2014-2015 Catalog

ARTH 10100. Introduction to Art. 100 Units.

This course seeks to develop skills in perception, comprehension, and appreciation when dealing with a variety of visual art forms. It encourages the close analysis of visual materials, explores the range of questions and methods appropriate to the explication of a given work of art, and examines the intellectual structures basic to the systematic study of art. Most importantly, the course encourages the understanding of art as a visual language and aims to foster in students the ability to translate this understanding into verbal expression, both oral and written. Examples draw on local collections.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, this course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 14107. Greek Art and Archaeology. 100 Units.

This course will survey the art and archaeology of ancient Greece from ca. 1000 BCE–ca. 200 BCE. Participants will see the Greeks emerge from poverty and anarchy to form a distinctive political and social system based on city-states—and they will see that system grow unstable and collapse. They will see the emergence of distinctive forms of sculpture, architecture, pottery, and urban design—many of which are still in use today. Along with these facts, they will acquire a conceptual toolkit for looking at works of art and for thinking about the relation of art to social life. The big question is: How can we make sense of the past by means of artifacts?

Instructor(s): R. Neer     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 21807

ARTH 14115. Roman Art I: Republican and Early Imperial Art and Architecture. 100 Units.

This course offers an introductory survey of the art and architecture of the Roman world from the legendary founding of Rome in the eighth century BC up through the beginning of the second century AD, when the Empire reached its point of greatest expansion. Students will witness the transformation of Rome from a humble village of huts surrounded by marshland in central Italy into the centripetal force of a powerful Empire that spanned mind-bogglingly distant reaches of space and time. Throughout the course, we will consider how the built environments and artifacts produced by an incredible diversity of peoples and places can make visible larger trends of historical, political, and cultural change. What, we will begin and end by asking, is Roman about Roman art?

Instructor(s): P. Crowley     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 24115

ARTH 14215. Roman Art II: Late Antique and Early Christian Art and Architecture. 100 Units.

This course offers an introductory survey of the art and architecture of the Roman world starting from the beginning of the second century AD, when the Empire reached its point of greatest expansion. It then proceeds through a period of relative peace and prosperity before witnessing the effects of a political, social, and economic “crisis” of the third century AD, the adoption of Christianity as the state religion, and the tremendous consequences of moving the capital from Rome to Constantinople. Throughout the course, we will consider how the built environments and artifacts produced by an incredible diversity of peoples and places can make visible larger trends of historical, political, and cultural change. What, we will begin and end by asking, is Roman about Roman art?

Instructor(s): P. Crowley     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 24215

ARTH 14505. The Global Middle Ages. 100 Units.

Focusing on the art and architecture of the Mediterranean and Middle East, this course provides a survey of monuments and artifacts produced at places of exchange. Its goal is to help students understand the complexity of religious, political, and visual interactions in the Middle Ages, a period in which the rise and expansion of Christian and Islamic polities brought together diverse religious communities, generating both social frictions and new cultural forms. We will examine visual representations from spaces of contact in the Byzantine, Islamic, Spanish, Norman, and Venetian Mediterranean realms, giving due attention to the minority cultures within these governing polities.

Instructor(s): H. Badamo     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 14700. Building Renaissance Italy: A Survey of the Built Environment. 100 Units.

This introductory course surveys the major patrons, architects, and building programs that defined the spatial contexts of the Renaissance in Italy. Between the 15th and 16th centuries, the political aspirations of governments, popes, princes, and merchants demanded a more articulated architectural environment that would facilitate increasingly complex modes of public and private life. They were aided in this endeavor by the emergence of a newly professionalized class of architects, who turned their eyes towards both a systematic study of the classical past and a critical assessment of their contemporary world. Renaissance urban palaces—both civic and private—and rural villas provided the stages upon which a new art of living could be performed. New inventions in military engineering responded to rapidly advancing technologies of warfare. Urban planning techniques created new topographies of spiritual and political triumph and reform, while treatises on ideal cities laid the foundations for the modern integrated multi-functional city. Between Venice, Florence, Rome, and their rural surroundings, this course will focus on a range of important patrons such as Roman popes, Venetian doges, princely courts, and private merchants, and will explore what made the works of such architects as Filippo Brunelleschi, Giuliano da Sangallo, Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco di Giorgio, Michelangelo, Jacopo Sansovino, and Andrea Palladio so creative, innovative, and influential well into our own contemporary architectural landscape.

Instructor(s): N. Atkinson     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 15600. Twentieth-Century Art. 100 Units.

Focusing on the interrelationships between avant-garde culture and the emerging mass cultural formations of industrializing societies in Europe, North America, Asia, and South America, our survey will address a wide range of historical and methodological questions: the impact of new technologies of production, the utopian projects of the Euro-American avant-gardes, the transformation of modernist conceptions of artistic autonomy, the changing roles of cultural institutions, the construction of social Others, the formation of new audiences, and the rise of “contemporary art.” Prior knowledge of art history not required.

Instructor(s): M. Jackson; T. Zhurauliova     Terms Offered: Autumn; Spring
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 16100. Art of Asia: China. 100 Units.

This course is an introduction to the arts of China focusing on major monuments and artworks produced in imperial, aristocratic, literati, religious, and public milieus. Lectures will reconstruct the functions and the meanings of objects, to better understand Chinese culture through the objects it produced.

Instructor(s): Wu Hung     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 16100

ARTH 16211. Introduction to African Art. 100 Units.

This course is an introduction to the arts of Africa and its diaspora. It surveys selected monuments of African expressive culture from a variety of places and times. Lectures, readings and discussions explore the relationship between art and leadership, religion, and society on the continent and in African diasporic communities in the Americas. Class meetings and assignments make use of local collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Field Museum.

Instructor(s): C. Fromont     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): tudents must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 16460. Modern Latin American Art. 100 Units.

This course offers an introductory survey of the art of modern Latin America from the first wave of independence in the early 19th century to the present day. Through the study of key artists, movements, and works of art, we will attend to a set of central problems: the formation of collective identities in these new nations; the impact of revolution, dictatorship, and political violence on the development of art in the region; the incorporation of both foreign styles and indigenous traditions; and the shifting definitions of Latin American art. Special emphasis will be placed on developing the skills needed to analyze a wide variety of modern and contemporary art, including painting, sculpture, photography, performance art, and site-specific installations.

Instructor(s): M. Sullivan     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 16460

ARTH 16800. Arts of Japan. 100 Units.

This course surveys the arts of the Japanese archipelago through the study of selected major sites and artifacts. We will consider objects in their original contexts and in the course of transmission and reinterpretation across space and time. How did Japanese visual culture develop in the interaction with objects and ideas from China, Korea, and the West? Prehistoric artifacts, the Buddhist temple, imperial court culture, the narrative handscroll, the tea ceremony, folding screens, and woodblock prints are among the topics covered.

Instructor(s): C. Foxwell     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 16806

ARTH 16809. Islamic Art and Architecture, 1500–1900. 100 Units.

This course surveys the art and architecture of the Islamic world from 1500–1900. This was the period of the three great Islamic empires: the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals. Each of these multi-religious, multi-linguistic, multi-ethnic empires developed styles of art and architecture that expressed their own complex identities. Further, they expressed their complex relations with each other through art and architecture. The various ways in which contact with regions beyond the Islamic world throughout this period impacted the arts will also be considered.

Instructor(s): P. Berlekamp     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): NEAA 10631

ARTH 17015. Blood, Sweat, and Tears: The Sacred Image in Byzantium. 100 Units.

During the Middle Ages, icons—sacred images—played a pivotal role in the devotional practice of Byzantium, the eastern Christian empire that had its capital in Constantinople from 324 to 1453. “Windows to heaven,” sacred images provided access to the divine. Despite their spiritual function, icons also drew attention to their materiality by erupting into life—bleeding, weeping, and attacking foes. In this course, we will combine the study of Byzantine images with Byzantine primary sources (in translation) to explore a range of topics related to the icon, including medieval image theory, iconoclasm, visuality, enshrinement, the copy, and materiality. Our investigation of Byzantine images will be enhanced through comparison with responses to the image in Islam, Judaism, and the Christian west.

Instructor(s): H. Badamo     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 17400. University of Chicago Campus. 100 Units.

An introduction to architecture and planning, this course examines the changes in thinking about the University campus from its origins in the 1890s to the present. Many of the University’s choices epitomize those shaping American architecture generally and some of our architects are of national significance. The course develops skill in analyzing architecture and urban form in order to interpret: how the University images itself in masonry, metal, and lawn; how it works with architects; the role of buildings in social and intellectual programs and values; the effects of campus plans and the siting of individual buildings; and the impact of technological change. Includes many sessions around campus and study of archival documents.

Instructor(s): K. Taylor     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): tudents must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 17410. Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago and Beyond. 100 Units.

This course looks at Wright's work from multiple angles. We examine his architecture, urbanism, and relationship to the built environment, as well as the socio-cultural context of his lifetime and legend. We take advantage of the Robie House on campus and of the rich legacy of Wright's early work in Chicago; we also think about his later Usonian houses for middle-income clients and the urban framework he imagined for his work (Broadacre City), as well as his Wisconsin headquarters (Taliesin), and spectacular works like the Johnson Wax Factory (a field trip, if funds permit), Fallingwater, and the Guggenheim Museum. By examining one architect's work in context, students gain experience analyzing buildings and their siting, and interpreting them in light of their complex ingredients and circumstances. The overall goal is to provide an introduction to thinking about architecture and urbanism.

Instructor(s): K. Taylor     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 20502

ARTH 17612. The Art of Michelangelo. 100 Units.

The central focus of this course will be Michelangelo’s prolific production in sculpture, painting, and architecture while making substantial use of his writings, both poetry and letters, and his extensive extant body of preparatory drawings to help us understand more about his artistic personality, creative processes, theories of art, and his intellectual and spiritual biography, including his changing attitudes towards Neoplatonism, Christianity, and politics. Our structure will be roughly chronological starting with his highly precocious juvenilia of the 1490s in Florence at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent through his death in Rome in 1564 as an old man who was simultaneously already the deity of art and a lonely, troubled, repentant Christian, producing some of his most moving works in a highly personal style. Beyond close examination of the works themselves, among the themes that will receive considerable attention for the ways they bear upon his art are Michelangelo’s fraught relationship with patrons such as the Medici and a succession of popes; his complex devotion to and rivalry with ancient classical art and his living rivalry with Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Bramante, and others; his changing attitude towards religion, especially his engagement with the Catholic Reform and some of its key personalities such as Vittoria Colonna; his sexuality and how it might bear on the representation of gender in his art and poetry; his “official” biographies created by the devotees Giorgio Vasari (1550, 1568) and Ascanio Condivii (1553) during Michelangelo’s lifetime and some of the most influential moments in the artist’s complex, sometimes ambivalent, reception over the centuries; new approaches and ideas about Michelangelo that have emerged in recent decades from the unabated torrent of scholarship and, especially, the restoration and scientific imaging of many of his works. Through the concentrated art-historical material studied, the course will take seriously the attempt to introduce students with little or no background in art or art history to some of the major avenues for interpretation in this field, including formal, stylistic, iconographical, psychological, social, feminist, theoretical, and reception. Readings are chosen with this diversity of approach in mind.

Instructor(s): C. Cohen     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 21411

ARTH 17700. 19th Century Art in the Art Institute. 100 Units.

In this course, we will closely examine 19th century paintings and sculptures in the Art Institute of Chicago and seek to understand how and why art changed during this period. Topics to be considered include the meaning of stylistic innovation in the 19th century, the development and dissolution of the genres as landscape and portraiture, and varying conceptions of realism and abstraction. Most class sessions will be devoted to looking at works in the galleries of the Art Institute. Because attendance is mandatory, students should consider whether their schedules will allow time for traveling to and from the museum for class meetings. Assignments include three papers and a variety of written homework exercises.

Instructor(s): M. Ward     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 17735. The Art of Post-Revolutionary Mexico. 100 Units.

This course surveys the landscape of Mexican art from the eve of the Revolution into the 1940s, exploring the developments, debates, and problems of this particularly rich moment in the history of 20th-century art. Within the context of post-revolutionary society and politics, we will study the production, circulation, and reception of prints, photographs, easel painting, film, and craft, along with the work of the “big three” Mexican muralists. Issues to be addressed include: the formation of new ideas of nation and citizenship, the relationship of artists to the state, the place of the Indian in the new social order, the influence of foreign artists, the incorporation of both old and new media and technologies, and the intersection of gender, class, and national identities. Students will develop their ability to analyze works of art both formally and historically and will learn the fundamentals of art historical research and writing.

Instructor(s): M. Sullivan     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 17735

ARTH 18000. Photography and Film. 100 Units.

This core course serves as an introduction to the history of art by concentrating on some fundamental issues in the history of photography and film. The course is divided roughly in half between still photography and film. The central theme of the course concerns the way in which photographs and films have been understood and valued during the past 165 years. There have been profound changes in attitudes and beliefs regarding the nature of photographs throughout the history of photography (this is likewise true of film). The current range of views is very different from those held by the various audiences for photographs and films in the last century and the century before. For instance, photographs were originally conceived of as copies of things that can be seen, but the notion of copy was drawn from a long established set of views about what makes a picture a work of art and copies were said to be incapable of being works of art. This view continues to haunt the writings of some critics and historians of photography and film. The course will concentrate on the work of photographers, theorists of photography and film, and on films by John Huston, Billy Wilder, and Roman Polanski.

Instructor(s): J. Snyder     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 17000 through 18999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 18202. Creative Destruction: War, Violence, and Upheaval in 20th-Century Art. 100 Units.

Articulated by Joseph A. Schumpeter in his book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy from 1942, the term “creative destruction” refers to capitalism’s inherent tendency to destroy existing economic systems through incessantly creating new ones in order to generate additional wealth. In a similar vein, the history of artistic avant-gardes is often told as a succession of radical formal innovations, a string of revolts against existing artistic conventions in search of a new visual language. This course will draw on Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction, positioning it within a larger cultural context in order to examine the creative potential and ethical limitations of violence and destruction in art. Focusing on visual arts from World War I to the 9/11 attacks, we will question the concept of avant-garde innovation in order to consider the relationship between artistic gesture and social upheaval. Addressing such issues as political violence, psychological instability, trauma, and ecological devastation, the class will focus on various visual forms of creation, from painting and sculpture to photography and film.

Instructor(s): T. Zhurauliova     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 21202. Drawing Foundations in Early Modern Europe. 100 Units.

This course addresses the foundations of humanist drawing in early modern Europe from the perspectives of disegno, as the conceptual and formal “foundation" of art, and from the critical art historical junctures in which drawing achieves both an intellectual and an autonomous status. By looking at the works of such important artists as Michelangelo, Leonardo, the Carracci, Rubens, and Watteau, drawing will be analyzed in the context of its increasingly central place in the creative process, as a place of intellectual freedom, as a study tool to explore the past and the natural world, and as an autonomous work of art. By examining early “moments” of the humanist practice of drawing and artistic training from the standpoints of theory, practice, content, and the art market, this course aims to further problematize the nature, evolution, and stakes of early modern drawing as a cognitive and aesthetic process, and, by extension, the relationship between drawing and other more “finished” works such as painting. Students will gain familiarity with drawing as an artistic medium related to major questions about art and society.

Instructor(s): S. Caviglia-Brunel     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 31202

ARTH 21205. From the Non-Object to the End of Art: The South American 1960s. 100 Units.

Beginning with the 1959 publication of the “Neo-Concrete Manifesto” in Rio de Janeiro, this course traces the radical transformations of art objects and artistic practices in South America (especially Brazil and Argentina) over the course of the 1960s. Through the study of both works of art and the writings of artists and critics, we will investigate new definitions of the art object, revolts against existing institutions of art, and the emergence of performance, media, and conceptual art. These developments will be read against social and political changes in the region, including the impasse of mid-century modernization efforts and the rise of repressive dictatorships. We will also look to parallel movements in the United States, asking how we might account for the development of related artistic strategies in distinct socio-historical contexts.

Instructor(s): M. Sullivan     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 31205,LACS 21205,LACS 31205

ARTH 21415. Gender and Sexuality in Roman Art. 100 Units.

In the remote, but omnipresent past of classical antiquity, what kinds of experiences and practices fell under the umbrella of terms and concepts that we moderns call “gender” and “sexuality”? This course explores the fundamentally visual aspect of this question by drawing attention first and foremost to works of Roman art, but also to topics such as the erotics of vision, the senses of shame and modesty, and bodily comportment. While the robust corpus of ancient and modern literature on these topics will constitute an important part of our discussions, we will likewise consider the ways in which ancient art provides forms of evidence that are analogous, but never coextensive, with that of ancient texts. Finally, taking a cue from Tom Stoppard’s play The Invention of Love (1997), in which A. E. Housman declares that the “barbarity” of homosexuality is that it’s “half Greek and half Latin,” we will attend to the ways in which the dynamics of gender and sexuality took shape in a historical continuum in which the lines between what was “Greek” and what was “Roman” became increasingly blurred.

Instructor(s): P. Crowley     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 31415,CLCV 21415,CLAS 31415

ARTH 22550. Histories of Cairo. 100 Units.

This course examines the urban planning and architectural development of the city from the late antique era to the present. By studying urban planning and the main architectural types in different periods—churches, mosques, synagogues, palaces, defensive works, mausoleums, and houses—this course considers the role of architecture in shaping society. It combines study of monuments and primary sources with work on urban spaces from relevant disciplines, and addresses themes such as the temporalities of monuments, minorities within the Islamic city, orientalism, modernization, contemporary practices of preservation and accommodation, and the recent role of public spaces in politics.

Instructor(s): H. Badamo     Terms Offered: Autumn

ARTH 22808. Rhoades Seminar: Age of Rubens and Rembrandt. 100 Units.

This seminar will feature paintings, prints, and drawings to consider the artistic impact of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) within their intellectual, political, and social contexts. Works of art in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago will serve as case studies for discussions related to these artists, their contemporaries, and the history of interpretation and connoisseurship as it pertains to this field of art history. In class meetings in the Art Institute’s galleries, study rooms, and conservation labs, students will conduct object-based research as the point of departure for their individual projects. The adjacent fields of Southern Baroque European art and Colonial Latin American art will also be engaged.

Instructor(s): V. Sancho Lobis     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 32808

ARTH 23113. Computer Art. 100 Units.

This course will consider the history and evolution of computer art beginning from the earliest computer graphics in the 1960s and continuing through computer and technology-based new media practices of the twenty-first century. Computer art has been marginal at best to canonical modern and contemporary art history. Yet the issues we will explore in this course, including the relationship between politics and art, art and technology, the role of the artist in society, changing models of collaboration and authorship, and problematizing display and exhibition in a museum setting, are critical to broader narratives of postwar art.

Instructor(s): V. Salinger     Terms Offered: Winter

ARTH 23400. Art, Architecture, and Identity in the Ottoman Empire. 100 Units.

Though they did not compose a “multi-cultural society” in the modern sense, the ruling elite and subjects of the vast Ottoman Empire came from a wide variety of regional, ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds. The dynamics of the Empire’s internal cultural diversity, as well as of its external relations with contemporary courts in Iran, Italy, and elsewhere, were continuously negotiated and renegotiated in its art and architecture. This course examines classical Ottoman architecture, arts of the book, ceramics, and textiles. Particular attention is paid to the urban transformation of Byzantine Constantinople into Ottoman Istanbul after 1453, and to the political, technical, and economic factors leading to the formation of a distinctively Ottoman visual idiom disseminated through multiple media in the sixteenth century.

Instructor(s): P. Berlekamp     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 33400,NEAA 20801,NEAA 30801

ARTH 23603. Grace, Love, and Pleasure. Painting in Eighteenth Century France. 100 Units.

The easing of political life and the relaxation of private morals which came to characterize the long reign of Louis XV (1715–1774) was mirrored by the development of a new conception of art, an art more intimate, decorative, generally amorous, and often erotic. It is these last two related dimensions which are the basis of a new visual aesthetic which constitutes the subject matter of this course. Through the exploration of contemporary novels and theater, as well as contemporary critical and philosophical writings, we will demonstrate how both the sensual and the erotic become essential components of the century’s cultural ethos. Artistic subjects, the mechanisms to represent them, their metaphorical stakes, and their phenomenological effects on the beholder will therefore be considered as the expression of a particular historical and ideological context. It is in this context that love became the symbol of a king who privileged peace against war, and where emotional pleasure triumphed over moralizing values and asserted itself as a new aesthetic category.

Instructor(s): S. Caviglia-Brunel     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students who take this course for French credit must do the readings and assignments in French.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 33603,FREN 26303,FREN 36303

ARTH 24812. Museums and Art. 100 Units.

This course considers how the rise of the art museum in the 19th and 20th centuries affected the making of modern art and the viewing of past art. It is not designed to be a survey course, but rather a historical investigation of certain issues and developments. We will concentrate on the following:  what has been said to happen to objects when they are uprooted and moved into the museum; how and why museums have changed display practices so as to get viewers to look at art in new ways; what artists have understood museums to represent and how they have responded to that understanding in their work and their display preferences. Though reference will be made to the contemporary art world, the focus will be on materials and case studies drawn from the French Revolution through the 1960s. French, German, English and American museums will be featured.

Instructor(s): M. Ward     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 34812

ARTH 26201. Architectural History and Critical Media Practice. 100 Units.

This advanced studio course is offered in conjunction with a Gray Center collaboration between D. N. Rodowick and Victor Burgin. We will investigate how creative practice can engage specific architectural sites and explore the erased or disappeared cultural histories, real and/or imagined, inscribed in those spaces. Our focus will be the history of “The Mecca” apartment building. Despite great protest, The Mecca was demolished in 1952 as part of the expansion of the Illinois Institute of Design under the plan of Mies van der Rohe. This site and its Bronzeville environs thus present a variety of opportunities for exploring themes of displaced architectures, competing visions of modernism and utopia, and conflicts in popular and cultural memory. Students are expected to propose and pursue individual projects around this theme and to work experimentally with strategies of research and writing together with still and/or moving image production. Field trips required.

Instructor(s): D. N. Rodowick, V. Burgin     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Prior coursework and/or experience with a camera-based practice (photography, film, video, 3D modelling) is required. Admission to this course is by application and with consent of the instructors. Please contact Sophia Rhee sophiar@uchicago.edu to apply for consent.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 26201,ARTH 36201,ARTV 36201,CMST 29004,CMST 39004

ARTH 26301. Art, Ecology, and Politics. 100 Units.

This course studies earthworks, land art, installation, performance, and “social practice” art that is motivated by ecological concerns, exploring how artists and activists have adapted strategies to environmental issues over the past 50 years. Themes to be addressed may include sustainability, materiality, “thingness,” and recycling; human ecologies and political struggles in relation to gender, race, poverty, territory, and indigeneity; utopia and dystopia; and information, affect, and crisis. Readings may include fiction and journalism as well as art historical scholarship and critical theory. The class may involve some film screenings and/or field trips within the Midwest outside of class hours.

Instructor(s): R. Zorach     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 36301

ARTH 26400. History of Photography in the U.S., 1835 to Present. 100 Units.

The invention of the photographic system as a confluence of art practice and technology is studied in detail. The aesthetic history of photography is traced from 1839 through the present. Special emphasis is placed on the critical writing of P. H. Emerson, Erwin Panofsky, Alfred Stieglitz, Lewis Mumford, Susan Sontag, and Michael Fried.

Instructor(s): J. Snyder     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 36400

ARTH 26707. Modern Chinese Art in a Global Context. 100 Units.

This course will explore the ways in which Chinese artists have defined modernity and tradition against the complex background of China’s history from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s. We will study modern Chinese art through the lenses of social and cultural history as well as cross-border comparison. A key issue for this art is the degree to which Chinese artists chose to adopt or adapt Western conventions and the extent to which they rejected them. Equally legitimate positions have been taken by artists whose work actively opposes the legacy of the past and by those who pursued innovations based upon their particular understandings of the Chinese tradition. Through examining art works in different media, including oil painting, graphic design, woodblock prints, traditional ink painting, photography, and architecture, along with other documentary materials including theoretical writing, bibliographical and institutional data, we will investigate the most compelling of the multiple realities that Chinese artists have constructed for themselves.

Instructor(s): Yanfei. Zhu     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 36707,EALC 26707,EALC 36707

ARTH 26803. Architectural Theory and Practice in the Enlightenment and the 19th Century. 100 Units.

This course examines influential new ideas about architectural design from the Enlightenment and nineteenth century in terms of writings and related buildings in Europe and the United States. This experimental period generated theoretical writing that continues to matter to architects today; we will study it in terms of its initial contexts and application. Major themes are: (1) the relationship of a building’s structure to its decoration (or body to clothing, as it was sometimes put); (2) the rise of historical interest in older buildings from divergent stylistic traditions (e.g., classical and Gothic) and its impact on new design; (3) the development of aesthetic theory suited to mass as well as elite audiences (e.g., the sublime and the picturesque); and (4) the idea that architect and building could and should be ethical or socially reformative.

Instructor(s): K. Taylor     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Prior course in art history or permission of the instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 36803

ARTH 27215. Public Sculpture. 100 Units.

This class examines sculpture made for public spaces since World War II. We will read foundational texts on postwar sculpture; test the relevance of theories of the public; consider the role of commemoration, site-specificity, context, architecture, and photography; and examine questions of censorship, vandalism, and conservation. Significant portions of the class will involve on-site case studies, including Henry Moore’s Nuclear Energy, Wolf Vostell’s Concrete Traffic, Giuseppe Penone’s Ideas of Stone, Jean Dubuffet’s Monument with Standing Beast, Arturo Herrara’s Night Before Last, Sol LeWitt’s Lines in Four Directions, Louise Bourgeois’s Untitled, and the sculptures in Millennium Park. Depending on interest, students may work on a campus public sculpture app or website, and/or an exhibition surrounding Wolf Vostell’s Concrete Traffic.

Instructor(s): C. Mehring     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 37215

ARTH 27304. Photo/Modernism/Esthetic. 100 Units.

The course presents the history of photographic practices in the United States, beginning in the late 19th century and extending into the 1980s, aimed at gaining an audience for photographs within museums of art. The issues under study include the contention over claims about medium specificity, notions of photographic objectivity, a peculiarly photographic esthetics, the division of photography into two categories—art vs. documentary—and the role of tradition and canon formation in the attempted definition of the photographic medium.

Instructor(s): J. Snyder     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 37304

ARTH 27808. Mapping Mexico. 100 Units.

This course scrutinizes the role of maps and mapmaking practices in Mexico. Through the study of ten historical moments, spanning pre-Hispanic, colonial, and modern Mexico, students will be exposed to a diverse set of cartographic conventions that speak to the social, cultural, and political currents undergirding Mexican history. Moving away from positivistic readings where only geometric accuracy and mathematical precision fulfill the most salient qualities of a map, students will explore how through the selection, organization, and codification of geographic information into a pictorial language, cartographers made maps the locus of knowledge and power. Aided by readings on critical cartography, students will gain understanding of how to analytically conceive of a map’s aesthetics and their function within their historical context. This course will take advantage of the Newberry Library’s cartographic collection. A term paper will be due at the end of the quarter.

Instructor(s): J. Lopez     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 37808,LACS 27808,LACS 37808

ARTH 28204. Liquid Intelligence: Thinking the Fluid Image in the Long 18th Century. 100 Units.

In an influential essay, contemporary artist Jeff Wall has sketched a suggestive genealogy linking chemical photography to a range of wet, atavistic processes and their modes of “liquid intelligence.” Using Wall’s model as point of departure, this experimental seminar explores how liquid intelligence might be expanded and deployed as a broader category of art-historical investigation. What, we will ask, can be revealed by applying the analytical solvent of liquid intelligence to an expanded field of visual production? How might doing so enable us to reciprocally reconsider relations between photography and other visual media? Drawing upon a range of theoretical perspectives, novels, and film, this seminar takes its focus from artists and visual practitioners of the early modern period and long 18th century (possibly including Leonardo, Cellini, Titian, Hooke, Reynolds, Turner, Talbot, and Courbet) who engage significantly with the problematic of making and thinking watery images. We will also consider their work in light of historical dynamics of maritime empire, the sciences of water (geology, chemistry, fluid mechanics, among others), and shifting conceptions of intellectual liquidity itself.

Instructor(s): M. Hunter     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 38204

ARTH 29600. Junior Seminar: Doing Art History. 100 Units.

The aim of this seminar is to deepen an understanding of art history as a discipline and of the range of analytic strategies art history affords to students beginning to plan their own BA papers or, in the case of students who are minoring in art history, writing research papers in art history courses. Students read essays that have shaped and represent the discipline, and test their wider applicability and limitations. Through this process, they develop a keener sense of the kinds of questions that most interest them in the history and criticism of art and visual culture. Students develop a formal topic proposal in a brief essay, and write a final paper analyzing one or two works of relevant, significant scholarship for their topics. This seminar is followed by a workshop in Autumn Quarter focusing on research and writing issues for fourth-year students who are majoring in art history, which is designed to help writers of BA papers advance their projects.

Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Required of third-year students who are majoring in art history; open to nonmajors with consent of instructor. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 29700. Reading Course. 100 Units.

This course is primarily intended for students who are majoring in art history and who can best meet program requirements by study under a faculty member's individual supervision. The subject, course of study, and requirements are arranged with the instructor.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of Instructor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. Must be taken for a quality grade. With adviser's approval, students who are majoring in art history may use this course to satisfy requirements for the major, a special field, or electives. This course is also open to nonmajors with advanced standing. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 29704. The Objects of East Asian History. 100 Units.

The collections of Japanese and Chinese objects in the Field Museum will be examined as a case study in museum and collection research. Assembled in the 1950s by Commander Gilbert and Katherine Boone, the Boone Collection includes over three thousand Japanese objects. Individual objects will be examined, not only for religious, aesthetic, cultural, and historical issues, but also for what they tell us of the collections and of museum and collections studies in general. The course is also timed to coincide with the reinstallation of the museum's Chinese galleries. The course will be co-taught by Chelsea Foxwell from Art History and James Ketelaar from History, and will include methods and texts from both disciplines. Several study trips will be made to the storage rooms of the Field Museum during class time.

Instructor(s): C. Foxwell, J. Ketelaar     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 39704,EALC 29704,EALC 39704,HIST 24603,HIST 34603

ARTH 29800. Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop. 100 Units.

This workshop is designed to assist students in researching and writing their senior papers, for which they have already developed a topic in the Junior Seminar. Weekly meetings target different aspects of the process; students benefit from the guidance of the workshop instructors, but also are expected to consult with their individual faculty advisers. At the end of this course, students are expected to complete a first draft of the senior paper and to make an oral presentation of the project for the seminar.

Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Required of fourth-year students who are majoring in art history. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 29900. Preparation for the Senior Paper. 100 Units.

This course provides guided research on the topic of the senior paper. Students arrange their program of study and a schedule of meetings with their senior paper adviser.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and Undergraduate Program Chair
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. May be taken for P/F grading with consent of instructor. This course may not count toward the twelve courses required in the major. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.