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The seminar examines a range of topics devoted to the makers of Greek art and artifacts, the men and women who used them in life and the afterlife, and the miscreants - from Lord Elgin to contemporary tomb-looters and dealers - whose deeds have damaged, deracinated and desecrated temples, sculptures and grave goods. Readings include ancient texts in translation, books and articles by classicists and art historians, legal texts and lively page-turners. Students will discuss weekly readings, give brief slide lectures and a final presentation on a topic of their choice, which need not be confined to the ancient Mediterranean.

This seminar considers the dynamism and resilience of Greek art and culture. The dialogues in question are not with ancient shades in the underworld but with later artists who build on the creative vision (and blind spots) of the past to addressthe issues of their day.Roman philhellenes, Renaissance humanists and Neoclassical loyalists have received much attention. More remains to be explored in the work of modern and contemporary artists such as Romare Bearden, Robert Mapplethorpe, Lawrence Argent, Daniel Arsham, Yinka Shonibare and Xu Zhen.In the Cantor Center and the Rodin Garden, the artist's debts to antiquity run deep; freed from his shadow, Camille Claudel's bronzes reflect the sunlit surfaces of Greek sculpture. On Meyer Green, the capital puns of Xu Zhen reverberate from Shanghai to Athens, from archetypes in the Louvre to galleries around the world, where classical "icons" - subverted, inverted and recharged - engage contemporary eyes. Classical tragedy spoke to war-weary Greeks in the 5th century. Today, Sophocles and Bryan Doerries' Theatre of War Productions help veterans to feel less alone as they return to civilian life bearing the wounds of war, visible and invisible. The vibrant and varied afterlife of Greek art is the subject of the seminar, but we will not ignore the sinister aspects of its legacy: the advertising industry's Botoxic embrace of "Greek perfection," the quest for fitness at any price and the persistence of white, western, ableist ideals of male and female beauty. Darker still is the lethal appropriation of classical art and architecture by genocidal tyrants and racists. These dialogues are deadly.

Explores the relationship between chant and images in medieval art. Examples are sourced from both Byzantium and the Latin West including the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Ste. Foy at Conques, and Santiago de Compostela. We will explore how music sharpens the perception of the spatial, visual programs and liturgical objects.

This seminar considers materiality and processes of material transformation as core elements of artistic practice and the history of making, largely from Sumer (3rd Millennium BCE) until the Early Modern period (18th Century in the West), but with several modern comparisons. Major points of focus will include pre-modern perceptions of the elemental properties of materials as matter, the reflexive relationship between materials and imagination, and the diverse ways in which societies have associated specific substances with social and cultural values. Humanistic perspectives on such issues are augmented by complementary insights from the physical sciences, and references are made to current ideas regarding material agency, affordances, and the imperfect separability of nature and culture. Indeed, a central question underlying all the readings is how to distinguish natural from synthetic: where does nature end and art begin, or maybe where does nature stop?

Featuring several sessions led by distinguished artist Ala Ebtekar, this course traces the nexus of word and image across a millennium of Persian poetry. Our aim is to look at how texts have been represented through images and enacted in public performances, from the tenth century to the present. Topics will range from high to popular culture and include the visual representation of narrative in illuminated manuscripts, the function of calligraphy on sacred and profane buildings, the performance of poetry in mediaeval courts, the use of images in dramatic tellings of the national epic, and the practice of divination by books. What kinds of space are created in these different instances of text and image coming together? What does it mean for our understanding - and experience - of history if verses from the 13th or 14th century are inscribed on the interior of taxi cabs that navigate through the contemporary Iranian city? And how does an ancient text come alive in a performance that seeks to recreate the space of its origin? These are some of the questions that will be explored through an examination of primary sources (both texts and images) as well as theoretical analyses.

Medieval art is silent in modern times. Often displayed in sterile museum galleries, it is presented without analytical consideration of the intended envelope of sound, chant, prayer, and recitation. Stripped of this aural atmosphere, the objects have lost the power to signify and to elicit affect. This course, in response, restores aspects of the original soundscape to explore the entanglement of chant and image in medieval times. It is the first to engage with the impact of AudioVision in experiencing medieval art in its original historical context, focusing on the golden statue of Ste. Foy at Conques in Auvergne, France, and its eleventh-century public worship. ARTHIST 206B fulfills DLCL 122: Medieval Manuscripts: Digital Methodologies core course for the Medieval Studies Minor. ( ARTHIST 406B is graduate-level section of this course.)

This seminar investigates medieval attitudes towards dead bodies through the material culture of death, from the cult of relics, to tomb sculpture, to monumental architecture. The place of death in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities in medieval Europe will be analyzed by putting these works of art in conversation with texts dealing with death as both biological event and powerful symbol.

In many ways, the reasons that medieval people traveled are not unlike our own: to see new sights, make new connections, and return home to regale others with their exploits. Of course, travel was also a more complicated affair, limited to those who could afford the time and money to leave home. Focusing on three famous medieval travelers the pilgrim Egeria, the businessman Benjamin of Tudela, and the invented traveler John Mandeville this course will explore the visual and cultural landscape of global travel in the premodern age.

How do historians, art historians, and literary historians of premodern Europe shape their research and their teaching around questions of race? How do current debates on race theory shape our perception of the past and deepen historical inquiry? This graduate colloquium focuses on the most recent publications on race in medieval and early modern studies to reflect on such questions while examining the challenges that race studies put on historical definitions, research methodologies, as well as teaching institutions.