Graduate Courses

Fall 2020

Raphael: Self-Production and Historical Reception
AS.010.655 (01)

Raphael’s status as a canonical artist and icon of the classical or academic art is mostly taken for granted and the artist's apparent resistance to re-assessment and reinterpretation has occasioned incomprehension and resentment, beginning with the "Pre-Raphaelism" of the 19th century. In the seminar we will aim at an understanding of what makes Raphael work as an artist – his working procedures and strategies to ensure success, as well as the reasons – not just institutional and ideological – for his ongoing role as a touchstone for artists ranging from Poussin to Ingres to Cezanne, and for interpreters including Bellori and Hegel.

Credits: 0.00
Level: Graduate
Days/Times: W 4:00PM - 6:30PM
Instructor: Campbell, Stephen
Room:
Status: Open
Seats Available: 9/10

Art and Vision in Premodern Europe
AS.010.647 (01)

This seminar surveys the important relationship between art and vision from classical antiquity until the 16th century. Select topics include: the role of ancient authors on medieval theories of vision; the role of Islamic science on medieval theories of vision; medieval perspective; linear perspective. Primary readings will come from Plato, Aristotle, Al-Hacen, Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, among others.

Credits: 0.00
Level: Graduate
Days/Times: T 4:00PM - 6:00PM
Instructor: Lakey, Christopher
Room: Gilman 177
Status: Approval Required
Seats Available: 5/5

Postcolonial Theory
AS.010.651 (01)

This course will engage with the foundational texts and subsequent debates within postcolonial theory in relation to the historiography of art history. Postcolonial theory's intersection with questions of memory, the archive, the body, and transnational flows of objects and ideas will be central. As such, engagements with the postcolonial via feminism, indigeneity, and critical race theory will be a part of the conversation. The seminar will also take seriously the ways in which the understanding of "the other" has shaped both art and the history of art of the pre-modern world.

Credits: 0.00
Level: Graduate
Days/Times: M 9:30AM - 11:30AM
Instructor: Brown, Rebecca Mary
Room:
Status: Open
Seats Available: 5/8

The Cut
AS.010.656 (01)

This seminar focuses on “the cut”—both as material practice and conceptual trope. Looking specifically at the early modern period, we will attempt to stitch together arts of cutting that have all too often been thought of separately or entirely in isolation—decoupage and inlaid stone, silhouette and turned ivory, repurposed drawing and perfectly hewn precious gem, pared-down panel and paper cut-out. To do so, we will look to expansive modern treatments and theorizations of “the cut” as literal gesture and figurative process, material technique and metaphoric mode. At stake is a reappraisal of creative paradigms that rest upon myths of wholeness, finitude, completion, generation, etc., and that thus undergird the early modern emergence of the very notion of “Art.” This seminar thus asks whether recentering the cut has the potential to position the art object within more expansive fields of material culture and to resituate artistic production within less hegemonic frameworks of creation and creativity. Though focused on the early modern period, students are encouraged to pursue research in their own fields/periods of study.

Credits: 0.00
Level: Graduate
Days/Times: Th 4:00PM - 6:30PM
Instructor: Hyman, Aaron M.
Room: Hodson 305
Status: Open
Seats Available: 9/10

Special Rsrch & Problems
AS.010.801 (01)