ARTHIST 182B: Cultures in Competition: Arts of Song-Era China, 960-1279 CE (ARTHIST 382B)
The Song dynasty (mid-10th to late 13th c.) was a period of extraordinary diversity and technical accomplishment in Chinese painting, ceramics, calligraphy, architecture and sculpture. Artistic developments emerged within a context of economic dynamism, urban growth, and competition in dynastic, political, cultural and social arenas - as between Chinese and formerly nomadic neighboring regimes, or between reformers and conservatives. This course will consider major themes and topics in Song art history, including innovations in architectural and ceramic technologies; developments in landscape painting and theory; the rise of educated artists; official arts and ideologies of Song, Liao and Jin court regimes; new roles for women as patrons and cultural participants; and Chan and popular Buddhist imagery.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Vinograd, R. (PI)
ARTHIST 185: Arts of China in the Early Modern World, 1550-1800 (ARTHIST 385, CHINA 185A, CHINA 385A, EASTASN 385B)
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: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
Instructors:
Vinograd, R. (PI)
ARTHIST 186B: Asian American Art (AMSTUD 186D, ARTHIST 386B, ASNAMST 186B)
This lecture course explores the work of artists and makers of Asian descent from 1850-present. Rather than a discrete identity category, we approach 'Asian American' as an expansive, relational term that encompasses heterogenous experiences of racialization and migration. Key themes include the history of immigration and displacement; diasporic geographies; art, activism, and community; feminist/queer perspectives; and interethnic conflict and solidarity. The course is structured around the Asian American Art Initiative's Fall exhibition Spirit House: Haunting and the Asian Diaspora at the Cantor Arts Center; sections will be held in the museum and at Stanford Special Collections.
Last offered: Autumn 2024
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ARTHIST 188: Imperial Collecting, Patronage, and Taste in China and Japan (ARTHIST 388)
Explores how the imperial courts collected and censored art in China and Japan ca. 1000-1800. The imperial control over art collecting activities shaped the way in which court painters represented the world. The imperial court dictated art creations and occasionally threatened the lives of art collectors through violent art confiscations. Students learn how institutional mechanisms form the underlying force behind art creation and circulation in imperial China and Japan. Students also discover the confluence of art, politics, and cultural transmission as imperial patronage shaped transnational networks.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 4
ARTHIST 188B: From Shanghai Modern to Global Contemporary: Frontiers of Modern Chinese Art (ARTHIST 388B)
Chinese artistic developments in an era of revolution and modernization, from Shanghai Modern and New National Painting though the politicized art of the Cultural Revolution and post-Mao era re-entry into international arenas.
Last offered: Winter 2025
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ARTHIST 189: Word Image & Emotion in Medieval Manuscripts
This course explores the sight and sound of medieval manuscripts of the Eastern Roman Empire between the seventh and eleventh centuries. This is a transitional period when challenged by Islam, the portrayal of the divine in figural images underwent a re-evaluation in the Latin West and Greek East. Through relational analysis of word and image, we carve new pathways of understanding of what the icon is and how it mobilizes emotion and shapes identity in differentiation with the other cultures of the book. We will study facsimiles of the major manuscripts and explore their use in the public ritual in Rome, Constantinople, Sinai, Damascus, Baghdad, Cordoba, and Aachen.
Last offered: Autumn 2023
| Units: 3-5
ARTHIST 191: African American Art (AFRICAAM 191B, CSRE 191)
This course explores major art and political movements, such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and #BlackLivesMatter, that have informed and were inspired by African American artists. Students will read pivotal texts written by Black artists, historians, philosophers and activists; consider how artists have contended with issues of identity, race, gender, and sexuality; and learn about galleries, collections, and organizations founded to support the field. Attendance on the first day of class is a requirement for enrollment.
Last offered: Winter 2025
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ARTHIST 194: U.S. Latinx Art (CHILATST 195, CSRE 195)
This course surveys art made by Latinas/os/xs who have lived and worked in the United States since the 1700s, including Chicanos, Nuyoricans, and other Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists. While exploring the diversity of Latinx art, students will consider artists' relationships to identity, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Students will also study how artists have responded to and challenged discrimination, institutional exclusion, and national debates through their work. Attendance on the first day of class is a requirement for enrollment.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ARTHIST 199: Close Cinematic Analysis: Caste, Sexuality, and Religion in Indian Media (ASNAMST 108, FEMGEN 104, FILMEDIA 101, FILMEDIA 301, TAPS 101F)
This course engages in close analysis of different cinematic themes, genres, and artists. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic: Caste, Sexuality, and Religion in Indian Media. India is the world's largest producer of films in over 20 languages, and Bollywood is often its most visible avatar, especially on US university curricula. This course will introduce students to a range of media from the Indian subcontinent across commercial and experimental films, documentaries, streaming media, and online cultures. We will engage in particular with questions of sexuality, gender, caste, and religion in this postcolonial context and across its diasporas. Given this course's emphasis on close cinematic analysis, we will analyze formal aspects of cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, and performance, and how these generate spectatorial pleasure, star and fan cultures, and particular modes of representation.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
Instructors:
Iyer, U. (PI)
;
Maine, D. (TA)
ARTHIST 201A: Soren Kierkegaard and the Visual Arts (ARTHIST 401A)
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the Danish philosopher and theologian, espoused the importance of the individual's relation to God, the need to forsake different forms of group-think ("the crowd is untruth"), and the necessity of overcoming despair as a means to finding one's own spirit or "infinitization." In dense but accessible prose, dedicating his books always to his readers (of whom he had almost none during his lifetime), he wrote beautiful and tormented texts psychoanalyzing himself as a first patient, a first agent, of the truth he saw for others. Reading famous Kierkegaard texts such as Fear and Trembling, The Seducer's Diary, The Concept of Anxiety, The Sickness unto Death, and The Point of View for My Work as an Author, we will consider the challenging and open question of the philosopher's relation to works of visual art. In our own moment of artistic norms and conventions, profound personal seeking is as shunned and forbidden as it was in Kierkegaard time. Considering art from then and now, each student will write on a work of art of their own choosing, exploring it in a Kierkegaardian fashion.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Nemerov, A. (PI)