Honors Program

Core Art History and Humanities Curriculum

First-Year Requirements in Art History

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, these courses 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 these courses.

First-Year Requirements in Humanities and Sciences

At the completion of the foundation-year Honors Program, students will receive exemptions from foundation-year humanities requirements, and will have fulfilled the Humanities Distribution Requirement (HDR) in History.

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 20th Century One semester:

1.5 humanities and sciences credits

This course is a continuation of the themes and events covered in HHD-1040, and will explore the 20th century as an age of war and ideology, social conflict and change, technological transformation and globalization.

HLD-1827 / HLD-1828

Modern Writing and Narrative Technique I and II

Two semesters: 1.5 humanities and sciences credits per semester What is modernity and what is modernism in the arts? What happened in literature while the visual arts, music and dance made their fundamental break from traditional forms? How do we account for the complex and puzzling literary techniques of the modern age? These courses will examine the parallel problems of expression and composition that literature shared with the other arts, to empower students in the many ways they will be writing. It analyzes turning points in modern writing and narrative technique (e.g., realism, point of view, subjectivism, abstraction, time-compression, stream of consciousness, montage, absurdism) and how these have mattered for the visual arts.

HMD-1050

Modern Philosophy and Critical Theory: 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 and Critical Theory: 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 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.

Second-Year Requirement in Art History

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. Successful completion of AHD-2010 will exempt Honors Program students from AHD-1010 through AHD-1021.

Third-Year Requirement in Art History

Third-year Honors students are required to take one of the following courses.

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 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.

Second- and Third-Year Requirements in Humanities and Sciences

Students must take at least four of the following Honors Program humanities courses during their second and third years of study. They may take these courses as their schedules allow, keeping in mind that 12 humanities credits from this list must be completed during this time. It is recommended that students take at least one of these honors humanities courses per semester. Students must choose at least one course from three of the following four areas:

Literature – HLD prefix

Philosophy and Cultural Studies – HMD prefix

Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology – HPD prefix

Science – HSD prefix

By the end of their third year of the Honors Program, students will have completed all Humanities Distribution Requirements (HDR).

HLD-2123

Human and Divine