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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.

The class begins with the art, architecture and political ideals of Periclean Athens, from the emergence of the city as the political and cultural center of Greece in 450 to its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404. It then considers how the Athenians (shell-shocked from war and three outbreaks of plague) and the rest of 4th century Greece rebuild their lives and the monuments that define them. Earlier 5th century traditions endure, with subtle changes, in the work of sculptors such as Kephisodotos. Less subtle are the outlook and output of his son Praxiteles. In collaboration with Phryne, his muse and mistress, Praxiteles challenged the canons and constraints of the past with the first female nude in the history of Greek sculpture. His gender-bending gods and men were equally audacious, their shiny surfaces reflecting Plato's discussion of Eros and androgyny. Scopas was also a man of his time, but pursued different interests. Drawn to the interior lives of men and woman, his tormented Trojan War heroes and victims are still scarred by memories of the Peloponnesian War, and a world away from the serene faces of the Parthenon. His Maenad, who has left this world for another, belongs to the same years as Euripides' Bacchae and, at the same time, anticipates the torsion and turbulence of Bernini and the Italian Baroque. The history and visual culture of these years remind us that we are not alone, that the Greeks grappled as we do with the inevitability and consequences of war, disease and inner daemons.

This course surveys modern African arts in the contexts of colonialism, decolonization, and the global Cold War. Modernism developed in Sub-Saharan Africa as early as the 1920s and '30s among scattered independent practitioners, and in workshops run by colonial educators. Following World War II, a new generation of artists and critics rose to prominence in conjunction with the transnational Negritude movement. By the 1960s and '70s, modernism flourished in some parts of the continent with support from new national governments, and African socialist regimes often sought to intensively modernize local art practices, even as alarms sounded over new patterns of authoritarianism, corruption, and foreign intervention. Because classificatory orders in Africa were never so commanding as they tend to be in the West, modern African art can be productively studied through a cross-genre and multi-media lens. Such a lens examines drawing, painting, and sculpture alongside performance, photography, and film, and it registers how "high" and "popular" cultural forms frequently merged or became blurred.

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.

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.

This seminar uncovers the aesthetic principles and spiritual operations at work in Hagia Sophia, the church dedicated to Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. Rather than a static and inert structure, the Great Church emerges as a material body that comes to life when the morning or evening light resurrects the glitter of its gold mosaics and when the singing of human voices activates the reverberant and enveloping sound of its vast interior. Drawing on art and architectural history, liturgy, musicology, and acoustics, this course explores the Byzantine paradigm of animation arguing that it is manifested in the visual and sonic mirroring, in the chiastic structure of the psalmody, and in the prosody of the sung poetry. Together these elements orchestrate a multi-sensory experience that has the potential to destabilize the divide between real and oneiric, placing the faithful in a space in between terrestrial and celestial. A short film on aesthetics and samples of Byzantine chant digitally imprinted with the acoustics of Hagia Sophia are developed as integral segments of this research; they offer a chance for the student to transcend the limits of textual analysis and experience the temporal dimension of this process of animation of the inert.

This course examines the relationship between art and the market, from Renaissance artisans to struggling Impressionist painters to the globalized commercial world of contemporary art and NFTs. Using examples drawn from France, this course explores the relationship between artists and patrons, the changing status of artists in society, patterns of shifting taste, and the effects of museums on making and collecting art. Students will read a mixture of historical texts about art and artists, fictional works depicting the process of artistic creation, and theoretical analyses of the politics embedded in artworks. They will examine individual artworks, as well as the market structures in which such artworks were produced and bought. The course will be taught in English, with the option of readings in French for departmental majors.

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.