Confirm course times, discussion section times, and call numbers
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All Columbia seminars (with "AHIS" prefix) require an application. Columbia seminar applications are due on April 20, 2007, 5:00PM in 826 Schermerhorn Hall. The application form can be found here.
If you are interested in a Barnard seminar, please attend the first day of class. Please compose a brief statement (1-2 paragraphs) explaining your interest in and preparation (e.g., past coursework) for the course. Address the statement to the instructor (Dear Prof. xxxx.) Include: name, PID or social security number, school, Major/Concentration(s), year, email address. An individual application is required for each seminar to which you apply.
Many courses fall into more than one distribution area. However, A SINGLE COURSE can never fulfill two Field requirements AT THE SAME TIME . For example, AHIS W4155: The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Mesopotamia can fulfill either 'Ancient' or 'non-Western' but never both . CHECK to see which requirement the courses below fulfill here.
Please note that 4000 level lectures are "introductory graduate courses" and are open to advanced undergraduate and all graduate students, and a limited amount of registered auditors from the School of Continuing Education, if the instructor permits auditors
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(AHIS BC 1001) Introduction to the History of Art I
N. Kampen
Either term may be taken separately. Brief examination of the techniques of visual analysis, followed by a chronological survey of the major period styles of Western European art. Emphasis on the introduction of form and content in the works studied and on the correlation of the visual arts with their cultural environments. BC1001: Greek and Roman art; medieval art. BC1002: Renaissance to modern art.
(ACLG W3002) Introduction to Archaeology
J. Smith
An exploration of past and present knowledge that exists because of the field of archaeology. Individual site-based and cultural studies from around the world combine with rediscoveries of systems of communication, such as languages and belief systems, to make for a broad-based introduction to archaeological discourse.
(AHIS W3020) Drawings and Prints
D. Rosand
Graphic structures in pictorial representation. The style, function, and meaning of drawings and prints from the Renaissance to the 20th century, with emphasis on artists such as Pisanello, Leonardo daVinci, Dürer, Raphael, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Goya, Cézanne, and Picasso.
(AHIS W3205) Introduction to Japanese Painting
M. McKelway
A survey of the multifaceted forms of Japanese painting from antiquity through the early modern period. major themes to be considered include: painting as an expression of faith; the interplay indigenous and imported pictorial paradigms; narrative and decorative traditions; the emergence of individual artistic agency; the rise of woodblock prints and their impact on European painting in the nineteenth century.
(AHIS W3209) The Contemporary Arts of Africa
Z. Strother
This survey will examine the new visual cultures emerging in Africa since 1950. It will pay special attention to the controversies rooted in the reception of contemporary African Art, including both the changing status of the artist and the art object as well as the nature of modernity itself.
(AHIS V3248) Greek Art & Archaeology
F. de Angelis
An introduction to the art and architecture of the Greek world during the archaic, classical, and Hellenistic period (11th - 1st c. BCE). Issues that will be addressed include: changing ideals of the human body in Greece; the expression of emotions in sculpture and painting; architecture and society; the religious aspects of Greek art; mythological images.
(AHUM V3340) Art in China, Japan, and Korea
S. Larrivé-Bass
Discussion section required. Introduces distinctive aesthetic traditions of China, Japan, and Korea--their similarities and differences--through an examination of the visual significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, architecture, and other arts in relation to the history, culture, and religions of East Asia. Major Cultures Requirement: East Asian Civilization List B.
(AHUM V3342) Masterpieces of Indian Art & Architecture
K. Kasdorf
Introduction to 2000 years of art on the Indian subcontinent. The course covers the early art of Buddhism, rock-cut architecture of the Buddhists and Hindus, the development of the Hindu temple, Mughal and Rajput painting and architecture, art of the colonial period, and the emergence of the Modern.
(AHIS W3600) 19th Century Art
A. Higonnet
Studies European visual arts of the 19th century. Covers a century of rapid stylistic, political and technological changes beginning with the radical changes of the Enlightenment and ending with the glamorous portraits of the Belle Epoque. Considers careers and works of individual artists, formal innovation, the invention of new media, materials, institutional structures, and ideological functions. Discussion Section Required.
(AHIS BC3642) North American Art & Culture
E. Hutchinson
Examines North American painting, sculpture, photography, graphic art and decorative arts from the colonial period until World War I. Artists discussed include West, Copley, Cole, Spencer, Powers, Aragon, Duncanson, Church, Homer, Eakins, MacNeill, Whistler, Cassatt, Moran, Tanner, and Muybridge.
(AHIS BC3658) History and Theory of the Avant-Garde
R. Deutsche
Examines the practice of artistic avant-gardism from the mid-19th to the late 20th century. Explores the relationship between the avant-garde, the institutions of art, and political radicalism. Studies art-historical theories of the modernist, historical and neo-avant-gardes as well as critiques of avant- gardism from feminist and democratic points of view, discussing the charge of "elitism" often leveled against avant-gardism.
Columbia University undergraduate seminars require an application, which are due on April 20, 2007, 5:00 PM in 826 Schermerhorn Hall. The application can be found here
(AHIS W3800) The Ancient Egyptian Body
D. Vischak
This seminar will examine ancient Egyptian art and architecture (primarily from the pharaonic period, c. 3000 BCE to c. 1000 BCE) using the body as a visual and conceptual theme. Utilizing art historical and archaeological methods, we will analyze sculpture, relief, painting, drawing, and architecture, as well as objects used to adorn and encase bodies both living and dead, emphasizing the context and interrelationships of these materials as they relate to the body and the corporeality of Egyptian society and culture.
(AHIS W3835) Rococo & Neoclassical Interiors in 18th Century Europe
M. Martin
This seminar explores the eighteenth-century European interior and the interrelationship between architecture, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts. We will examine the role that objects and spaces played in the formation of eighteenth-century notions of desire, sensation, identity, and subjectivity. Focusing on domestic interiors, we will discuss a variety of patrons — actresses, bankers, salon intellectuals, and mistresses — and artists, among them Antoine Watteau, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Robert Adam, and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. Several sessions will be held at Avery library, where we will examine architectural treatises and other printed materials, and at area museums (including the Met and the Frick Collection), where we will consider the re-installation of eighteenth-century interiors in a museological, “period room” context
(AHIS W3843) The History of Urban Renewal
H. Ballon
The seminar concerns 20th-century efforts to rebuild American cities. The first part will focus on efforts to improve slum conditions through housing reforms. The second part will consider the rise of slum clearance in the 1950s-70s; case studies in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, among other cities, will highlight efforts to restructure the center city as retail activity and the middle class relocated to suburbia. We will then turn to current redevelopment issues, including privatization of public space, eminent domain, and uses of historic preservation.
(AHIS W3855) Michelangelo
D. Rosand
The art of Michelangelo in painting, sculpture, architecture, drawing and poetry. Special attention to the contexts and functions of his art, from the personal to the public, and to the problems and challenges of interpretation.
(AHIS W3895) Major’s Colloquium: the Literature and Methods of Art History
Section 1: Z. Bahrani
Section 2: C. Grewe
Prerequisites: the department's permission. Students must sign-up in 826 Schermerhorn. Introduction to different methodological approaches to the study of art and visual culture. Majors are encouraged to take the colloquium during their junior year.
(AHIS W3897) Black West: African American Artists in the Western United States
K. Jones
This course considers the creative production of African Americans primarily in California in the 19th and 20th centuries. Of interest are the graphic and photographic works of Grafton Tyler Brown and J.P. Ball and the narratives of black cowboys in the 19th century. Moving to the 20th century we will consider sculpture by Beulah Ecton Woodard and Sargent Johnson and architecture by Paul Williams and their relationship to modern themes and theory, particularly that of the Harlem Renaissance. We will also look at African American connection to the film industry through black westerns like The Bronze Buckaroo, Harlem Rides the Range, and Two Gun Man from Harlem all from the 1930s. In the contemporary period we will explore the work of artists in dialogue with the Black Arts Movement including Betye Saar, Charles White, David Hammons, and Senga Nengudi. Themes pertinent to the course include: how are African American identities and cultural production imbricated with concepts of what is considered “western” or trends of west coast artmaking?; what can these artists tell us about notions of space, place, and migration in the African American imagination?
(AHIS W3901) The Literature of Pre-Columbian Art
E. Pasztory
This seminar will explore the various assessments of Pre-Columbian Art from the 19th century until the present time. The focus will be on the pioneers of the field, such a George Kubler. Theories of art will be related to archaeology and literature.
(AHIS BC3949) Art of Witness
R. Deutsche
Attendance at the first class is mandatory. Limited to 15 students. Instructor determines class roster on first day of class. Examines aesthetic responses to collective historical traumas, such as slavery, the Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima, AIDS, homelessness, immigration, and the recent attack on
the World Trade Center.
(AHIS BC3968) Art Criticism
J. Miller
Please attend the first day of class if interested. No application required. Contemporary art and its criticism written by artists (rather than by art historians or journalistic reviewers). Texts by Dan Graham, (Art and Language), Robert Smithson, Brian O'Dougherty, Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper and others.
(AHIS BC3950) Photography and Video in Asia
C. Phillips
Please attend the first day of class if interested. No application required.
(AHIS G4084) Mesoamerican Art and Architecture
E. Pasztory
A survey of the major pre-hispanic cities of Mexico and Guatemala, including San Lorenzo, Teotihuacan, Tikal, Monte Alban, Uxmal, and Chichen Itza. Aesthetic, historical, and archaeological problems are discussed.
(AHIS G4128) Visual Narratives of India
V. Dehejia
This course proposes the existence of distinct modes of visual narration used by India's artists to present stories visually, both in the medium of relief sculpture, and that of watercolors on paper or plastered walls. It considers the rich corpus of Buddhist narrative reliefs, and then focuses on the relationship of text and image in the painted manuscript tradition of India.
(AHIS W4175) Anatolian Art and Architecture
J. Smith
An examination of the arts, architecture, and archaeology of Anatolia, inclusive of central and western Anatolia as well as related eastern Mediterranean regions, this survey includes material from the Bronze and Iron Ages, with a particular focus on the visual culture of the Hittites.
(AHIS G4423) Architecture and Urbanism in Renaissance Rome
P. Berdini
Class Cancelled
(AHIS G4601) Origins of Modern Visual Culture
J. Crary
Major developments in the emergence of modern visual culture in Europe and North America, 1750-1900. Topics include the panorama, diorama, photography, painting, world's fairs, early cinema; issues in technology, urbanization and consumer society.
(AHIS W4633) Reassessing Modernist architecture: the canon, exceptions, and contradictions
T. Benton
This course is about the consolidation and subsequent fragmentation of a set of ideas and architectural practices in Europe between 1890 and 1939, now referred to as Modernism. The approach is to sketch out the core ideas, most of them well established before 1890, and then interrogate the contradictory ways these ideas were interpreted and exemplified in Modernist buildings. We will look critically at work by Antoni Gaudì, Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Auguste Perret, Le Corbusier, Gerrit Rietveld, Charlotte Perriand, Eileen Gray, Mies Van der Rohe, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Hans Scharoun, Berthold Lubetkin, Giuseppe Terragni and Luigi Moretti, among others.
(AHIS G4640) German Art in European Context, 1760–1920
C. Grewe
The class will examine the development of German painting and sculpture from the rise of Neoclassicism to the formation of Expressionism. It focuses on the tension, on the one hand, between a developing nationalist sensibility and the concomitant search for a national style, and, on the other hand, German art's intense engagement with the international art context. Given the particularities of German history, the question of periphery and center assumed a crucial role in the making of the German art world. Focusing on this problematic will not only allow to examine the love-hate relationship of Germans and their art, and the culture of France and England, but also shed light on the role of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, East Prussia, or Poland in the creation of German (artistic) identity. Periphery and center will also be key concepts for thinking about another vital issue of the period: religion. In an age characterized by burgeoning confessionalism and the rise of an anti-semitism now grounded in racist theories, religion served as an arbiter for inclusion and exclusion, and was thus inseparably intertwined with the debates about German national identity.
(AHIS G4848) Neo-dada and Pop Art
B. Joseph
This course examines the avant-garde art of the fifties and sixties, including assemblage, happenings, pop art, Fluxus, and artists’ forays into film. It will examine the historical precedents of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Carolee Schneemann and others in relation to their historical precedents, development, critical and political aspects.
(AHIS G6125) Painting in the Song Dynasty
R. Harrist
The goals of this course are to study major works of painting from the Song dynasty (960-1279) and to master art historical and sinological methods that can be used for research in any field of Chinese art. Among the topics that will receive special attention are the rise of landscape painting, imperial patronage, urban life and painting, the art of scholar-officials, and the relationship between words and images, especially during the Southern Song period.
(AHIS G6140) Japanese Arts of the Momoyama Period
M. McKelway
An investigation of the visual arts of the Momoyama period (1573-1615), Japan's era of political unification. This course will focus on the patronage and participation of provincial warlords in the production of gilded screen and panel paintings, lacquer, ceramics, and textiles. We will also consider the question of how Momoyama period aesthetics would have a lasting impact on all succeeding periods of Japanese art.
(AHIS G6273) Roman Art III
F. de Angelis
The course will investigate Roman art and architecture from the age of Trajan to the Severans. Special attention will be devoted to issues that carry methodological implications (e.g. the meaning and specificity of Hadrianic classicism; the stylistic change in the Antonine age), as well as to monuments and architectural complexes about which recent research has yielded new data (e.g. the Forum of Trajan).
(AHIS G6650) Multiple Modernities
S. Vogel
A comparative approach to the vibrant contemporary arts outside the West which seem not to fit easily into current classifications. The aim is to initiate the discourse for the study of modern art and architecture in the countries of Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
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All graduate seminars require an application. Applications are due by *August 1, 2007, 5:00PM* without exception in 826 Schermerhorn Hall. The seminar application for all Art History and Archaeology graduate seminars consist of a one-page form, available *only* online as a PDF or as a RTF (the office does not have copies of the form.) Do not attach second pages or letters to the form, only this application form will be accepted. An individual application form is required for each seminar to which you apply. Please drop off seminar applications to 826 Schermerhorn by the deadline.
(AHIS G8164) Art and Ritual in the Ancient Near East
Z. Bahrani
This seminar will be an investigation of the relationship of art and ritual in the ancient Near East. Topics to be covered include rituals of architecture and foundation deposits, votive images and votive gifts, sacrifice and ritual substitution, iconoclasm, the care of ancestral images and cult images, rituals of death and burial, and the arts of divination.
(AHIS G8569) French Painting in Paris during the Reign of Louis XV
C. Bailey
An opportunity to examine in some depth the period generally known (and often dismissed) as the rococo. The seminar will focus on the major figures of the period--Watteau, Chardin, Boucher, Greuze and Fragonard (up to the Progress of Love)--while also consider the larger themes of the Academy, the Salon and salon criticism, institutional and private patronage, and notions of interior decoration and display. Less familiar artists such as Lemoyne, De Troy, Lancret, Natoire and saint-Aubin will also be introduced. While the majority of sessions will be held in the classroom, the seminar will include at least four site visits to museums.
(AHIS G8655) Genesis of the project: Le Corbusier's design process
T. Benton
This seminar series is about close examination of an architect’s practice. We will use a wide range of sources, from Le Corbusier’s writings, correspondence, lectures, diary notes, what he read and the reactions of his contemporaries, to ask the questions “How were the design solutions arrived at and what do they mean?”. Among the projects to be analysed will be the La Roche, Stein-de Monzie, Baizeau, Savoye, de Mandrot, Félix and Jaoul houses, the Pessac housing estate and the furniture designs.
(AHIS G8765) Issues in Performance Art
K. Jones
Wedged between the rudiments of theater and the gestures of visual art, performance art came to prominence at the end of the twentieth century. Our concentration in this course will be on artists and practices after 1960. However, we will also consider the roots of this form in the first part of the twentieth century. Central to our investigations will be discussions surrounding performance as catalytic process, as temporal art, and issues of the body as form. Feminist performance art will be the focus for this semester.
(AHIS G8729) Conceptual Art
B. Joseph
This seminar engages the development and legacy of conceptual art and certain theoretical ideas (like the “death of the author”) associated with it. Work from the 1960s to now will be included from such artists as Mel Bochner, Dan Graham, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozloff, Martha Rosler, Vito Acconci, and others. Particularly important will be the art’s political context and implications.
(AHIS G8150) Art, Architecture, and Urban Identity: Constantinople and Thessaloniki
H. Klein
This graduate seminar explores the art, architecture, and urban development of two major political, commercial, and artistic centers of the Late Roman and Byzantine Empire, namely the empire’s capital Constantinople and Thessalonike, the empire’s ‘Second City’ and one of its most important regional centers. With urban histories and monuments spanning more than a thousand years, the two cities – with all their similarities and differences – provide a unique opportunity to study the major trends, themes, and developments of Byzantine art, architecture, ritual, and politics from the Late Antique period through the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
(AHIS G6009) Proseminar
D. Freedberg & J. Crary
Required course for first-year PhD Students in the Art History Department
(AHIS G8990) M.A. Colloquium
J. Rajchman
Required course for all first-year Modern Art M.A. students. The M.A. Colloquium, taken in the first term by all M.A. in Modern Art students, is designed to explore issues of historical and critical method by focusing them through the lens of a particular area of concern within the modernist field. These "lenses" will change from year to year, but an example would be the rise of photography within modernism, with all that it implies for the relationship between high art and mass culture and all that it signals with regard to new media. Another such example might be notions of "primitivism," which would lead to sessions ranging from postcolonial studies to contemporary art's use of ethnographic models; or again, contemporary architecture studies and theories of urbanism. The structure of the colloquium combines reading and analysis of major texts conducted by the major theorists and critics working in the given subject area.
(AHIS G8991) Curatorial Seminar
J. Rajchman
Required course for first-year Modern Art/Curatorial Track M.A. students. Beginning this fall the Curatorial seminar, formerly the Whitney Seminar, will be conducted in a modular format with guest speakers giving lectures for a limited number of weeks on various topics. A very limited number of spots are reserved for advanced M.A. students by seminar application only.
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