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All Columbia seminars (with "AHIS" prefix) require an application. Columbia seminar applications are due on April 18, 2008, 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
(AHIS BC1001) Introduction to the History of Art I
K. Moxey
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.
(AHIS C3001) Introduction to Architecture
F. Benelli
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 V3203) The Arts of Japan
M. McKelway
Introduction to the painting, sculpture, and architecture of Japan from the Neolithic period through the 19th century. Discussion focuses on key monuments within their historical and cultural contexts.
(AHIS W3230) Medieval Architecture
S. Murray
Developed collaboratively and taught digitally spanning one thousand years of architecture.
(AHIS V3248) Greek Art & Architecture
J. Mylonopoulos
Introduction to the art and architecture of the Greek world during the archaic, classical, and Hellenistic periods (11th - 1st centuries B.C.E.).**
(AHUM V3342) Masterpieces of Indian Art & Architecture
N. Poddar & A. Seastrand
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 W3437) 16th Century Renaissance Painting
D. Rosand
Style and significance of painting in Italy, with attention to the social, political, and religious contexts of artistic production as well as to the critical concepts of High Renaissance and mannerism. Emphasis on major figures in Florence, Rome, and Venice, especially Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giorgione, and Titian.
(AHIS W3600) Nineteenth Century Art
J. Crary
Painting and sculpture in Western Europe, 1789-1900. The neoclassic, Romantic, Realist, Impressionist, and post-Impressionist movements. No Laptops.
(AHIS BC3673) History of Photography
A. Alberro
Focuses on the intersection of photography with traditional artistic practices in the 19th century, on the mass cultural functions of photography in propaganda and advertising from the 1920s onwards, and on the emergence of photography as the central medium in the production of postwar avant-garde art practices.
(AHI G4072) Contemporary African Art: Alternative Africas
S. Vogel
This survey examines art being made today by African artists working in Europe, America and in Africa, and surveys the origins of African modernity in the 20th century. Theoretical and critical approaches and even basic definitions in this new field are still being challenged, and the course will consider these and the many Africas evoked by artists and critics.
(AHIS G4126) Rock-Cut Architecture of India
V. Dehejia
For a period of over a thousand years, a favored mode of architecture across India was to create monuments by excavating into the rock of the mountainside. This course examines the rock-cut mode of architecture, adopted by Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains, that remained popular right up to the tenth century when it yielded precedence to structures built by piling stone upon stone.
(AHIS W4155) Mesopotamian Art & Architecture
Z. Bahrani
Introduction to the art and architecture of Mesopotamia beginning with the establishment of the first cities in the fourth millennium B.C.E. through the fall of Babylon to Alexander of Macedon in the fourth century B.C.E. Focus on the distinctive concepts and uses of art in the Assyro-Babylonian tradition.
(AHIS G4425) Italian Renaissance Sculpture
W. Hood
This is a "bridge" course whose primary pedagogical goal is to improve the students' ability to see and understand works of Italian sculpture from the 15th to the 17th centuries with what one might call "curatorial eyes." That is to say, the emphasis will be on long, careful, and discriminating visual examination and analysis of works of art themselves. Accompanying this primary training will be extensive exposure to sculptural materials and techniques of manufacture; and students will also visit conservation laboratories where sculptures are undergoing treatment. Because so many class meetings will be off-campus, the course will meet only once a week.
(AHIS G4569) Eighteenth Century French Architecture
V. Di Palma
This course examines developments and controversies in 18th-century European architecture, urbanism, and landscape design. Topics to be investigated include: the Grand Tour and the vogue for ruins; the development of institutions like prisons, hospitals, and academies; concepts of nature and sensibility; the search for origins; the development of the domestic realm; popular spectacles, urban fetes, and the rise of the public sphere.
Columbia University undergraduate seminars require an application, which are due on April 18, 2007, 5:00 PM in 826 Schermerhorn Hall. The application can be found here
(AHIS W3895) Major’s Colloquium: Literature and Methods of Art History
Z. Bahrani & S. Murray
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 W3822) Art & Antiquarianism in Italy, 1300-1500
S. Cartwright
How did artists and humanists in the Renaissance record and respond to surviving physical fragments of ancient civilization, and what kinds of interaction did these two groups have in the production of new works all’antica (in the ancient style)? This seminar will examine relationships between artistic and humanist-antiquarian studies of antiquity from the late 14th through the fifteenth centuries and their role in the Renaissance "rebirth of antiquity". Emphasis will be on drawing, painting, manuscript illumination, and sculpture.
(AHIS W3875) Iconoclasm
Z. Strother
Does the object speak for itself? Questions like this have fueled controversies on the nature of image-making in many different societies throughout history. This seminar will explore the uneasy relationship between people and works of art, in particular, what the willful destruction of images reveals about the act of representation itself. Through case studies, we will examine disputed claims about religious prohibition on art making; the competition of text and image in early modern Europe; the birth of the museum; women’s suffrage; and the embrace by modernists of the iconoclast as a creative model. Readings range from late antiquity to contemporary art; from Europe, US, to Africa..
(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 W3941) House & Garden in 18th Century Britain
V. Di Palma
This seminar investigates the development of the country house in eighteenth-century Britain. Issues addressed will include the idea of the villa, the evolution of the domestic interior, the role of ornament, and the relationship between the house and its landscape setting.
(AHIS BC3950) Photo & Video in Asia
C. Phillips
Explores the range of contemporary photographic and video work being made in Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Considers the artists, institutions, publications and exhibitions that have contributed to the growing centrality of Asia in the contemporary art world.
AHIS 3963) Readings in Modernism and Modernity in Architecture
M. De Michelis
This seminar, based on close readings of key texts in modern and contemporary architectural theory, addresses the question of how these writings have shaped the practice of architecture and critical writing about actual buildings and urban design. Writers covered will include Wagner, Le Corbusier, Moholy-Nagy, Gropius, Venturi, and Koolhaus. The seminar will give particular attention to the relationship between the
manifestoes of architects and the buildings they produced.
(AHIS BC3968) Art Criticism
J. Miller
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, Barbara Kruger and others. Also, considers the art and writing of each artist together.
(AHIS BC3985) Introduction to Connoisseurship
M. Ainsworth
Factors involved in judging works of art, with emphasis on paintings; materials, technique, condition, attribution; identification of imitations and fakes; questions of relative quality.
(AHIS BC3990) Japanese Prints
J. Reynolds
Ukiyo-e, the "images of the floating world," present a vivid and highly romanticized vision of the dynamic urban culture of Japan during the 17th through 19th centuries. Considers ways in which these images promoted kabuki theater, glamorized life in the licensed prostitution quarters, and represented sexuality and gender. We will study how print designers and publishers dodged government censorship as they ruthlessly parodied contemporary life, literature, and venerable artistic traditions.
(AHI G4072) Contemporary African Art: Alternative Africas
S. Vogel
This survey examines art being made today by African artists working in Europe, America and in Africa, and surveys the origins of African modernity in the 20th century. Theoretical and critical approaches and even basic definitions in this new field are still being challenged, and the course will consider these and the many Africas evoked by artists and critics.
(AHIS G4126) Rock-Cut Architecture of India
V. Dehejia
For a period of over a thousand years, a favored mode of architecture across India was to create monuments by excavating into the rock of the mountainside. This course examines the rock-cut mode of architecture, adopted by Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains, that remained popular right up to the tenth century when it yielded precedence to structures built by piling stone upon stone.
(AHIS W4155) Mesopotamian Art & Architecture
Z. Bahrani
Introduction to the art and architecture of Mesopotamia beginning with the establishment of the first cities in the fourth millennium B.C.E. through the fall of Babylon to Alexander of Macedon in the fourth century B.C.E. Focus on the distinctive concepts and uses of art in the Assyro-Babylonian tradition.
(AHIS G4425) Italian Renaissance Sculpture
W. Hood
This is a course whose primary pedagogical goal is to improve the students' ability to see and understand works of Italian sculpture from the 15th to the 17th centuries with what one might call "curatorial eyes." That is to say, the emphasis will be on long, careful, and discriminating visual examination and analysis of works of art themselves. Accompanying this primary training will be extensive exposure to sculptural materials and techniques of manufacture; and students will also visit conservation laboratories where sculptures are undergoing treatment. Because so many class meetings will be off-campus, the course will meet only once a week.
(AHIS G4569) Eighteenth Century French Architecture
V. Di Palma
This course examines developments and controversies in 18th-century European architecture, urbanism, and landscape design. Topics to be investigated include: the Grand Tour and the vogue for ruins; the development of institutions like prisons, hospitals, and academies; concepts of nature and sensibility; the search for origins; the development of the domestic realm; popular spectacles, urban fetes, and the rise of the public sphere.
(AHIS G6117) Early Chinese Calligraphy
R. Harrist
The history of calligraphy from earliest times through the Song dynasty, with special emphasis on the interaction of the state and the innovations of individual calligraphers.
(AHIS G6135) Japanese Narrative Handscrolls
M. McKelway
This course explores the narrative handscroll (emaki), a major form of Japanese pictorial art, from its origins in the eighth century through the sixteenth century. Through an investigation of such masterworks as the "Illustrated Scrolls of the Tale of Genji," "Illustrated Legends of Mount Shigi," and "Life of Saint Ippen" (Ippen hijiri-e), the course will address questions of text-image relationships, patronage, and viewing practices in visual depictions of classical literature, hagiographic narratives, and popular tales. Although emphasis will be given to works for which texts and scholarly studies are available in English, reading ability in Japanese is recommended.
(AHIS G6274) Roman Art IV
N. Kampen & H. Klein
This lecture course is intended to confront art and architecture from the third through the sixth century among the peoples of the Roman Empire in its eastern and western forms. The two faculty, one specializing in secular and Jewish art, the other in Christian, provide a conversation about how traditional Roman art forms and ideas interact with new ones to create a distinct art versus one that is merely transitional or decadent. The lectures will be combined with talks from visitors and museum trips in order to keep the actual objects under scrutiny.
(AHIS G6644) Modernism, Post-Modernism & Structuralism
R. Krauss
The discourse on Modernism in the visual arts examined in relation to the theoretical positions of structuralism and post-structuralism, specifically the work of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida.
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All graduate seminars require an application. Applications are due by August 1, 2008, 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 G8015) Dada and the Media
N. Elcott
Dada is often credited with the valorous but failed attempt to reintegrate art into the praxis of life. Increasingly, scholars have recognized that technological media regulate the sxchange between objects, images, and life inmodernity; and that Dada not only challanged but also incorporated a range of media practices and channels into their art, writing and events. This seminar will examine the Dada movement in relation to emergent media, with particular focus on recent art in historical scholarship, media theory, and historical sources.
(AHIS G8061) Masquerade: Rhetoric/Theory/Practice
Z. Strother
This seminar will explore masquerade, one of the oldest of the world’s visual arts, drawing on critical works in art history, literary criticism, philosophy, theatre, and anthropology. We will study how Western theories about “the mask” have shaped the literature on African masquerading but our ultimate goal is to open up new questions about African practice inspired by arguments on cross-dressing, minstrelsy, the “uncanny,” and the “carnivalesque.”
(AHIS G8416) Andrea Palladio: Architecture, Theory & Legacy
F. Benelli
The seminar is organized in such a way to analyze Palladio under four different aspects: his buildings, his theoretical production, his drawings and his legacy.
The first part will investigate the architectural features of a selection of meaningful construction in order to cover all the typologies: the city hall of Vicenza, private palaces including Thiene, da Porto, Chiericati and Valmarana. Country villas including villa Godi, Pisani at Bagnolo, Badoer at Fratta Polesine, Emo at Fanzolo, Barbaro at Maser, Poiana at Poiana, Cornaro at Piombino d’Ese, Malcontenta. Churches such as the Redentore and S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. The monastery of the Carità in Venice, The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza and the Bridge at Bassano.
The second part of the seminar will focus on the theory and literature and will use the Rare Book Collection at Avery Library. Working on the original first edition of the “Four Books on Architecture”, “Guide of Rome” and the “Julius Cesar’s Polybius”, it will be possible to grasp his architectural thought and, in general, the sense of Renaissance theory of Architecture.
(AHIS G8417) Paragone: Art Theory and Studio Practice in the Italian Renaissance
W. Hood
This seminar focuses on the conventions of comparison as the dialectical root of art criticism and stylistic development in Italian Renaissance art. Case studies of specific instances of artistic rivalry or competition will alternate with close readings of the primary texts, including Ghiberti’s Commentarii, Manetti’s Life of Brunelleschi, Leonardo’s treatise on the paragone, and its deployment in the famous “disegno/colore” discussions found, for example, in Dolce’s Aretino and, of course, Vasari’s Vite.
(AHIS G8608) The Iconic Turn
K. Moxey
Affirmations that images are endowed with a life of their own have become a commonplace in recent art historical literature. Older approaches to the life of images based on phenomenology, have been supplemented by fresh initiatives drawn from philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and science studies. This course will examine the claims made for the “presence” of objects--their power over their reception--made by a variety of recent authors in both art history and visual studies. Is it possible to wed this sensitivity to the agency of objects with interpretations that stress their ideological and political social function?
(AHIS G8653) The Bauhaus in America
M. de Michelis
This seminar focuses on architects, designers, and theorist associated with the Bauhuas School who relocated to the United States after 1933 and radically transformed many domains of architectural practice in this county. Focus will be on Gropius, Moholy-Nagy, and Mies van der Rohe.
(AHIS G8710) Modern Art and its Legacies in Latin America
A. Alberro
This seminar will consider the impact of abstract art on practices of painting, sculpture and architecture in Latin America in the mid-twentieth century. Particular attention will be placed on the various ways in which artists in Latin America appropriated elements of the form of abstraction known as Concrete art, only to break with them on their way to developing new art movements. We will begin with an overview of the recent literature on abstract art. Then we will investigate the ways in which the Constructivist and Neo-Plasticist avant-gardes explored the possibilities of abstract art in the second and third decades of the century. This will set the stage for the second part of the course, which will study the history of nonrepresentational art, first in the Rio de la Plata region in the 1940s, and then in Brazil and Venezuela in the 1950s and 1960s. Emphasis will be placed on the ways in which these developments overlapped with each other, as well as on the impact they might have had on European and North American art. The third part of the course will examine the contributions of Latin American abstract artists on the development of kinetic and optical art in Europe in the mid-twentieth century, as well as the effect of these modes of art practice on late modern and contemporary art.
(AHIS G6009) Proseminar
D. Rosand & 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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