Art History Degree Requirements

Successful completion of 15 art history credits (18 for fine arts majors), including all required art history courses. In addition to College-wide requirements, please refer to the specific art history departmental requirements for your degree major.

General Course Listing

AHD-1010

European Painting: Late Gothic to Romanticism

One semester: 3 art history credits

The history of European painting from the late Gothic and pre-Renaissance eras to the early 19th century will be examined in this course. We will focus on the major movements and key figures during the 700-year period and include such topics as the varieties of Renaissance painting from the North of Europe to Italy, the development of mannerism and baroque art, and the emergence of neoclassical and Romantic painting. The aim throughout will be to understand the art of each time and place within the historical and political transformations taking place in Europe. 

AHD-1015

Modern Art: European (and American) Painting From Realism to Pop

One semester: 3 art history credits

The transitions from 19th-century modernism to the advent of contemporary painting in the mid-20th century will be examined in this course. How trends in art influence and respond to major social transitions in the modern world will be considered. 

AHD-1016

Non-European Art Histories

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will survey various traditions of non-European art, and consider such topics as the ancient arts of East and South Asia, the Indus Valley and Indian subcontinent; African arts; and the indigenous arts of North and South America. The creation, function and meaning of religious and secular art in different types of arts will be addressed.

AHD-1017

Ancient and Classical Art

One semester: 3 art history credits

Art of the Western tradition from approximately 20,000 BCE to 400 CE will be explored in this course. It will include Aegean art of the ancient Mediterranean and Hellenistic societies. The course will conclude by considering classical art at the end of the Roman Empire and the art that appeared at the emergence of the Christian Empire. 

AHD-1018

Introduction to Modern Art

One semester: 3 art history credits

Beginning with the invention of photography in 1839, this course will reflect the visual expansion of practices involving painting, sculpture, film and architecture. Surveying the discourses surrounding the prominent “isms” (impressionism, symbolism, cubism, etc.) of the 19th century and finally arriving at the inception of pop art in the 20th century, radical shifts in iconography, material applications and the infusion of media into fine arts will be cited. Seminal texts and visits to museums will augment this course.

AHD-1019

Global Perspectives

One semester: 3 art history credits

As much of the world is connected through the World Wide Web, a global perspective of the arts, crafts and architecture is relevant to contemporary understandings concerning non-Western art. Discussions of the indigenous, the colonized and the transcultural will be explored. From concepts such as memory, ceremony, domestic life, the body and beliefs about the natural and cosmic worlds will intersect with visual culture. The paintings, drawings, ceramics, architecture, textiles and food cultures from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Oceania will focus on how ideas are represented in objects and edifices reflecting cultural difference.

AHD-1021

History of Art and Design In New York: Capital of the World

One semester: 3 art history credits

New York City’s history of art and design has been defined by its role as an important international hub in the exchange of perspectives, ideas and influences. This course will explore the artistic communities and movements—along with their broader reverberations in popular culture—that have come to make the city the dynamic and endlessly inspiring place it is today. You will be introduced to a variety of artworks, subjects and histories, including the migration of modernism from Europe to America, David Alfaro Siqueiros's Experimental Workshop, Andy Warhol’s Factory, the beginnings of minimalist and conceptual art, the East Village Art scene of the 1970s and ’80s, and beyond—inspiring you to see yourself as part of the city’s ongoing creative history. You’ll never look at NYC the same way. 

AHD-1070

Film History and Criticism

One semester: 3 art history credits

Cinema, a language of more than a century, is employed to convey ideas and emotions through images and sounds within a time-based structure. The history of cinema is now hundreds of histories. This course will focus on the language of narrative films through examples from established histories and from previously hidden histories. We will begin with the silent era, early and mid-century sound films. We then move on to the French New Wave and explore how its directors not only changed film language but also inspired a new way of seeing American popular movies. These, in turn, were influenced by the civil rights movement, the feminist movement and postmodern aesthetics. These developments led to the mix of independent filmmaking and studio films that have thrived in the last decades of the 20th century and continue today. This course will consist of weekly screenings alongside in-class presentations and writing assignments.

AHD-1075

Film History: Analysis of Genre

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will investigate a variety of cinematic genres, such as the Western, horror, experimental cinema, period drama, the musical and science fiction. Screening will be preceded by an overview of the genre in question, and a follow-up discussion of how each film represents and/or subverts conventions or traditions. 

AHD-1090

History of Photography

One semester: 3 art history credits

Serving as an introduction to the history of photography, this course will examine the major photographic movements and technological advances of the medium from its invention through the first half of the 20th century. Prominent figures from these periods will be closely studied to provide a foundation for understanding not only the medium’s history but also the limitations of the canonical approach to understanding photography’s democratic reach.

AHD-1170

Animation: From Paper to Pixels

One semester: 3 art history credits

Animation milestones will be screened and examined in this course. We will begin by studying the work of pioneer animators, such as Winsor McCay, Disney and Fleischer, then focus on special topics from later periods, eventually concluding with CG’s impact on the art form and industry. Students will view both rare and significant animated films that have influenced the direction of animation for well over a century.

AHD-2003

Highlights of European Animation

Thursday 6:30-9:20

One semester: 3 art history credits

The historical and artistic developments of European animation, from its 19th-century parlor toy origins to contemporary films, will be surveyed in this course. We will sample the earliest animation by silent-film pioneers Emile Cohl and Ladislas Starevich, and see how Lotte Reiniger produced the first known full-length animated feature in 1926. The immense artistic growth and diversification of animation since World War II and the emergence of many of animation’s most brilliant and influential masters will be discussed.

AHD-2006

A World of Animation

One semester: 3 art history credits

For more than a century animation has been used to depict concepts in motion that are difficult or impossible to convey by other means. As an incredibly versatile art form and dynamic commercial commodity, animation now surrounds us in all kinds of entertainment and technological mediums. In this course students will view films employing various animation techniques from a variety of periods and countries, and use critical analysis to discuss and write about their observations. Historical and anthropological approaches will be taken to explore how periods in history, global conflicts and cultural influences shape the production of animated films and how these artistic and commercial works, in turn, impact humanity.

AHD-2008

Women in Animation

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will examine the many creative roles that women artists have contributed to the dynamic medium of animation, from its inception at the beginning of the 20th century to the present. The work of these artists includes not only animation and direction, but also concept, design, preproduction, and other areas in the fields of traditional animation, stop motion and experimental films, among others. The course will include lectures and screenings, as well as scholarly journals and animation-specific publications. Artists studied include Lillian Friedman, Mary Blair, Laverne Harding, Rhetta Scott, Lotte Reiniger, Olga Khodataeva, the Brumberg sisters, Hermina Týrlová, Faith Hubley, Joan Gratz, Kathy Rose, Jane Aaron and Emily Hubley. 

AHD-2010

The Origins of Art

One semester: 3 art history credits

The Arts serve as a record of the history of ideas and society. This course will explore the development of what we call art, by examining its emergence and development in the context of specific Western and non-Western societies and civilizations. To do so, the class traces the changing nature of representation in painting, sculpture and architecture from the Paleolithic to the early 19th century. Topics include art and ritual, iconoclasm and theories of God, the separation of art and craft, the social history of art and the rise of the individual, idealism and aesthetics. Discussion, slide presentations and museum visits are a part of the course. 

AHD-2020

Modern Art Through Pop I

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course maps the major movements and tendencies in modern art beginning with the realism of Courbet in the 19th century and continuing into the 20th century, including impressionism, postimpressionism, symbolism, fauvism, cubism, futurism, expressionism, Dada and surrealism. The art will be discussed in terms of the individual artist’s intent as well as in terms of historical events and cultural issues at the times in which they were created. Museum field trips are an important part of the course.

AHD-2025

Modern Art Through Pop II

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course is a survey of art from the emergence of “modernism” through the radical transformations in established modes of art-making of the postwar period. Close attention will be paid to the social, political and economic contexts in which artistic styles and forms have materialized, grown or changed from mid-century to the present.

AHD-2030

History of Cartooning

One semester: 3 art history credits

A historical overview of cartooning and visual storytelling is the focus of this course. Major movements and developments (political, strip and book formats) and the cultural influences of comics will be explored, as well as the changing role of the comics artist.

AHD-2040

History of Illustration

One semester: 3 art history credits

The fascinating history of illustrative images and the major movements in illustration are the focus of this course. The continuous interrelations between commercial and fine art, as well as the changing role of the artist’s influence on culture will be explored. The course will also help students better understand the differences of metaphor in pictorial content and the universal symbolic vocabulary—where a rose is not just a rose, a ladder is not just a ladder, and a dark horse is far from being just a dark horse. 

AHD-2068

The Language of Film

One semester: 3 art history credits

Serving as an introduction to the basic terms and concepts of cinematic language, this course will explore the vocabulary, grammar, sign and syntax of film through screenings, lectures and discussion. Feature-length narratives as well as animated, experimental and documentary shorts will be addressed, with an emphasis on examining the function of the film as a formal construct—the basic principles of film form. We will also pay particular attention to the techniques of the film medium along with the questions of types and genres of films. The course is analytical but with a thoroughly pragmatic bent: to map the extraordinary diversity of contemporary cinematic practice in relation to editing, sound, cinematography, framing, genre, auteur and narration. 

AHD-2070

International Cinema

One semester: 3 art history credits

Designed to facilitate an understanding of classic and contemporary international cinema, this course is dedicated to the study of films that have adopted a different aesthetic framework from Hollywood. We will discuss themes, ideologies, forms, the impact of history—both political and social—and the background stories of the filmmakers. Screenings will be drawn from the cinema of Mira Nair (India), Jean-Luc Godard (France), Andrei Tarkovsky (Russia), Federico Fellini (Italy) Carl Dreyer (Denmark), Luis Buñuel (Spain/Mexico) and Peter Weir (Australia), among others. 

AHD-2121

History of Advertising: From the 19th Century to the Present

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course traces the history of advertising in the United States and how it increased from a $200 million industry in the 1800s to a $3 billion industry in the 1900s. Through field trips, guest lectures and documentaries, this course will survey the art directors, writers, photographers, agencies and campaigns that helped to shape American culture from the war-raddled 1930s and ‘40s to the prosperous ‘50s to the Mad Men era that continued into the early 1970s and its impact on the ‘80s. In addition to exploring product and service campaigns, we will discuss several topics as they relate to advertising, such as political ideology, energy conservation, deforestation, public service and military recruitment.

AHD-2127

History of Graphic Design: A Survey of Styles from the Late 19th Century to the Present

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will focus on various graphic design movements from art nouveau and Jugendstil to De Stijl and Dada; from the impact of the Bauhaus to the fervor of the streamlined 1930s; from the Swiss International style of the ’50s to the psychedelia of the ’60s and on to the punk ’70s and postmodern ’80s. We will also examine the subjects, themes and relationship of the designer to the period. Using examples of the period as a focal point, the evolving design styles and their relationship to politics, commerce, social mores, technology and pop culture will be explored. From the beautiful to the ridiculous, the ephemeral aspects of design will be studied. Guest speakers will feature individuals who have created important design work of the periods discussed.

AHD-2128

The International Typographic Style

One semester: 3 art history credits

The course will explore the development of the International Typographic Style from its constructivist origins and postwar Swiss Style design roots of the 1950s to its rapid expansion across Europe, the United States, Canada, South America, Japan, and beyond. We will examine the evolving design style and the role of the pioneer designer in society, with an emphasis on notable works, subjects and themes, and their cultural, political and social connections. Together we’ll investigate the international design pioneers who explored and expanded upon the movement until the mid-1970s (including many lesser-known and unrecognized figures), their evolving ideologies and principles, distinctive visual vocabularies, technological advancements, landmark exhibitions, publishing programs and institutional pedagogies, as well as the development of the emerging field of corporate identity and cultural communications. Slide lectures, primary readings, and discussions will be complemented with research and writing assignments. 

AHD-2129

History of Type: Stories, Secrets, Experiments and Accidents

One semester: 3 art history credits

The history of type is a mix of stories, secrets, experiments and accidents. In this course students will explore why letters have thick-and-thin strokes, why the tail of the Q is on the right side, why some types are called “Fat Faces” and others are grotesque, why some people refuse to use Gill Sans, who Mrs. Eaves was, and much more. Everyone has a typeface they love (Helvetica)—and one they don’t (Helvetica). This course will explain why people love certain typefaces and hate others—and why they should love the ones they hate and hate the ones they love. If you have a question about type, this is where you can find the answer. 

AHD-2136

What’s Your Type?

One semester: 3 art history credits

There’s something magical about the alphabet—its capacity to change shape and style, to express purpose and suggest mood, to be formal and informal, elegant and ugly, classical and romantic, delicate and robust. Although we live in a digital age, with access to a wealth of fonts, there is a movement in typography to revert to the handwritten alphabet. We see it on the street, stenciled and sprayed. We see it in signage and labels, and on our grocery lists. This course begins with the history of typography and will examine its different movements to the present. Students will complete a series of digital and handwritten typographical assignments and develop their own alphabet.

AHD-2147

Lighting the Sky: New York Architectural Signage and Outdoor Advertising Signs

One semester: 3 art history credits

New York City after dark is a magical show of color and light. The spectacular signs above and around us give the same sort of pleasure and awe as fireworks, and excite admiring crowds on the street. These signs take advertising off the printed page and into the physical space of everyday living on storefronts, buildings and roadsides, and even in the air with lighting on blimps. This course will follow the history of this exciting subject from the beginning of the 20th century through Prohibition, the Depression, the blackout of World War II, Times Square’s low period in the 1970s and 1980s and the recovery in the 1990s. In addition, we will focus on the history and evolution of various forms of lighting, including incandescent, neon and animated installations. The many forms of roadside, outdoor signs and ads will be surveyed, from billboards that rely on words and images to three-dimensional signs made of metal and electrical lighting that rely on design and typography to attract travelers.

AHD-2154

Gender, Sexuality and Visual Culture

One semester: 3 art history credits

Visual culture makes arguments about gender, sexuality and the body. To see and be seen is to assume a gendered (and sexualized) position. In this course we will study how genders, sexualities and desires have been shaped through images, the built environment and the gaze. We will analyze artworks and architecture as well as commercial photography, film and music videos. Themes will include: the sexual politics of looking; movement, desire and space; the public and the private; homosexuality, drag and gender ambiguity; visual pleasure and the unconscious; in/visible sexualities and religion. 

AHD-2164

Inspired Innovators

One semester: 3 art history credits

In this course students will examine the process of artistic influence and innovation through observation, analysis, discussion and hands-on assignments relating to the work of select influential masters. The following topics will be considered: homage vs. copying, inspired influence vs. theft, realized artistic identity vs. branding. Museum field trips will offer a close look at the artists’ works under investigation. Students will relate to their own originality while at the same time embracing inspiration and identifying plagiarism.

AHD-2168

Drawing Art History at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will combine drawing from observation with conversations about the people, artists, objects and periods we are examining. We will meet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art to engage in visual analysis, critical thinking and dialogue about works of art, which can only be done in the presence of these works, and students then draw from observation in a loose and uninhibited way. We will examine the interconnectedness of various cultures (and periods) and the common threads within the language of art history. Drawings are done quickly and energetically, the focus being on “note-taking” through drawing. Open to all majors, the course will ideally provide students with images (sketches) and information that can be employed in their studio practice.

AHD-2171

The Art of Observation

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course is all about slowing down, looking closely and training one’s eye to investigate, analyze and discuss original works of art. We will meet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and explore three works of art each session, with the goal of developing each student’s power of attention and critical thinking. Observations, opinions and open dialogue are encouraged. Creative writing and sketching as forms of note-taking will be components of our exploration.

AHD-2173

Gender Trouble

One semester: 3 art history credits

A radical collective inquiry into the ‘aesthetics of resistance’ that occur when the gendered non-conforming body speaks in the visual is the focus of this course. We will explore using the arts to engage in the queering of fixed social boundaries, a most ancient form of antiauthoritarian power and sensuous (spiritual) pleasure for use by bodies situated at the borderlands of gender, race, class, pleasure and power. Presentations of slide and video work by key contemporary and historical feminist figures will help students situate their creative practice in relationship to contemporary discourses around intersectional feminism—race, class, gender and sexuality. How do we make sense of feminist art of the past and present—its contradictions, slogans and symbols? What content is lost in translation during art’s shift from private practice to public locus? Reading assignments by a range of provocative critical theorists will be given and students will bring in work in any medium for weekly critique. This course features a special focus on underground, pansexual and transnational networks we can define loosely as punk, queer, hip-hop, radical, sex-positive feminist culture. There will be guest lecturers. 

AHD-2180

History of Film I

One semester: 3 art history credits

Serving as an introduction to theatrical motion pictures, this course will examine its nascence along with the silent era and early sound. While American narrative film will be emphasized, examples of world cinema will also be screened. Political, cultural and aesthetic history will form a background for viewing selected films—both important works and more transitory ones—to gain an understanding of how the medium developed and its cultural impact.

AHD-2185

History of Film II

One semester: 3 art history credits

A continuation of AHD-2180, History of Film I, this course will examine the history of motion pictures from the ascendancy of the studio system, through effects of World War II on the film industry to the subsequent collapse and re-emergence of prominent studios. The era of independent filmmaking will also be addressed. While American narrative film will be emphasized, examples of world cinema will also be screened, as well as examples from various film genres, including documentary, animation and experimental work. 

AHD-2190 / AHD-2195

History of Animation I and II

Two semesters: 3 art history credits

These courses explore milestones in animation, from pioneers like Walt Disney, Norman McLaren and Lotte Reiniger, to present-day digital innovators. Along the way we’ll consider a range of techniques, including line-and-cel, glass painting, stop motion, clay animation, morphs and 3D characters. We’ll also see why animation deserves to be seen as perhaps the most complex art form.

AHD-2210

World Architecture: Art and Interior Design

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course introduces a broad overview of world architecture and design history and theory from antiquity to the baroque period. Through presentations/lectures, group discussions, videos, readings, research and field trips, students develop an awareness and knowledge of world history in the built environment, interior styles, furniture development and decorative/material arts.

AHD-2220

Western Architecture: Art and Interior Design

One semester: 3 art history credits

Design history and theory of Western architecture and interior design will be introduced in this course—from neoclassicism to aspects of the Industrial Revolution and the influences of modernism in the 21st century. Through presentations/lectures, group discussions, videos, readings, research and museum field trips, students develop awareness and understanding of American and European histories in the built environment, interior styles, furniture development, technological advances and decorative/material arts.

AHD-2224

Historic Interiors at The Met

One semester: 3 art history credits

From an ancient Roman bedroom to a living room designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, students will explore the historic interiors and architectural structures at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Meeting in the galleries, we will discuss the design, function and material culture of each room as well as how The Met acquires, displays and interprets the spaces.

AHD-2225

American Art: 1600-1915

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course traces the history of art in North America from colonial times to World War I. Meeting in the galleries of the American Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, students explore works by Native American, African American, Mexican American and European American artists. Class discussions focus on interior design, decorative objects and furniture, as well as paintings and sculpture. Music, fashion and literature are also woven into our discussions.

AHD-2226

American Art: The Rise of Pop Culture

One semester: 3 art history credits

Beginning in the 1920s through Neo-Dada of the 1950s, this course will examine the rise of American pop art and its focus on consumer culture. Discussions will include an exploration of pop art’s European antecedents; the movement’s zenith in the 1960s with artists such as Warhol, Lichtenstein and Oldenburg; pop manifestations in Europe; commodity art of the 1980s and pop art’s lasting influence.

AHD-2227

Monument/Memorial: Sculpture in the American Landscape

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course examines the influence of man and nature on national memory, with attention paid to digressions from the dominant historical thread. Geological time and the sweeping path of wildfire are monumental events for our consideration, alongside Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Gutzon Borglum’s Mount Rushmore and the ongoing removal of Confederate statues nationwide. Readings include: Lucy Lippard, Rebecca Solnit and Terry Tempest Williams with lectures from historians, anthropologists and artists. This course aims to question American historical preservation practices and encourages students to responsibly consider the future as they erect it.

AHD-2230

Minimalism Across the Arts

One semester: 3 art history credits

Originating as an artistic movement in New York during the late 1960s, minimalism is built upon various formal restraints that organize the given particulars of a structural model. The term has had international impact within many creative fields, resulting in divergent outcomes. This course unpacks the origins and applications of minimalism across disciplines, including painting, music, sculpture, film/video, performance, architecture, design, fashion and creative writing. Students will engage with critical texts on what constitutes a minimal aesthetic and technique, then apply it to their own practices and methodologies through research papers and creative projects. Far from a “less is more” model, minimalism stimulates a rigorous approach to conceptualizing and making work. 

AHD-2231

Avant-Gardening: Art, Food and Agriculture

One semester: 3 art history credits

Avant Gardening is premised on an egalitarian ideal proposed by a growing number of artists in postwar Europe and the Americas, which recognizes that the materials of everyday life—be it a sock, burlap sack or detritus found in the street—are as equally suitable ingredients of the artist’s palette as a tube of paint. Since the 1960s, artists expanded this principle into the representation and material use of food and its relation to the garden, agriculture and the broader social environment in which it is produced. This course investigates the historical and theoretical backgrounds of art and artists who use gardening, agriculture and food as their medium. Lectures will provide the cultural, environmental and sociopolitical context in which these artists are working. Field trips and a final project (in research or the creation of an artwork) will be made in collaboration with Project Eats, an organization that works in communities around New York City to create community-owned farms, farmers markets, and arts and cultural projects, among other initiatives.

AHD-2234

Monochromatic Arts: Creativity in Black and White

One semester: 3 art history credits

The exclusive use of black and white in the arts is a careful aesthetic choice, and it has been a past necessity born of technological limitations in historical media. In this seminar-style survey course a variety of monochromatic works will be examined—from illustration to painting, silhouette cutting to shadow puppetry and photography to photocopying. Considerable focus will be placed on animation and live-action films from the silent era to contemporary times, as well as early television productions. With an appreciative eye for this limited palette, practical and philosophical questions about the nature and effects of monochromatic art—such as the implication of choice versus necessity—will be approached through discussion and writing.

AHD-2236

Theories of Vision and Color

One semester: 3 art history credits

In this course students will be asked to consider theories of vision and color through a variety of lenses: critical, cultural, scientific, (art) historical, philosophical, experiential and literary, to name a few. Such consideration will be facilitated by a corresponding diversity of methods, encompassing reading, discussion, screening, observation, experimentation and site visits. We will attempt to arrive at an understanding of both vision and color as multivalent and ever-evolving phenomena. Throughout, students will be encouraged to consider the role of vision and color in both historical and contemporary art practices and in relation to their own artistic development.

AHD-2238

History of Ornament: A Survey of Form and Pattern

One semester: 3 art history credits

Designed as a survey on ornament, form and pattern, this course examines themes such as geometry and nature that shape a unique visual language. We will explore the historical and cultural phenomena of ornament and pattern located on surfaces and objects. An interdisciplinary approach will be taken, focusing on material culture, architecture and design, beginning with the Renaissance and concluding in the early 20th century. Students will also be introduced to the work of theoreticians and design pioneers, such as Augustus Pugin, Owen Jones, Auguste Racinet, Émile Prisse d’Avennes and Adolf Loos, offering a comprehensive understanding of ornament and its theories. The aim of this course is to present students with a deeper understanding of pattern and ornament and to recognize an important part of art history. There will be compulsory readings each week and biweekly drawing assignments. 

AHD-2239

Symbols in Art and Design

One semester: 3 art history credits

A symbol has its own story to tell on how it finds its way into man-made objects. The beauty of nature becomes a living poem inserted into a piece of art, weaved into a textile or carved into a building. Symbols in Art and Design will focus on the meaning of symbols through different religions, cultures and geographical locations. Through readings, lectures and practice, students will explore how to use different types of symbols (geometric, vegetal and figural) in their art and designs. 

AHD-2241

The Artist as Coder

One semester: 3 art history credits

In the post-studio interdisciplinary art world, technology plays a critical role in an artist’s practice. The ubiquity of the Internet, displays and computers demands a new kind of literacy today. By examining contemporary artists working on the periphery of traditional media, we’ll explore the implications for art and artists. Readings and lectures will be supplemented by in-class exercises that introduce fundamental programming principles with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. To emulate the interdisciplinary art world mentioned, this course is a hybrid art history course with studio practice. 

AHD-2252

History of Astrology, Magic and Alchemy in Art and Design

One semester: 3 art history credits

Since ancient times, astrology, magic and alchemy have been considered important tools to unravel the mysteries of nature, foretell human destiny and even cure illness. These occult traditions have become rich sources of inspiration for artists and decorate many religious institutions, illuminated manuscripts, cities, and other everyday art objects. Astrological, magical and alchemical symbols serve as inspiration to a wide range of artists and artistic movements, in particular Renaissance artists—such as Bosch, Bruegel, Dürer and Caravaggio—and in the artwork of 19th-century artists, including Fuseli, Blake and the surrealists. This course will investigate, discuss and analyze these symbols in many of the great masterpieces of art and design. We will study various astrological, magical and alchemical symbols as we explore their meaning in different cultures. No previous experience in symbolism in art and design is necessary. 

AHD-2251

Myths and Legends in Art

One semester: 3 art history credits

Throughout history, myths have played an important function in human life, shaping cultures and religions. These myths help explain why and how the world functions. Artists have been inspired by myths and legends and have given them visual form. Sometimes mythical art is the only surviving record of what cultures believed and valued. Art helps us understand these myths and legends, as well as associated cultural values and fears. This course investigates, discusses and analyzes different cultural and religious myths and legends and how art represents them. No previous experience in this field is necessary.

AHD-2254

The Arts of Ancient Egypt and the Near East

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will survey the art of the peoples who inhabited the great cultural centers of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Iran from their earliest appearances in the fifth millennium BCE to the conquest by the Greeks under Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE. We will focus on the stylistic and iconographic developments of the cultures and civilizations that flourished in the area and will emphasize the continuity across the millennia of artistic imagery, forms and techniques.

AHD-2255

African Art and Life

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will introduce students to the life, art and architecture of the African continent from the prehistoric to the present. We will begin with an overview of ancient peoples and sacred sites in Africa (8,000 BCE-800 CE). This will be followed by a consideration of African art and global trade (1450-1860), and then colonialism and the modern world (1860-1957). The course concludes by considering art in the 21st century. The emphasis of this course is on African lifestyles, spiritualities and philosophies, and how these concepts are expressed in African art. We will learn that most traditional African art was not meant to be on display for the public, but rather viewed in use and in motion, and then destroyed. In addition to textbooks and an online framework, articles are assigned to enrich specific geographic coverage and introduce further contemporary artists. 

AHD-2256

Medieval Art and Modernity

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will focus on the transition from feudalism to capitalism, examining the social context that informs the art forms of the period. We will reframe the Middle Ages away from the stereotypical view of the backward Dark Ages and consider its artistic and intellectual innovations as precursors to modernity. Spending time understanding the ideologies and philosophies of the period, we will examine art and literature while also considering developments in music, dance and theater. Readings will be paired with discussions to understand how the social, political and economic systems of medieval Europe are reflected in art. 

AHD-2257

Religion and Visual Arts

One semester: 3 art history credits

Art has been a way to communicate beliefs and express ideas about the human experience throughout all stages of civilization and in every region of the world. Art and religion have been closely connected since the earliest works of art were created. As religious documents, works of art provide important insights into past and existing religions, helping us to understand how others have lived, and what they valued. The course will explore the connections between art and religion from early on through the contemporary period, and aims to provide students with information in relation to religion and visual and material arts/cultures. We will look at the role of the arts in relation to religious traditions, as well as some of the ways they change from culture to culture and religion to religion.

AHD-2258

Let’s Go: Modern Art in New York Museums

One semester: 3 art history credits

This survey course will involve an energetic, immersive, rigorous and truly active approach to the study of modern art history, while capitalizing on the city’s world-renowned collections and seasonal exhibitions, including those at the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Morgan Library and Museum, and Neue Galerie. Conversations during exhibition visits with curators, art historians, artists, and others will be organized around specific exhibitions, artworks and movements. Students will gain skills for responding—in real-time—to artworks in various mediums, their scale and subject matter. Further, students will develop an understanding of the art historical contexts and pivot points that have fostered significant advancements in modern art. This will be reinforced with engaging reading and writing assignments structured to examine the conditions and power structures that shaped the production, circulation and exhibition of artworks throughout the world during the 20th century.

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Latin American and Latino Art

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will introduce the concepts and ideas that are known as “art from Latin America,” and to interconnect them with samples of American Latino art as that branch has evolved since the WPA of the 1930s and 40s, with emphasis on the New York City area. After an overview of prominent pre-Columbian and Colonial artistic models, we will observe how today’s most relevant art practices continue to be animated by this heritage. We will explore various models of modernism that developed in Latin America from 1900 to 1945, with emphasis on location and context, by way of nations that include Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay. The latter part of the course will examine a broad spectrum of visual culture from Latin and North America, 1945 to present, to critically investigate the distinct social, political and historical contexts of art-making in the Americas.

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Contemporary Latin American Art

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will delve into Latin American art from 1968 to the present, with a focus on independently run spaces and alternative art education. Throughout much of the 20th century, the relentless forces driving economic and political crises in Latin America shaped artistic creation and its language, forcing artists to risk their lives in order to express their ideas and communicate with a public living under dictatorship. The legacy of violence and fear continues to shape artistic production in Latin America, offering a reflection on the new realities and historical connections in contemporary work. Taking the political risks assumed by the artists behind the Tucumán Arde exhibition (1968) as a point of departure, we will investigate the influence of critics like Marta Traba and Luis Camnitzer, the 1975 Texas symposium, and the construction of a regional identity for art in Latin America, examining the impossibility of a unified aesthetic for the region. After reviewing the use of anthropophagy in the 24th São Paulo Biennial, we will examine how the focus has now shifted into curatorial concepts and artist-run spaces in Argentina, Chile and Colombia, and the recent prominence of Central American artists in the international milieu.

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Gender and Politics in Contemporary Latin American Art

One semester: 3 art history credits

Taking off with the ground-breaking exhibition “Radical Women: Latin American Art 1960-1985,” this course will explore the many ways that artists who live and work in Latin America, and who do not identify as cis-male, communicate, work and create. As the great American critic and activist Lucy Lippard has said “Art has no sex but artists do.” Today, there’s an urgent need to take a new look at the history of contemporary Latin American art largely because of the way that Latin American LGBTQI artists were rendered invisible for so long. The course will follow the “traditional path” of development in Latin American art from the 1960s to the 2010s, as well as artists who have been omitted or briefly mentioned in the footnotes of art history books. Artists will include emblematic figures (such as Lygia Clark, Ana Mendieta and Marta Minujín), as well as lesser-known contemporaries (including Cuban-born abstract artist Zilia Sánchez, Colombian multidisciplinary artist Carlos Motta and gender-neutral Argentine artist Ad Minoliti).

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Chinese, Japanese and Korean Art

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will concentrate on major epochs of Chinese and Japanese art, from their beginnings to modern trends of the 20th century. The arts of Korea and other Asian countries will be touched on where relevant. Course activities include a museum trip and participation in a Japanese tea ceremony.

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Strategies of Contemporary Art: The Case of China

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course examines the multiple strategies employed by contemporary artists—readymade, abstraction, performance and conceptualism, among others—through case studies of contemporary Chinese artists. We will begin by examining texts that first theorized these artistic strategies, such as Burger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde. Studying Chinese artists of the 1980s and ’90s, we will then tackle the asymmetry of power between the West, where these strategies first occurred, and the non-West, where these strategies spread and mutated. Ultimately, we will explore the meaning of “transnationalism” in artistic pollination. Students in this course will gain familiarity with the language of artistic critique through close reading of texts, and a greater sensitivity to the issues involved in these artistic strategies, many of which persist in today’s art world.

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History of Collage and Assemblage—Two Dimensions, Three Dimensions and Four Dimensions in Space and Time

One semester: 3 art history credits

What was truly radical at the beginning of the 20th century remains ‘radical’ in the 21st century. What began as pasted paper applied to a flat surface with the cubists ‘papier collage’ became a graphic method to combine disparate visual elements and objects in film, advertising, graphic design, photography and the fine arts. Reaching into space and using time as a basic element, collage and assemblage have become installations, environments and other performative events, as well as a component of virtual reality. In this course we will examine the implications of this development as the philosophical basis of this pictorial invention.

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History of Video Art: 1965 to 1985

One semester: 3 art history credits

What is referred to as “video art” has become a ubiquitous feature of 21st-century art practice, yet it is an art form whose emergence is still a relatively fresh aspect of contemporary art history. This course will explore the origins of video art, examining its sources in film, photography and performance art. Through screenings of key works and discussion with artists, critics and curators as well as in directed readings, students will be exposed to important works and individuals associated with the first two decades of video. Special attention will be paid to an understanding of the cultural and social context that supported the emergence of video art. We will focus upon the evolution of video art from both a technological perspective as well as the development of a video’s critical and institutional framework. Artists whose works will be viewed and discussed include Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Peter Campus, Vito Acconci, Frank Gillette, Juan Downey, Joan Jonas, Chris Burden, Lynda Benglis, Ira Schneider, Andy Mann, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Shigeko Kubota, Bill Viola, Gary Hill, Mary Lucier, Woody and Steina Vasulka, Ilene Segalove, William Wegman, Tony Oursler, Antoni Muntadas, Keith Sonnier, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, Dara Birnbaum, Ant Farm, Videofreex, TVTV, Marcel Odenbach, Dan Graham, Doug Hall, Richard Serra, Howard Fried, Terry Fox, Paul Kos, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley and Ernie Kovacs. 

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History of Video Art: 1985 to Present

One semester: 3 art history credits

As video art became more widely accepted and the tools became increasingly affordable and available, the medium quickly emerged as a primary site for the global dialogue that characterizes contemporary art practice. Among the topics to be addressed in this screening, lecture and discussion course will be the emergence of Asian, Latin American and European Video Art, the continued development of sculptural video installation work and the emergence of the market for video art. The blurring of the lines among video art, digital art forms, digital cinema and art made for the Internet will also be addressed. Artists whose works will be viewed and discussed include Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Peter Campus, Vito Acconci, Frank Gillette, Juan Downey, Joan Jonas, Chris Burden, Lynda Benglis, Ira Schneider, Andy Mann, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Shigeko Kubota, Bill Viola, Gary Hill, Mary Lucier, Woody and Steina Vasulka, Ilene Segalove, William Wegman, Tony Oursler, Antoni Muntadas, Keith Sonnier, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, Dara Birnbaum, Ant Farm, Videofreex, TVTV, Marcel Odenbach, Dan Graham, Doug Hall, Richard Serra, Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Paul Kos, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley and Ernie Kovacs. 

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Sound Art: Theory and Practice

One semester: 3 art history credits

The boundaries of sound art stretch from experimental music practices to the fine arts, and its many possibilities and potential remain to be discovered. This course will provide a foundation in contemporary creative sound practices while offering students the opportunity to explore their own sound-based art projects. We will investigate the history of experimental music and arts practices that led to the development of sound art as an independent field, and we will also inquire into the technological, physical and psychological nature of sound. A survey of the current state of the field as practiced today will be included with the goal of developing our own creative relationship to sound.

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Visual Music

One semester: 3 art history credits

The term “visual music” has been used to describe a wide variety of responses to sound within the arts, most notably in film and video, but also across painting, live performance, and music itself. At its core is the idea that concepts of tone, rhythm and musical form have corollaries in color, shape and texture, allowing for a creative process that connects the senses. Focusing on experimental animation, students will prepare visual analyses, synchronize time-based imagery with sound and create original projects in response to this rich, alternative history of abstraction. 

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Music Videos: From the Beatles to Beyoncé

One semester: 3 art history credits

The evolution and influence of the music video will be explored in this course. Beginning with its early roots in the Scopitone jukeboxes of the 1950s and 1960s and its early cinematic forerunners (The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night), the course will chart the format’s emergence and its aesthetic and conceptual maturation in the 1980s and 1990s and, at times, its subversive cultural impact. We will also examine the way music videos reshaped the style and grammar of the film medium from which it first derived its inspiration (Pink Floyd: The Wall, Absolute Beginners, True Stories), produced a new generation of filmmakers (Mary Lambert, Julian Temple, David Fincher, Spike Jonze) and enabled key artists to take control of their images to reinvent themselves (David Bowie, Madonna, Michael Jackson, George Michael, R.E.M.). Toward the end of the course students will split into groups and collaborate on the curation and presentation of a 20-minute selection of music videos from the modern era.

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Sound/Mind/Material

One semester: 3 art history credits

Sound is at once ephemeral in air, concrete in material and conceptualized in the mind. This unique transformation property makes sound ideal for examining the relationship of our internal experience to physicality; our body in relationship to a world increasingly more abstracted through digital media. In this course students will recon-sider sound as material, develop their own physical-based audio work and discover theories that aim to understand these relations. Studio projects exploring unexpected and novel material for music and audio—flexible embedded circuitry, building audio speakers and sound sculpture—will be supplemented by listening and viewing of related arts and artists. Students will also respond to readings in theories of sound, new media, perception and phenomenology. This course will offer a hybrid experience—studio practice along with readings and discussion about the many possibilities for considering our relationship to the body, physical material and sound embodied in the physical world.

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Seen, Scene and Heard: Sound and Vision in Modern + Contemporary Art, Film and Video, 1900-Present

One semester: 3 art history credits

This survey course will examine how visual artists, photographers, filmmakers, and others have used sound for their artworks across and between disciplines. Combinations of art and sound mediums, including video and photography with audio narratives or music, installations with accompanying soundscapes, animation soundtracks, concerts with visuals, listening experiences, materials, scale and subject matter will all be covered in detail. In-class critical viewing and listening sessions will happen alongside visits with visual artists, sound artists, performers, and others. By examining the artists, movements and styles responsible for significant pivot points in the visual arts during the modern period, students will gain a comprehensive understanding of how artworks across all media employ sonic elements, while simultaneously considering how to advance the use of sound within their own art practices.

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Essential Dance Digressions for Artists

One semester: 3 art history credits

In this course for artists, theorists and budding art historians, we will approach visual art by way of dance. Constituted in time and as time, dance has as potent a relationship to memory and haunted-ness as to presence and immanence. Inhabited not just by bodies but also by people, dance ignites questions of agency and its opposite, automatism. Rearranging space from inside the choreographic frame, dance turns negative space nearly positive. Its peculiarities abound. Our first task will be to gain some purchase on dance. We will attend live performances in both traditional and alternative spaces and watch screendances. We will read relevant poets, philosophers and conceptually inclined choreographers—for example, W. B. Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Valéry, Henri Bergson, Roland Barthes, Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, Gregory Bateson, Ishmael Houston-Jones, William Forsythe, Meg Stuart and Jérôme Bel. The end goal is not to absorb a poetics of dance, but to defamiliarize the art idiom to which you are primarily dedicated and thus to reorient you to its fundamental features. No prior knowledge of dance required.

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The Art of Death

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course examines the history of art with respect to the subject of death and the range of allegorical, figurative, literal, religious and documentary approaches used to frame it. Though our discussions will allude to ancient and global frameworks around the subject, our study will focus on modern Western art and creations in which elements of the macabre, ornamentation, documentation, Romanticism, phantasmagoria, and other responses to mortality will be closely examined. In addition to tracing a particular visual language and recurring aesthetic of death among a broad range of artworks—representative of different media, conceptual approaches, time periods, etc.—we will discuss these works against relevant theoretical positions expressed by Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Craig Dworkin, Sigmund Freud, Amy Herzog, Didier Maleuvre, and others, to identify the roles that art plays in articulating the indefinable, and the persistent importance of death as a subject of creative reflection and study. Readings and assignments, gallery and museum visits, will require several hours of time outside of class.

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Cinema and Revolution

One semester: 3 art history credits

Cinema has been associated with politics and revolutionary movements since its early years. Lenin declared cinema the most important art form for its power to educate the masses. This course is a survey of the films that are particularly connected with the history of revolution in the 20th century. We will look at how political ideas are translated into the language of cinema and the role of cinema in various revolutionary movements. Screenings include films from the Soviet Union, the Cold War and the collapse of Berlin Wall, the Cuban Revolution, Italian neorealism, Cinema Novo (Brazil), the German film industry (Nazi and more), the Chinese Culture Revolution, the Japanese Red Army and North Korean propaganda today, as well as the recent prosperity of cinematic images in the wake of the Arab Spring.

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Exposed: Exhibitions That Made Art History

One semester: 3 art history credits

Today’s art calendar is overloaded with international biennials and blockbuster loan exhibitions. This course will show how the impulse to put art on public display has a long history. We will look at the locations, organization and contents of art exhibitions from Italy in the 14th century to the most recent edition of the Venice Biennale. How these exhibitions and the works of art exhibited were documented and received will be analyzed, as will the impact public displays have on the canon of art history. Current shows on view in New York will provide opportunities to chart developments in exhibition design and concepts.

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Art and Business in the 20th and 21st Centuries

One semester: 3 art history credits

Why do we know about certain works of art and not others? The answer lies not just with the quality of the work in question or the artist who created it, but also in the “auxiliary world” of the business of art—the dealers, curators, galleries, mentors and collectors of art, who preserve, exhibit, auction and seek out works and artists. By focusing on some of the most influential behind-the-scenes players in the international business of art, we will explore the economics and practicalities of bringing a work of art to market, as well as the aesthetics and styles of the 20th and 21st centuries.

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Professional Practices and the Art Industry

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course aims to give participants an understanding of the art world and its history, as well as how to navigate professional pitfalls. From the practical to the esoteric, we will address the complex—sometimes overlapping, other times conflicting—components and institutions of the art world. Professionals such as gilders, faux-finishers, gallerists, grant writers, photographers, art handlers and museum educators (to name a few) will be invited to lead discussions on their areas of expertise. Some sessions will be hands-on studio work, others will concentrate on strategies to support the artist and their studio practice. Students will review exhibitions throughout the semester. Finished artwork will be shared during the final class session. 

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Museums in New York: Collecting in the Empire City

One semester: 3 art history credits

From the encyclopedic collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum to the donor-memorial museum of the Frick Collection to the museums that focus on a culture or period, such as the Rubin Museum of Art, this course will survey the landscape of displaying art in New York City. By looking at first attempts at establishing cultural venues, such as P.T. Barnum’s American Museum, we will see how the city’s museums chart the growth of the financial capital of the United States. An examination of the collectors, curators and critics who helped to shape these institutions will shed light on how collections are formed and which artists are valorized, opening a discussion for ways in which to expand the canon.

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From Chance to “Give Peace a Chance”: The Revolution that Took Us From Dada to Fluxus

One semester: 3 art history credits

Beginning with fin-de-siècle Europe and ending in New York City in the 1960s, this course investigates the history of modern and contemporary avant-garde thinking from Dada to Fluxus, from “chance operations” to the activist slogan, “Give Peace a Chance.” Sessions will combine lectures, screenings, discussions and critique to offer an immersive study of early- to mid-20th century revolutionary movements in art, music, literature, film, theater and science. There will be weekly assignments, such as to create a readymade (in the spirit of Marcel Duchamp), make a photocollage (in the spirit of Hannah Höch) or assemblage (in the spirit of Kurt Schwitters), compose a sound poem (in the spirit of Hugo Ball), or fabricate a “prepared” musical instrument (in the spirit of John Cage. The goal of the course is to strengthen each student’s critical awareness of “intermedia” practice and explore the devolution of “art” to “anti-art.”

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In and Out of Print: Modern and Contemporary Art Publications and Practices in the Expanded Field

One semester: 3 art history credits

In this course we will enthusiastically explore 20th- and 21st-century art and artist publications and related practices in the expanded field: art and artist books, chapbooks, posters, flyers, broadsheets, editions, multiples, and other printed ephemera. Historical contexts, artistic advancements and prevailing styles will be examined in-depth, across all mediums and print platforms. We will begin at the end of the 19th century with print and photography portfolios, and continue through Dada, surrealism, concrete poetry, up to Fluxus, minimalism and conceptual art, pop, pictures generation artists, underground publications (from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, including punk) and up through to contemporary artists’ engagements with published materials. Multiples and methods of reproduction will be thoroughly covered, while visiting artists, publishers, collectors and archivists will give presentations on their practical applications of—and engagements with—this subject matter. 

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Museum Studies

One semester: 3 art history credits

How are art collections and museums formed? Who decides what a museum exhibits? Is a museum like a bank vault filled with precious objects, or is it more like a secular cathedral? This course will address these questions by surveying the history and philosophy of art collections and museums. Topics include: public, private and corporate art collections; the conservation and preservation of art; museum architecture; installation design; traveling exhibitions; museum education programs; exhibition catalogs; museum trustees; laws that impact museums; commercial galleries and non-profit artists’ spaces. 

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The Art of Editing

One semester: 3 art history credits

Editing is the creative process by which visual and aural elements are rhythmically integrated to produce meaning in film. This historical survey investigates interrelations of storytelling and story-showing by screening classic and contemporary film scenes and sequences. Students explore how editing techniques across various genres shape character and story, inspiring one of the world’s most powerful art forms. 

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Film Noir

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course is an examination of one of the most enduring pictorial and narrative styles of American sound films. Named by French film critics in the 1950s, its roots are found in American and German silent films. Influenced, too, by the French poetic realism of the 1930s, film noir reached its zenith in the postwar America of the 1940s and ’50s. Films like Body Heat, Blade Runner and Blue Velvet pay homage to the noir style. An understanding of American film is not possible without a grounding in this mysterious, sinister, graphically vigorous movie style.

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Dramatic Construction

One semester: 3 art history credits

The many structures and styles employed in cinematic storytelling over the past century will be surveyed in this course, from the classical narrative tradition to the experimental. Films will include work by Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Alfred Hitchcock, John Cassavetes, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan and David Lynch.

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Science-Fiction Film Milestones

One semester: 3 art history credits

Acclaimed and groundbreaking science-fiction films from the 1950s to the 1990s will be examined in this course through a historical survey. Films will deal with such subjects as space travel (2001: A Space Odyssey), dystopian futures (Soylent Green, Blade Runner), extraterrestrial menaces (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing) and earthbound cautionary premonitions (Videodrome, The Andromeda Strain).

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Art on Film

One semester: 3 art history credits

From experimental documentaries to Hollywood biopics to artist-made films, this course will explore how film shapes our understanding of what it means to be an artist. Each week we will consider a famous, underground, or forgotten figure in art whose story is represented through film. Narrative structure, dialogue, aesthetics and acting will all be examined as we think about how movies create a vision of the artist as bohemian, outsider, genius and celebrity. 

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History of Comedy in Films

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course seeks to identify and define the fundamentals of comedy in film history through an in-depth study of the comedians, directors and films that make up the body of this genre. The course will establish the two basic forms of comedy—physical and situational—and, by extension, their subsets in spoof, slapstick, satire and the one-liner, from Chaplin to Woody Allen. The utilization of comedy as a method of commentary on and a release from geopolitical, social and cultural factors in the 20th century will provide the context and overview against which films as chronologically diverse as City Lights, Dr. Strangelove and Annie Hall are examined. Special attention will be given to those contemporary artists stretching the boundaries of and redefining traditional comedy (in SoHo’s performance art scene, Chicago’s Second City, Monty Python and Saturday Night Live) and their contribution through avant-garde theater techniques and improvisation to current film comedies.

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American Independent Film Milestones 1965-1990

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course surveys a group of groundbreaking films that laid the foundation for the emergence of the independent film movement as a major force in American cinema in the 1990s. These films represented models for a future generation of filmmakers who flew below Hollywood’s radar by adopting a DIY approach. We will study films by Andy Warhol, George Romero, Melvin Van Peebles, John Waters, Barbara Loden, John Cassavetes, David Lynch, Charles Burnett, John Carpenter, Bette Gordon, John Sayles, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee and Steven Soderbergh.

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New York on Film: The 1890s to the 1990s

One semester: 3 art history credits

This seminar-style course surveys New York City as a geographic location, a culture, an image, and a concept in visual media. Screenings and class topics will include Edison’s early film experiments, the first American public performances of motion picture films in 1890s Manhattan and the pre-Hollywood film industry. We will also view and discuss New York City on and behind the screen in noteworthy productions and film genres, including the silent film era, the Great Depression, mid-century urban film noir, the shifting postwar cultural landscape, the housing crisis and its ensuing displacement, and urban decay in the 20th century.

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Latin American Cinema

One semester: 3 art history credits

In this course we will study Latin American cinema from the 1960s to the present, examining the relationships among cinema and art, politics and social change. We will begin with the Third Cinema movement that emerged in Latin America under military dictatorships in the 1960s and 1970s. In the second part of the course, we will examine films made in the 1980s and 1990s that address memory during and after these regimes. Finally, we will consider a series of critically acclaimed contemporary films on topics such as gender and race; drug and human trafficking; neoliberalism; and segregation, periphery and violence. The course will pose the following questions: How have Latin American filmmakers, from the 1960s onward, portrayed the idea of “Latin America”? How have they negotiated their colonial past and their social and political history in their films? Is Latin American film different from European and U.S.? And if so, what distinguishes Latin American from Western film?

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Forbidden Images: Transgressive Cinema 

One semester: 3 art history credits

This international survey of films will examine often controversial works that explore or exploit taboo and morally objectionable material in many forms, from racism to sexual violence to mental health to death itself. Students registered for this course must give their written consent to view/discuss potentially triggering images and content and be ready to engage in a robust discussion of the film medium’s moral responsibility and its boundless potential to disturb. Featured films include works by directors such as D.W. Griffith, Jack Smith, Stanley Kubrick, Frederick Wiseman, Ken Russell, Fernando Arrabal, Sam Peckinpah, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Nagisa Oshima. 

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New York Animation

One semester: 3 art history credits

Mainstream animation is often coupled with Hollywood studios, yet many of the earliest examples of the art form were created in New York City where the production of animated films continues to thrive. In this course students will examine animation’s New York City roots and the iconic animators who paved the way for today’s artists. We will screen locally produced animation from many periods and explore how a variety of cultures thriving in New York City have impacted the evolution of animation. Sessions will include guest lectures from the animation community.

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Wandering in the Boneyard: The Horror Film Genre

One semester: 3 art history credits

As they say in the film biz, “horror travels.” Many cinematic giants began their journeys in horror, including Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Roman Polanski and Oliver Stone. This course will explore the genesis of the horror genre and its evolution over the last hundred years, generously supported by features, clips and guest lecturers. We will examine Lon Chaney’s groundbreaking work, masters such as George Romero, Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven, as well as European and Japanese horror films.

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The Language of the Goddess

One semester: 3 art history credits

In Western art history, the female nude is mostly depicted as the muse, the lover and the mistress while in prehistory—as early as 6,000 BCE—it symbolized goddesses in possession of matriarchal societies and civilizations. This course will examine female archetypes throughout art history, study the pre-neolithic figurines of the Mother Goddess, and reflect on the representation of the female body in our contemporary culture. We will research pioneering women and queer artists such as Ana Mendieta, Judy Chicago, Mary Beth Edelson, Genesis P-Orridge and Vaginal Davis who were part of the feminist and queer art movement in America, whose works were influenced by the symbolism of the fertility goddess and cults. We will also look at social movements such as ecofeminism and body positivity as well as examining the mythology, art and activism of matriarchal indigenous and black societies who are traditionally left out of the Western art canon.

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Who’s Looking? (The Function of Women in Film)

One semester: 3 art history credits

Film both reflects and generates ways in which women are seen and function in our culture. The development of feminist film criticism and theory has given women a perspective from which to challenge the male-dominated film industry. Women are fighting back as critics, scholars and filmmakers. This course examines, from a feminist position, films by such masters as Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese and takes a look at some current box-office biggies. Critical readings by Laura Mulvey, Meaghan Morris and Angela Carter will ground discussions of such issues as the relationship of aesthetics and politics, and the construction of gendered positions both on the screen and in the audience.

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Queer Current: Designs for Living

One semester: 3 art history credits

Since the emergence of “homosexuality” and “transsexuality” as identities in the late 19th century, queer culture has been relegated to the margins of American life, ancillary to and shaped by heterosexual norms. Yet the vast majority of queer people in the last 100 years have lived (to at least some degree) closeted lives, allowing them to exist in the mainstream while evolving distinctly non-normative identities. As America transitioned into a consumer culture, many queer people found themselves working in creative fields. How did their queerness, as an identity and a body of experience, shape their vision of the world, and how did they repackage this vision as the ideal of normality for mainstream America? Through the lenses of queer theory and theory and mainstream art and design history, this course focuses on the post-Stonewall era to explore how queer agency and notions of liberation move queerness into the mainstream. Film, television and time-based media that influenced evolving LGBTQ+ consciousness will be at the center of our discussions, as well queer creative practices in print and other 2D and 3D media. Each student will pursue a final research project exploring the evolution of that history and the practices they are developing. 

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Freak(y) Theory

One semester: 3 art history credits

Queer. Crazy. Crip. Freak. Bodies that, by virtue of existing, call into question the very notion of normality and functionality. Freak(y) theory expands on the scope of traditional queer-artistic practice to propose full-scale economic, political, epistemological and cultural experiments that seek to produce difference and equality at the same time. Taking on the conceptual concerns of queer theory, crip theory and mad studies, this course will examine the historical and performative manifestations of the “freak.” We will engage with critical literature, a wide variety of performance artifacts and our own performance practices to discover how “freaky” embodiment and aesthetics can disrupt normative social practices to generate, what Foucault once called, the “utopian body.” From freak shows to transhumanist net art, we will explore the survival strategies of those individuals deemed too sick, sexual and out of control by the dominant powers.

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Women Make Movies

One semester: 3 art history credits

During the 1970s, the feminist movement gave rise to a powerful wave of women filmmakers; they emerged on a worldwide scale, primarily in the independent sector. During the ’80s, the number of women directors increased, and one or two even penetrated that patriarchal monolith—the Hollywood film industry. We will examine the past 40 years of women’s filmmaking and also take a look at some of its antecedents. We will screen films by Chantal Akerman, Jane Campion, Julie Dash, Susan Seidelman, and others.

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Feminist Approaches to Media

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will combine the art history and art practice of the 20th and 21st centuries in order to familiarize students with different feminist media strategies: collage (beginning in the early 20th-century), performance and video (1970s-’80s), zines (1990s), as well as net art and social media (’90s-2000s). Accompanied by relevant readings (including Linda Nochlin, bell hooks and Lisa Nakamura), we will examine this era of feminist practice while adapting these mediums for students to explore in their own creative work.

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Modern Feminist Theory

One semester: 3 art history credits

Feminism is not a static concept that one can point to for a concrete definition. As an idea and an orientation toward the world, it resides in a contested space between patriarchal male privilege and confusion about what feminism actually means. This course seeks to unpack the ideas behind feminism, understand their histories and the narrative of the thought, while also examining the influence feminism has had on art making, specifically art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Through reading and studying diverse thinkers and artists (such as Adrian Piper, Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf) we will form a rigorous and nuanced understanding of what feminism is/was and, perhaps most crucially for this class, what the emancipatory struggle that defines feminism means for a new generation of artists.

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Transgender Visual Culture

One semester: 3 art history credits

Taking the transgender experience as a point of departure, this interdisciplinary seminar course will cover the junctures between identity politics and theories of representation. We will draw from the visual arts, philosophy, psychology and anthropology, among other disciplines, to look at the central features and concerns of queer theory and transgender identity. The focus of the course will be on the 21st century, with reference and consideration to historical trajectories of the past. Ultimately, this course is a proposal toward recognizing the intersections of, and interfaces mediating, transgender discourse and theories of representation, toward an understanding—if not theory—of contemporary transgender visual culture. 

AHD-2816

History of the Cartoon Image: From Greece to Manga and Emojis: Caricature, Satire, Politics and Humor

One semester: 3 art history credits

Visual artists have used the cartoon image throughout history in formats such as animation, graphic novels, instruction booklets, comic strips, comic books, political editorials, manuals, graphic design, illustrations, storyboards, posters, T-shirts, books, advertisements, greeting cards, magazines, newspapers and video games. From the ancient Greeks who used satirical imagery through the Japanese manga and Charlie Hebdo, the cartoon artist has a vital role in communicating ideas to a receptive public. This history will be closely examined along with the political and social contexts that support it.

AHD-2817

Comics Criticism

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will examine comics as an artistic medium and as a product of their social and historical context. Topics will include the superhero, horror, alternative and underground comics as well as newspaper strips. We will analyze comics using traditional techniques of literary criticism such as the study of symbolism, narrative structure, and character development, as well as visual analysis and recent innovations in literary theory such as semiotics, feminism, and postcolonialism. We will also discuss the influence of major historical events on the development of comics, shifts in audience base, and the relationship between comics as an art form and a mass medium.

AHD-2818

Beyond Genre: The Structure of Comics and Graphic Novels

One semester: 3 art history credits

Comics is a medium that has been stereotyped by genre: the superhero, the cartoon, the funny animal. Beyond these tropes is a complex visual, storytelling medium that utilizes a fusion of fragmented parts to create a unified narrative. Action and time are divided; words and images are separated. Yet, the flow of the story, the style and the layout merge it all back together. This course will examine a range of both historical and contemporary comics and graphic novels from a formal and structural standpoint. Topics will include the emotional and narrative impact of style in comics, the symbolic nature of the comics character, the dichotomy between words and images, images in sequence, and the structure of the page and the panel. Readings will come from American and European comics as well as Japanese manga and we will discuss their similar and divergent approaches to visual storytelling.

AHD-2823

Manga History

One semester: 3 art history credits

Serving as an overview of the history of manga, this course will discuss its early influences as far back as the 12th-century Chōjū jinbutsu giga to the modern day. We will survey prominent manga artists, the changing historical context their works were made in, the cultural impact they had, and the interaction between manga and Western comics over the course of several centuries. The goal of the course is to provide students with a basic timeline and understanding of manga history and the tools to critically dissect and examine comics as both historical objects and literary works.

AHD-2842

Understanding Kitsch

One semester: 3 art history credits

Although the etymology of the term is debatable, “kitsch” is generally understood to refer to the questionable aesthetic of mass-produced items created to appeal to crass, unrefined tastes. Since its emergence in the mid-1800s, artists have borrowed from and been inspired by this aesthetic; by the twentieth century, kitsch and high culture seemed at times to be so intertwined as to be indistinguishable. Championed by some as the “democratization” of taste and decried by others as catering to the lowest common denominator, kitsch embraces notions eschewed by arbiters of high culture, such as sentimentality, melodrama and cuteness. This course will discuss the culture and environment that gave birth to kitsch and its continued development. We will use kitsch as a vehicle for examining concepts that may shed light on how we view fine art objects, including an introduction to political, historical and psychoanalytical models of interpreting art; the origins of suburbia; and the difference between kitsch and propaganda. All of these topics are considered as we try to get to the root of the question: What makes fine art “art” and kitsch “kitsch”?

AHD-2947

Game Culture

One semester: 3 art history credits

Entering the mainstream in the 1970s and gaining popularity shortly thereafter, video games are cultural artifacts that warrant close examination and appreciation for their developing technologies, social and political critiques, entertainment value, creative expression, and more. Despite this, they have a negative reputation among some for being addictive and destructive, fueling an ongoing debate over their general worthiness. This course will focus on the complexity of video games by examining their history, changes in technologies, and general growth as a sophisticated and intricate storytelling medium. In addition to studying their formal elements, we will evaluate how developments in video games are informed by cultural, economic, social and creative influences, as well as the role that video games studies have played in addressing social concerns over the dominance and potential harm of games. We will draw on game theorists, historians, cultural critics, game designers, anthropologists, philosophers, and others to pose questions about games and their surrounding culture.

AHD-2951

Global Science and Art Today

One semester: 3 art history credits

Science and art combine naturally—like solutes in a solvent—because both aim to capture essences, discover underlying principles and express truth. This course covers the most recent discoveries in astronomy, biology, physics and psychology, as well as creations of contemporary art. The artists, many of whom have had significant training in science, have an approach that is at the core of the international art world today: the combination of the abstract, minimalist aesthetic with science in research-based studio practices to create powerful, artistic metaphors for the natural world and the human condition that incorporate insights from laboratories and telescopes around the world. 

AHD-3049

Modernism to Post-Postmodernism

One semester: 3 art history credits

You have heard of modernism and perhaps postmodernism. They present important issues in the arts but they embody ideas now 50 to 80 years old. Has nothing arisen to challenge them? Yes! But there is no one word for the critical developments across arts and culture these past 40 years. “Post-postmodernism” is one among many (and perhaps silly) terms, but it does embody the messy confusion in our times and shows an attempt to stuff it all back into some linear development. This course will outline the linear but concentrate on the messy parts, which means that art is one aspect of larger issues. First, the modern and modernism will be explored through well-known art forms of the first half of the 20th century. The same is done for a postmodernist period that emerges in the 1960s but takes hold more fully later in the century. During that time there also emerged impulses that commingle and counter the postmodernist reliance on irony and posthumanism in favor of issues more related to our contested 21st century. In the last part of this course, we will survey our attempt to reconcile the legacies of objectivity from post-humanist technology, digitization, sciences and engineering, into values shared between humans and the newly empowered object-world where visual art, technology and activist cultural forms function as “disobedient objects” in the age of the Anthropocene.

AHD-3051

Art in Theory: 1648-1900

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will focus on what became the central ideas that informed the European tradition of art theory and criticism. The goal is to acquaint students with the writings and ideas of these times, which were considered to be the foundation of what constitutes art and the art experience. 

AHD-3052

Art in Theory: 1900-1990

One semester: 3 art history credits

Important articles, manifestoes, and artists’ statements of the 20th century will be examined in this course. Lectures will connect the artwork produced during that time to these texts and offer a comprehensive understanding of both images and ideas. 

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Art and Emotion in 17th and 18th Centuries

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will focus on the art of the 17th and 18th centuries while addressing influential theoretical and philosophical writings about emotion, the senses, affection, the sublime, pleasure, the pursuit of happiness and humor. We will investigate a series of seminal writings by Descartes, Hobbes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Mandeville and Wollstonecraft. In terms of art historical styles, our class will focus mainly on paintings and sculptures from the baroque and rococo through Romanticism, neoclassicism and impressionism. Among the artists discussed are Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Charles Le Brun, Nicolas Poussin, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Marie Victoire Lemoine, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Artemisia Gentileschi, Louise Moillon, Caspar David Friedrich, J.M.W. Turner, Marguerite Gérard, John William Waterhouse, Eugène Delacroix, Angelica Kauffmann, Edmonia Lewis, Henry Fuseli, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Rosa Bonheur and Suzanne Valadon.

AHD-3054

Art and Perception

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will cover recent trends in the philosophy of art and aesthetics pertaining to the topic of perception. It comprises a general survey of the literature spanning the fields of the philosophy of art and aesthetics, cognitive psychology, philosophy, the philosophy of art and aesthetics, and educational pedagogy. We will begin outlining a definition of perception, then models of aesthetic perception, followed by debates about the cognitive and affective value of art, some ideas in developmental psychology pertaining to thereof, and finally studies about emotion and intentionality as they pertain to both artistic production and reception.

AHD-3055

Art and the Intimate

One semester: 3 art history credits

We engage the intimate through family relationships, gender and sexuality, and even the natural and architectural spaces we inhabit. Artists have played an important role in imagining intimacy as personal, sociopolitical and ecological practice. How do we express love and belonging? What can we learn through the intimate gaze? How does our intimacy reflect our identities? When does viewership become voyeurism, and what are the ethical considerations in relation to surveillance? From documentary photographic practices to experiential performative works, art invites us to consider intimacy as a rich ground for interrelating and investigating the human condition. We will explore the intimate in visual and performance art, as it intersects with human narratives, ethics, technology and politics. In community, we will investigate intimacy as both a personal journey into one’s private and interior world, and a research practice grounded in friendship, solidarity and collaboration.

AHD-3056

Art and Psychoanalysis in the Work of Modern and Contemporary Artists

One semester: 3 art history credits

Various psychoanalytic perspectives will be explored in this course through seminal artworks from the late 19th century to contemporary art. We will read significant writings in psychoanalysis, including those by Sigmund Freud, René Girard, Jacques Lacan, Laura Mulvey, Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous and Judith Butler. Modern and contemporary artists to be examined will include Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, Max Ernst, Remedios Varo, John Stezaker, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, Rachel Whiteread, Hans Bellmer, Cindy Sherman, Claude Cahun, Mary Kelly, Kiki Smith, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Rona Pondick, Helen Chadwick, Pipilotti Rist, Lyle Ashton Harris, Eva Hesse, Carrie Mae Weems, Marina Abramovic and Lygia Clark. 

AHD-3067

American Maverick Filmmakers

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will study the work trailblazing American filmmakers who worked outside the established aesthetic and narrative conventions of mainstream Hollywood cinema. These outsiders, risk-takers and misfits adopted their own stylistic approaches and subject matter, and in the process influenced subsequent generations of American directors. We will examine the innovative film grammar and storytelling approaches of such filmmakers as Samuel Fuller, Sam Peckinpah, Robert Altman, John Cassavetes, Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Stone, Melvin van Peebles, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Spike Lee, Mary Harron and Gus Van Sant. Through lecture and class discussion we will explore the idiosyncratic formal techniques and expressive properties of each film.

AHD-3078

The Sublime and Transcendence

One semester: 3 art history credits

The sublime is a little-understood idea; it has become a term of approval for those things we cannot do. Yet if we really examine the sublime, it is an experience of transcendence and moral connectedness; it is the aesthetic experience that most forcefully requires us to make contact with life. In this course we will investigate the sublime (chronologically and in the context of each theorist’s era) from Longinus to Albert Camus, and will examine how the concept of the experience of sublimity has been linked to the philosophical idea of the tragic—that both require a sort of moral re-attunement to life in the wake of such overwhelming experiences. Our explorations into past notions of the sublime will be used to try to answer the question of whether the sublime can be depicted in contemporary art and, most importantly, if the sublime has the capacity to speak to the modern world.

AHD-3079

Direct-to-Streaming: Netflix and the Streaming Platform

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course explores the specificity, history and functionality of subscription streaming services since their rise in the mid-2010s. We 

will undertake a critical analysis of selected works from each platform accompanied by academic scholarship and a close examination at the business models of several platforms with a focus on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Apple TV+. Beyond learning how to recognize and describe formal choices and techniques, students will be asked to engage in close readings of films, attending to the greater aesthetic significance and stakes of formal choices and innovations evident within a particular work.

AHD-3080

Netflix and Beyond: Exploring the World of Streaming

One semester: 3 art history credits

In this course we will delve into the world of subscription streaming services and their impact on our home entertainment viewing habits. Our focus will be on analyzing these services critically, exploring their history, functionality, and impact on the entertainment industry. We will pay special attention to the writers' and actors' strikes that have altered the media landscape. Throughout the course we will closely examine selected works from various streaming platforms, supported by academic scholarship. The primary focus will be on Netflix, with an emphasis on more specialized platforms such as Crunchyroll, Mubi, Shudder and The Criterion Channel. By studying these platforms, we aim to gain insights into their business models and how they have revolutionized the entertainment industry.

AHD-3085

Artists in the Archive

One semester: 3 art history credits

What is an archive? What does it mean to archive? What does it mean for an artist to work with archives? The term is at once a site, a method, an application, and can mean everything from compiling your grid on social media to safeguarding presidential records. Conceptually, archives are rife with opportunities to reinterpret, rewrite and rearrange the fragments that preserve, and thereby produce, memory. Readings, guest lectures and site visits will aid in our investigation of the restrictions of the archive, its potential as a tool in art-making and what occurs when an artist chooses to intervene. We will discuss contemporary artists who respond to the archives such as Camille Henrot and Jill Magid, as well as artists who prominently feature archives as large-scale installations, such as Theaster Gates and Gala Porras-Kim. Through final creative responses, students will explore and contest individual archives as formal institutions, repositories for evidence, community spaces and artworks.

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Critical Media Studies

One semester: 3 art history credits

Mediation has become an acknowledged and celebrated condition during a time when the visualized nature of a globalized world reconfigures our spheres of communication, values and evaluations in ways that require us to reconsider our relations to art-making. This course looks at the history of modern media as a change in tools and technology and at the media cultures they generate, with a decided stress on contemporary and emerging situations. The goal is to characterize and critically examine accepted and developing theories used to understand the real and hypothetical changes in local and global functions of media cultures. Students will participate in assigned exercises and develop and produce independent projects that combine research with textual and visual resources. A global perspective and some experience in Internet practices, web design and social media is a plus, but not required. 

AHD-3083

A Decolonial Art History 

One semester: 3 art history credits

Designed for artists to explore the history of the colonial experience and introduce postcolonial theory, this course offers case studies on a variety of artists who work with the subject to examine and challenge the universalist narratives of art history. As such, this course will aim to offer students a space to reconsider their historical context in its complexity and explore the potentiality of the contemporary moment despite all its problematics.

AHD-3086

Diversity in Practice

One semester: 3 art history credits

Contemporary art can be defined by diversity in medium, methodology and style. Many artists feel confined by media-specific approaches to studio practice and have learned to expand their repertoire to include any material that helps their ideas and identities come to life. Such an approach has also supported artists from diverse backgrounds who wish to integrate their particular set of cultural contexts into their art-making process. From textiles to technology, painting to cooking, science to literature, we can use the diverse fields of knowledge we have acquired both in and out of the studio to produce art that is meaningful, personal and entirely our own. This seminar-style course will be enhanced by regular investigations into art history and theory, poetry, music, science, history, and other areas of human expression that support a spirit of inquiry and curiosity.

AHD-3087

The Diasporas Emerge: Filling in the Gaps

One semester: 3 art history credits

In this course we will comb through the Western European canon of art and history to trace the roots of important black, Latino and indigenous thinkers, artists, poets and musicians who have shaped the politics, culture and representations of modern and contemporary art. We will delve into an array of historical, decolonial and philosophical texts and source materials to expand our knowledge and understanding of the canon by unearthing the contradictions inherent in the legacy of Western European Enlightenment and imperialism. Students will be presented with two case studies. The first will be surrealism, its relationship to the Négritude movement and the influence of the Blues. We will read and unpack thinkers such as Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter and Franklin Rosemont. For the second, we will look at New York City in the late 1970s and ‘80s to unpack the cross-pollination of the arts in the city, through the lens of Martha Rosler, Jeff Chang and the poetry of Pedro Pietri to expand our knowledge of the canon to include those influential poets, musicians and artists from Chinatown, Loisaida and the South Bronx that were left behind.

AHD-3089

The Interdisciplinary Black Arts

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will introduce students to the art and ideas of the Black Arts Movement (BAM). During the 1960s, BAM artists created aesthetic counterparts to Black self-determination and community solidarity, from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York. Creating new relations to Black publics on a local, grassroots level and to diasporic politics and the African continent on a transnational level, artists broke with the limitations of painting and sculpture by blending mediums and fostering awareness of the physical and social environment. Starting from art history as our home discipline, the course will ask how BAM artists extended visual art in poetic, performative and musical directions. What were the expressions of freedom and celebration of Black social life that emerged out of this moment and how do they correlate to the present? How were they conveyed through different aesthetic strategies that can inform artists today? 

AHD-3092

Intersectionality and Art

One semester: 3 art history credits

How is Western art history related to power in terms of gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, nationality, age, or ability? When Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” she addressed the inability of law to acknowledge discrimination that occurs across both race and gender. Since then, intersectionality has become a useful theoretical tool for discussing complex questions related to identity formation, social ordering, representation, equity and social justice. In this course we look at art-making through the lens of intersectionality through lectures, discussions, writing assignments, art projects and museum visits. This critical inquiry will enhance our understanding of our own role as makers and creators in the 21st century. 

AHD-3096

Beyond the Veil: Orientalism and Visual Culture

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course takes as its target the thorny subject of Orientalism and its relationship to the history of visual expression. What is Orientalism, and what does it have to do with art, image-making, or even film? How does Orientalism differ from cultural appropriation, “primitivism,” “Chinoiserie,” or “Japonism”? Is Orientalism just another name for “othering” and deeming the unfamiliar as inferior to one’s own? Does Orientalism itself have a history, and if so, what does that history look like? More importantly, is Orientalism dead? In this course we study these questions through image-making, museum visits and persuasive writing. We will examine the development of Orientalism in art, tracking its emergence in history and tracing its path as a field of ethnographic study to its use as a literary and visual discourse, as introduced by Edward Said in the 1978 and as developed and critiqued by later authors. This course will expand our understanding of the complex relationships between the East and the West and reveal to what extent our understanding of these relationships, which form the background of art-making, have changed and still call for change in our own work as makers and creators working in the 21st century. 

AHD-3109

Black American Aesthetics: “Who shall let this world be beautiful”

One semester: 3 art history credits

The contributions of African Americans to American aesthetic thought are deeper than the popularly identifiable, though rightly canonical, Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement. As such, this course seeks to shine a light on a little investigated, but profoundly important, field of American philosophy: African-American aesthetics. Thinkers and artists as diverse as W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Romare Bearden, Samella Lewis, Amiri Baraka, Paul C. Taylor, Toni Morrison, Charles T. Davis, Barbara Smith, Darby English and Christina Sharpe have all engaged with and contributed to how we might approach Blackness and art in America. Broadly conceived as an intellectual history course, students will read art, literary and race theory to gain a deeper understanding of how African-American aesthetic philosophy has shaped American thought and art-making. 

AHD-3111

Art and Politics

One semester: 3 art history credits

In this course we examine perennial and contemporary issues in art and politics by a close reading of the remarkable oeuvre of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and an inquiry into the manifold influence of his thought. We read together his important works on aesthetics (Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, Letter to D’Alembert on the Theatre), politics (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, On the Social Contract), and education (Emile). We also examine his Confessions, and how it helped shape our ideas of the value of the individual, of self-examination and of authenticity. We will make use of occasional secondary sources to illuminate these works, but will mostly rely on careful attention to the texts themselves. Finally, we examine some of the manifold legacy of this extraordinary thinker in the art of Romanticism, as well as in history, ethics and politics. Throughout, we will examine the values of equality, individuality and self-examination that underlay the work of this remarkable figure and continue to influence and challenge us today. 

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Irony and Beauty

One semester: 3 art history credits

Irony is a puzzling concept, far deeper than the dictionary definition: “Irony is the act of using words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning.” If this were the case, all sarcasm would be irony and the truly ironic act would be nothing more than cheap theatrics. Thankfully, real irony is hard to come by. It is rooted in something more than cleverness, just as beauty is more than simply being pretty. The idea of beauty is, at its core, a moment of transcendence, an experience of something greater than the tangible world has to offer. When done well, irony is a concentrated disaffection with what has been presented as truth; it is a mode of rebellion. Can beauty and irony co-exist or are they mutually exclusive? Is there any irony in the paintings of Barnett Newman or is it all deadly serious? Has irony become too easy? And has beauty ceased to answer any real questions? These are the issues we will address as we try to reconcile these seeming opposites.

AHD-3140

Memory and History in Film

One semester: 3 art history credits

A range of issues will be addressed in this course, all intended to explore the relationship between history and memory in the films of Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, Andrei Tarkovsky and Alexander Kluge. How do the modernist and postmodernist discourses of memory and history take shape in these filmmakers’ works? Questions crucial to the understanding of how cinema (re)works the ideas of history and memory through representation will be raised. What is the nature of this relationship? How do individual and social memories intersect? We will attempt to answer these and other questions as we trace the trajectories of two forces—memory and history—always at odds with each other in the films of these directors.

AHD-3142

New Issues in Contemporary Art

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course aims to examine the most recent trends in art, starting with the major technological changes of the 19th century (particularly the invention of recording devices and synthetic images) and progressing to the most recent issues raised by artificial intelligence, new media, metaverse, database aesthetics, or NFTs). This study will help us understand the origins of what we still refer to as “contemporary art” from a new perspective, as well as its evolution from a technical and philosophical standpoint. It will be based on the analysis of numerous works of art, as well as discussions with guest lecturers (theorists and artists) whose work is associated with these current changes.

AHD-3145

Issues in Contemporary Art: Globalism

One semester: 3 art history credits

We will focus our attention this semester on the impact/influence of globalism on visual culture and contemporary art. On one hand, we will frame the idea of “globalism” by rifling through the bones of history, including post-World War II distribution networks and postcolonial legacies that begin to manifest in art in the 1960s and ’70s. On the other hand, we will investigate various exhibition formats, artists, audiences, narratives, circumstances and more (emphasis on the 1980s to the present), all of which contributed to the thrilling complexity of “worldwide visual culture” and the “global communication continuum.” As Guy Davenport stated, “Art is the attention we pay to the wholeness of the world.” This idea will be our starting point.

AHD-3147

Contemporary Painting

One semester: 3 art history credits

Interesting things have been happening in the medium of painting. It has died, come back as a zombie, imitated computer screens, looked lazy; it has indulged in narrative, it has emerged, it has been resurrected and died a few more times along the way. This course will provide an account of painting’s recent history—the major trends, theories and conversations that have defined the medium from the 1980s to the present. It will be our task to chart these developments and understand the strategies, arguments and narratives at play. We will explore this question from a variety of angles, including an account of defining artists and exhibitions, an engagement with theory and criticism, and in the act of looking—all toward the goal of understanding the situation of painting in the present.

AHD-3163

The Hall of Mirrors: Painting in Space and Time

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will explore painting as a condenser of cultural acts, tensions and contradictions leading up to the beginning of the 21st century. We will identify global semiotics that do not necessarily depend on the picture plane to manifest themselves. By assimilating multi-mediatic signs in our cultural environment as part of constellations that constitute image-making, our discussion will invite various artistic and scientific dis-courses ranging from late-modern ontotheologies, BLM, materialist psychiatry and Tijuana Bibles to culture jamming, the Talking Heads, Beyoncé and Childish Gambino. These “pictorial textures” will centrifuge painting as an ever-shifting (none) center affected by historical, economic and sociological genealogies. This course attempts a historical revision of the artistic renaissances and their transformation into academicism, passing through at least three different modernities and focusing on the possibilities of escaping late-modernity. We will understand our subjects as a partial cultural progression of the renaissances, examining them across a capitalist economy that starts in mercantilism, passes through capitalism and is currently located in a kind of neo-feudalist space. Our objective is emergence from the cave of late-modernity: to prevent our existence from turning dangerously nihilistic too fast, making painting a meaningful basis of being in a seemingly desolate contemporary landscape.

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Ideas in Art: 1960 to the Present

This course will examine the developments of modern and contemporary art from the 1960s to the present. Topics might include a variety of themes and movements such as pop art, minimalism, postminimalism, conceptual and performance art alongside issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and identity.

AHD-3212

15 Weeks/15 Artists

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will examine the influences of 15 notable post-World War II artists, one per class session. The study will include the art they created and readings of critical responses to their work, as well as their own writings. We will consider the legacies they inherited and what they have left behind in order to develop an understanding of what makes these artists some of the most important creative contributors of this era. Artists include Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Joseph Beuys, Robert Smithson, Donald Judd, George Maciunas, Cindy Sherman, Richard Tuttle, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Vito Acconci, Eva Hesse and John Baldessari. Readings and research papers will be assigned.

AHD-3261

Art, Activism and the Public Space

One semester: 3 art history credits

At a moment of extreme geopolitical unrest, the work of many artists showing in public spaces intersects with political activism and social justice causes. In a time of struggles for racial and social equality and immigrant rights, and against gentrification and police violence, public art amplifies activism, resistance and solidarity. This course is dedicated to the study of public art, activism and social practice. Its goal is to build a platform for understanding by examining the history and conceptual framework of public art in New York City, and beyond. We will examine works of artists and collectives like The Yes Men, The Center for Artistic Activism, Hank Willis Thomas, Banksy, and many more, and explore questions such as whether art can truly contribute to social justice. Visiting artists involved in socially engaged art will discuss their work and advise students on their projects. Recent guests have included Pablo Helguera, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Dread Scott, William Powhida, Shimon Attie, Ernesto Pujol and Mary Mattingly. This course provides an opportunity for students to discover the mechanisms of the nonprofit world while working on their own art interventions. 

AHD-3262

The Artist as Activist: A Case Study

One semester: 3 art history credits

Building on the theoretical framework provided in AHD-3261, Art, Activism and the Public Space, this course will focus on planning, creating and delivering our own activist art interventions. All art genres can be explored, from performance to video, photography, printed matter, AR, and more. Students will read texts that will help clarify the goals, ethics and complexities of the field. In small groups, students will create a public art project that is artistically relevant, socially conscious and/or politically disruptive. Logistical planning to support such work (including the basics of cultural production, proposal writing, budgeting and documentation) will be included. Students will also have opportunities to observe and assist in socially concerned art fieldwork for their own research purposes, and to gain experience engaging communities directly. 

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Art and Activism

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course addresses the cultural responses to social crises in the 20th century. Focusing on the international movements in art since the 1960s, artists to be discussed include Joseph Beuys, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Group Material and the public art projects of Gran Fury, the Guerrilla Girls and Act Up. Topics covered range from artists’ involvement in the protests against the Vietnam War, Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America and the civil rights movement, as well as artistic responses to the AIDS crisis, domestic violence, etc. The course covers the historical background behind these unconventional art practices in lectures and through student research. The semester culminates in the development of a final project that will take the form of an activist work (i.e., an exhibition, event, artwork) to be designed by the class. Guest speakers will be featured.

AHD-3370

Influences in Contemporary Interiors

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will address and clarify the influences contributing to today’s interiors and the theoretical and practical sources of inspiration that have formed contemporary dynamic design structure. The work of significant interior designers, trends and contributions, and related developments in architecture, furniture, industrial design, technology and art is discussed. Attention is paid to what influences and inspires interior design today, including environment, structure, sustainability, function, technology, materials, resources, changing of values, international influence, social and cultural issues, economic developments, reverberations of the past, globalization, and vernacular presences, aesthetical trends, and cultural and psychological identities. Through an interdisciplinary approach, topics are presented through lectures, digital images, discussions, field trips, guest speakers, student presentations, videos and film clips. 

AHD-3404

Experimental Movies: 1918 to 1980

One semester: 3 art history credits

The history of experimental movies within the century of modernism is the focus of this course. Within the context of constructivism, surrealism and Dada we will examine the first avant-garde cinema—films produced in Europe and the Soviet Union between 1920 and 1930. Then we will look at experimental film in the U.S. between 1944 and 1980 in relation to abstract expressionist, minimalist and conceptual art. Filmmakers to be studied include: Vertov, Buñuel, Dulac, Man Ray, Deren, Brakhage, Snow, Lynch, Van Sant. Students are required to attend five screenings or exhibitions outside of class (chosen from a list of 30) and to keep a written journal about them.

AHD-3821

Vernacular Video

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will look at how the Internet has changed video production, in terms of new genres (unboxing videos, watching video games, surveillance, tutorials, fan edits), formats (Vines, Stories, YouTube, Twitch, live streaming) and audiences. We will address questions of authorship such as the dissolution of the author/viewer dichotomy, genre as author, changing production and power structures, and new distribution methods. Though the course will focus on web- and app-based video, and consider these questions in regard to important precursors such as photography, home movies and television along with the vernacular’s impact on contemporary mainstream media. Throughout the course, artists’ approaches will be emphasized and students will learn to make their own video work for digital platforms with these ideas in mind. 

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Video Art as Avant-Garde Practice

One semester: 3 art history credits

Early pioneers of independent film—such as Maya Deren and John Cassavetes—were deeply critical of the big-budget Hollywood films of their day. They responded by making low-budget films that thoughtfully used film media in new and unique ways, and by distancing them from cinematographic standards. Students will be encouraged to deconstruct conventional forms of narrative. We will approach video in ways that look beyond the technical, highlighting hidden mechanisms and methodologies. New technologies ultimately affect our reality and contemporary culture; that proximity enables us to have a basic understanding and use of the moving image beginning as early stages of childhood. We will analyze different format references, including video installation, web projects and film, among other media, exploring cinema in its expanded form. The course will draw on a rich body of readings.

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Rewriting the Hit: Video Art and Music Videos

One semester: 3 art history credits

In the entertainment industry, a hit is a song that peaks in popularity and often quickly fades away. That hit resonates in many people’s lives and experiences, becoming a powerful signifier with potential for creating narratives. As such, the hit has come to be one of the most important myths and myth-makers of our times. French philosopher Roland Barthes said that myth is, in its most basic form, a special type of speech. Barthes used the term “myth” while analyzing the popular. This course will have a specific focus on how celebrity culture, media and the self are attached to the hit, and its potential for creating subjectivities. We will analyze different hits through the history of popular music, and study its representations and effects in the collective consciousness. Students will create critical responses to the hit while developing an understanding of cinematic tropes and techniques. The course will draw on a rich body of readings and moving images references.

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The Experimental, Electronic Moving Image: 1965 to the Present

One semester: 3 art history credits

The development of what has been called video art will be examined, from the “TV” installations of Nam June Paik to the current proliferation of video in galleries and museums. This course will consider video as a medium struggling to define itself as an art form, and the contradictions in doing so in the postmodern era. In addition, we will look at electronic and digital technology, not only in terms of representation, but also as delivery systems. How have the web, YouTube and video games redefined the moving image? Included are screenings of pioneering video makers such as Wegman, Acconci, Viola and web-based work by such artists as David Lynch and Marina Zurkow. Outside of class viewing of recommended installations is required.

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The Art of the Steal

One semester: 3 art history credits

Picasso’s famous idiom “Good artists borrow, great artists steal” summarizes much more than his own personal work and conviction. It encapsulates centuries of phenomena that have occurred between cultures and individuals who influenced, cross-pollinated, borrowed and, most importantly, stole from one another. In this course we will cover periods ranging from the ancient Greco-Roman, to the medieval, modernity and postmodernity, as well as the contemporary art world. Topics include visual art, literature and occasionally music. We will address the inevitable problematics that occur with cultural appropriation, but mainly focus our studies on appropriation and influence among artists. Readings will be assigned weekly and each session will consist of lectures and class discussions.

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Surrealism

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course will examine the social, artistic and political background out of which (and often against which) the surrealist movement began in the 1920s in Paris and surrealism’s particular relationships to the modernist art movements that preceded it, particularly its immediate ancestor, Dada. The course will survey the various sources of surrealist inspiration and ideas in the areas of literature, psychology, art and philosophy. It will cover surrealist drawing and painting, sculpture, photography and film as well as surrealism’s invention and cultivation of multimedia techniques, games and exercises that aimed to free image, object, language and experience from the constraints of traditional form and practice. We will explore surrealism’s many paradoxes, including its highly problematic relationship to Woman (as fantastic object of its unrelenting passion) and women (as real members and associates of the movement), and its ambivalent position regarding popular culture.

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Being and Seeing

One semester: 3 art history credits

Images shape, alter and transform what we see and what we think: Where do they stand in our experiential path to ascribe meaning to our idea of reality? How do they condition our way of seeing and thinking and how we all see not quite the same, and all of what is perceived is still real? As we live immersed in a bulimic state of overexposure to a multitude of often no longer discernible information, this course intends to provide new insights to reflect upon the perception we have toward ourselves as individuals, as human beings, and our physical and cultural environment, and to question who we are through what we see. Being and Seeing will explore visually and verbally the conceptual and the experiential in the realm of the lens-based arts, and will integrate theory, criticism and art practice in a multifaceted cultural environment open to other fields of inquiry: science, literature and philosophy. The goal is to achieve an integrated knowledge and develop a personal vision along a path of creative expression. Students can expect to learn not only about the visual and the verbal language at the core of this course, but also reflect on their respective practices and fields of investigation. The main topics addressed from a conceptual and experiential standpoint will be: reality, language and limit; time, space and light; point of view, interpretation and truth.

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Altered States: Under the Influence

One semester: 3 art history credits

Experiences of spontaneous visions and altered perceptions are common in the telling of art history. Countless artists have had experiences that go beyond those that are granted by the “ordinary” five senses. Some artists have dabbled in drugs to bring about these visions; others are haunted by illness that can impose hallucinations or a sense of otherworldliness. This course will examine the role of intoxicants (with particular attention to psychedelics) and other induced states as creative inspiration for works of art from 1850 to today. Topics will include: why these altered states are fascinating to artists, the kinds of inspiration that can be gained from going beyond the physical world, the creative dangers of toying with altered states of consciousness.

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Altered States: Ritual, Magic and Meditation

One semester: 3 art history credits

Events like Burning Man draw hundreds of people into the desert to commune with one another and experience a state that exists beyond the limits of ordinary existence. It is a ritual that seems at once to be both a throwback to a more primitive era and a quest for contemporary answers to age-old questions. But what does this resurgence of interest in the visionary realm mean? By examining the cultural lineage of these events—Eastern and Western religious traditions, occultism, spiritualism and channeling, meditative practices, the concepts of primitivism and the “native mind,” we will trace how they have influenced the history of art and culture. Artworks from the cave paintings at Lascaux to the present will be considered in light of these belief systems, with particular emphasis placed upon the 19th and 20th centuries.

AHD-3994

Introduction to Visual Culture

One semester: 3 art history credits

We are an imagistic culture in which images from a wide range of sources communicate and shape values more forcefully than the written texts, museums and art market. This increases the power of your creations for use in the “society of the spectacle” as you become a shaper of cultures and subcultures. This course examines the elements of that power in visual culture(s). Topics range across many media, often selected from your own academic interests, for their consequences in the meaning and understanding of “culture.” We analyze contemporary myth, the hero and heroine, the use of stereotypes and icons, and attitudes toward gender, race and ethnicity conveyed, consciously and unconsciously, in visual forms. Critical approaches such as semiotics, cultural analysis and psychoanalytic perspectives are introduced to explore how cultural norms are established and to help you clarify your own position. Readings are from the sociology of media, film and visual theory, applied design and graphics, fashion and advertising, popular culture, and gender studies. Final visual projects and a brief paper are required at the end of this course.

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Senior Seminar

One semester: 3 art history credits

This course examines in depth a specific theme or conflict relevant to contemporary art practice. Through focused readings and rigorous class discussions, students will gain knowledge and understanding of current issues relevant to their senior thesis work.