Graduate Courses

Spring 2023

An Empire’s Diversity: Ottoman Architecture and Patronage beyond the Imperial Court
AS.010.621 (01)

The established historiography of Ottoman architecture is dominated by the patronage of the sultans and their elites, particularly as it shaped the empire’s third and final capital, Istanbul. While this focus on the “center” and its leadership reflects the Ottoman state’s own hierarchical structure, it also obscures the larger network of places and people that enabled the imperial system to develop and acquire meaning in the first place. This course will explore Ottoman architecture and its patronage from the perspective of these neglected regions and actors, covering such examples as Christian vassal states along the empire’s European borders, Arab lands with existing traditions of Islamic art, the curious persistence of Gothic models in the former Crusader kingdom of Cyprus, and the distinctive architectural practices of non-Muslim minorities within Istanbul itself. Drawn primarily from the early modern and modern periods, our case studies will be treated not as imitations of or deviations from the metropolitan mainstream, but as vital expressions of Ottoman culture that assertively engaged with, and themselves contributed to, the better-known strategies of the sultan’s court. We will also go beyond issues of architecture and patronage and consider these buildings as lived spaces whose associated objects, furnishings, and social and ceremonial activities were no less constitutive of the empire’s diverse architectural landscape.

Credits: 3.00
Level: Graduate
Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Instructor: Rustem, Unver
Room: Gilman 177
Status: Open
Seats Available: 7/8
PosTag(s): n/a

What is in a Landscape
AS.010.668 (01)

This is a graduate seminar on the histories and theories of the art of landscape as knowledge, medium, and contesting field of power and identity.

Credits: 3.00
Level: Graduate
Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Instructor: Liu, Yinxing
Room: Gilman 177
Status: Open
Seats Available: 4/7
PosTag(s): HART-THRY

Vulnerable Images
AS.010.730 (01)

What is a vulnerable image? The Latin vulnus points us in two directions: toward the relational vulnerability arising from the sight of wounds and the action of wounding; and toward the raw disclosure of the body's interior. This seminar, team-taught so as to bring the perspectives of the modern and the long premodern era into dialogue, attends to vulnerable images in both senses: we will consider not only works that picture vulnerable subjects, but images that, in their vibrant materiality or through their use and circulation, themselves become vulnerable. Across both domains we will examine what is arguably their shared capacity: to make viewers aware of their own vulnerability, and to provoke a range of responses, from the "tragic" emotions of pity and fear, to horror and disgust, compassion and care, pleasure and pain. Each week involves the critical juxtaposition of artworks and texts drawn from modern and contemporary culture with those from the long premodern past. Topics include pain as spectacle and perceptions of pain; care, attention, and maternal inclination; the vulnerability of gendered and racialized bodies; representations of torture, punishment, and war; laughter and grotesque humor; the subjects and objects of iconoclasm; material decompositions and forms of fragility. Readings run the gamut from Aristotle to Arendt, Freud to Butler, Warburg to Hartman, Sontag to Scarry.

Credits: 3.00
Level: Graduate
Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Instructor: Merback, Mitchell; Schopp, Caroline Lillian
Room: Gilman 177
Status: Open
Seats Available: 11/15
PosTag(s): n/a

Special Rsrch & Problems
AS.010.801 (01)