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Traditional Art History viewed the Renaissance as its pinnacle; it privileged linear perspective and lifelikeness and measured other traditions against this standard, neglecting art from the Near East, Egypt, the Middle Ages, or Islam. This course will disrupt this colonizing vision by conceptualizing artworks as "methexis" (participation, liveliness, or enactment) as opposed to mimesis (imitation or lifelikeness). We will study the development of the Western canon and its systematic eradication of difference through a renewed understanding of what an artwork is.

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.

Art 142 is an introduction to the history of architecture since 1900 and how it has shaped and been shaped by its cultural contexts. The class also investigates the essential relationship between built form and theory during this period.

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.

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.

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?

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.

The seminar reveals the religious and ethnic hybridity of the art medieval Spain, where the lives, material cultures, and artistic practices of Muslims, Christians, and Jews were more intertwined than any other region of the medieval world. We work thematically rather than strictly chronologically in order to build a model of engagement with medieval art in which the movement of ideas and objects between the three major religions is in itself a focus of study.

CPT course required for international students completing degree.