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ARTHIST 5: Art and Power

Art and Power explores a wide range of artworks from the premodern to the contemporary world to reflect on how art has been shaped by structures of inequality and, conversely, how power relations are represented and reinforced by art. Co-taught by two professors to foster a multi-focal perspective, this course asks questions about the relationship of beauty and violence, and the place of art history in capitalism, colonialism, and elitism.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5
Instructors: ; Kwon, M. (PI)

ARTHIST 32P: Place: Making Space Now (CEE 32P)

This seminar argues that architeccts are ultimately "placemakers," and questions what that means in the contemporary world. Part I investigates the meaning of the word "place." Additional background for understanding contemporary place making will include a critique of the history of modern place-making through an examination of modern form. Part II examines two traditional notions of place by scale: from "home" to "the city." What elements give these conceptions of space a sense of place? To answer this question, themes such as memory, mapping, and boundary, among others, will be investigated. part III presents challenges to the traditional notions of place discussed in Part II. Topics addressed include: What does it mean to be "out of place"? What sense of place does a nomad have, and how is this represented? What are the "non-places" and how can architects design for these spaces? Part IV addresses the need to re-conceptualize contemporary space. The role of digital and cyber technologies, the construction of locality in a global world, and the in-between places that result from a world in flux are topics discussed in this section of the seminar. Learning goals: Specific goals include clsoe reading of texts, understanding of philosophical thinking and writing, argument under uncertainty, and developed concepts of place, space and architecture.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3

ARTHIST 97: Curatorial Internship (ARCHLGY 97A, ARCHLGY 297A)

Opportunity for students to pursue an internship at the Stanford University Archaeology Collections (SUAC) and receive training and experience in museum curation. Curatorial interns conduct focused object research in preparation for upcoming exhibitions to go on view at the Stanford Archaeology Center.
Terms: Win, Spr | Units: 1-5
Instructors: ; Raad, D. (PI)

ARTHIST 100N: The Artist in Ancient Greek Society (CLASSICS 18N)

Given the importance of art to all aspects of their lives, the Greeks had reason to respect their artists. Yet potters, painters and even sculptors possessed little social standing. Why did the Greeks value the work of craftsmen but not the men themselves? Why did Herodotus dismiss those who worked with their hands as "mechanics?" What prompted Homer to claim that "there is no greater glory for a man than what he achieves with his own hands," provided that he was throwing a discus and not a vase on a wheel? Painted pottery was essential to the religious and secular lives of the Greeks. Libations to the gods and to the dead required vessels from which to pour them. Economic prosperity depended on the export of wine and oil in durable clay containers. At home, depictions of gods and heroes on vases reinforced Greek values and helped parents to educate their children. Vases depicting Dionysian excess were produced for elite symposia, from which those who potted and painted them were excluded. Sculptors were less lowly but still regarded as "mechanics," with soft bodies and soft minds (Xenophon), "indifferent to higher things" (Plutarch). The seminar addresses such issues as we work to acknowledge our own privilege and biases. Students will read and discuss texts, write response papers and present slide lectures on aspects of the artist's profession.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Maxmin, J. (PI)

ARTHIST 116: The American Civil War: A Visual and Literary History

Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville - so much great poetry and prose came out of the American Civil War. In the visual arts, the same was the case. Winslow Homer painted sharpshooters poised amid leafy branches. Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan shockingly photographed the dead at Antietam and Gettysburg. In the theater, the famous actress Charlotte Cushman wowed an audience as Lady Macbeth in a one-night charity performance of Shakespeare's play in Washington, DC in 1863. And beyond these art forms, there was the daily round of life, the experience of soldiers and slaves, of women in Richmond, Washington, and elsewhere - all an art form of its own kind, descended to us in diaries, medals, and uniforms; in cemeteries, fragments of shrapnel found in fields; in the haunting space of Ford's Theatre, where John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln on April 14, 1865. Together, all these places and pictures and poems and stories create a mosaic of life between 1861 and 1865 and beyond - a mosaic that's made to this day, in the war's ongoing political and poetic after-effects, most recently, the defacing and removal of Confederate statues in Richmond and other places in 2020. Focusing on poems, paintings, and photographs, but also on the lived experience of Americans during the war, the course is a personal and poetic journey into the past, told by Alexander Nemerov. More than that, it is a chance for students to reflect on their own personal and emotional connection to the American past.
Terms: Spr | Units: 1
Instructors: ; Nemerov, A. (PI)

ARTHIST 120: Superhero Theory (AMSTUD 120B, ARTHIST 320, FILMEDIA 120, FILMEDIA 320)

With their fantastic powers, mutable bodies, multiple identities, complicated histories, and visual dynamism, the American superhero has been a rich vehicle for fantasies (and anxieties) for 80+ years across multiple media: comics, film, animation, TV, games, toys, apparel. This course centers upon the body of the superhero as it incarnates allegories of race, queerness, hybridity, sexuality, gendered stereotypes/fluidity, politics, vigilantism, masculinity, and monstrosity. They also embody a technological history that encompasses industrial, atomic, electronic, bio-genetic, and digital.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Bukatman, S. (PI)

ARTHIST 185: Arts of China in the Early Modern World, 1550-1800 (ARTHIST 385)

The dynamic period of late Ming and early Qing dynasty China, roughly 1500-1800 CE, was marked by political crisis and conquest, but also by China's participation in global systems of trade and knowledge exchanges involving porcelain, illustrated books, garden designs and systems of perspectival representation. Topics will include Innovations in urban centers of painting and print culture, politically inflected painting, and cultural syncretism in court painting and garden design.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
Instructors: ; Vinograd, R. (PI)

ARTHIST 218: Fashion and Other Disasters (ARTHIST 418)

This course takes clothing seriously. It examines fashion both as a concept and as a global industry that grew massively during the early modern period (15th-18th centuries), contributing to making the world what it is. Taught by an ex-Vogue journalist, this seminar explores how clothes communicate and subvert ideas of distinction while also examining why many people have overlooked this power over time. In particular, the course focuses on the understudied relationship between fashion, wars, and other geopolitical catastrophes since only disasters provide the necessary ground zero for narratives of change that are fundamental for fashion's constant regeneration.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Lugli, E. (PI)

ARTHIST 222A: Image Technologies in the 19th Century: Reproductions, Revivals, and Revolutions (ARTHIST 422A)

This course explores how new image technologies transformed culture and society in the 19th century, from the invention of lithography in the 1790s, to the development of photography in the 1830s, to the birth of cinema in the 1890s. We will consider how these and other new media and the makers who wielded them shaped art, politics, science, and entertainment in the period, with a focus on French and British contexts. The course will address themes of reproduction, originality, expression, documentation, realism, and seriality, among others, and will engage closely with the print and photography holdings of the Cantor Arts Center.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5

ARTHIST 230: Beauty

Is beauty an extravagance or a necessity? By allowing us to attend to the particular, quotidian and personal, what can beauty teach us about who we are and the kind of histories of art we choose to tell? This reading intensive seminar will draw from contemporary discourses on beauty from Asian American studies, Black studies, performance and queer theory to examine how various artists and thinkers have explored beauty's formal and ethical values. We will trace the shifting valuation, visibility and politicization of beauty and examine how its evolution has informed discourses around minoritized artists, artworks and movements in art history. This course has limited enrollment; if you are interested in enrolling, please email Marci Kwon (mskwon1@stanford.edu) for application instructions.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5
Instructors: ; Kwon, M. (PI); Yoon, J. (PI)

ARTHIST 250: Cultural Heritage and Urban Space in Cairo and Istanbul (ARTHIST 455, ISLAMST 250C)

More than a decade ago, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the city of Cairo became a theater of social and political upheaval. In Istanbul, the Gezi protests in spring and summer 2013 drew attention to public space and how it is affected by the construction of major government projects. This seminar introduces students to the architectural and urban history of Istanbul and Cairo, with the perspective of current urban transformations as a central point of reference. As one of the major political, cultural, and economic centers of the Islamic world, Cairo has long played a central role in the urban imaginary of the region. Istanbul, has become a global city that connects Europe and the Middle East. Readings will focus on the lack of integration of the historical center with the more recent development of suburban residences, the segregation of the urban landscapes, migration, climate change, and will examine the reactions of architects, writers, filmmakers and street artists.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5
Instructors: ; Blessing, P. (PI)

ARTHIST 253: Aesthetics and Phenomenology (ARTHIST 453, FILMEDIA 253, FILMEDIA 453)

This course explores central topics in aesthetics where aesthetics is understood both in the narrow sense of the philosophy of art and aesthetic judgment, and in a broader sense as it relates to questions of perception, sensation, and various modes of embodied experience. We will engage with both classical and contemporary works in aesthetic theory, while special emphasis will be placed on phenomenological approaches to art and aesthetic experience across a range of media and/or mediums (including painting, sculpture, film, and digital media). PhD students in the Art History program may take the class to fulfill degree requirements in Modern/Contemporary Art or Film & Media Studies, depending on the topic of their seminar paper.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Denson, S. (PI)

ARTHIST 254: Contemporary Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (ARTHIST 344, ARTSINST 242, EASTASN 242)

This course delves into the rapidly evolving landscape of contemporary art as it intertwines with the advancements in artificial intelligence. Students will explore how artists from Asia and its diaspora are harnessing the capabilities of AI to redefine artistic expressions, appropriate traditional media and aesthetics, and interrogate the boundaries between human creativity and machine intelligence. Drawing upon case studies, hands-on experiments, and critical discussions, students will gain a deeper understanding of the sociocultural implications of AI-infused artistry and its impact on society. This course contextualizes its content in a global narrative, discussing challenging themes and existential inquiries AI has evoked worldwide. Situating AI in the long history of machines, automation, and human engagement with technologies, the class encourages students to think critically about the "transformations" AI made to society. Central to our exploration will be the fundamental questions of what it means to be "human" in a world where machines can mimic, and even surpass, human cognition in certain domains. Drawing parallels between diverse cultures and technologies, we will dissect how human-machine collaborations shape our perceptions of reality, authenticity, emotion, and creativity. Through examination of both Asian philosophies and theories of posthumanism, students will reflect upon the broader philosophical implications of a world where artificial and human intelligence coexist, intertwining and reshaping the very fabric of society, culture, and personal experience. Instructor: Gerui Wang.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Wang, G. (PI)

ARTHIST 284B: Introduction to Museum Practice (ANTHRO 134D, ARCHLGY 134, ARCHLGY 234)

This is a hands-on museum practicum course open to students of all levels that will culminate in a student-curated exhibit. It entails a survey of the range of museum responsibilities and professions including the purpose, potential, and challenges of curating collections. While based at the Stanford University Archaeology Collections (SUAC), we will visit other campus collections and sites. Students will plan and realize an exhibition at the Stanford Archaeology Center, gaining skills in collections management, research, interpretation, and installation.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | Repeatable 3 times (up to 15 units total)
Instructors: ; Raad, D. (PI)

ARTHIST 285: American Photographs: A Magical History (AMSTUD 285)

What is a "magical" photograph? Who makes one? What is the photograph's relation to the world, to the real? To time and memory and to the viewer? What hold can photographs have on us if they are now everywhere, all the time? Who is the person who could bother to care and look closely at the world and at pictures? If there is such a person, why might she see her role as an ethical one? Starting with the invention of the medium in the 1830s, this course will consider the many distinguished American photographers who have pursued their own answers to these questions: Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks, Diane Arbus, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, William Eggleston, Francesca Woodman, Laura Aguilar, Deana Lawson, and others. Pursuing the magical, the course offers: a meditation on photography as a medium (its difference from and relation to poetry, literature, and painting); a partial history of America since 1960; a questioning of photography's relation to history; a theory of human intelligence at work - but also passive - before the world; a reflection on how a mechanical medium allows for a personal touch, a personal vision, on the part of master practitioners; yet how even an amateur can make a photograph of haunting power; an attempt to investigate whether or not - if you are quiet and attentive and lucky enough - such a thing as an actual American experience appears before your eyes
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Nemerov, A. (PI)

ARTHIST 290: Curricular Practical Training

CPT course required for international students completing degree.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum | Units: 1-3 | Repeatable for credit

ARTHIST 295: Visual Arts Internship

Professional experience in a field related to the Visual Arts for six to ten weeks. Internships may include work for galleries, museums, art centers, and art publications. Students arrange the internship, provide a confirmation letter from the hosting institution, and must receive consent from the faculty coordinator to enroll in units. To supplement the internship students maintain a journal. Evaluations from the student and the supervisor, together with the journal, are submitted at the end of the internship. Restricted to declared majors and minors. May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum | Units: 1-5 | Repeatable 3 times (up to 15 units total)

ARTHIST 297: Honors Thesis Writing

May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr | Units: 1-7 | Repeatable 3 times (up to 10 units total)

ARTHIST 298: Individual Work: Art History

Prerequisite: student must have taken a course with the instructor and/or completed relevant introductory course(s). Instructor consent and completion of the Independent Study Form are required prior to enrollment. All necessary forms and payment are required by the end of Week 2 of each quarter. Please contact the Undergraduate Coordinator in McMurtry 108 for more information. May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr | Units: 1-5 | Repeatable for credit

ARTHIST 320: Superhero Theory (AMSTUD 120B, ARTHIST 120, FILMEDIA 120, FILMEDIA 320)

With their fantastic powers, mutable bodies, multiple identities, complicated histories, and visual dynamism, the American superhero has been a rich vehicle for fantasies (and anxieties) for 80+ years across multiple media: comics, film, animation, TV, games, toys, apparel. This course centers upon the body of the superhero as it incarnates allegories of race, queerness, hybridity, sexuality, gendered stereotypes/fluidity, politics, vigilantism, masculinity, and monstrosity. They also embody a technological history that encompasses industrial, atomic, electronic, bio-genetic, and digital.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Bukatman, S. (PI)

ARTHIST 344: Contemporary Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (ARTHIST 254, ARTSINST 242, EASTASN 242)

This course delves into the rapidly evolving landscape of contemporary art as it intertwines with the advancements in artificial intelligence. Students will explore how artists from Asia and its diaspora are harnessing the capabilities of AI to redefine artistic expressions, appropriate traditional media and aesthetics, and interrogate the boundaries between human creativity and machine intelligence. Drawing upon case studies, hands-on experiments, and critical discussions, students will gain a deeper understanding of the sociocultural implications of AI-infused artistry and its impact on society. This course contextualizes its content in a global narrative, discussing challenging themes and existential inquiries AI has evoked worldwide. Situating AI in the long history of machines, automation, and human engagement with technologies, the class encourages students to think critically about the "transformations" AI made to society. Central to our exploration will be the fundamental questions of what it means to be "human" in a world where machines can mimic, and even surpass, human cognition in certain domains. Drawing parallels between diverse cultures and technologies, we will dissect how human-machine collaborations shape our perceptions of reality, authenticity, emotion, and creativity. Through examination of both Asian philosophies and theories of posthumanism, students will reflect upon the broader philosophical implications of a world where artificial and human intelligence coexist, intertwining and reshaping the very fabric of society, culture, and personal experience. Instructor: Gerui Wang.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Wang, G. (PI)

ARTHIST 385: Arts of China in the Early Modern World, 1550-1800 (ARTHIST 185)

The dynamic period of late Ming and early Qing dynasty China, roughly 1500-1800 CE, was marked by political crisis and conquest, but also by China's participation in global systems of trade and knowledge exchanges involving porcelain, illustrated books, garden designs and systems of perspectival representation. Topics will include Innovations in urban centers of painting and print culture, politically inflected painting, and cultural syncretism in court painting and garden design.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4
Instructors: ; Vinograd, R. (PI)

ARTHIST 418: Fashion and Other Disasters (ARTHIST 218)

This course takes clothing seriously. It examines fashion both as a concept and as a global industry that grew massively during the early modern period (15th-18th centuries), contributing to making the world what it is. Taught by an ex-Vogue journalist, this seminar explores how clothes communicate and subvert ideas of distinction while also examining why many people have overlooked this power over time. In particular, the course focuses on the understudied relationship between fashion, wars, and other geopolitical catastrophes since only disasters provide the necessary ground zero for narratives of change that are fundamental for fashion's constant regeneration.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Lugli, E. (PI)

ARTHIST 422A: Image Technologies in the 19th Century: Reproductions, Revivals, and Revolutions (ARTHIST 222A)

This course explores how new image technologies transformed culture and society in the 19th century, from the invention of lithography in the 1790s, to the development of photography in the 1830s, to the birth of cinema in the 1890s. We will consider how these and other new media and the makers who wielded them shaped art, politics, science, and entertainment in the period, with a focus on French and British contexts. The course will address themes of reproduction, originality, expression, documentation, realism, and seriality, among others, and will engage closely with the print and photography holdings of the Cantor Arts Center.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5

ARTHIST 434: Race & Abstraction

TBD
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Salseda, R. (PI)

ARTHIST 453: Aesthetics and Phenomenology (ARTHIST 253, FILMEDIA 253, FILMEDIA 453)

This course explores central topics in aesthetics where aesthetics is understood both in the narrow sense of the philosophy of art and aesthetic judgment, and in a broader sense as it relates to questions of perception, sensation, and various modes of embodied experience. We will engage with both classical and contemporary works in aesthetic theory, while special emphasis will be placed on phenomenological approaches to art and aesthetic experience across a range of media and/or mediums (including painting, sculpture, film, and digital media). PhD students in the Art History program may take the class to fulfill degree requirements in Modern/Contemporary Art or Film & Media Studies, depending on the topic of their seminar paper.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Denson, S. (PI)

ARTHIST 455: Cultural Heritage and Urban Space in Cairo and Istanbul (ARTHIST 250, ISLAMST 250C)

More than a decade ago, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the city of Cairo became a theater of social and political upheaval. In Istanbul, the Gezi protests in spring and summer 2013 drew attention to public space and how it is affected by the construction of major government projects. This seminar introduces students to the architectural and urban history of Istanbul and Cairo, with the perspective of current urban transformations as a central point of reference. As one of the major political, cultural, and economic centers of the Islamic world, Cairo has long played a central role in the urban imaginary of the region. Istanbul, has become a global city that connects Europe and the Middle East. Readings will focus on the lack of integration of the historical center with the more recent development of suburban residences, the segregation of the urban landscapes, migration, climate change, and will examine the reactions of architects, writers, filmmakers and street artists.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5
Instructors: ; Blessing, P. (PI)

ARTHIST 460: Decolonization and Decoloniality: Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (FILMEDIA 460, TAPS 460)

In the past few years, campus protests and petitions have brought about a remarkable reckoning with systemic, curricular structures of inequality, underscoring the epistemic violence of the privileging of white, western, cisheteropatriarchal intellectual traditions in the academy. This seminar mobilizes multiple approaches and orientations from anti-colonial, postcolonial, and decolonial traditions to study discourses of race, caste, indigeneity, gender, and sexuality across a variety of regional and cultural contexts. We will engage with a range of materials -- written texts, films, visual and performance art. In addition to theoretical and historical engagements with decolonization and decoloniality, we will begin to explore decolonial praxis through somatic workshops (including basket-weaving and dance) and through radical pedagogy and critical university studies frameworks.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Iyer, U. (PI)

ARTHIST 660: Independent Study

For graduate students only. Approved independent research projects with individual faculty members.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum | Units: 1-15 | Repeatable for credit

ARTHIST 660E: Extended Seminar

May be repeated for credit. (Staff)
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr | Units: 4 | Repeatable for credit

ARTHIST 670: Dissertation Seminar

For graduate students writing and researching dissertations and dissertation proposals. How to define research projects, write grant proposals, and organize book-length projects.
Terms: Win, Spr | Units: 1-2 | Repeatable 5 times (up to 5 units total)

ARTHIST 680: Curricular Practical Training

CPT course required for international students completing degree. Prerequisite: Art History Ph.D. candidate.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum | Units: 1-3 | Repeatable for credit
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