Courses

Courses by semester

Courses for

Complete Cornell University course descriptions are in the Courses of Study .

Course ID Title Offered
ARTH1100 Art Histories: An Introduction
This lecture course introduces students to the History of Art as a global and interdisciplinary field. Team-taught by a selection of professors from the department, in collaboration with members of the staff and faculty of the Herbert Johnson Museum of Art, its primary aim is to familiarize students with the most significant geographical areas, epochs and works of art, as well as with methods employed in their study and analysis. The course will be organized around a changing selection of themes central to the history of art. The theme for fall 2021 is "Ornament," departing from a broad understanding of just what constitutes a work of art (in addition to painting, sculpture, and architecture, we will consider a range of objects of material culture, from ceramics to metalwork to the human body itself), paying particular attention to intersections of aesthetics and utility, and the attitudes of various cultures, from antiquity to the present, toward adornment and its interpretation.

Full details for ARTH 1100 - Art Histories: An Introduction

Fall.
ARTH1132 FWS: Seeing, Reading, and Writing the Alhambra
This course is centered on Granada's Alhambra, built, for the most part, during the middle decades of the 14th century A.D. Both the most complete surviving medieval Islamic palace and the most popular tourist destination in Spain, throughout the more-than-six centuries of its existence, the Alhambra has inspired admiration and interpretation, this latter being influenced by intellectual trends and cultural currents as varied as Romanticism, positivism, Orientalism, post-structuralism, post-colonial theory and literature for tourists it was even the setting for Washington Irvving's famed Tales of the Alhambra. In this class students will learn to view and to write about the Alhambra through the lenses offered by these various movements and currents, as well as through the eyes of its contemporary audience, the 14th-century poets, courtiers, kings, mystics and the occasional Christian ally who frequented its beautifully ornamented halls and patios.

Full details for ARTH 1132 - FWS: Seeing, Reading, and Writing the Alhambra

Fall.
ARTH2200 Introduction to the Classical World in 24 Objects
Why are the most famous ancient Greek vases found in Italy? What was the "worlds' first computer" used for? What can a brick tell us about still standing Roman buildings? What is "classical" about all this and why should we care? This course on the art and archaeology of ancient Greece and Rome will address all these questions. Covering the time span from the

Full details for ARTH 2200 - Introduction to the Classical World in 24 Objects

Fall.
ARTH2600 Introduction to Modern Western Art: Materials, Media, and the End of Masterpieces
This course offers a broad introduction to some of the artistic practices that have come to be known as "modern" in Europe and the United States. Beginning with the upheavals of the French Revolution and carrying through to the turmoil of two world wars, we will survey the role of both fine art and visual culture in a period of great political, social, and technological change. The very definition of art was revolutionized in this moment, as an emphasis on materials and experiments with new media like photography and cinema took precedence over the production of highly-skilled masterpieces. Particular attention will be given to exchanges between western representation and that of other cultures. Topics covered include revolutionary propaganda; romantic unreason; caricature and political critique; the changing pace of the modern city; architecture in the machine age; the place of women in modernity; and the impact of new technology on spectatorship. Students should leave the course with increased familiarity with key art movements in the modern era and the skills to analyze and appreciate art and visual culture from any period. 

Full details for ARTH 2600 - Introduction to Modern Western Art: Materials, Media, and the End of Masterpieces

Fall.
ARTH2711 Archaeology of the Roman World: Italy and the West
With megacities, long-distance trade, and fluid identities, the Roman empire can seem uncannily close to our modern world. This course adopts a thematic approach to explore whether this is a valid parallel, based on archaeological evidence ranging from temples to farms, from wine containers to statues.

Full details for ARTH 2711 - Archaeology of the Roman World: Italy and the West

Fall.
ARTH3250 Introduction to Dendrochronology
Introduction and training in dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) and its applications in archaeology, art history, climate and environment through lab work and participation in ongoing research projects using ancient to modern wood samples from around the world. Supervised reading and laboratory/project work. Possibilities exists for summer fieldwork in the Mediterranean, Mexico, and New York State.

Full details for ARTH 3250 - Introduction to Dendrochronology

Fall.
ARTH3255 The Byzantine Empire: Culture and Society
An introduction to the art, history, and literature of the Byzantine Empire, its neighbors, and successors, ca. 500-1500.

Full details for ARTH 3255 - The Byzantine Empire: Culture and Society

Fall.
ARTH3566 Art and Architecture of the Pre-Columbian Americas
This course introduces students to the arts of the ancient Americas from circa 2000 BC to the Spanish invasions of the 15th and 16th centuries. The inhabitants of the Americas produced outstanding works of art and architecture that showcased their diverse aesthetic contributions. This course covers the arts of indigenous Mesoamerica (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras), the Caribbean (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and the Greater and Lesser Antilles), and Andean South America (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile). Students will become familiar with the history, archaeology, and visual arts of the earliest cultures that populated these regions up through the Inca, Aztec, and Maya cultures that encountered the Spaniards. This course will also explore the legacies of pre-Columbian art in colonial, modern, and contemporary Latin America.

Full details for ARTH 3566 - Art and Architecture of the Pre-Columbian Americas

Fall.
ARTH3650 History and Theory of Digital Art
In this course, we will examine the role of mechanical, electronic and digital technologies in the arts of the late 20th and 21st centuries with emphasis on Europe and North America. Beginning with kinetic art and the cybernetically inspired work of the late sixties, we will explore early uses of computer technology, including early experiments in synthetic video in the 1970s. An overview of pre-internet telematic experiments will lead to an investigation of net art and later currents of digital art. The ongoing development of behavioral art forms will be a central theme. Critical evaluation of various attitudes concerning technology will be encouraged.

Full details for ARTH 3650 - History and Theory of Digital Art

Fall.
ARTH3820 Introduction to the Arts of Japan
As an island nation east of the Asian continent, Japan developed a unique culture that reflects both continental and indigenous characteristics. This course examines pre- and post-contact with continental culture and the process of artistic acculturation and assimilation in successive periods of Japanese art history.

Full details for ARTH 3820 - Introduction to the Arts of Japan

Fall.
ARTH4101 Proseminar: Introduction to Methods
Works of art have always engendered political, social, and cultural meanings. This seminar presents an introduction to the methods used by art historians and the objects and ideas that constitute the historiography of their discipline. If art history was once understood as the study of the development of style in "European art", over the past century its practitioners have attempted to embrace a "global" perspective and to address issues of class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, and gender. Readings will focus on historically situating methods and the implications of their cross-cultural application. They will be discussed in the framework of institutions, apparatuses and practices that have shaped the field, identifying how these have contributed to systemic mechanisms of hegemony and exclusion. Papers will encourage students to put methods into practice, realizing in the process that subject matter is not an isolated choice to which methods are applied, but something that profoundly affects the approach that the researcher brings to the writing and conceptualizing and doing of art history. 

Full details for ARTH 4101 - Proseminar: Introduction to Methods

Fall.
ARTH4110 Curatorial Practicum Fall.
ARTH4155 Topics in Latin American Art
Most of the canonical histories and criticism of Latin American art depict a history of artistic production in which technology plays a minor or invisible role. This construction of history reinforces the assumption that experimentation, innovation and theorization in technological art are exclusive provinces of the developed world. How does the inclusion of technologically-engaged practices in the history of Latin American art challenge our understanding of this art? Has the dissemination of digital technologies contributed to preserve or to obscure cultural memory?  Has it contributed to the development of socially engaged practices? Can artists' engagements with technology stimulate the development of new historical and critical discourses about Latin American art? Diverse disciplinary and methodological approaches will be considered.

Full details for ARTH 4155 - Topics in Latin American Art

Fall.
ARTH4171 19th Century Art and Culture
An examination and analysis of the major trends in art from Neoclassicism and Romanticism through Post Impressionism and the dawn of the twentieth century. Lectures and readings will concentrate on the historical context of great masterpieces by seminal artists. The class will investigate the imagery and theoretical foundation of nineteenth-century European and American art using a selection of appropriate methodological approaches. Major figures to be discussed include David, Copley, Goya, Delacroix, Courbet, Cole, Manet, Morisot, Monet, Degas, Cassatt, Sargent, Eakins, Homer, Rodin, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Part of each class will be devoted to discussions of the readings. Two classes will be held in the National Gallery of Art at times and dates to be determined. Exams, a term paper, and class participation will be used for evaluative purposes.

Full details for ARTH 4171 - 19th Century Art and Culture

Fall, Spring.
ARTH4664 Death in the City: Funerary Architecture in Muslim South Asia
This seminar examines the development and transformation of Muslim funerary landscapes in the Indian subcontinent from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries. It explores the relationship between sepulchral spaces and the urban environments with which they are connected, highlighting their role as spaces of sociability as well as piety. We will study the long history of funerary architecture through a series of case studies. This examination will involve architectural analysis of sites such as the shrine of Nizam al-Din Awliya in Delhi, close readings of poetic compositions, for example, the Maklinamah of Mir Sher 'Ali Qani, and travelogues like the Rihla of Ibn Battuta, to unravel the processes by which sites are re-imagined and re-made over time. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for ARTH 4664 - Death in the City: Funerary Architecture in Muslim South Asia

Fall.
ARTH4690 Comparative Modernities
Since the late 19th century, the effects of capitalism across the globe have been profoundly transformative and have intensified with the demise of the older colonial empires, the rise of nationalism and independent states, and the onset of neoliberal globalization. These transformations are manifested in the domains of high art, mass culture and popular culture, yet remain inadequately studied. This seminar theorizes and explores non-Western modernist and contemporary art practice in a comparative framework. Taught as a seminar, it assumes active participation by advanced undergraduate and graduate students who have a prior knowledge of Euro-American modernism and art history, and who wish to better understand the great artistic and visual transformations from the beginning of the 20th century onwards in a global context.

Full details for ARTH 4690 - Comparative Modernities

Fall.
ARTH4754 Themes in Mediterranean Archaeology
This seminar provides a higher-level general introduction to, and survey of, contemporary theories, methods, and approaches in the archaeology of the Mediterranean world. Rather than focusing on a specific geographical sub-region or chronological period, this course examines and critically assesses the practice and distinctive character of Mediterranean archaeology more broadly.

Full details for ARTH 4754 - Themes in Mediterranean Archaeology

Fall.
ARTH4822 Objects, Rituals, and Tea
Tea is a ubiquitous commodity across time and cultures. The craze for tea has become a global phenomenon. The goal of this course is not only to elucidate the exchanges and transmissions that gave rise to the phenomenon, but also to unpack the definition of tea culture through the exploration of objects and rituals. How are tea objects related to rituals, etiquette, and movement? What do tea objects reveal about craftsmen/craftswomen and collectors? How are the objects related to religious, political, social, and economic environments of their times? Lastly, what is the importance of tea culture in shaping national and cultural identity in modern East Asia?

Full details for ARTH 4822 - Objects, Rituals, and Tea

Fall.
ARTH4852 Shadowplay: Asian Art and Performance
Shadowplay is a superb medium for storytelling. As with many performing arts in Asia, neither the highly stylized images of puppets, nor its musical, or linguistic complexity detract from its wide popularity. Why does an art that appears so obscure exercise such broad appeal? This seminar explores the playful and politically adept fluctuations of shadows across screens from India to Mainland and Island Southeast Asia. We will also briefly examine East Asian developments, particularly in China and Japan. In each of the countries where shadow theatre exists it has acquired its own repertory and a distinct technique and style of its own. This aesthetic has translated locally into paint, sculpture, architecture, cinema, and modern and contemporary installation art. Classes will meet regularly in the Herbert F. Johnson Museum.

Full details for ARTH 4852 - Shadowplay: Asian Art and Performance

Fall.
ARTH4991 Independent Study
Individual investigation and discussion of special topics not covered in the regular course offerings, by arrangement with a member of the department.

Full details for ARTH 4991 - Independent Study

Fall.
ARTH4998 Honors Work I
A course for senior Art History majors working on honors theses, with selected reading, research projects, etc., under the supervision of a member of the History of Art faculty.

Full details for ARTH 4998 - Honors Work I

Fall, Spring.
ARTH5991 Supervised Reading
Individual investigation and discussion of special topics not covered in the regular course offerings, by arrangement with a member of the department.

Full details for ARTH 5991 - Supervised Reading

Fall.
ARTH5993 Supervised Study
Individual investigation and discussion of special topics not covered in the regular course offerings, by arrangement with a member of the department.

Full details for ARTH 5993 - Supervised Study

Fall.
ARTH6000 Graduate Research Methods in Art History
This seminar introduces graduate students to a range of methodologies and approaches to teaching and researching topics in art history and visual studies. Each week, a member of the faculty will present his or her work to the seminar, highlighting unique research approaches, areas of specialty, technological challenges, and professional and pedagogical rewards. Topics include defining a research question; conducting archival research and fieldwork; syllabus design; identifying funding sources; and grant proposal writing. This course is required for all art history Ph.D. students and open to graduate students from other departments. Students are encouraged to use current technologies for presenting their coursework, including the creation of a blog for documenting ongoing research questions related to their teaching and dissertation.

Full details for ARTH 6000 - Graduate Research Methods in Art History

Fall.
ARTH6010 Curatorial Practicum Fall.
ARTH6101 Proseminar: Introduction to Methods
Works of art have always engendered political, social, and cultural meanings. This seminar presents an introduction to the methods used by art historians and the objects and ideas that constitute the historiography of their discipline. If art history was once understood as the study of the development of style in "European art", over the past century its practitioners have attempted to embrace a "global" perspective and to address issues of class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, and gender. Readings will focus on historically situating methods and the implications of their cross-cultural application. They will be discussed in the framework of institutions, apparatuses and practices that have shaped the field, identifying how these have contributed to systemic mechanisms of hegemony and exclusion. Papers will encourage students to put methods into practice, realizing in the process that subject matter is not an isolated choice to which methods are applied, but something that profoundly affects the approach that the researcher brings to the writing and conceptualizing and doing of art history. 

Full details for ARTH 6101 - Proseminar: Introduction to Methods

Fall.
ARTH6155 Topics in Latin American Art
Most of the canonical histories and criticism of Latin American art depict a history of artistic production in which technology plays a minor or invisible role. This construction of history reinforces the assumption that experimentation, innovation and theorization in technological art are exclusive provinces of the developed world. How does the inclusion of technologically-engaged practices in the history of Latin American art challenge our understanding of this art? Has the dissemination of digital technologies contributed to preserve or to obscure cultural memory?  Has it contributed to the development of socially engaged practices? Can artists' engagements with technology stimulate the development of new historical and critical discourses about Latin American art? Diverse disciplinary and methodological approaches will be considered.

Full details for ARTH 6155 - Topics in Latin American Art

Fall.
ARTH6190 Comparative Modernities
Since the late 19th century, the effects of capitalism across the globe have been profoundly transformative and have intensified with the demise of the older colonial empires, the rise of nationalism and independent states, and the onset of neoliberal globalization. These transformations are manifested in the domains of high art, mass culture and popular culture, yet remain inadequately studied. This seminar theorizes and explores non-Western modernist and contemporary art practice in a comparative framework. Taught as a seminar, it assumes active participation by advanced undergraduate and graduate students who have a prior knowledge of Euro-American modernism and art history, and who wish to better understand the great artistic and visual transformations from the beginning of the 20th century onwards in a global context.

Full details for ARTH 6190 - Comparative Modernities

Fall.
ARTH6255 The Byzantine Empire: Culture and Society
ARTH6664 Death in the City: Funerary Architecture in Muslim South Asia
This seminar examines the development and transformation of Muslim funerary landscapes in the Indian subcontinent from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries. It explores the relationship between sepulchral spaces and the urban environments with which they are connected, highlighting their role as spaces of sociability as well as piety. We will study the long history of funerary architecture through a series of case studies. This examination will involve architectural analysis of sites such as the shrine of Nizam al-Din Awliya in Delhi, close readings of poetic compositions, for example, the Maklinamah of Mir Sher 'Ali Qani, and travelogues like the Rihla of Ibn Battuta, to unravel the processes by which sites are re-imagined and re-made over time. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website. 

Full details for ARTH 6664 - Death in the City: Funerary Architecture in Muslim South Asia

Fall.
ARTH6754 Themes in Mediterranean Archaeology
This seminar provides a higher-level general introduction to, and survey of, contemporary theories, methods, and approaches in the archaeology of the Mediterranean world. Rather than focusing on a specific geographical sub-region or chronological period, this course examines and critically assesses the practice and distinctive character of Mediterranean archaeology more broadly.

Full details for ARTH 6754 - Themes in Mediterranean Archaeology

Fall.
ARTH6822 Objects, Rituals, and Tea
Tea is a ubiquitous commodity across time and cultures. The craze for tea has become a global phenomenon. The goal of this course is not only to elucidate the exchanges and transmissions that gave rise to the phenomenon, but also to unpack the definition of tea culture through the exploration of objects and rituals. How are tea objects related to rituals, etiquette, and movement? What do tea objects reveal about craftsmen/craftswomen and collectors? How are the objects related to religious, political, social, and economic environments of their times? Lastly, what is the importance of tea culture in shaping national and cultural identity in modern East Asia?

Full details for ARTH 6822 - Objects, Rituals, and Tea

Fall.
ARTH6852 Shadowplay: Asian Art and Performance
Shadowplay is a superb medium for storytelling. As with many performing arts in Asia, neither the highly stylized images of puppets, nor its musical, or linguistic complexity detract from its wide popularity. Why does an art that appears so obscure exercise such broad appeal? This seminar explores the playful and politically adept fluctuations of shadows across screens from India to Mainland and Island Southeast Asia. We will also briefly examine East Asian developments, particularly in China and Japan. In each of the countries where shadow theatre exists it has acquired its own repertory and a distinct technique and style of its own. This aesthetic has translated locally into paint, sculpture, architecture, cinema, and modern and contemporary installation art. Classes will meet regularly in the Herbert F. Johnson Museum.

Full details for ARTH 6852 - Shadowplay: Asian Art and Performance

Fall.
VISST1101 Visual Literacy and Design Studio
This course is an introductory design studio.  The primary course objective is to introduce principles of visual literacy as it pertains to two-dimensional and three-dimensional issues in design at all scales.  Concepts about representation, expression, composition, color, form, light, structure, and function will be explored through project based learning.  The emphasis will be on learning explicit compositional concepts, visualization skills, and media techniques as well as implicit design sensitivities to serve the student throughout the rest of his or her DEA experience and beyond.

Full details for VISST 1101 - Visual Literacy and Design Studio

Fall.
VISST2002 Environment and Sustainability Colloquium
This colloquium presents students with diverse approaches at the art-science interface used to interest, educate and motivate people to consider, address and solve environmental and sustainability challenges. It consists of a series of lectures given by experts, people with different expertise and perspectives who are addressing a variety of environmental and sustainability problems with regard to humanistic concern.

Full details for VISST 2002 - Environment and Sustainability Colloquium

Fall.
VISST2012 Discussions of Environment and Sustainability
This colloquium presents students with diverse approaches at the art-science interface used to interest, educate and motivate people to consider, address and solve environmental and sustainability challenges. It consists of a series of lectures by experts with different perspectives addressing a variety of environmental and sustainability problems with regard to humanistic concern. The small group discussion session allows in-depth engagement with the art-science interface. Building on the possibilities shared by our expert visitors, students in the discussion section will develop their own approach to addressing environmental issues. We will analyze how the ways in which information is shared is as significant as the information itself, and consider "artistic" and "scientific" perspectives as mutually beneficial tools for exploring and communicating our relationship to the environment.

Full details for VISST 2012 - Discussions of Environment and Sustainability

Fall.
VISST2511 Beginning Dance Composition
Weekly assignments in basic elements of choreography. Students compose and present short studies that are discussed and reworked. Problems are defined and explored through class improvisations. Informal showing at end of semester. Includes informal showing of work.

Full details for VISST 2511 - Beginning Dance Composition

Fall.
VISST2744 Gamelan in Indonesian History and Cultures
This course combines hands-on instruction in gamelan, Indonesia's most prominent form of traditional music, and the academic study of the broader range of music found in contemporary Indonesia, including Western-oriented and hybrid popular forms. Students thus engage with music directly, and use it as a lens to examine the myriad social and cultural forces that shape it, and that are shaped by it.

Full details for VISST 2744 - Gamelan in Indonesian History and Cultures

Fall.
VISST3175 Global Cinema I
Global Cinema I and II together offer an overview of international film history from the late nineteenth century to today. Through a focus on key films and significant epochs, the course traces the evolution of form, style and genre, the medium's changing technologies and business models, as well as film's relation to broader cultural, social and political contexts. Screenings of narrative, documentary and experimental films will be accompanied by readings in film theory and history. Global Cinema I covers the period from 1895 to 1960. Precise topics will vary from year to year, but may include: early silent cinema; the emergence of Hollywood as industry and a "classical" narrative form; Soviet, German, French and Chinese film cultures; the coming of sound; interwar documentary and avant-garde movements; American cinema in the age of the studio system; Italian Neorealism; the post-war avant-garde.

Full details for VISST 3175 - Global Cinema I

Fall.
VISST3461 Introduction to African American Cinema
This course explores the rich and diverse history of African American filmmaking.  Focusing on films written and/or directed by African Americans, this seminar traces the history of filmmaking from the silent era to the present day.  In exploring Black cultural production and creative expression, students will consider the ways in which film is used as a medium of protest, resistance, and cultural affirmation.  We will look at films through the critical lenses of race and representation in American cinema while locating our analysis within larger frameworks of Hollywood's representation of African Americans and various cultural and social movements within local and global contexts.

Full details for VISST 3461 - Introduction to African American Cinema

Fall.
VISST3566 Art and Architecture of the Pre-Columbian Americas
This course introduces students to the arts of the ancient Americas from circa 2000 BC to the Spanish invasions of the 15th and 16th centuries. The inhabitants of the Americas produced outstanding works of art and architecture that showcased their diverse aesthetic contributions. This course covers the arts of indigenous Mesoamerica (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras), the Caribbean (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and the Greater and Lesser Antilles), and Andean South America (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile). Students will become familiar with the history, archaeology, and visual arts of the earliest cultures that populated these regions up through the Inca, Aztec, and Maya cultures that encountered the Spaniards. This course will also explore the legacies of pre-Columbian art in colonial, modern, and contemporary Latin America.

Full details for VISST 3566 - Art and Architecture of the Pre-Columbian Americas

Fall.
VISST3650 History and Theory of Digital Art
In this course, we will examine the role of mechanical, electronic and digital technologies in the arts of the late 20th and 21st centuries with emphasis on Europe and North America. Beginning with kinetic art and the cybernetically inspired work of the late sixties, we will explore early uses of computer technology, including early experiments in synthetic video in the 1970s. An overview of pre-internet telematic experiments will lead to an investigation of net art and later currents of digital art. The ongoing development of behavioral art forms will be a central theme. Critical evaluation of various attitudes concerning technology will be encouraged.

Full details for VISST 3650 - History and Theory of Digital Art

Fall.
VISST3798 Fundamentals of Directing I
Focused, practical exercises teach the student fundamental staging techniques that bring written text to theatrical life. A core objective is to increase the student's awareness of why and how certain stage events communicate effectively to an audience. Each student directs a number of exercises as well as a short scene.

Full details for VISST 3798 - Fundamentals of Directing I

Fall.
VISST4101 Proseminar: Introduction to Methods
Works of art have always engendered political, social, and cultural meanings. This seminar presents an introduction to the methods used by art historians and the objects and ideas that constitute the historiography of their discipline. If art history was once understood as the study of the development of style in "European art", over the past century its practitioners have attempted to embrace a "global" perspective and to address issues of class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, and gender. Readings will focus on historically situating methods and the implications of their cross-cultural application. They will be discussed in the framework of institutions, apparatuses and practices that have shaped the field, identifying how these have contributed to systemic mechanisms of hegemony and exclusion. Papers will encourage students to put methods into practice, realizing in the process that subject matter is not an isolated choice to which methods are applied, but something that profoundly affects the approach that the researcher brings to the writing and conceptualizing and doing of art history. 

Full details for VISST 4101 - Proseminar: Introduction to Methods

Fall.
VISST4155 Topics in Latin American Art
Most of the canonical histories and criticism of Latin American art depict a history of artistic production in which technology plays a minor or invisible role. This construction of history reinforces the assumption that experimentation, innovation and theorization in technological art are exclusive provinces of the developed world. How does the inclusion of technologically-engaged practices in the history of Latin American art challenge our understanding of this art? Has the dissemination of digital technologies contributed to preserve or to obscure cultural memory?  Has it contributed to the development of socially engaged practices? Can artists' engagements with technology stimulate the development of new historical and critical discourses about Latin American art? Diverse disciplinary and methodological approaches will be considered.

Full details for VISST 4155 - Topics in Latin American Art

Fall.
VISST4641 Comparative Modernities
Since the late 19th century, the effects of capitalism across the globe have been profoundly transformative and have intensified with the demise of the older colonial empires, the rise of nationalism and independent states, and the onset of neoliberal globalization. These transformations are manifested in the domains of high art, mass culture and popular culture, yet remain inadequately studied. This seminar theorizes and explores non-Western modernist and contemporary art practice in a comparative framework. Taught as a seminar, it assumes active participation by advanced undergraduate and graduate students who have a prior knowledge of Euro-American modernism and art history, and who wish to better understand the great artistic and visual transformations from the beginning of the 20th century onwards in a global context.

Full details for VISST 4641 - Comparative Modernities

Fall.
VISST4664 Death in the City: Funerary Architecture in Muslim South Asia
This seminar examines the development and transformation of Muslim funerary landscapes in the Indian subcontinent from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries. It explores the relationship between sepulchral spaces and the urban environments with which they are connected, highlighting their role as spaces of sociability as well as piety. We will study the long history of funerary architecture through a series of case studies. This examination will involve architectural analysis of sites such as the shrine of Nizam al-Din Awliya in Delhi, close readings of poetic compositions, for example, the Maklinamah of Mir Sher 'Ali Qani, and travelogues like the Rihla of Ibn Battuta, to unravel the processes by which sites are re-imagined and re-made over time. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for VISST 4664 - Death in the City: Funerary Architecture in Muslim South Asia

Fall.
VISST4793 Film and Video Production II
A continuation of PMA 3570, Introduction to Visual Storytelling, students will dive deeper into creating story driven short form narratives. Students will have the opportunity to develop and produce a short film over the course of the semester. The expectation is the follow through of the filmmaking process, from story development, preproduction, production, post production and distribution. Students are expected to collaborate heavily and crew on each other's film productions, in various roles. Final film projects will be screened in a public, open-campus event at the end of the semester.

Full details for VISST 4793 - Film and Video Production II

Spring.
VISST4852 Shadowplay: Asian Art and Performance
Shadowplay is a superb medium for storytelling. As with many performing arts in Asia, neither the highly stylized images of puppets, nor its musical, or linguistic complexity detract from its wide popularity. Why does an art that appears so obscure exercise such broad appeal? This seminar explores the playful and politically adept fluctuations of shadows across screens from India to Mainland and Island Southeast Asia. We will also briefly examine East Asian developments, particularly in China and Japan. In each of the countries where shadow theatre exists it has acquired its own repertory and a distinct technique and style of its own. This aesthetic has translated locally into paint, sculpture, architecture, cinema, and modern and contemporary installation art. Classes will meet regularly in the Herbert F. Johnson Museum.

Full details for VISST 4852 - Shadowplay: Asian Art and Performance

Fall.
VISST6155 Topics in Latin American Art
Most of the canonical histories and criticism of Latin American art depict a history of artistic production in which technology plays a minor or invisible role. This construction of history reinforces the assumption that experimentation, innovation and theorization in technological art are exclusive provinces of the developed world. How does the inclusion of technologically-engaged practices in the history of Latin American art challenge our understanding of this art? Has the dissemination of digital technologies contributed to preserve or to obscure cultural memory?  Has it contributed to the development of socially engaged practices? Can artists' engagements with technology stimulate the development of new historical and critical discourses about Latin American art? Diverse disciplinary and methodological approaches will be considered.

Full details for VISST 6155 - Topics in Latin American Art

Fall.
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