Undergraduate Program

The aim of this course is two-fold: First, to develop an understanding of the extraordinary variety of ways meaning is produced in visual culture; secondly, to enable students to analyze and describe the social, political and cultural effects of these meanings. By studying examples drawn from contemporary art, film, television, digital culture, and advertising we will learn techniques of analysis developed in response to specific media and also how to cross-pollinate techniques of analysis in order to gain greater understanding of the complexity of our visual world. Grades are based on response papers, class attendance and participation, and a midterm and a final paper. Occasional film screenings will be scheduled as necessary in the course of the semester.

Location

Morey Room 504 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

Teaching assistantship in Visual and Cultural Studies

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( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

Graduate research assistantship in Visual and Cultural Studies.

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( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

This course introduces students to the theory and practice of media studies. We will look at a range of both media and historical tendencies related to the media, including manuscript culture, print, and the rise of the newspaper, novel, and modern nation-state; photography, film, television and their respective differences as visual mediums; important shifts in attitudes towards painting; the place of sound in the media of modernity; and the computerization of culture brought about by the computer, social networks, video games, and cell phones. In looking at these, we will consider both the approaches that key scholars in the field of media studies use, and the concepts that are central to the field itself (media/medium; medium-specificity; remediation; the culture industry; reification and utopia; cultural politics). By the end of the class, students will have developed a toolkit for understanding, analyzing, and judging the media that shape their lives in late modernity.

Location

Meliora Room 203 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Buildings are enduring cultural artifacts that embody both artistic expression and technological limitations, influencing societies beyond their creators. This studio art course explores the design, creation, and study of architecture through lectures, exercises, and thematic assignments by while developing skills in architectural design and understanding the built environment. Coursework culminates in a fully realized building design. This course is open to all majors, and prior architecture study is not required. If the course fills and you would like to be added to the waitlist, fill out the form found at this link: https://www.sageart.center/resources.

Location

Sage Arts Center Room 103 (MW 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

An introductory survey of art and architectural achievements of Indigenous societies within specific cultural sphere of Mesoamerica (including parts of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica) from colossal monolithic portraits of Olmec rulers in the 10th century BCE to the delicate feather paintings commissioned by Nahua elites as gifts sent to the courts of sixteenth-century Europe. Participants will learn to recognize the formal features of material culture and built environments of major historic groups as well as their descendant communities. Through work by contemporary artists, we will also consider how these images continue to participate in the social and political realities of today.

Location

Morey Room 501 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course will introduce students to the art, architecture, and archeology of ancient Egypt, from the Predynastic Period until the country’s inclusion into the Roman Empire. This course will highlight the wide range of materials encountered in Egyptian archaeology—architectural remains in secular, sacred, and funerary contexts; material culture (pottery, stone and wooden artifacts, artistic creations); human and faunal remains; written documents; iconographic material—and will evaluate how they reflect the cultural, social, and political organization of each major period of Egyptian history. Special attention will be given to both Egypt’s interconnections with its neighbors—Nubians, Libyans, and inhabitants of Syria-Palestine—and the impact of religion on the artistic production. Material will be presented to the students in the form of lectures, student-led discussions on specific readings and topics, and guest lectures.

Location

Hylan Building Room 202 (MW 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

This course surveys the art and architecture of the Islamic world from the seventh century to the present. It investigates a wide range of artifacts, buildings, and cities from Spain to India around three interrelated themes: piety, power, and propaganda. This class discusses key monuments, from religious buildings such as the Ka‘ba in Mecca to the architecture of leisure in palaces and gardens. It introduces students to the significance of text on sacred artifacts such as the Qur’an and religious buildings such as mosques to ceramicware of everyday life. It explores the transformation of prominent capital cities of Isfahan, Istanbul, and Cairo under dynastic development, as well as the production of luxurious textiles and glassware in their court workshops as reflections of political power and glory. By studying royal patronage of lavishly ornamented history books, the course shows how kings propagated their legitimacy to rule during political crises. In this class, students will develop a clear sense of the history of the Islamic world through studying its objects and buildings. They will also improve their analytical skills through visual analysis and critical writing.

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Meliora Room 205 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This course will examine early modern and contemporary art, establishing the nature of “fantasy” in art of the premodern world and tracking the evolution of the concept into contemporary visual culture. We will interrogate the nature of the real and unreal, fantasy and reality, and how the unseeable is envisioned in art. The course will include discussions of fantastic animals in Eurasian Iron Age art, medieval bestiaries and travel books, early modern depictions of witches and monsters, and culminate in examinations of fantasy in a contemporary context and the art associated with pop culture properties like The Lord of the Rings and the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons. The goal of the course is to decipher the different functions of fantasy, both the good and the bad: a cathartic separation from lived struggle or a cultural tool that encourages fear and disgust towards difference in gender, religion, race, and sexuality. What makes fantasy and depicting the fantastic so compelling that it persists and evolves across history, geographies, and cultures? This course will provide an introduction to visual studies and art history and include a required research paper. More advanced students seeking challenging material will have opportunities to lead discussions and produce longer and more polished research papers.

Location

Morey Room 504 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course offers a comprehensive survey of Chinese art and culture from the Neolithic age to the present. Course sections are arranged chronologically. We will study works by major artists together with the unique materials, formats, genres, conventions, and ideas in artistic conception and production. Besides regular class meetings, the schedule also includes two debating games (about Shang bronzes and Song landscapes respectively), a hands-on section of calligraphy, a touch section of authentic ceramic sheds from the best-known kilns, and a storage visit at the Memorial Art Gallery. We will develop our sensitivities to unspoken visual subtleties as we outline an intellectual history of Chinese culture through artistic creation.

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Morey Room 502 (TR 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

This course is an introduction to art exhibition practices including research, curation, planning, art handling, installation, and hands-on experience in galleries. Students will install exhibitions in the teaching galleries and spaces on campus, including (but not limited to) Hartnett Gallery and Frontispace Gallery. Studio Art lab fee applied. *Instructor permission is required for this course.  Use the “Request Course Section Prerequisite Override” task found on your academics dashboard under the Planning & Registration section to request this permission.*

Location

Sage Arts Center Room 102 (T 11:05AM - 1:45PM)

While many of us may or may not live in cities today, their presence as central places for administrative, judicial, and social purposes is undeniable. Both the historical and archaeological record demonstrates the city is not a new phenomenon, but scholars debate over what actually constitutes a city, especially in the prehispanic Americas. To this end, we will read key texts about cities and urbanism that will help us better understand this debate. We will also discuss how recent anthropological approaches to studying cities have helped archaeologists better understand prehispanic urbanism and city-life.

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Lechase Room 181 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

The second of a sequence of two, the course approaches 'The Divine Comedy' both as a poetic masterpiece and as an encyclopedia of medieval culture. Through a close textual analysis of the second half of 'Purgatorio' and the entirety of 'Paradiso,' students learn how to approach Dante's poetry as a vehicle for thought, an instrument of self-discovery, and a way to understand and affect the historical reality. They also gain a perspective on the Biblical, Christian, and Classical traditions as they intersect with the multiple levels of Dante's concern, ranging from literature to history, from politics to government, from philosophy to theology. A visual component, including illustrations of the 'Comedy' and multiple artworks pertinent to the narrative, complements the course. Class format includes lectures, discussion, and a weekly recitation session. Intensive class participation is encouraged. No prerequisites. Freshmen are welcome. Part of the Dante Humanities Cluster.

Location

Goergen Hall Room 110 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This class explores global trends in film history from 1989 to the present. In considering the contemporary period of cinema, we will look at the technical, social, and formal aspects of the medium. Of interest will be new digital technologies for production, post-production, and exhibition in both commercial and independent filmmaking (e.g., CGI, HD, Motion Capture, High Frame Rate), all of which are linked to a network culture that emerges after 1989. We will also focus on geopolitical developments and social upheavals such as the end of the Cold War, the events of September 11, 2001, economic and cultural globalization, and the post-2008 financial crisis as all these altered various national/regional cinemas and genres (e.g., the spy film, the horror movie, the comedy-drama, and action movies). We will screen the works of major figures in late twentieth century and early twenty-first century world cinema from the United States, Mexico, China, and Hong Kong to Palestine, Iran, India, and Senegal. 

Location

Gavett Hall Room 301 (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Cities of the World explores the histories of a selected group of global cities during notable moments in their social, economic, and political lives. It spans roughly 40 centuries from ancient Mesopotamia to post-world war South America to investigate how cities have been made by, and have made, humans. This course will focus on one or two cities based on a theme each week and discuss the urban built environment and monumental architecture in their historical context. In this course, students will learn about the history of major cities such as Rome, Cairo, Tenochtitlan, Angkor, Paris, Beijing, Isfahan, New York, and Brasília. More importantly, they will comprehend critical social, economic, and political themes from the “Agricultural Revolution” to Capitalism. Finally, they practice how to “read” urban spaces by developing their spatial analytical skills in historical contexts.

Location

Morey Room 525 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

What do activist-led protests like “Decolonize This Place” have in common with the movement to restore artworks and other objects—including human remains—to their places of origin? What does “Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience” have to do with performance art, dance, and other forms of liveness that take place in today’s museums as if they too were “visual art”? Surveying these developments from the origins of art museums to the present day, this seminar looks at key new conceptions of what and who art objects and art viewers are, and how these new conceptions are changing both art and ourselves. Open to art history majors in their senior year and others by consultation with the professor only.

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Morey Room 524 (W 10:25AM - 1:05PM)

According to a story recorded in A Collection of Notable Tales Old and New, in the wake of a civil war that saw to the formation of the Kamakura shogunate, the Cloistered Sovereign Goshirakawa sent an emissary to the Shogun Minamoto Yoritomo. This emissary carried with him an illustrated narrative scroll from Goshirakawa’s own secret collection. The shogun, however, dared not even glance at the contents and ordered its immediate return. Japan’s celebrated tradition of graphic storytelling can in part trace its roots to a culture of illustrated narrative that began in the 8th century. This course introduces students to illustrated narrative scrolls and other forms of visual and performative culture from the late classical through the early modern period with reference to modern manifestations of Japan’s ongoing visual culture. Students will explore the relationship between text and image, how scholars approach illustrated narrative, and how historical developments shape the formation of illustrated narrative and are in turn shaped by these combinations of text and image. In considering how illustrated scrolls developed and matured as a Japanese art form, we will dare to look where Japan’s first shogun did not, and in so doing, come to understand his refusal to do so—and something of our own desire to view and be viewed. Taught in English.

Location

Frederick Douglass Room 420 (MW 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters,” said C.S. Lewis, “of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” In recent years, Korean film and television has taken the world by storm in what is no small miracle of marketing, technology, and story-telling, but what does contemporary Korean film and television render visible that would otherwise be difficult to see? Onscreen interactions with the supernatural, divine, or horrific provide a unique medium for myth-making, identity formation, and world-building. In this course students will explore the ways in which religion in Korean film and television confront mortality and collective anxieties, and how the interaction between the religious and nonreligious serve as sites for the construction and interrogation of nation, race, gender, identity, modernity, cosmology, and moral discourse.

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Frederick Douglass Room 420 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This course examines the physical remains of ancient Greek civilization, with an emphasis on architecture, sculpture, painting, and other visual arts, in order to understand Greek culture and society.

Location

Morey Room 504 (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Forty years after his death in 1984, Michel Foucault continues to be considered one of the world’s most prominent and influential thinkers across a variety of disciplines, including philosophy, literary studies, art history, cultural studies, sociology, cultural anthropology, gender studies, history, musicology, and visual/film studies. We will examine Foucault’s major works, such as Madness and Civilization, The Order of Things, and Discipline and Punish, the interviews and essays of Power/Knowledge, as well as selections from the recently published Collège de France lectures, to understand his profound effect on the ethical and political transformations of “Theory” or “Critical Theory.” We will also examine Foucault’s thought in relation to prominent philosophers and critics, including Judith Butler, Derrida, Rorty, Habermas, and Hayden White. Conducted in English.

Location

Lattimore Room 401 (TR 6:15PM - 7:30PM)

How are Indigenous women represented in art? What is revealed in the differences between autochthonous representations and those created by outsiders? Focusing on images of Nahuatl-speaking women specifically, this course considers the intersecting roles of gender and power, labor and knowledge, sacrifice and sustenance in the conception of Nahua femininities from the pre-Hispanic period to the present day. Topics include the changing perception of Aztec female deities in New Spain and their Chicana reclamation, as well as historical figures such as Malinche, “tongue” of Hernán Cortés, and Doña Luz Jiménez, muse to the Mexican Muralists who fostered a cultural and linguistic revival in her community.

Location

Morey Room 524 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This course provides students with knowledge and understanding of the places, people, events; historical and cultural factors; and technological innovations that have influenced the development of graphic design into the practice that it is today. This course examines both the dominant cultural ideas embodied by Graphic Design, as well as the counter-narratives it generates to express diverse cultural identities. Students in this course will question the meaning and form of graphic artifacts.

Location

Rettner Hall Room 307 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

The Art New York Field Studio course will utilize the resources of New York City as a starting point for creative production. The course will be conducted primarily online, with face-to-face meetings with the professor spread throughout the semester. Projects will take students outside into the city to make art with a rotating variety of media, including photography, video, sound, and installation, with an emphasis on collaboration. Studio Art lab fee applied.

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

As an integral part of the internship program, all students participating in ANY will meet weekly with the program's resident director. The class will visit museums, art galleries, film & media screenings, & learn from these visits through readings, papers, presentations & discussions. The colloquium will also serve to provide an intellectual framework for understanding the operations of the NY art world & to allow students to discuss with one another their experiences at the various institutions where they intern. Each student will be expected to make a presentation about their internship to the ANY group. There will be an entrepreneurial component which will introduce the students to a wide variety of entrepreneurial activity & innovative practices within arts and culture. Through guest speakers, seminars & field trips the students will learn how entrepreneurial endeavors develop. By the end of the semester, the students will create their own proposal for an entrepreneurial project.

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

When Spanish and Portuguese explorers stumbled upon a sunny "America" that was new to them, they encountered balmy wonders – armadillos, cities, and gold. By contrast, when the English crashed into their own unseen continent a century later, they landed in the arctic, and found, to some extent, nothing. Icy, unpopulated, commodity- poor, visually and temporally “abstract,” the Far North - a different kind of terra incognita for the early modern imagination than the sun-drenched Indies, offered no clear stuff to be seen or exploited. With this, this seminar contends, the Arctic quietly yet powerfully challenged older narratives of world- and picture-making. Neither a continent, nor an ocean, nor a meteorological circumstance, the Arctic forced explorers, writers, and early artists from England, the Netherlands, and Germany to grapple with a different kind of “ecology.” Here, there were virtually no exotic animals, teeming forests, or enchanting civilizations to study, exploit, or exterminate - yet. In the frigid North, that is, the idea of description as a kind of accumulative endeavor of “representation” - of exoticism as synonymous with abundance - was thrown into question; the North was unsettling not because of dazzling difference, but because of monotonous sameness. Rather than an Eden, to Renaissance travelers the arctic was something like the moon.

Location

Morey Room 524 (W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This course thinks about the fold as a form, a material, and a metaphor in art.  How do actions of folding (paper, hands, altarpieces, screens, poker) affect counter-forces and time-spaces resisting or subverting the dynamism of a “stable” artwork? Since Deleuze, folding has been understood as riposte to fixed thinkings of here/there, present/nonpresent, being/nonbeing, long dominant in Western philosophy. Departing from this idea, and its vitality as a universal differentiator, this course hopes to explore the fold’s extensions into other philosophical motifs, and probe its conceptual intersections with art history. Our objects are diverse: German diptychs, Japanese fans, the first ever folded letters, etc. Readings will follow two threads: One weaves through the theoretical discussions on, but not restricted to, the concepts of continuum, repetition, (in)finity, (in)visibility, event, tableau(x), and depth(s). The second surveys the art historical interpretations of folds’ representation and materiality, scattered across regions and cultures, and draws particular attention to the distinct apprehensions of artworks acting as the “thinking objects” and “pensive images” that philosophize folds. We will investigate the conditions, methods, and challenges of current scholarship, and reflect on the issues of how to write about folds across disciplines.

Location

Morey Room 524 (R 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This course examines the philosophical, aesthetic, and social issues that are central to classical film theory. It traces the historical development of film theory from 1900 to the 1950s. We will begin with on thinkers in the period of early cinema, including Germaine Dulac, Jean and Marie Epstein, and then we will examine the development of film theory in the work of later theorists, such as Jean Mitry, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, Andre Bazin and Christian Metz. Weekly screenings of historically contemporary films will allow us to examine the ongoing dialogue between the evolving medium and the developing theoretical discussion.

Location

Morey Room 504 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Independent study under faculty guidance of a limited field of art history or individual study on a single topic at an advanced level under the guidance of a member of the art history faculty.

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

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( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

See 'Requirements for Honors in Art History.'

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( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)