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Confirm course times, discussion section times, and call numbers on the Directory of Classes.
All Columbia seminars (with "AHIS" prefix) require an application. Columbia seminar applications are due on Monday, December 3, 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 V3203) The Arts of Japan
J. Reynolds
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 W3208) The Arts of Africa
Z. Strother
Introduction to the arts of Africa, including masquerading, figural sculpture, reliquaries, power objects, textiles, painting, photography, and architecture. The course will establish a historical framework for study, but will also address how various African societies have responded to the process of modernity.
(AHIS V3250) Roman Art & Architecture
F. de Angelis
The architecture, sculpture, and painting of ancient Rome from the 2nd century B.C. to the end of the Empire in the West.
(AHUM V3340) Arts of China, Japan & Korea
D. Delbanco, S. Larrive-Bass, Y. Chen
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.Discussion Section Required.
(AHIS W3407) Early Italian Art
W. Hood
An introduction to the origins and early development of Italian Renaissance painting as a mode of symbolic communication between 1300-1600. Artists include Giotto, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Mantegna, and Leonardo da Vinci. Emphasis on centers of painting in Florence, Siena, Assisi, Venice and Rome.
(AHIS W3650) 20th Century Art
B. Joseph
Major developments in 20th-century art, with emphasis on modernist and avant-garde practices and their relevance for art up to the present.
(AHIS W3780) African American Artists in the 20th & 21st Centuries
K. Jones
This course is a survey of visual production by North Americans of African descent from 1900 to the present. It will look at the various ways in which these artists have sought to develop an African American presence in the visual arts over the last century. We will discuss such issues as: what role does stylistic concern play; how are the ideas of romanticism, modernism, and formalism incorporated into the work; in what ways do issues of postmodernism, feminism, and cultural nationalism impact on the methods used to portray the cultural and political body that is African America?
Columbia University undergraduate seminars require an application, which are due on Monday, December 3, 5:00 pm in 826 Schermerhorn Hall. The application form can be found here.
(AHIS W3817) The Byzantine Monastery; Ascetic Ideals, Communal Realities
N. Bakirtzis
We will study the values and habits of Byzantine monastic life and the ways communities experience, construct and use their natural and built environment in pursuit of their spiritual goals. Since the early beginnings of monasticism in Late Antiquity monks and nuns made a conscious effort to create an environment suitable to host the toils of daily life and to sustain its spiritual goals. From the examples of ascetic practice in caves to the establishment of monastic states like that at Mt. Athos , a series of important case studies will introduce us to the development and the organization of monastic life in the Byzantine tradition.
(AHIS W3848) Michel Foucault and the Arts
J. Rajchman
In this seminar, we will explore the work of Michel Foucault in its relations with visual art, its criticism and its history. We examine the development of his historical work, his critical aims, and his methods in and through their relations with the visual arts and art institutions: first, through his own criticism or analysis of Raymond Roussel, Manet, Velasquez, and Magritte, and views on the museum; then through his invention of new sorts of archival work, fictions and other documentary forms, and finally through his reflections on the question of artistic work as a ‘technique of subjectivisation’ or as ‘critical act of enlightenment’. We then consider attempts to extend these aspects of his work today in new ways or in relation to new problems.
(AHIS W3852) The Spanish Renaissance
J. Escobar
This seminar will explore sixteenth-century Spanish painting, sculpture, and especially architecture through a comparative lens with contemporary developments in Italy and Flanders, as well as Spain's complex medieval legacy. Buildings, altarpieces, fresco cycles, cartographic imagery - all of the arts will be investigated to help place Spain within the context of the Renaissance in Europe and beyond.
(AHIS W3895) Major’s Colloquium
H. Klein
Must sign up in 826 Schermerhorn.
Required course for all majors.
Limited enrollment: seniors get first priority, juniors get second priority. 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 W3904) Aztec Art & Sacrifice
E. Pasztory
This seminar explores the issues of art and sacrifice in the Aztec empire from the points of view of the 16th century and modern times.
(AHIS W3908) Topic in the Mediterranean Bronze Age: Archaeology and Exhibition
J. Smith
This seminar investigates the Mediterranean Bronze Age through the topic of museum exhibition. Students will engage in research and discussion about how museum's approach the display of Mediterranean Bronze Age subjects and will help to complete the preparation of a body of excavated material from the site of Phlamoudhi, Cyprus, for an exhibition in the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia that is planned for 2009.
(AHIS C3948) 19th Century Criticism
J. Crary
Selected readings in 19th-century philosophy, literature and art criticism with emphasis on problems of modernity and aesthetic experience. Texts include work by Diderot, Kant, Coleridge, Hegel, Emerson, Flaubert, Ruskin, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche.
(AHIS W3952) The Iconography of Belief: Art and Religion in 19th C. Europe
C. Grewe
The course focuses on the production of religious imagery in nineteenth-century France, Germany, England and America. It focuses on questions of communication, examining style, historical sources and religious context as well as strategies of promotion, dissemination and circulation. Topics covered include Mary, Eve and gender; landscape and belief, and anti-Semitism and Jewish self-representation.
(AHIS W3993) Investigations into Contemporary Art
B. Joseph
Travel Seminar. This course examines minimal sculpture, particularly that of Donald Judd and Dan Flavin. It will examine its emergence and transformations to the present day, including its place within the museum and how the museum itself has transformed. The course will examine criticism, patronage, and installation and involve a trip to Houston’s Menil Collection and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Tx.
(AHIS BC3948) The Harlem Renaissance
E. Hutchinson
Attendance at the first class is mandatory. Introduction to the paintings, photographs, sculptures, films and graphic arts of the Harlem Renaissance and the publications, exhibitions, and institutions involved in the production and consumption of images of African-Americans. Focuses on impact of Black northward and transatlantic migration and the roles of region, class, gender, and sexuality.
(ACLG G4001) Archeological Theory and Practice
J. Smith
The History of the Discipline from the end of the 18th century, with particular attention for the recent trends. The different categories of archeological evidence. The research of sites. The dating methods and the problem of chronology. The different uses of archeological evidence: for reconstructing ancient people, environment, society, economy, religion. The course ends exploring two basic issues: the relationships between Archeology and Politics, and between Archeology and History of Art.
(AHIS G4085) Andean Art & Architecture
E. Pasztory
Open to undergraduates. Survey of the art of the Andes from earliest times until the Spanish conquest. Emphasis on the nature of Andean tradition and the relationship between art and society.
(AHIS G4106) The Indian Temple
V. Dehejia
This course explores the emergence and development of the Indian temple, examines the relationship between form and function, and emphasizes the importance of considering temple sculpture and architecture together. It covers some two thousand years of activity, and while focusing on Hindu temples, also includes shrines built to the Jain and Buddhist faiths.
(AHIS W4131) Early Christian and Byzantine Art
H. Klein
Survey of early Christian and Byzantine art from its origins in the eastern provinces of the late Roman Empire through the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
(AHIS W4362) Architecture in the Spanish World
J. Escobar
Early Modern Spain was a place of cross-cultural convergence, with influences coming from Italy and northern Europe, the viceroyalties of Mexico and Peru, and its own conflicted medieval and ancient past. This course surveys the architecture and cities of the Spanish world from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries as a reflection of this historic reality.
(AHIS G4480) Art and the Reformation
K. Moxey
Artistic production in Germany and the Netherlands in the 16th century and the transformation of the social function of art as a consequence of the development of reformed theories of art and the introduction of humanist culture: Albrecht Dürer, Hans Baldung Grien, Hans Holbein the Younger, Albrecht Altdorfer, Quentin Massys, Lucas van Leyden, Jan Gossaert, Jan van Hemessen, and Pieter Aertsen.
(AHIS G4650) Post-War Critical Theory
J. Rachman
Description to come
(AHIS G6150) Genesis of Buddhist Art
V. Dehejia
Description to come
(AHIS G6XXX) Painting and the Religious Orders
W. Hood
The lectures focus primarily on large-scale painting in Tuscany and Umbria, beginning with the Basilica of San Francesco at Assisi in the late 13th century; they conclude with a consideration of several late-15th-century fresco programs reflecting the growing crisis that led a few decades later to the fracture of the Western Church with the outbreak of the Reformation in 1517. Included in these lectures on monumental painting will be discussions of large-scale altarpieces, which can be veritable billboards of the various Orders' ideology of the religious life. Prefacing the main body of lectures will be introductory ones on the organization of religious life in the Latin West and on the conundrums of the representational arts inherent in Christian theology. As a coda, the course finishes with some case studies of the chiastic reciprocity of painting and personal piety in the period.
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All graduate seminars require an application. Applications are due by Friday, November 30, 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 G8067) Literature of African Art
Z. Strother
The seminar seeks to excavate the field of African art history, with special emphasis on the legacy of anthropology and the challenges posed by feminism, African voices, public exhibition, and canon formation.
(AHIS G8099) Native American Landscapes
E. Hutchinson
The idea that Native Americans have an intrinsic connection to the American landscape has been circulated by both Indian people and non-Indians. Cultural critics have demonstrated that this assumption effaces the way in which both nature and ethnic identity are cultural constructs. In this course, we will explore the idea of the Native landscape by looking at ways indigenous North Americans have transformed their natural environments and represented them as a means of understanding their cultural significance. Our interpretations of these sites and objects will be informed by theoretical readings on the nature of space and of the “landscape” that address both Indian and non-Indian contexts. Readings are organized around three themes. The first is the cultural construction of space, in which we will investigate how social groups confront the natural environment and endow it with meaning. In the second, we will take up the issue of sovereignty, thinking through the question of territorial rights and also whether Native people can have sovereignty without control over ancestral lands. Finally, we will explore the notion of environmentalism in Native American art. As will become clear, for many each of these concerns overlaps with the others. Readings draw in particular from artists’ writings and major exhibitions of indigenous art organized around the issue of place.
(AHIS G8120) The Art of Xu Bing
R. Harrist
This seminar explores the career of the first Chinese artist to reach a truly international audience. Issues raised by Xu Bing's art to be addressed include the instability of language and writing, the functions of various media he has used, and the reaction of his work to concepts of "Chinese Art" in china and beyond. Students will visit to artist's studio and also hear presentations by invited critics.
(AHIS G8126) Japanese Architecture: Tokyo
J. Reynolds
This course will address the history and visual representations of the city of Tokyo from the mid-19th century to the present.
(AHIS G8128) Edo Period Painting
M. McKelway
This seminar will examine visual expressions of sinophilia and eccentricity in Japanese painting of the Edo period. Through an investigation of both original texts and modern studies of such artists as Ike Taiga and Itô Jakuchû, the seminar will also explore how such factors as the social background, personal networks, religious faith, and degree of literacy of Edo-period painters found expression in their art. Using Tsuji Nobuo's Kisô no keifu (The Lineage of Eccentricity) and more recent publications in western languages as a guide for discussions, the course will concentrate on painters active in mid-Edo period (late 17th-18th century) Kyoto and Edo. Students in the seminar will be encouraged to work directly with actual works in the Metropolitan Museum and the Burke Collection in New York, and with the Price Collection, on exhibit through April 2008 at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.
(AHIS G8159) Ancient Art in Seals
J. Smith
Using the Collection of Seals and Tablets at the Pierpont Morgan Library, this seminar offers students the opportunity to conduct original research. The seminar will focus on Middle to Late Bronze Ages as well as Iron Age glyptic material with well understood contexts from Syria, Cyprus and Greece. Central topics for research and discussion include style, artistic exchange, and the construction of authority.
(AHIS G8290) Roman Provincial Art
N. Kampen
This seminar concentrates on the impact of Roman presence in the geographically and culturally diverse provinces of the Empire and the ways in which that impact was reconfigured by local populations. The time frame extends from the 1st century b.c.e. to the 4th century c.e. and the geographical frame from Britain to Turkey and from Germany to the Sahara and the Nile.
(AHIS G8434) The Venetian Scuole
D. Rosand
Studies in the architecture and pictorial decoration of the scuole grandi, the confraternities that were essential elements of the civic organization of Renaissance Venice.
(AHIS G8652) The Bauhaus
B. Bergdoll
Description to come
(AHIS G8686) Methods Seminar: The Rhetoric of History
R. Krauss
Simon Shama’s Dead Certainties constructs history as a form of fiction, centering on an ekphrasis of a battle scene. T. J. Clark’s The Sight of Death is written as a diary of looking. Robbe-Grillet’s In the Labyrinth is another ekphrastic fiction. Hayden White’s Metahistory is an important exploration of rhetorical way of embedding historical narrative. Roland Barthes will provide another set of examples: “The Rhetoric of the Image” and S/Z.
(AHIS G8694) Spectral Modernity/cinematic specters
J. Crary
This course will evaluate a range of recent arguments about the inseparability of cinema from the experience of modernity in the 20th century. It will consider some of the social, cultural and political elements which constituted the century of cinema in the light of the so-called “death of film,” the collapse of semiotic-psychoanalytic film theory, the current cinephilia debate, the spread of new media, and of corporate-led globalization. Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema will be a core work for discussion of both the unstable contemporary status of film and its relation to the catastrophes of recent history. Works by other major directors will also be examined. Enrollment limited.
(AHIS G8742) Inventing the Monument
Z. Bahrani
F. de Angelis
This seminar will focus on the invention of the public monument as a commemorative genre, and the related concepts of time, memory, and history in the ancient world (near East, Egypt, Greece, Rome). Public monuments will be studied in conjunction with readings from ancient texts (in translation), as well as historical criticism, archaeological and art historical theories. Reading knowledge of German required.
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