298. Experimental Course
Research Methods
This seminar is highly recommended for students who will be sophomores ('11) and juniors ('10) next year and are considering graduate work in art history (MA, PhD) or museum studies (MA, PhD), and/or for students who plan on completing an honors thesis in art history during their senior year. The course will begin by examining the history of art history, followed by an exploration of a wide variety of methodological perspectives currently used in our discipline. While theoretical approaches to art history will be central to the questions posed, considerable time will be spent on multivalent approaches to one or more objects. Thus, theory and practice will guide the path of inquiry in this class. By helping students more fully engage with key methodologies in the field (feminist, Marxist, semiotics, structuralism, post-structuralism, psychoanalytical, reception theory, etc.) early in their college careers, this seminar will be a foundation for further studies in art history.
(If you will be a senior next year ('09) intending to go to graduate school and interested in this course, please see Professor Lane.) (Evelyn Staudinger Lane)
Visualizing Circus
Circuses have long been part of America's visual landscape, most especially during the heyday of the traveling circus: the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In this course, students will gain an understanding of circus history and of the social, political, and economic roles played by circus as a popular art form. Students will explore the visual culture of circus from the graphic design innovations of Philip Astley's eighteenth-century English circus to the contemporary spectacles produced by Cirque du Soleil. An emphasis will be placed on the critical analysis of various representations of circuses and circus performers in commercial posters, film and video, children's books, and the media. At the end of this course, students will understand the importance of visual productions and their reception in the creation and development of circus as an art form.
Please Note: This course does NOT fulfill any Art History requirements and should be considered an elective.
Early-Modern Spaces
This course will examine various spaces in Italy and France from circa 1400 until circa 1700. The students will look at private residences such as palazzi and castles in terms of architecture, patronage, and domestic productions. The class will determine the parameters of an established gendered space and the components of a socially constructed space. In addition, the course will address the impact of urban public structures on politics and culture, as well as the drive behind the establishment of villas outside of city centers. From the gardens of Bomarzo to studioli and to the Chåteau de Chenonceau, this class will pay close attention to aesthetic decisions contextualized within political, religious, economic, and social settings.
From the Holy Land to Graceland: The Art of Pilgrimage
Journeying was an important part of the Medieval World, primarily in the form of pilgrimages taken during the Romanesque period (1050 to 1200). Much of this course's content will focus on Romanesque art made for this audience and will include all media: architecture, sculpture, stained glass, ivories, tapestries, metalwork, and book production. While much of our time will be spent in France, Germany, Italy, England and Spain, we will head east to the Holy Land to study Crusader Art and aspects of Islamic culture absorbed by the West, after which we turn back to the West, but to Graceland to examine other manifestations of "pilgrimage." In addition, the development of monasticism which was keenly intertwined with the lives of pilgrims will figure prominently in this course along with themes such as: women as creators and consumers of art, the cult of the saints, the representation of doom and the meaning of monsters, images as a vehicle for maintaining power structures, the role of the patron, and the emerging identity of the artist. Rather than a passive blend of influences as its name suggests, Romanesque art is a highly original, vibrant art that emerged out of an entrepreneurial spirit of its age.
Youth and Gender in Modern Visual Culture
This course examines nineteenth- and twentieth-century visual representations of childhood and adolescence from a feminist and socio-historical perspective. We will explore how gender and other intersecting aspects of children≠s identities, including social class, family role, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, have been represented and shaped by Western visual culture. We will pursue formal, theoretical, and cultural analyses of a wide range of images, from nineteenth-century tabloid illustrations of "girls gone wild" to John Singer Sargent's evocative oil portraits of adolescent subjects and Lauren Greenfield's recent photographic study of 21st century "girl culture." In the process, we will consider the role of gender in the production and reception of these images. We will also discuss how scientific and literary ideas regarding the psychology and behavior of girls and boys have shifted, or not, over the years, and the historical development of adolescence as a distinct and pivotal stage of life. The course will build on a relatively recent and growing body of scholarly work on the social construction of childhood in the fields of Art History, Women's Studies, History, Fashion Theory, Literature, and Psychology.