ARTH 102 Perspectives in World Art II
CRN 18331
Professor Nick Napoli
Schedule: M W 12:00-1:20 Preston 110
Related Interest: African Studies, LAIS
This course, the second half of a two-semester survey, will continue to explore the visual arts worldwide. Beginning in the fourteenth century and ending in the present, the class will survey painting, sculpture, and architecture, as well as works in newer media (such as photography, video, and performance). The class will encompass works from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, arranged chronologically in order to provide a more integrated historical context for their production. In addition to the course textbook, readings will be chosen to broaden critical perspectives and to present different methodological approaches. This course is designed for those students with no background in art history as well as for those who may be contemplating a major in art history or studio. Students who have taken part one of this course will be given either preferential enrollment. First and second year students are encouraged to enroll.

ARTH 160 Survey of Latin American Art
CRN 18334
Professor Susan Aberth
Schedule: Tu Th 4:00 – 5:20 Olin 102 Cross Listed: LAIS (core course) SRE
Related Interest: Africana Studies, Theology
A broad overview of art and cultural production in Latin America, including South and Central America, Mexico, and the hispanophone Caribbean. A survey of major pre-Columbian monuments is followed by an examination of the contact between Europe and the Americas during the colonial period, 19th-century Eurocentrism, and the reaffirmation of national identity in the modern era.

ARTH 193 Arts of Japan
CRN 18355
Professor Patricia Karetzky
Schedule: W 1:30-3:50 FAS
Cross Listed: Asian Studies
This course begins with a study of the Neolithic period and its cord-impressed pottery circa 2000 B.C.E., when Japanese cultural and aesthetic characteristics were already observable. Next, the great wave of Chinese influence is considered, including its impact on government, religion (Buddhism), architecture, and art. Subsequent periods of indigenous art in esoteric and popular Buddhism. Shinto, narrative scroll painting, medieval screen painting, Zen art, and ukiyo-e prints are presented in a broad view of the social, artistic, and historical development of Japan.

ARTH 211 Sightseeing: Vision and the Image in the Early Modern Period
CRN 18333
Professor Susan Merriam
Schedule Tu Th 2:30-3:50 Olin 102
Cross listed Science, Technology and Society
This class examines the relationship between theories of vision, and the production and reception of images, in European art and culture of the early modern period (ca. 1500-1750). During this time, ways of thinking about visual experience changed profoundly. The “new science” placed particular importance on observation, and a number of visual technologies (optical devices such as the camera obscura, telescope, microscope, and "peepbox") came into common use. At the same moment that ideas about visual experience were undergoing rapid change, older ways of thinking about vision (the experience of miraculous apparitions, and the dangers inherent in viewing seductive images, for instance) were still a part of everyday life. We will examine this complex moment thematically, considering topics such as: the historicity of vision; perspective systems and their distortion; deception and deceptive images (trompe l’oeil); curiosity and connoisseurship; voyeurism; optical devices; visions of the divine; the image as evidence; the representation of sight.

ARTH 218 20th Century Sculpture
CRN 18337
Professor: Tom Wolf
Schedule Wed Th 10:30-11:50 Avery 117
This course surveys the major issues and the major artists who created modern sculpture. Beginning with Rodin in the late nineteenth century and ending with installation art in the late twentieth, the course examines the various media, styles and subjects investigated by Picasso, Brancusi, Giacometti, David Smith, the Minimalists and others.

ARTH 221 Romanesque and Gothic Art
CRN 18265
Professor Jean French
Schedule M W 10:30-11:50 Olin 102
Cross Listed: French Studies, Medieval Studies
This course will examine five hundred years of art and architecture – from the “terrors” of the Year One Thousand through the “Waning of the Middle Ages.” The focus of the course is the construction of the great monasteries, cathedrals and castles of Europe. Emphasis is placed on the analysis of architecture (religious and secular), sculpture, frescoes, stained glass, tapestry, manuscripts and metalwork as part of a wider cultural context. Among the topics studied are monasticism, the pilgrimage routes and the cult of relics, the Crusades, the rise of urbanism and the universities, technological innovations, and the role of patrons as well as that of marginalized groups (heretics, the poor and lepers) within a dynamic and changing society.
Open to all students.

ARTH 225 Contested Images and Iconoclastic Acts: A History of Image Destruction
CRN 18336
Professor Susan Merriam
Schedule W Fri 12:00-1:20 Olin 102
Cross listed: Human Rights, Religion
UNESCO termed the Taliban’s destruction (2001) of two revered ancient stone Buddhas in Afghanistan a “sacrilege to humanity,” and much of the world concurred. Yet to the Taliban (at least in official statements), it was the Buddhas that constituted the sacrilege: they violated the Islamic prohibition against figural imagery, and thus needed to be destroyed. Image critiques and iconoclastic acts such as this date to antiquity, and have frequently originated in beliefs about the right of human beings to represent and worship divinity in visual form. But iconoclastic acts are also frequently politically motivated--directed at representations of power-- and in many instances, the destruction of images results from the complex conflation of political aims and spiritual beliefs (as many would argue was the case with the Taliban). More recently, theorists have argued that certain images function as critiques of figural representation, and are thus “iconoclastic images.” This course looks at the most important instances of iconoclasm in the history of images, including those in Byzantium, Reformation Europe, revolutionary France, and more recently, isolated cases such as that of the Taliban. Primary attention will be paid to iconoclasms in the west, but comparative cases will be drawn from throughout the world. Our primary interest is not in the destruction of images per se, but rather in the theories about images that both provide for their making and that in turn may provoke their annihilation or disfigurement. Central issues to be addressed include: theories of idolatry; the way image critiques shaped the form and content of art; the ritual destruction of images; the relationship between idolatry and desire; contemporary valuations of the art object and idolatry. Two papers and two exams. Open to all students.

ARTH 228 Imperial Spain: Art and Architecture in Spain, Naples and the Americas 1400-1800
CRN 18329
Professor J. Nick Napoli
Schedule: M W 3:00-4:20 Olin 102
In a period of two centuries (1400-1600), an informal trade alliance in the Mediterranean anchored by the House of Aragon expanded into a worldwide empire. Architecture and Urbanism in Imperial Spain considers how architecture, art, and urban form responded to and shaped this extraordinary geopolitical phenomenon. As the contemporary world comes to terms with the benefits and failures of globalization, cultural historians have begun to show that this phenomenon has a rich history: many contend, furthermore, that the Renaissance and Baroque were the first artistic expressions to go global. Considering the art and architecture in geographical confines of the early modern Spanish Empire provides a rubric for examining this hypothesis. This lecture course examines the art and architecture of Spain and Spanish territories from Lima and Mexico City to Naples from 1500 to 1800. Lectures and discussions will explore three principal questions: How did art and architecture serve as a vehicle for the dissemination of Catholicism in the early modern world? How did the expansion of the Spanish Empire allow for the geographic diffusion of architectural form? What happens to Renaissance art and architecture outside of Europe? What is the relationship between architecture and cultural identity in the Spanish world?
Students who have taken ArtH 286 El Greco to Goya: Spanish Art and Architecture may not enroll in this course.

ARTH 256 The Art of the 1980s
CRN 18328
Professor Noah Chasin
Schedule M W 12:00-1:20 RKC 102
Courses on the history of late-twentieth-century art tend to begin with movements of the late 1960s-early 1970s and then move quickly into the most contemporary practices. Art of the 1980s serves as a multidisciplinary introduction to this most maligned of art decades. While the prevalent iconic documents of the time (Dallas, Miami Vice, Wall Street, the Brat Pack) dependably reemerge cyclically in the contested realm of popular culture, unawareness of the serious art practices from this decade is common. We will look at work by seminal painters, sculptors, and collectives from the US, Europe, Latin America, and Africa—e.g., Schnabel, Sherman, Gonzalez-Torres, Polke, Leirner, Watts, Group Material— examining these practices through the multivalent lenses of the decade’s important intellectual movements such as postmodernism, appropriation, deconstruction, and liberation theology. Contentious and/or momentous major exhibitions such as “Magiciens de la terre” and “Primitivism in 20th Century Art” (and the attendant rise of the curator-as-celebrity) will be evaluated in terms of their contemporary impact as well as their era-defining roles. Among the radically diverse themes we will cover are the East Village gallery scene (including Gracie Mansion and Civilian Warfare), graffiti culture, institutional critique, activist art, the cultural impact of the fall of communism and the rise of Reaganite neoliberalism, post-punk and new wave music, fashion and cultural icons, and video games, contributing to a larger understanding of this important, misunderstood decade. Assignments include short reviews and a final research paper.

ARTH 330 Artists, Patrons and Ideas: Seminar in Italian Renaissance Sculpture
CRN 18266
Professor: Jean French
Schedule: M 4:30 – 6:50 FAS
Cross Listed: Italian Studies
An examination of the ideas that inspired sculptors and the patrons who footed the bills; the relationship among artists, poets, and philosophers of the Renaissance; and the degree of influence exerted by patrons and their associates on the selection of content and the establishment of stylistic trends. Topics include the materials and forms of sculpture, the changing social position of the artist, the Neoplatonic movement of Florence, and Renaissance theories of love. The major sculptors of the Renaissance are studied, with an emphasis on Donatello, Ghiberti, Jacopo della Quercia, and Michelangelo. Also investigated are the political ambitions and socioeconomic milieu of such remarkable patrons as Cosimo de Medici, Julius II, and Lorenzo the Magnficent.

ARTH 342 Rome, Paris and London: Urbanism and Architecture in Europe, 1600-1800
CRN 18463
Professor J. Nick Napoli
Schedule Tu 1:30-3:50 Avery 117
In the Principles of Art History (1915), Heinrich Wölfflin devised five criteria of opposition (linear to painterly, plane to recession, closed to open form, multiplicity to unity, and absolute to relative clarity) for understanding the change in painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Wölfflin’s criteria provide a starting point for understanding architectural form in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but can they explain how architecture functioned in the European city of this period? In addition, how applicable are these criteria in urban centers beyond Rome?
This seminar will address both the form and function of architecture as we explore how cities functioned – from providing venues for commerce to expressing political and religious ideals – in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe. We will do this by considering buildings and the people who built and used them in three cities: Rome, Paris, and London. While our discussion is not limited to these cities, in each case we will consider how architecture shapes the routines of a city’s inhabitants and visitors, responds to the needs of its patrons and builders, and embodies the fears and aspirations of its creators.

ARTH 359 Manet to Matisse
CRN 18490
Professor Laurie Dahlberg
Schedule Tu Thu 10:30-11:50 FAS
Cross listed: French Studies, GSS
A social history of French painting from 1860 to 1900, beginning with the origins of modernism in the work of Manet. Topics include the rebuilding of Paris under Napoleon III, changing attitudes toward city and country in impressionist and symbolist art, the gendering of public spaces, and the prominent place of women in representations of modern life. The course addresses vanguard movements such as impressionism and postimpressionism and the styles of individual artists associated with them, as well as the work of academic painters.

ARTH 367 Feminism and American Art
CRN 18464
Professor Tom Wolf
Schedule Th 1:30-3:50 FAS
Cross listed: Gender and Sexuality Studies
This seminar will study the intertwined relationship between women’s liberation and art in the United States during the Twentieth century. We will look at the role of women in the Arts and Crafts movement and the art and artists associated with the Suffragist movement around 1900. In the second half of the course we will study “Second Wave” feminism of the 1970s as manifested in the art world, and examine how it relates to its predecessors. Students will present reports to the class about selected women artists, or about issues concerning the interplay between art and women’s political issues. We will read classic documents of feminist art history and theory including texts by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Linda Nochlin. The class is open to Upper College students and others with the permission of the instructor.

ARTH 385 Art Criticism and Methodology
CRN 18332
Professor Noah Chasin
Schedule Tu 1:30-3:50 FAS
This seminar, designed primarily for art history majors, helps students develop the ability to think critically about a range of different approaches to the field of art history. Students read and discuss a variety of texts in order to become familiar with the discipline’s development. Methodologies such as connoisseurship, cultural history, Marxism, feminism, and post-modernism are analyzed.

ARTH/PHOT 113 History of Photography
CRN 18335
Professor Laurie Dahlberg
Schedule: W F 10:30-11:50 Preston 110
Cross Listed: Photography, and Science,
Technology and Society
The discovery of photography was announced in 1839, almost simultaneously by several inventors. Born of experiments in art and science, the medium combines vision and technology. It possesses a uniquely intimate relation to reality and for this reason has many applications outside the realm of fine art; nevertheless, from its inception photography has been a vehicle for artistic aspirations. This survey of the history of photography from its earliest manifestations to the 1970s considers the medium’s applications – as art, science, historical record, and document. This course is open to all students and is the prerequisite for most other courses in the history of photography.

ARTH/SPAN 239 Surrealism in Latin American Literature and Art
CRN 18083
Professors Team taught by Susan Aberth
and Melanie Nicholson
Schedule: M W 1:30-2:50 Olin 202
Cross Listed: LAIS
André Breton, founder and leader of the Surrealist Movement, first visited Mexico in 1938 and the Caribbean in 1941. Politically supportive of Latin America’s struggle against European imperialism, Breton was deeply interested in both its art and culture, and had a large personal collection of ethnographic artifacts. Surrealist journals and artists extolled “primitive” mythologies and were captivated by such “exotic” artists as Frida Kahlo and Wifredo Lam. This course plans to explore two areas: the rich and varied field of surrealism in both literature and the arts of Latin America and, to question the Surrealist fascination with non-Western culture. As numerous critics have noted, surrealism came alive in Latin America at the moment when it was waning in Europe, and continued to develop throughout the twentieth century. By looking through the double lens of art and literature, we will tease out answers to such questions as: What geographical, political, and/or social factors contributed to the widespread growth of Surrealism in Latin America? In what ways did cross-fertilization take place among the countries of Latin America, and between these countries and Europe? Did Latin American artists always feel comfortable being labeled “Surrealist” or was it viewed as another form of colonization? In what ways did the European Surrealists project their fantasies regarding the psychic power of the “primitive” onto Latin American creative production? Finally, we will examine the ways in which Surrealism and its influences survive in contemporary cultural production. Maximum enrollment: 25

HR/ARTH 240 Observation and Description
CRN 18498
Professor Gilles Peress
Schedule Tu Th 2:30-3:50 pm Olin 205
Distribution Social Studies
Cross:listed Art History
We will study the observation and description of reality as a fundamental and daunting problem for human rights. Pain, violence, victimization, and injustice have long been a part of human reality. Can we change, or are we doomed to repeat ourselves and kill and torture one another until the end of time? The answer is not obvious. But one thing is certain: as long as we stay in the cave, in obscurity, and only look at shadows, we are not going to resolve this conundrum. Going into the world, trying to look at it and describe it, is the only way for us to escape that cavern of ideology, of disempowering shadows and ghosts. And while there is no such a thing as truth or objectivity, this process of trying to understand what we see, how we see it and how to describe it, brings us closer to a resolution -- by action -- of this fundamental question. In order to reach the point of rawness where we reformulate for ourselves what observation and description are, we must escape the predicament and predictability of known methods and forms. We need to position ourselves in a no-man’s land, beyond traditional specializations in knowledge and practice. In this seminar, we are out to re-appropriate reality, to get at perception before it has been shaped as expression, to see images in the heart and eye before they harden as categories, styles, definitions -- and if it is possible to do so, to reconcile the layers of meanings and to pull from all these contradictions some organized process, where the documentary act begins. We will focus on visual awareness, not as an illustration of ideas, but as a seed for ideas in themselves. We will try, through examples and assignments, to investigate how non-professionals can use not only current technologies but also new visual attitudes, so that reports and communications can escape their usual dreariness, so that human rights reporting can be formalized in such a way as to escape its own ghetto and be made attractive, visually and emotionally engaging to the largest possible audience. On-line registration

ARTH 101 Perspectives in World Art I
Nick Napoli
CRN 97363
Schedule: M W 3:00-4:20
Olin 102
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
Perspectives in World Art introduces the breadth and diversity of the visual arts worldwide over the course of two semesters. Students may take either semester or both. The first semester class examines painting, sculpture, architecture, and other artifacts from the Paleolithic period through the 14th century. The works, studied chronologically to create an integrated historical context, come from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Readings, outside the course textbook, will broaden critical perspectives and present different methodological approaches. Requirements include two papers, a mid-term, a final, and two quizzes. This course fulfills one requirement for moderating into Art History. Open to all students. On-line registration

ARTH 114 Introduction to the History of Design and Decorative Arts
Tom Wolf
CRN 97167
Schedule: W Th 10:30-11:50 am
Avery 117
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
Cross-listed: STS
A survey of decorative arts from the rococo period to postmodernism. Students explore the evolution of historical styles as they appear in furniture, interiors, fashion, ceramics, metalwork, and graphic and industrial design. Objects are evaluated in their historical contexts, and formal, technical, and aesthetic questions are also considered. Two or more trips to museums to see decorative arts collections are included.
On-line registration

ARTH 126 Architecture Since 1945
Noah Chasin
CRN 97353
Schedule: Tu Th 1:00-2:20 pm
Olin 102
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
Cross-listed: Science, Technology & Society
A survey of the major transformation in architectural practice and debate since the end of World War II, with a focus on the challenges aimed at the modernist discourses of the early 20th century. These challenges begin with Team 10's critique of the historical avant-garde and encompass regionalism, neorationalism, corporate modernism, so-called “blob” architecture, and various permutations of these models. Attention is also paid to alternative and experimental practices that deal with pop art, cybernetic, semiological, and new media discourses. The course concludes with the impact on built form of globalization and advanced information technologies.
On-line registration

ARTH 195 Monuments of Asian Art
Patricia Karetzky
CRN 97359
Schedule: Wed. 1:30 - 3:50
Reem Kayden Cntr 103
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
Cross-listed: Asian Studies
The Monuments of Asia Art is an introduction to the great cultures of India, China and Japan. The course is divided into three sections, with a series of five lectures devoted to each area. The major artistic monuments, painting, and sculpture, will be discussed in terms of their unique characteristics. Religious traditions include Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam in India; Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism in China; and Shinto and Buddhism in Japan. Secular artistic traditions – both pictorial and literary are also studied in the respective societies along with an analysis of their particular artistic format and stylistic evolution. On-line registration

ARTH 212 The Handmaiden's Tale: 19th Century Photography and Fine Art
Laurie Dahlberg
CRN 97355
Schedule: Wed Fri 10:30-11:50
Fisher Annex Seminar Room
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
Cross-listed: Photpgraphy; Science, Technology & Society
Photography led a tortured path into the precincts of fine art, and this course explores that fractious history. We begin by studying the pre-existing debate over realism in art that forms the “backstory” for the complicated reception of photography, and work forward to the so-called Pictorialist movement at the end of the 19th century. Along the way, we will discuss topics such as: photography’s status as “the bastard child of art and science,” “passing (i.e., how to make photographs that look like art)” photography and art pedagogy, pornography, the fine art nude, and Victorian mores, photography’s role in the “liberation” of painting, and the 20th century repudiation of the 19th century photography’s art aspirations. The course will take a hybrid seminar/lecture format, and will include significant weekly readings, at least two medium-length writing assignments, and two exams. A trip to the Met’s “British Calotypes” exhibition is planned. On-line registration

ARTH 219 Art of the Northern Renaissance
Jean French
CRN 97357
Schedule: M W 12:00 noon - 1:20 pm
Olin 102
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
Related interest: Science, Technology & Society
A survey of painting in Flanders, the Netherlands, and Germany during the 15th and 16th centuries. The course opens with an examination of the remarkable innovations of Flemish and Dutch artists working abroad, primarily under the patronage of the French court. It then shifts to the emergence, in the North, of new forms of painting in the work of Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein, Jan van Eyck, and Rogier van der Weyden. The class examines developments in landscape and portraiture (including engagement and marriage portraits), the use of oils, and changing patronage as well as the influence of various philosophical and religious movements, including nominalism, the Devotio moderna, and mysticism. Particular attention is paid to controversial works (alleged references to alchemy, witchcraft, and heretical sects in the paintings of Bosch) and recent interpretations of old favorites (The Arnolfini Wedding of van Eyck). On-line registration

ARTH 232 Italian Renaissance Architecture
Nick Napoli
CRN 97364
Schedule: Tu Th 2:30-3:50
Olin 102
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
Cross listed: Italian Studies
Cross-listed: Science, Technology & Society
This class traces the development of architecture and urbanism in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries. Proceeding more or less chronologically from Florence to Rome and Venice, the class situates the architecture and ideas of Brunelleschi, Alberti, Leonardo, Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Palladio (yes! they were all architects) within their political and theological context in order to decode their meaning. It focuses on how the Renaissance’s complicated relationship with antiquity gave birth to both archaeology (the study of the material remains of the past) and architectural theory (the formulation of suitable ideas for the future). The second half of the class explores how the demands of the Counter Reformation modified architectural form and theory, while the conclusion will consider how the achievements in Italy affected France, Spain, and England. Requirements include a mid-term, final, critical essays, and quizzes. Open to all students. On-line registration

ARTH 240 Rights and/to the City: Topics in Human Rights and Urbanism
Noah Chasin
CRN 97354
Schedule: Tu Th 4:00-5:20
Olin 102
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
Cross-listed: Human Rights (core course); Science, Technology & Society
The course will explore the often-contested terrain of urban contexts, looking at cities from architectural, sociological, historical, and political positions. What do rights have to do with the city? Can the ancient idea of a "right to the city" tell us something fundamental about both rights and cities? Our notion of citizenship is based in the understanding of a city as a community, and yet today why do millions of people live in cities without citizenship? The course will be organized thematically in order to discuss such issues as the consequences of cities' developments in relation to their peripheries (beginning with the normative idea of urban boundaries deriving from fortifying walls), debates around the public sphere, nomadic architecture and urbanism, informal settlements such as slums and shantytowns, surveillance and control in urban centers, refugees and the places they live, catastrophes (natural and man-made) and reconstruction, and sovereign areas within cities (the United Nations, War Crimes Tribunals). Students will do two position papers and one research paper. Admittance is at the professor’s discretion. On-line registration

ARTH 257 Art in the Age of Revolution: European Painting 1760-1860
Laurie Dahlberg
CRN 97356
Schedule: Tu Th 10:30-11:50 am
Campus Center Weis Theatre
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
A social history beginning with the art of the pre-Revolutionary period and ending with realism. Major topics include changing definitions of neoclassicism and romanticism; the impact of the revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848; the Napoleonic presence abroad; the shift from history painting to scenes of everyday life; landscape painting as an autonomous art form; and attitudes toward race and sexuality. Emphasis is placed on French artists such as Corot, Courbet, David, Delacroix, Géricault, Greuze, Ingres, and Vigée-Lebrun; Constable, Friedrich, Goya, and Turner are also considered. On-line registration

ARTH 269 Revolution, Social Change, and Art in Latin America
Susan Aberth
CRN 97166
Schedule: Mon Wed 3:00 -4:20 pm PRE 110
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
Cross-listed: Human Rights, LAIS, SRE
This course examines the role that Christian iconography played in the conquests of the 16th century and the radical new meanings that same iconography took as time went on; it also reviews the visual strategies employed in the presentation of the “heroes” of independence movements (Simón Bolivar, Miguel Hidalgo) and how art contributed to the formation of national identities. It considers the 20th century Mexican mural movement and how the artists involved promoted and reaffirmed the nation’s new leftist political policies in public spaces. Other topics include printmaking as a political tool; the use of Che Guevara’s image as a catalyst for social change; murals in Nicaragua; art in Chicano activists in the United States; and the role of folk art traditions. The course concludes with a look at the use of performance, installation, and video as a means to promoting dialogue on such complex issues as the border, racism, feminism, and AIDS. On-line registration

ARTH 277 The Dutch "Golden Age"
Susan Merriam
CRN 97360
Schedule: Wed Fr 10:30 - 11:50 am OLIN 102
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
Cross-listed: Science, Technology & Society
Examines the extraordinarily rich visual culture that emerged in seventeenth-century Holland, the first bourgeois capitalist state. We will study the art of Rembrandt and Vermeer, among others, as it expressed the daily life, desires, and identity of this new society. The course will be taught thematically, addressing artistic practice (materials and production, patronage, the art market), aesthetics (realism, style), and social concerns (public and private life, city and rural cultures, national identity, colonialism, domesticity, gender, religion, and the new science). Open to all students. On-line registration

ARTH 298 History of the Museum
Susan Merriam
CRN 97361
Schedule: Wed Fr 1:30 -2:50 pm
OLIN 102
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
Cross-listed: Science, Technology & Society
Examines the history of the museum from the Renaissance to the present. Traces the transformation of early collecting and display practices into the first modern “survey” museum, and considers the emergence of alternatives to this model. Particular attention given to critiques of the museum (including critiques of exclusivity and cultural insensitivity), as well as to problems in contemporary museum practice (such as contested provenance and the issue of restitution). Other topics to be addressed include: the museum as memory and memorial; the role played by the museum in the wake of New World discovery and European colonization; collections as sites for producing knowledge; artists’ intervention in the museum; the virtual collection; the gallery and the museum; the logic and politics of display. The class will be conducted as both lecture and discussion. Open to all students. On-line registration

ARTH 320 Celtic Art from Beginnings through Viking Invasions
Jean French
CRN 97358
Schedule: Mon 4:30 -6:50 pm
Fisher Annex Seminar Room
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
Cross-listed: Irish and Celtic Studies; Medieval Studies
Through a study of archaeological remains, myths and sagas, and non-narrative art, this course explores the origin and identity of the Celts, the rich variety of their material way of life, their institutions, and their attitudes toward the supernatural. The course begins with the Continental Celts, who left their treasures throughout Iron Age Europe, from the Balkans in the east to France and Spain in the west. Students become familiar with chariot graves and their princely goods; sanctuaries devoted to the “cult of the head”; and swords, helmets, cauldrons, torques, and bracelets – all decorated with the swirling and intricate patters of the Celtic imagination. Also studied are the migration of the Celts to Ireland and Britain, prehistoric passage graves (Newgrange, Dowth, and Knowth), Irish gold ornaments, dwellings, fortifications, sacred sites, and mysterious stones (fring forts, crannogs, Navan Fort, the Hill of Tara, etc.). Traditions associated with the coming of Christianity include the beehive huts and oratories of ascetic monks and the high crosses and round towers that even today dot the landscape. The course concludes with an examination of Celtic objects found in Viking and Anglo-Saxon graves (Sutton Hoo), as well as the cultural impact of Viking raids and settlements in Celtic Ireland. Open to students in various disciplines, sophomores through seniors. On-line registration

ARTH 343 / PHOT 343 Venacular Photography
Luc Sante
CRN 97366
Schedule: Th 1:30 -3:50 pm
Woods
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
This course addresses the many purposes to which photography has been put outside the realm of art. Students consider the studio portrait, the postmortem portrait, journalistic photography, scientific photography, forensic photography, “spirit” and Kirlian photography, erotic photography, advertising photography, fumetti, and the snapshot. Students study methods of production and reproduction – the carte de vistie, the postcard, the Fotomat, the Polaroid – in their social and historical contexts. Discussion topics include how photographs change their meaning over time, how they insinuate themselves into the unconscious, and the human desire for narrative.
On-line registration

ARTH 348 Asian American Artists Seminar
Tom Wolf
CRN 97365
Schedule: Wed 1:30 -3:50 pm
Fisher Annex Seminar Room
Distribution: Analysis of Arts/ Rethinking Difference
Cross-listed: Asian Studies
In recent years there has been increasing interest in artists of Asian ancestry who have worked in the United States. The relationships between the artistic traditions of their native lands and their subsequent immersion in American culture provide material for fascinating inquiries concerning biography, style, subject matter, and politics. This class surveys some of the central figures involved and explores uncharted art historical territory. Key artists studied include Yum Gee, Yasua Kuniyoshi, Isamu Moguchi, Yayoi Kusama, Nam June Paik, and Mariko Mori. On-line registration

ARTH 375 Mexican Muralism
Susan Aberth
CRN 97352
Schedule: Mon 9:30 - 11:50 am
Fisher Annex Seminar Room
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
Cross-listed: LAIS
This course examines the muralism movement’s philosophical origins in the decades following the Mexican Revolution, the murals of Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros, the Tres Grandes (“The Three Great Ones”); and the work of lesser-known Mexican muralists. Also considered is the muralism movement’s wide-ranging impact on murals executed under the WPA in the United States throughout the 1930s, in Nicaragua during the 1970s, and in urban Chicano communities. Prerequisite: Art History 101-102, or 160 or permission of the instructor. On-line registration

ARTH 385 Art Criticism and Methodology
Susan Merriam
CRN 97362
Schedule: Th 1:30 -3:50 pm
Fisher Annex
Distribution: Analysis of Arts
This seminar, designed primarily for art history majors, helps students develop the ability to think critically about a range of different approaches to the field of art history. Students read and discuss a variety of texts in order to become familiar with the discipline’s development. Methodologies such as connoisseurship, cultural history, Marxism, feminism, and post-modernism are analyzed. On-line registration

REL 343 Popular Arts in Modern India
Richard Davis
CRN 97198
Schedule Tu 4:00 -6:20 pm
OLIN 309
Distribution: Humanities
Cross-listed: Art History
In India one sees them everywhere: bright wide-eyed Hindu deities, in poster form, perched above cash registers in restaurants and clothing shops, glued to the dashboards of taxis and buses, and framed on the walls of temples and home shrines. These mass-produced chromolithographs or “god-posters” occupy a central place in the visual landscape of modern India, but until recently they have remained far on the periphery of scholarly attention. In this seminar we will explore the world of Indian god-posters. The course will consider iconographic features, stylistic developments, political and religious significations, and devotional responses to these popular commercial prints. We will look at the ways the artists have adapted their visual practices within commercial structures of production, and how they have directed their arts towards devotional needs. We will also situate this pervasive genre in “interocular” relation to other modern forms of South Asian visual arts, such as tribal and folk arts (Warli and Mithila painting), pilgrimage paintings (Kalighat, Nathadvara), Parsi theater, photography in India, and especially Bollywood cinema. On-line registration

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