HAA Course Descriptions - Fall 2008
The following courses will be offered during term 2091, fall 2008. View the schedule through the Arts and Sciences webpage.
HAA 0010 Introduction to World Art
From ancient to the present, works of art can be understood as significant cultural documents. This introductory course, designed for students with no previous background in art or art history, is intended to demonstrate how to interpret works of art and architecture. The course will focus on selected works of art produced world-wide, relating them to their historical context. The class will be taught through illustrated lectures and class discussions in a thematic approach to the material. In the broadest light, the course is designed to demonstrate some of the basic tools of analysis with which to approach works of art as both aesthetic objects and historic documents.
HAA 0020 Introduction to Asian Art
This course is intended to introduce major artistic traditions of Asia and to develop basic tools of analysis in order to understand the material. Some of the topics to be studied include: The Ancient city of Mohenjodaro, Art of Landscape Painting, Japanese Narrative Handscrolls, Buddhism and the State, and The Arts of Zen. Upon completing the course students will be familiar with many monuments in India, China, Japan and Southeast Asia and will know something about interpreting them.
HAA 0030 Introduction to Modern Art
This course aims to supply students with a broad introduction to one of the most exciting periods in the history of artistic production. Focusing on Europe and the United States from approximately 1840-1960, this course will familiarize students with the primary formal developments, movements, and aesthetic debates and theories that make up the historical entity we call modernism. Arguably no other period offers an equivalent display of disruption, innovation, and exploration in the visual arts, and this course charts the contours of these artistic practices and the forces that guided their development. Enrollment in a recitation section is required of all students. Recitations will provide an opportunity for more in-depth consideration of issues raised in lecture. Note that there are W-practica (HAA 0033) that carry an additional hour of credit (for a total of 4 hours); students who choose to enroll in the W-practicum must, like all students in the course, also enroll in a regular recitation.
HAA 0033 Introduction to Modern Art Writing Practicum
Amy Cymbala
This practicum must be taken in conjunction with HAA 0030, CN 14758. In this practicum students will write and rewrite 12 pages on topics related to the lectures, readings, and examinations in Introduction to Modern Art.
HAA 0040 Introduction to Western Architecture
Franklin Toker
This course introduces students to western architecture from the ancient world until today. The course works both chronologically as a history of phases and styles, and methodologically, examining the contextual issues that gave each period its distinctive architecture. Discussion plays a key role at all meetings. Students who take this course will learn to understand and make critical judgments on buildings and be ready for more specialized studies in the history of architecture or any other branch of art history.
HAA 0090 Introduction to Contemporary Art
Robert Bailey
This course explores the latest developments in contemporary art in the context of changes in world visual cultures since the 1960s. The first weeks will concentrate on the transformations of artistic practice that occurred initially in Pop Art, and on the Minimal-Conceptual shift in Western art. This will be followed by a survey of the diversification of artistic practice in the 1980s and 1990s, including the emergence of new internationalisms reflecting postcoloniality, global Contemporary Art, indigenous art and digital media. The course will conclude with a consideration of multiplicity of art today.
HAA 0302 Renaissance Art
Marion Dolan
Transformations in the status, appearance, and meaning of artworks during the European Renaissance have profoundly affected Western visual culture. This course explores the extraordinary experiments of competitive, innovative artists and patrons, going beyond stylistic change to focus on the role of artistic invention in shaping Renaissance society. It considers the shifting functions of the visual arts in Europe between 1250 and 1600. Artists to be discussed include Giotto, Brunelleschi, Donatello, van Eyck, Botticelli, Mantegna, Leonardo, Durer, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian. Students will be asked to write short papers on thematic issues throughout the term and, at the end of the semester, they will undertake a more substantial project that engages the research methods of art history.
HAA 0350 Baroque Art
Ann Sutherland Harris
This course will focus on the most significant artists working in 17th century Italy (Caravaggio, the Carracci, Bernini, Algardi, Ribera, Cortona, Poussin, Claude), Spain (Zurbaran, Velazquez, Murillo), France (Georges de la Tour, Champaigne, the Le Nains, Puget, Le Brun), Flanders (Rubens, Van Dyck) and Holland (Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael, Vermeer), and will also emphasize the rise of new themes (portraiture, landscape, still life and scenes of daily life) and the growth of middle-class patronage of the visual arts. The broader political and cultural context of these images will also be considered.
HAA 0420 Van Gogh
Aaron Sheon
Van Gogh is one of the most famous artists, yet most people know only one or two things about him. This class will study his life and works in-depth, and in the context of Realism and Impressionism in France, and in the framework of Dutch art. He also will be viewed as an artist interested in playing a role as a mad genius and ill artist, which were cultural models for artists in the late 19th century. This class is intended for students who have had little or no background in art history.
HAA 0480 Modern Architecture
Drew Armstrong
From the late eighteenth century, new processes and cultural phenomena that may be globally described as effects of modernization have impinged on architectural design and urban planning throughout the world. The development of new technologies and materials, of colonial expansion and extensive state planning in the 19th century, of multi-national corporations and sprawling urban centers in the 20th century, continue to reshape societies and environments. Through case studies of texts, monuments and sites, this course will investigate the consequences of these trends on architectural design and thought from 1800 to the 20th century.
HAA 0501 American Art
Karla Huebner
In 1776 few observers would have predicted a brilliant future for American art. Sculpture barely existed, painting was limited to portraiture, and ambitious artists who wanted to tackle more imaginative subjects had to pursue their careers abroad. This course will examine American art and architecture from their beginnings in the Colonial era to their coming of age in the nineteenth century and their rise to international prominence in the twentieth century.
HAA 0640 Art of Japan
Karen Gerhart
This course will survey Japan's diverse artistic traditions from its Neolithic origins to the 19th century. The lectures will focus on Buddhist painting and sculpture, architecture, handscrolls, gardens, zen painting, castles and warrior culture, and wood block prints. Major themes for discussion include the relationship between Japan, Korea, and China; the role of religion in art production; and the social and historical contexts of each major period.
HAA 0900 Special Topics (Architectural Studies) - Approaches to the Built Environment
Gretchen Bender
Approaches to the Built Environment, an introductory course designed for Architectural Studies majors, is meant to complement HAA 0040: Introduction to Architecture. Through a series of units dealing with different architectural issues and building types (Representation; Landscape; Dwelling; Commerce and Industry; Public Institutions; Sacred Spaces), students will be introduced to ideas and problems that affect the way in which the built environment has been and continues to be shaped in a variety of historical and cultural contexts. We will think broadly about how the spaces that people move through and inhabit in their daily lives shape and are shaped by human behavior, cultural identity, political experience, and the currents of historical circumstance. Contemporary buildings and projects will figure prominently as examples of how designers currently approach architectural, structural and urban problems. Local sites will serve as case-studies for the analysis of different aspects of the built environment. This class is taught in a seminar format with students evaluated on their class participation and assigned projects. Readings and projects will introduce students to a variety of techniques for analyzing and representing the built environment, providing the basic tools for subsequent architectural research and studies.
HAA 1010 Approaches to Art History - Expressionism
Barbara McCloskey
This seminar for undergraduate majors in art history will explore the history of Expressionism throughout the 20th century. Expressionism is typically identified with the artistic movement that emerged in Germany before the First World War, most specifically in the "primitivist" works of artists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Wassily Kandinsky, Paula Modersohn-Becker, and others. The course will analyze this first flowering of Expressionism. It will also trace Expressionism's post-World War I afterlife in Germany and elsewhere, including its vilification under the Nazi regime (1933-1945) and its emergence in Western democratic cultures during the same period as Germany's foremost artistic movement of the modern period. We will continue our exploration of Expressionism through the post-World War II period and examine the reasons behind its reemergence in Germany and elsewhere during the Cold War, most vividly under the rubric of the international Neo-Expressionist movement of the 1980s. HAA 1010 is offered every fall and spring term. This particular topic may not be repeated very often.
HAA 1010 Approaches to Art History - Gendered Space in the Greek City
Anne Weis
Although we are all conscious of the relationship between gender and the (comfortable) use of space within our own cultures, being aware of and understanding the interplay of gender and space in a culture not our own is much more difficult. The difficulty is magnified if the culture is an ancient one that cannot be visited or experienced directly. The course will explore the evidence available and the methods used to reconstruct the relationship between gender and space in the Greek city, literature, ethnography, archaeology, and art historical analysis. HAA 1010 is offered every fall and spring term. This particular topic may not be repeated very often.
HAA 1010 Approaches to Art History - Bernini
Ann Sutherland Harris
This undergraduate seminar is intended for majors who are also taking (or who have taken) Baroque Art 0350 but other art history majors may take it with the instructor's permission. Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was the greatest sculptor of 17th C Europe and a major architect. His enormous technical facility and ability to conceive original solutions to the traditional commissions awarded to sculptors enabled him to dominate this medium in Rome, where his services were employed by every pope from Paul V onwards. His influence was felt throughout Europe, especially in Catholic countries. Extensive publication of documents about his life and work, and much later interpretative literature in English will give students the opportunity to employ many of the methods used by art historians to interpret visual imagery while learning about Bernini. HAA 1010 is offered every fall and spring term. This particular topic may not be repeated very often.
HAA 1106 Pre-Columbian Art
Ruth Fauman-Fichman
This course will examine the art and architecture of complex New World civilizations in Mesoamerica (northern Mexico to Honduras) and Andean South America before European conquest. Our main goal will be to understand the relationship of the art to the ideology, cosmology, worldview and culture(s) of its creators. Themes to be explored include the relationship of the art to religion, the organization of power and the interaction between groups. Mesoamerican cultures to be studied include the Olmec, Maya, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, and Aztec (two thirds of the course). The ancient cultures of Andean South America -- Chavin, Paracas, Nazca, Moche, Wari, Tiwanaku, Chimu and Inca (one third of the course) -- will also be examined.
HAA 1160 Roman Architecture
Anne Weis
The course will examine the development of Roman architecture from its origins in Etruria and Central Italy to the High Empire (ca. 150 AD). Special attention will be given to 1) the relationship of architectural forms, types and functions to changes in Roman politics and society, 2) the significance of materials and outside influences for the development of local Italian traditions and forms, and 3) the problems of interpreting the development of an ancient building tradition, when the monuments themselves are so fragmentarily preserved.
HAA 1255 Gothic Art
Alison Stones
This course focuses on selected monuments of Gothic Art from the mid-12th century to the beginning of the 15th century in Western Europe. It includes painting (wall paintings, stained glass, and manuscripts), monumental and free-standing sculpture, and the minor arts. The focus is on patronage, techniques and production, stylistic development, and iconographic programs, with reference to written source materials. Lectures center upon monuments in Continental Europe; students work independently on monuments in England.
HAA 1305 Early Renaissance Architecture
Franklin Toker
The Early Renaissance (1420-1500) in Italy marked a fundamental change in the way humankind saw and thought about the world and the built environment. This course examines the buildings, cities, projects, and theories of that period through its major designers. It concentrates on the new acceptance of rationality and modular linkage in building, which prefigures the rationality and scientific method characteristic of the modern world.
HAA 1450 Art in the Weimar Republic
Barbara McCloskey
This course traces the political history of the visual arts in Germany during the interwar years of the Weimar Republic (1918-1932). In the wake of World War I and the fall of the German monarchy in 1918, modernist artists and architects received unprecedented support from the new Republican government in what has been described as a veritable "Golden Age" of vanguard experiment in painting, architecture, theater, and film. Such developments took place, however, amidst rising fascism, militarism, and the specter of a second world war. Weekly lectures will address the place of the arts in Germany's increasingly politicized culture of conflict during this period, which culminated in Hitler's rise to power in 1933. The politically dissident work of George Grosz and John Heartfield will be considered alongside the socially ambitious building and design programs of Walter Gropius's Bauhaus, the pacifist art of Otto Dix and Kathe Kollwitz, and Hannah Hoch's and Christian Schad's artistic critique of gender roles.
HAA 1530 Early American Architecture
Franklin Toker
Architecture often serves as a prime document and indicator of America's past and future. The theme of this course is the search for identity in American architecture in the centuries from the colonial settlements to the Civil War. The course studies both the recorded history of American architecture and the unrecorded millennium before that, to show its surprising cohesion in the face of great cultural and territorial diversity. The first part of the course particularly stresses archaeological evidence and historic preservation; throughout the course the instructor and the students will together be "reading" the buildings both for their own visual pleasures and as documents of American society.
HAA 1605 Ancient Chinese Art
Kathy Linduff
The course is designed to look carefully at the ancient societies that occupied, and eventually formed, ancient China. The first task is to learn more about how and where these peoples lived and to gain an understanding of how Chinese culture was formed and changed in period dating from c. 4000 BCE to the Tang Dynasty, or c. the 8th c. CE. The course is organized through the study of themes: Exhibiting Ancient Chinese Art; Burial Practices; the design and use of Capital Centers; Demonstration of Gender and Ethnic roles. Participants in the class will learn about material culture relevant to each theme, including those made of jade, bone, ivory, and bronze as well as the layouts and city planning of capital centers. All will be discussed in the context of social and political history.
HAA 1806 American Independent Film
William Judson
Since the 1920s, film production in the United States has been dominated by a powerful industry, manifested for several decades by a Hollywood "studio system" and subsequently by networks of economic corporate alliances. This course examines a wide variety of films that have been made using independent financing, outside the confines of this industry. The "indies" from Miramax and other studios will not be included. The films to be considered will be primarily a diverse sampling of independently produced narrative films, although a few examples of non-narrative experimental works (by, for instance, Maya Deren, Bruce Conner, Stan Brakhage, and Andy Warhol) and documentaries will be included as well. The course is structured more or less chronologically, beginning with a ca. 1920 classic by the African-American filmmaking pioneer Oscar Michaux. Attention will be given to late 1950s "Beat Generation" films like Pull My Daisy and John Cassavetese' first film, Shadows. Low-budget pioneers such as Roger Corman, Doris Wishman, Russ Meyer, John Waters and others will be considered, as will 1960s classics like Easy Rider and Medium Cool. Also included are key examples of blaxploitation and horror films from the late 1960s and the 1970s, including work by George Romero. Ethnic films such as Joan Micklin Silver's Hester Street (1975) and Wayne Wanga's Chan Is Missing (1982) will also be examined, and the course will conclude with several key directors who emerged from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, such as John Sayles, David Lynch, Susan Seidelman, Jim Jarmusch, and Steven Soderbergh.
HAA 1903 Internship
The History of Art and Architecture Internship is intended to provide a practical, professional experience for students seeking to enter the museum, gallery and art worlds. It also provides an opportunity for advanced students to execute special projects concerning art works. The internship carries 3 academic credits and can be repeated once for a total of 6 credits. Internships are arranged by the student in consultation with the sponsoring institution and the Department of Art History's undergraduate advisor.
HAA 1950 Senior Thesis
This W-course requires the writing of a research paper. The student should discuss a topic with a faculty member and write the paper under that faculty member's supervision. This course is open to History of Art and Architecture majors with an overall QPA of 3.5 and a departmental QPA of 3.5. Successful completion of this course with a A- or higher, and the completion of all requirements for the intensive major will enable the student to graduate with departmental honors.