AHD-1040 / AHD-1045 History and Theory of Modern Art I and II

Two semesters: 1.5 art history credits per semester

Intended to link the visual with the theoretical and the historical, this course will survey the relationship of art to its changing composition of ideas in a globalized context. Topics include: the contested concepts of the “modern,” modernism and primitivism; the emergence of abstraction; the invention of photography, collage and the found object. We will trace the development of modern art in the 19th and 20th centuries. As a model for analyzing contemporary practice, the conceptual structure of the avant-garde will be studied historically in this course.

HHD-1040 Political History of the Modern World: 18th and 19th Centuries

One semester: 1.5 humanities and sciences credits

This course will examine three significant themes unique to the modern era: 1) the struggle for individual rights; 2) the expansion of capitalism; 3) the increasing prominence of government as an agent for social change. These themes are traced from the founding of the United States and the dissolution of the European monarchies through the rise of the nation state.

HHD-1045 Political History of the Modern World: 19th and 20th Centuries

One semester: 1.5 humanities and sciences credits

This course is a continuation of the themes and events covered in HHD-1040, Political History of the Modern World: 18th and 19th Centuries, ending with the fall of 20th-century nation states.

HLD-1827 / HLD-1828 Why Modernism? Part I and II

Two semesters: 1.5 humanities and sciences credits per semester

What happened in literature while the visual arts, music and dance made their fundamental break from traditional forms? This course will examine the parallel problems of expression and composition that literature shared with the other arts.

HMD-1050 Modern Philosophy: 18th and 19th Centuries

One semester: 1.5 humanities and sciences credits

This course will introduce some of the key Western philosophical ideas, from the period of the European Enlightenment to the dawn of the 21st century. Through readings by Hume, Kant, Rousseau, Marx and Nietzsche we will examine central terms within the variety of philosophical trends and disputes of each period, including empiricism, political philosophy and aesthetic theory.

HMD-1055 Modern Philosophy: 20th Century

One semester: 1.5 humanities and sciences credits

This course will introduce some of the key Western philosophical ideas from the 20th century and into to the dawn of the 21st century. Through readings by Freud, William James, Camus, Sartre, De Beauvoir, Weber, Fanon, Heidegger we will examine central terms within the variety of philosophical trends and disputes of each period, including empiricism, political philosophy and aesthetic theory.

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-3145 Issues in Contemporary Art Globalism—New Patterns of Practice, Shifting Grounds of Discourse

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 post-Colonial 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.

HLD-2123 Human and Divine