World Cultures and Civilizations: Prehistory to the Nineteenth Century |
Art History, Theory, and Criticism |
1001 (001) |
Summer 2025 |
Description
Art has been many things to many people. This class introduces students to the history of art and art-like things on Earth from prehistory to ca. 1800 CE. It covers canonical examples from older scholarship alongside works and contexts emerging in recent art histories. Students will learn to perform basic art historical analysis and research, and the course will prepare them to form personal art histories, applying such art histories to their own work.
The course surveys historical art in a global scope, from the beginnings of known culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It introduces students to a range of interdisciplinary frameworks for parsing the production, reception, and conceptualization of art. And it challenges students to think about the relationships between past and present, highlighting how later artists and cultures have engaged earlier art and history.
There is a small amount of required reading each week-on average about 20 pages. Written work includes weekly reading responses, two in-class quizzes, an annotated bibliography project, and a take-home final exam.
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Class Number
1455
Credits
3
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Survey of Modern to Contemporary Art and Architecture |
Art History, Theory, and Criticism |
1002 (002) |
Spring 2025 |
Description
This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.
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Class Number
1030
Credits
3
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Survey of Modern to Contemporary Art and Architecture |
Art History, Theory, and Criticism |
1002 (002) |
Fall 2025 |
Description
This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.
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Class Number
1046
Credits
3
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Photography: History, Theory, and Practice |
Art History, Theory, and Criticism |
2620 (001) |
Fall 2025 |
Description
This course examines the photographs made in response to the shaping influences of 19th and 20th century global cultures. Our understanding of the issues guiding visual history has been sensitized by iconic as well as lesser known photographs and it is those meaningful images that are addressed across the semester. Because photography has been transformed across its history as technology altered practice and practice altered how the medium was conceptualized, the study of social and intellectual history along side the making of imagery is central if the larger purposes of photography are to be grasped and shared.
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Class Number
2167
Credits
3
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20th Century Photography |
Art History, Theory, and Criticism |
2622 (001) |
Spring 2025 |
Description
In 1839 a new means of visual representation was announced to a startled world: photography. Although the medium was immediately and enthusiastically embraced by the public at large, photographers spent decades experimenting with techniques and debating the representational nature of this new invention. This course focuses on the more recent history of this revolutionary medium. From the technological advancements that characterized the rise of photography in the commercial world during the 20th century, and the acknowledgement of photography as an artistic medium in its own right, to the digital revolution and its social media applications, we will consider the technological, economic, political, and artistic histories of photography through selected works of art and seminal critical texts.
This course considers photography in a global context. We focus on seminal texts and images in order to explore ethical, commercial, artistic, and political issues that make photography essentially important to our contemporary visual culture. The course explores broad range of photographic practices, techniques, and approaches including the work of Hannah Hoch, Martha Rosler, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Dawoud Bey, Gordon Parks, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, William Eggleston, Shirin Neshat, Wolfgang Tillmans and many more. We regularly visit the collections of AIC and MCoP to enrich our class discussions with private print viewings and exhibition critiques.
Students are expected to share an image of their choice in response to the assigned weekly reading. These images are used in class discussion. There also is a final paper, a final presentation, and an in-class test.
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Class Number
1083
Credits
3
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The Street: Site and Subject in Photography |
Art History, Theory, and Criticism |
4622 (001) |
Spring 2025 |
Description
This seminar considers the role of the city street in postwar American and contemporary photography and the ways in which such an approach might complicate our understanding of this genre. We will examine: key historical texts; exhibitions like Street and Studio, Strangers, and Bystander that have shaped the definition of street photography to date; and the critical practices of artists (e.g. Robert Adams, Sophie Calle, Hans Haacke, Zoe Leonard, Fred McDarrah, Ed Ruscha) and scholars (e.g. Michel de Certeau, Rosalyn Deutsche, Louis Kaplan) whose works may offer alternatives to that history.
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Class Number
1093
Credits
3
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