materials, joinery, structural geometries, organic growth, and temporality. After this initial period of information gathering, students will be free to determine the format or combination of formats that will shape an extended semester-end project. Readings, artist talks, museum visits and a wide range of pertinent visual materials will supplement and inform our studio work.
Requisite: One prior course in studio arts, architecture, or film production, or permission of the instructor. Limited to 12 students. Fall semester. Professor Keller.
2023-24: Not offered
An introduction to black-and-white still photography. The basic elements of photographic technique will be taught as a means to explore both general pictorial structure and photography’s own unique visual language. Emphasis will be centered less on technical concerns and more on investigating how images can become vessels for both ideas and deeply human emotions. Weekly assignments, weekly critiques, readings, and slide lectures about the work of artist-photographers, one short paper, and a final portfolio involving an independent project of choice. Two three-hour meetings per week.
Requisite: ARHA 102 or 111, or consent of the instructor. Limited to 12 students. Fall semester: Visiting Lecturer Meyer. Spring semester: Professor Kimball.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, January 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025(Offered as ARHA 221 and FAMS 221) This introductory course is designed for students with no prior experience in video production. The aim is both technical and creative. We will begin with the literal foundation of the moving image--the frame--before moving through shot and scene construction, lighting, sound-image concepts and final edit. In addition to instruction in production equipment and facilities, the course will also explore cinematic form and structure through weekly readings, screenings and discussion. Each student will work on a series of exercises, a collaborative project and a final video assignment. There will be one 3-hour class and one film screening each week.
Limited to 12 students. Fall semester. Professor Levine.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2014, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025A course appropriate for students with prior experience in basic principles of visual organization, who wish to investigate further aspects of pictorial construction using the figure as a primary measure for class work. The course will specifically involve an anatomical approach to the drawing of the human figure, involving slides, some reading, and out-of-class drawing assignments. Two two-hour meetings per week.
Requisite: ARHA 102 or 111, or consent of the instructor. Limited to 18 students. Fall semester. Professor Sweeney.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024In this course we will resist the art world’s current tendency to lionize the artist as a master creator/seer, who works within a veil of rarified spirits and to whom the truth is revealed. We will view the artist-student not as a genius auteur but rather a pragmatic re-discoverer of human truths lost in plain sight. Students will become collaborators with their audience, allowing viewers to consciously discover their own paths of entry to the artworks.
Working in a wide range of media, digital (photography, video), manual (sculpture, drawing) and performance, students will explore the breadth of expressive potential that can be found in observing and using small human gestures. Students will be asked to reach beyond traditional studio practice to engage with art-making in alternative ways that reflect our common humanity rather than specific cultural vicissitudes. To this end it may be an advantage to be unfamiliar with a material or technique, unbound by canons of traditional art-making; therefore no prior studio experience is required for the course.
Coursework will be complemented by class visits from a variety of practitioners: painters, photographers, magicians, and others. Additionally, students may be asked to participate in a collaborative public project, that could take a form as varied as a parade or projected-image event.
Limited to 12 students. Omitted 2015-16. Artist-in-Residence Lieb.
This course explores the visual structures of natural things. The processes and disciplines of drawing, acrylic painting, watercolor and sculpture will be used to examine natural subjects such as plants, animals, landscape and the figure. We will work directly from life. Out-of-class trips will be frequent to access natural subject matter not found in the classroom.
Requisite: One of Drawing 1, Painting 1, or Sculpture1 (because of the diversity of subject and materials used). Limited to 8 students. Spring semester. Senior Resident Artist Gloman.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 227 and FAMS 227.) This introductory production workshop focuses on the history and practice of film and video portraiture. The class will begin by considering the portrait’s origins in figurative art and still photography before identifying the ways in which the film portrait uses strategies unique to the moving image to convey character and meaning. We will then trace the development of the genre while also considering its intersections with narrative, documentary and experimental film.
The aim of the course is both analytic and creative. We will be looking at a variety of approaches and issues related to portraiture in an attempt to develop both common and contested definitions that can be applied to our own filmmaking practice. Each student will complete in-class exercises and individual video projects that seek to reveal the nature of people, places and objects through sound and image. The class will also cover the fundamentals of cinematography, lighting, audio recording and editing and discuss how these technological considerations influence the portrayal of a subject.
Limited to 12 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Levine.
2023-24: Not offeredThe human image was at the core of what are understood as the first steps into modern sculpture. We will look at the beginnings of the modernist approaches to the human image in sculpture and continue through its use by a wide variety of contemporary artists. Students will build sculptures based on the head and the figure, working from life, as well as from memory and imagination. From initial studies in clay from observation, students will move on to a variety of self-directed projects using the human image as central subject matter. Casting techniques, a range of materials, and a multiplicity of approaches to both analyzing and building form will be covered in the course. Two three-hour class meetings per week.
Requisite: At least one of the following--ARHA 111, ARHA 102, or ARHA 214. Limited to 10 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Keller.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Spring 2015, Spring 2016This course charts developments in contemporary art on a global scale since the 1960s. The first part of the course will concentrate on transformations in artistic practice following the breakdown of modernist discourse in the United States and Europe. We will discuss movements such as Pop Art, Conceptualism, Minimalism, Land Art, and more, while contextualizing these artistic movements in terms of the broader sociopolitical activism and changes that were occurring in the 1960s and 1970s. The course will then focus on a globalized shift in artistic production that took place in the 1980s and 1990s, tracing contemporary art from around the world and how it has responded to contested issues of post-colonialism, globalization, and the expansion of information technologies. Finally, the course will conclude with a theme-based exploration of diverse contemporary artistic movements and practices that investigate various ways of being and living in the world in the twenty-first century.
Limited to 25 students. Fall semester. Visiting Professor Cohen.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course focuses on contemporary art in an age of globalization. In the past 25 years, the breadth and range of contemporary artistic production has expanded in surprising ways, reflecting social, political, technological, and economic upheavals on a global scale. In this course, we will examine major developments in contemporary art as they both speak to different local, regional, and international transformations (i.e., momentous events such as Tiananmen Square or the dissolution of the USSR up until the Arab Spring) as well as address significant institutional, discursive, curatorial, and aesthetic shifts in the field. The opening up of not only geopolitical borders, but also frontiers between artists, curators, critics, and visual thinkers, has challenged contemporary art in creative ways. Readings in the course will reflect this diversity of artistic and cultural thought. Largely theme-based, specific topics to be considered will include the rise of new media in a digital age, questions of identity and social visibility, and art’s relationship to ecology. Two 80-minute classes per week.
Limited to 25 students. Spring semester. Visiting Professor Cohen.
2023-24: Not offeredThis lecture course examines the history of the modernist movement from 1914 to the present in relationship to the primary ideologies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries--socialism, capitalism, and globalism. It considers the work of the founding figures--Wright, Mies, Gropius and Le Corbusier--and significant themes, such as the individual versus the collective; European versus American approaches; modernism beyond the West; the impact of popular culture and new technologies; and issues surrounding sustainability.
Recommended requisite: ARCH/ARHA/EUST 135. Limited to 35 students. Spring semester. Visiting Lecturer Vickery.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 261 and ASLC 260.) Visual imagery plays a central role in the Buddhist faith. As the religion developed and spread throughout Asia it took many forms. This class will first examine the appearance of the earliest aniconic traditions in ancient India, the development of the Buddha image, and early monastic centers. It will then trace the dissemination and transformation of Buddhist art as the religion reached South-East Asia, Central Asia, and eventually East Asia. In each region indigenous cultural practices and artistic traditions influenced Buddhist art. Among the topics the class will address are the nature of the Buddha image, the political uses of Buddhist art, the development of illustrated hagiographies, and the importance of pilgrimage, both in the past and the present.
Omitted 2015-16. Professor Morse.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 262 and ASLC 238 [J].) In 1590 the Tokugawa family founded its provincial headquarters in eastern Japan. By the eighteenth century, this castle town, named Edo (now known as Tokyo), had become the world’s largest city. This class will focus on the appearance of artistic traditions in the new urban center and compare them with concurrent developments in the old capital of Kyoto. Topics of discussion will include the revival of classical imagery during the seventeenth century, the rise of an urban bourgeois culture during the eighteenth century, the conflicts brought on by the opening of Japan to the West in the nineteenth century, the reconstruction of Tokyo and its artistic practices after the Second World War, and impact of Japanese architecture, design and popular culture over the past twenty years.
Omitted 2015-16. Professor Morse.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 266 and ASLC 261.) An interdisciplinary study of the visual culture of the Buddhist and Shinto religious traditions in Japan. The class will examine in depth a number of Japan's most important sacred places, including Ise Shrine, Tôdaiji, Daitokuji and Mount Fuji, and will also look at the way contemporary architects such as Andô Tadao and Takamatsu Shin have attempted to create new sacred places in Japan today. Particular emphasis will be placed on the ways by which the Japanese have given distinctive form to their religious beliefs through architecture, painting and sculpture, and the ways these objects have been used in religious ritual.
Omitted 2015-16. Professor Morse.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2015, Fall 2023(Offered as ARHA 267 and ASLC 267.) This course considers the arts of the Islamic book, with a special focus on illustrated manuscripts produced at the royal courts of Greater Iran (including Afghanistan and Uzbekistan) and Islamic South Asia from the thirteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Among the types of manuscripts to be considered are dynastic and world histories, poetic works, horoscopes, genealogies, divinations texts, and albums. The class will explore in depth the nature of the royal book workshop, manuscript patronage and production (from paper, pigments, and brushes to gold leaf illumination and binding), the formation of visual and stylistic idioms, the roles of originality and imitation in artistic practice, the aesthetics of the illustrated page, word and text relationships, and the theorization of painting and calligraphy in technical treatises, poetry, and other primary texts. Emphasis will be placed on the great movement of artists, materials, and ideas across the Islamic world, all of which contributed to the rise of an elite, cosmopolitan culture of manuscript connoisseurs. Examination of objects in the Mead Art Museum, Frost Library, and other local collections will supplement classroom discussion and assigned readings. No previous knowledge of the topic is presumed, and all reading will be available in English.
Limited to 20 students. Fall semester. Professor Rice.
2023-24: Not offered
(Offered as ARHA 270 and BLST 293 [D].) The course of study will examine those African cultures and their arts that have survived and shaped the aesthetic, philosophic and religious patterns of African descendants in Brazil, Cuba, Haiti and urban centers in North America. We shall explore the modes of transmission of African artistry to the West and examine the significance of the preservation and transformation of artistic forms from the period of slavery to our own day. Through the use of films, slides and objects, we shall explore the depth and diversity of this vital artistic heritage of Afro-Americans.
Fall semester. Professor Abiodun.
2023-24: Not offeredSince the thorough renegotiation of the concept of art in the 1960s and 70s, contemporary art has continuously come to explore new media, sites, and expressions. Conceptual art, performance, video- and sound-based art are examples that often illustrate this development. However, they also act alongside an expanded understanding of traditional art forms such as painting and sculpture, both of which have taken radically new directions during the past decades. The vivid and changing field of artistic practices provides new challenges for museums and curators in terms of collecting, displaying, and communicating art to the public. This course offers theoretical and practical takes on curating and curatorial practices in relation to contemporary art and makes full use of the collection and facilities of the Mead Art Museum. The course investigates the relation between contemporary artistic and curatorial practices mainly from the perspective of the museum, but also with reference to curating outside the frame of an institution. It is designed to combine theory with practice in order to raise awareness of the effects curating can have on the individual artwork. The course aims to deepen the understanding of the individual artwork’s potential to communicate different narratives or expressions. Class is based on lectures regularly incorporating discussion. Recurring sessions at the Mead, which will include examinations of works from the collection, constitute a core in the course structure.
Seminars and lectures discuss central aspects in curating and museum practices, such as collecting and conservation; installation and display; education (including the use of new media); documentation. Named aspects are related to contemporary artistic practices in performance, photography, video- and sound-based art, conceptual art, street art and graffiti, contemporary painting, and sculpture. Furthermore, the course discusses the artist as researcher and curator, areas that have had impact on art education and the distinction between curating and art production in recent years. The course includes one field trip, e.g., Mass MoCA.
Limited to 15 students. Art history concentrators preferred; then upper-class students who have taken art history. Omitted 2015-16.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course will look at globalization and contemporary art through the lens of border culture, a term that refers to the "deterritorialized" experience of people when they move or are displaced from their context or place of origin. Their experience of belonging and understanding of identity are affected by borders within the realms of language, gender, ideology, race, and genres of cultural production as well as geopolitical locations. Border culture emerged in the 1980s in Tijuana/San Diego in a community of artists who had spent many years living outside their homelands or living between two cultures—an experience that in 2015 might well represent the nature of contemporary life as well as art praxis. Readings will include the voices of artists, critics, historians, theorists, anthropologists, and philosophers.
Limited to 24 students. Omitted 2015-16. Five College Visiting Professor Falk.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course is about the centrality of the photographic image - that is, an image produced by mechanical means - in our visual experience, in the rituals, practices and representation of everyday life. Since we no longer, if ever, experience an image in isolation from our experiences of other images and mediums, the culture and idea of photography is understood as utterly diverse in its functions. We will consider photography's histories, theory and practice, especially its relation to "images that move" and its profound role in what we now understand as visual culture. We will examine theoretical, social and cultural issues and contexts influencing image culture through specific examples from contemporary photography, film, media art and other visual media.
Requisite: At least one other course in the arts and humanities, or consent of the instructor. Limited to 24 students. Spring semester. Five College Visiting Professor Falk.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 281 and ASLC 281.) This course examines artistic exchanges and encounters in the Islamic world during the early modern period. We will focus on the movement of artists, objects, and systems of knowledge between and beyond the Mamluk, Ottoman, Timurid, Safavid, and Mughal courts, placing special emphasis upon encounters with the arts of Europe and East Asia. Among the topics to be considered are the design, circulation, and trade of textiles; the arts of diplomacy and gift exchange; the nature of curiosity and wonder; and artists’ responses to the “other.” This course aims to challenge conventional, essentialist binaries (e.g., East vs. West, Islamic vs. European), and to re-assess the standard art historical narratives from a more culturally, geographically, and economically interconnected perspective.
Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Rice.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 284, EUST 284, and SWAG 206.) This course will examine the ways in which prevailing ideas about women and gender-shaped visual imagery, and how these images influenced ideas concerning women from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. It will adopt a comparative perspective, both by identifying regional differences among European nations and tracing changes over time. In addition to considering patronage of art by women and works by women artists, we will look at the depiction of women heroes such as Judith; the portrayal of women rulers, including Elizabeth I and Marie de' Medici; and the imagery of rape. Topics emerging from these categories of art include biological theories about women; humanist defenses of women; the relationship between the exercise of political power and sexuality; differing attitudes toward women in Catholic and Protestant art; and feminine ideals of beauty.
Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Courtright.
2023-24: Not offeredIn this advanced photography course, eight students and the professor will choose a single site to travel to weekly to photograph. Participants will work individually in their chosen medium to build a body of work that represents their experience of that place. Simultaneously, the group will be collectively designing and producing a limited edition book that weaves together the varied ways these individual artists see, experience and produce work from a single place. The course will also include group and individual critiques of the students’ work, historical and topical lectures from the history of photography, and the careful examination of the book as a final vehicle for artistic work. Analog and digital technologies associated with book making will be reviewed, as well as the ideas and theory of book structure, sequence, and design.
Requisite: Introductory Photography, at least one other intermediate photography course or equivalent, and permission of the instructor. Limited to 8 students. Enrollment is determined by interview with the professor. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Kimball.
2023-24: Not offeredIn this advanced photography course (a continuation of ARHA 306), eight students and the professor will choose a single site to travel to weekly to photograph. Participants will work individually in their chosen medium to build a body of work that represents their experience of that place. Simultaneously, the group will be collectively designing and producing a limited edition book that weaves together the varied ways these individual artists see, experience and produce work from a single place. The course will also include group and individual critiques of the students’ work, historical and topical lectures from the history of photography, and the careful examination of the book as a final vehicle for artistic work. Analog and digital technologies associated with book making will be reviewed, as well as the ideas and theory of book structure, sequence, and design.
Requisite: ARHA 306 or equivalent, and permission of the instructor. Limited to 8 students. Enrollment is determined by interview with the professor. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Kimball.
2023-24: Not offeredAn investigation of ideas into the development of visual imagery focusing on series of works utilizing drawing and printmaking. Contemporary and historical references of artists' series of works will be studied in conjunction with students' individual projects, culminating in a final project consisting of a cohesive, visual body of work. Experimentation of conceptual and technical boundaries will be encouraged and explored. Discussion and critiques will be held regularly in both group and individual formats. Visual work will include a wide variety of drawing media, including, but not limited to traditional methods. The techniques of intaglio and relief printmaking will be used in combination with and concurrent to the drawn images.
Requisite: Introductory level Drawing or Printmaking 1 or permission of the instructor. Limited to 10 students. Spring semester. Senior Resident Artist Garand.
2023-24: Not offered
A studio course that will emphasize compositional development by working from memory, imagination, other works of art and life. The use of a wide variety of media will be encouraged including, but not limited to, drawing, painting, printmaking and collage. Students will be required to create an independent body of work that explores an individual direction in pictorial construction. In addition to this independent project, course work will consist of slide lectures, individual and group critiques, in-class studio experiments and field trips.
Requisite: ARHA 222, 326 or 327. Limited to 8 students. Spring semester. Professor Sweeney.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024A studio course that investigates more advanced techniques and concepts in sculpture leading to individual exploration and development. Projects cover figurative and abstract problems based on both traditional themes and contemporary developments in sculpture, including: clay modeling, carving, wood and steel fabrication, casting, and mixed-media construction. Weekly in-class discussion and critiques will be held. Two two-hour class meetings per week.
Requisite: ARHA 214 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 12 students. Spring semester. Professor Keller.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2023This advanced course offers the opportunity for each student to design and work on an individual project for an extended period of time. The emphasis is placed on the student's ability to express themselves clearly with the medium as it relates to their own personal vision. It is designed for those who already possess a strong conceptual and technical foundation in photography. Concepts and theories are read, discussed, demonstrated and applied through a series of visual problems, and complemented by presentations of contemporary and historical photography. Student work will be discussed and evaluated in group and individual critiques. Students may work in analog or digital photography.
Requisite: ARHA 102 or 111 and ARHA 328 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 8 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Kimball.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course offers students knowledgeable in the basic principles and skills of painting and drawing an opportunity to investigate personal directions in painting. Assignments will be collectively as well as individually directed. Discussions of the course work will assume the form of group as well as individual critiques. Two three-hour class meetings per week.
Requisite: ARHA 215 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Sweeney.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course is an extension of intaglio and relief processes introduced in ARHA 213 with an introduction to lithography. Techniques involved will be drypoint, etching, engraving, aquatint, monoprints, monotypes, woodcut, linocut and stone lithography. Printmaking processes will include color printing, combining printmaking techniques and editioning. Combining concept with technique will be an integral element to the development of imagery. A final project of portfolio-making and a portfolio exchange of prints will be required. Individualized areas of investigation are encouraged and expected. In-class work will involve demonstration, discussion and critique.
Requisite: ARHA 213 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 12 students. Fall semester. Resident Artist Garand.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2023This course is a continuing investigation of the skills and questions introduced in ARHA 218. It will include an introduction to varied camera and film formats and both analog and digital photography methods. An emphasis will be placed on defining, locating and pursuing independent work; this will be accomplished through a series of weekly demonstrations, assignments and a final independent project. Student work will be discussed and evaluated in group and individual critiques. This is complemented by slide presentations and topical readings of contemporary and historical photography.
Requisite: ARHA 218 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 12 students. Spring semester. Visiting Lecturer Young.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2021, Fall 2022This course offers an in-depth exploration of three-dimensional practice. The focus will be on extending the range of object-based art. Projects will involve combining materials, using alternative materials and processes and employing contemporary formats including installation and site-specific work. Basic sculptural processes such as carving, casting and welding will be revaluated for new potential. Figurative, abstract, architectural and conceptual approaches will be considered. Students will be encouraged to explore new territory while refining and developing their critical and technical skills. Contemporary critical approaches will be introduced through readings and visual presentations.
Requisite: ARHA 214 or permission of the instructor. Limited to 14 students. Omitted 2015-16. Visiting Lecturer Culhane.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 335 and FAMS 335.) This intermediate production course surveys the outer limits of cinematic expression and provides an overview of creative 16mm film production. We will begin by making cameraless projects through drawing, painting and scratching directly onto the film strip before further exploring the fundamentals of 16mm technology, including cameras, editing and hand-processing. While remaining aware of our creative choices, we will invite chance into our process and risk failure, as every experiment inevitably must.
Through screenings of original film prints, assigned readings and discussion, the course will consider a number of experimental filmmakers and then conclude with a review of exhibition and distribution strategies for moving image art. All students will complete a number of short asignments on film and one final project on either film or video, each of which is to be presented for class critique. One 3-hour class and one film screening per week.
Requisite: One 200-level production course or relevant experience (to be discussed with the instructor in advance of the first class). Limited to 12 students. Spring semester. Professor Levine.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024(Offered as ARHA 343 and FAMS 343) From the found-footage experiments of the avant-garde to the digital remixes of the networked age, artists have used pre-existing material to question the ideologies of dominant media, explore technological possibilities and play situationist pranks. With the advent of file-sharing platforms, streaming video and cheap DVDs, we live in an era dominated by what Hito Steyerl calls “the poor image” – low resolution, second- or third-generation images whose quality has been sacrificed for accessibility. The availability of this material has allowed artists to work economically and to borrow the aesthetics of cinema and television for their own purposes, but it also foregrounds many problematic questions of authorship and ownership.
This course is a hands-on investigation into the practice of recycling, recontextualizing and remixing moving images. We will screen found-footage work, collage films and remakes in addition to discussing readings by filmmakers, artists and theorists that will provide ideas and models for our own production. The class will also review the fundamentals of editing as we create projects both entirely from found material and in combination with our own footage. Two 2-hour classes per week (one seminar/critique and one lecture/screening).
Limited to 12 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Levine.
2023-24: Not offeredWhat is art history? What is its history? What are its premises and where does it come from? This seminar will explore the historical foundations, formulations, and applications of current art historical methods, the foundations of the art historical discipline as it emerged from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as attitudes towards and theories on art practice in their diverse global contexts from before the modern period. Both practice and theory will be considered through discussion of select texts and objects drawn from a variety of traditions. Topics may include: style and periodization; iconography, narratology, and phenomenology; semiotics; the social functions of images and the social history of art; the cultural foundations of representation, aesthetics, and vision; art and the material world; art, gender, and sexuality; collecting and commodification of art; and post-colonialism and post-modernism.
Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Rice.
2023-24: Not offered
This course focuses on the exhibition of artistic and cultural objects from the mid-nineteenth century through the twenty-first century. We will look at how viewing, collecting, categorizing, objectifying, and turning objects into commodities are tied to nineteenth-century European imperialism and nationalism, and how these processes reveal tensions between universalistic claims and local conditions. How do the legacies of imperialism and nationalism continue to shape art and stereotyping in the modern era? Have twenty-first century curators and art professionals who work in regions such as the Middle East, Latin America, and East Asia maintained or resisted such stereotyping in the modern era? Topics to be covered may include: World’s Fairs, ethnographic museums, national collections, dilemmas of representation after the Holocaust, MoMA (NYC) and the Guggenheim Museums, world biennials and mega-exhibitions, commercialized art fairs, and display on the Internet. Largely discussion-based, this class will combine theoretical texts with the visual analysis and writings of art historians, curators, and artists in order to introduce some of the key epistemological shifts underpinning artistic/cultural display and exhibition-making in a global context. We will also visit the Mead Museum and take one to three field trips to prominent international museums in the region.
Limited to 12 students. Fall semester. Visiting Professor Cohen.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 354, ARCH 355, and EUST 355.) Artists such as Donatello, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Leonardo, Raphael, Bramante, Michelangelo, Cellini and Titian, but also unknown artisans, constructed illusions imitating nature or offering profound spiritual connectedness, be it through the spatial grandeur of perspectival narratives on painted walls, in sculpture and the built environment, or through the expert crafting of precious materials for domestic and ritual objects. Art, artifacts, and architecture created for merchants, monks, princes and pontiffs in the urban centers of Florence, Rome, Venice, and Paris from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries range from the gravely restrained and intentionally simple and devout to the monumental, fantastically complex or blindingly splendid. Emphasis will be upon the way the form, materiality, and content of each type of art conveyed ideas concerning creativity, originality, and individuality, but also expressed ideals of devotion and civic virtue; how artists dealt with the revived legacy of antiquity to develop an original visual language; how art revealed attitudes toward the body and the spirit, expressed the relationship between nature, the imagination and art, and developed the rhetoric of genius; and how art and attitudes towards it changed over time.
Rather than taking the form of a survey, this course, based on lectures but regularly incorporating discussion, will examine selected works in depth and will analyze contemporary attitudes toward art of this period through study of the art and the primary sources concerning it.
Requisite: One course in ARHA, FAMS, or ARCH, or with permission of the instructor. Fall semester. Professor Courtright.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 356 and EUST 356.) After the canonization of the notion of artistic genius in the Italian Renaissance and the subsequent imaginative license of artists known as Mannerists, phenomena sponsored throughout Europe by the largesse of merchants, courtiers, aristocrats, princes, and Churchmen alike, a crisis occurred in European society--and art--in the second half of the sixteenth century. Overturned dogmas of faith, accompanied by scientific discoveries and brutal political changes, brought about the reconsideration of fundamental values that had undergirded many facets of life and society in Europe at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the starting point of this course. Unexpectedly, these upheavals led to a renewed proliferation of innovative art. In this century of remarkably varied artistic production, paradoxes abounded. Some artists sought the illusion of reality by imitating unimproved, even base nature through close observation of the human body, of landscape, and of ordinary, humble objects of daily use, as others continued to quest for perfection in a return to the lofty principles implicit in ancient artistic canons of ideality. More than ever before, artists explored the expression of passion through dramatic narratives and sharply revealing portraiture, but, famously, artists also imbued art meant to inspire religious devotion with unbounded eroticism or with the gory details of painful suffering and hideous death. They depicted dominating political leaders as flawed mortals--even satirized them through the new art of caricature--at the same time that they developed a potent and persuasive vocabulary for the expression of the rulers’ absolutist political power. This class, based on lectures but regularly incorporating discussion, will examine in depth selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture produced by artists in the countries which remained Catholic after the religious discords of this period-e.g., Caravaggio, Bernini, Poussin, Velázquez, and Rubens in Italy, France, Spain, and the Spanish Netherlands--as well as engaging the cultural, social, and intellectual framework for their accomplishments. Upper level.
Requisite: One other course in art history or consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Courtright.
2023-24: Not offeredThe American avant-garde in the period between the two world wars was both revolutionary and combative, determined to forge a radical style that was in tune with European innovations yet also clearly American. This course will explore the achievement of such painters and photographers as Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Ansel Adams, Aaron Douglas, and Stuart Davis against the background of more conservative movements of the era (e.g., American Impressionism, the colonial revival) as well as in light of the lively culture generated by bohemian writers, patrons, critics, and political activists.
Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Visiting Professor Troyen.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2022This course will examine historical and contemporary photographic images of political violence from around the world. How have artists, photojournalists, and citizens worked to make visible forms of state repression and censorship, human rights violations, genocide, terrorism, and violence against broader ecosystems? How have they historically used lens-based witnessing to resist such violence or to participate in political protest? This course will not only investigate the circulation of iconic photographs of war and state aggression (from the Holocaust and the atomic bomb to Abu Ghraib), but it will also examine the ethics of photography-based documentation in the aftermath of such atrocities. What kind of truth claims can photographs make as evidence of organized political violence, whether in the courtroom or in the larger public sphere? What are the stakes of using photography to lend visibility to self-determination movements and human rights struggles? Visual analysis will be supplemented by close readings of interdisciplinary texts from an array of scholars, artists, and critics. Due to the sensitive nature of much of the material, the class will also involve extensive in-class discussion and debate. Two 80-minute classes per week.
Requisite: Previous courses in ARHA or permission of the instructor. Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Visiting Professor Cohen.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 374, EUST 384, and SWAG 374.) We will revel in dramatically different works by women artists, from Magdalena Abakanowicz, Lynda Benglis and Louise Bourgeois, to Eva Hesse, Jeanne-Claude, Jenny Holzer, Rona Pondick, Doris Salcedo, Kiki Smith and Rachel Whiteread on down, as we explore how they created themselves through their work. As a foil, we will analyze the invented personas of Sarah Bernhardt and Madonna, as well as images of women by Renoir, Cézanne, Picasso, Magritte, de Kooning, Woody Allen, and Saura. While we will focus on original objects and primary texts (such as artists' letters or interviews), we will also critique essays by current feminist scholars and by practitioners of "the new cultural his-tory," in order to investigate possible models for understanding the relationship between a woman and her modern culture at large. Assignments will include a substantial research paper and at least one field trip.
Requisite: One course in modern art or consent of the instructor. Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Staller.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 381 and ASLC 381.) The term “talisman,” from telesma (Greek) and tilsam (Arabic), has traditionally been defined as a magical object that is believed to repel harmful or evil forces. According to this view, a talisman is more interesting for what it does rather than what it represents or how it looks. Taking the arts of the Near East and South Asia as its primary frame, this course aims to move beyond these standard claims to examine the aesthetic dimensions of the talisman. What forms do talismans assume, and why? How—and with what materials, texts, and physical senses (smell, sight, touch)—are talismans made? And in what ways does this intersection of multiple systems of knowledge challenge basic assumptions regarding the relationship between art and reality? Among the objects we will explore are amulets, prayer scrolls, astrological materials, illustrated divination manuscripts, books of wonders, and talismanic clothing. While our case studies will be drawn mainly from the Islamic and South Asian spheres, students will have the opportunity to investigate a topic outside these realms for their final research project. Participation in class discussion, a significant component of the course, is expected. All readings will be available in English. One class meeting per week.
Requisite: One course in History of Art, History, Anthropology, or Religion. Limited to 20 students. Permission required for first-year students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Rice.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 383 and ASLC 319.) An examination of the history of chanoyu, the tea ceremony, from its origins in the fifteenth century to the practice of tea today. The class will explore the various elements that comprise the tea environment-the garden setting, the architecture of the tea room, the forms of tea utensils, and the elements of the kaiseki meal. Through a study of the careers of influential tea masters and texts that examine the historical, religious, and cultural background to tea culture, the class will also trace how the tea ceremony has become a metaphor for Japanese culture and Japanese aesthetics both in Japan and in the West. There will be field trips to visit tea ware collections, potters and tea masters. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Morse.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 385, EUST 385, and SWAG 310.) This course will explore the construction of the monstrous, over cultures, centuries and disciplines. With the greatest possible historical and cultural specificity, we will investigate the varied forms of monstrous creatures, their putative powers, and the explanations given for their existence-as we attempt to articulate the kindred qualities they share. Among the artists to be considered are Valdés Leal, Velázquez, Goya, Munch, Ensor, Redon, Nolde, Picasso, Dalí, Kiki Smith, and Cindy Sherman. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Staller.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023This course provides an introduction to the Pre-Columbian art and architecture of the Americas. It explores major traditions in architecture and city planning, murals, sculpture, painting, masks, and textiles. The first half of the semester concentrates on Preclassic and Classic Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America); the second on Postclassic Mesoamerica, North America, and the Andes.
Spring semester. Visiting Professor Couch.
2023-24: Not offeredWe will investigate a series of historical events (such as the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile crisis, Stonewall, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King) as well as the Civil Rights Movement, the rise of identity politics (Feminism, Black Power, the Brown Berets) and the counterculture. We will study the myriad art forms and their attendant ideologies invented during the decade (such as Pop, Op, Color Field, Minimalism, Land Art, Conceptual Art, Performance Art, Fluxus), as well as some crucial critics, dealers and art journals, in an effort to understand the ways in which artists rejected or appropriated, then transformed, certain themes and conceptual models of their time.
Requisite: One course in modern art or consent of the instructor. Limited to 12 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Staller.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 441 and FAMS 441.) Intended for advanced film/video production students, this course will explore creative documentary practice through readings, weekly screenings and production assignments. Each student will complete a series of projects working both as a single maker and in collaboration with other members of the class. Topics may include: shooting the interview; scripting, performance and reenactment; history and narrativity; place and space; ethnography and the “embedded” filmmaker. We will also host visiting filmmakers and, where possible, visit a cultural institution which supports and screens cutting-edge documentary work.
The course will be taught annually but will focus on a set of revolving themes and issues that inform contemporary documentary filmmaking and the critical discourse that surrounds it. The theme for fall 2015 will be “Ecstatic Truth: Fact versus Fiction.” One 3-hour class and one evening screening each week.
Requisite: A prior 200-level production course or relevant experience (to be discussed with the instructor in advance of the first class). Limited to 12 students. Fall semester. Professor Levine.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2023(Offered as ARHA 444 and FAMS 444) Essay filmmaking is a dynamic form with many commonly cited attributes—the presence of an authorial voice, an emphasis on broad themes, an eclectic approach to genre, and the tendency to digress or draw unexpected connections. Yet, true to its nature, the precise definition of the essay film is in constant flux. It can be both personal and political, individual and collective, noble and mischievous. Essay filmmakers themselves are equally diverse, ranging from established film auteurs to Third Cinema activists and contemporary video artists.
If we entertain the notion that the processes of cinema closely resemble the mechanics of human thought, then the essay film may be the medium’s purest expression. To watch or make such a film, we must give ourselves over to a compulsive, restless energy that delights in chasing a subject down any number of rabbit holes and blind alleys, often stopping to admire the scenery on the way. As with thought, there is no end product, no clear boundaries, no goal but the activity itself.
The term "essay" finds its origins in the French essayer, meaning “to attempt” or to try.” In this advanced production workshop, we will read, screen and discuss examples of the essayistic mode in literature and cinema while making several such attempts of our own. Students will complete a series of writing assignments and video projects informed by class materials and group discussion.
Requisite: One 200-level production course or relevant experience (to be discussed with the instructor in advance of the first class). Limited to 12 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Levine.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARHA 453 and ASLC 453.) An examination of the construction and use of images and icons. The primary focus will be on images and icons in the Buddhist and Hindu faiths; however, the class will also make comparisons with those in Christianity and the religions of Africa and New Guinea. Some of the topics to be covered will include the relationship between icons and deities, the authentication and animation of images, the connections between icons and political authority, the use of images and icons in ritual, and aniconism and iconoclasm. The class is designed to focus on art historical writing.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Morse.
2023-24: Not offered
We will study two of the greatest artists of all time--their complex relationships to their current worlds, toward traditions and each other. We will interrogate their attitudes toward nature, the sacred, history and gender, as well as the ways in which they recast myths, fears and dreams from the countries and regions of their birth and later experience. We will analyze the ways in which they responded to particular geographies and qualities of light, as we interrogate ways in which their works addressed–-and sometimes aggressively did not address-–cataclysmic events in the social sphere: anarchist insurrections, the Guerra Civil, two world wars. We will consider their drawings, paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, and writing, from the entire trajectory of their careers, reveling in original objects whenever possible. In addition to weekly reading assignments, there will be one substantial research paper, based at least in part on primary sources, and an oral presentation. There will be at least one required field trip, on a Friday.
Requisite: One course in modern art or permission of the instructor. While not required, reading knowledge of French and/or Spanish would be helpful. Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2015-16. Professor Staller.
2023-24: Not offeredHalf course.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025Preparation of a thesis or completion of a studio project which may be submitted to the Department for consideration for Honors.
Open to seniors with consent of the Department. Spring semester. The Department.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025