Courses

Fall 2013

Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Networks as Art, Networks as Art History Course Number: R1B Section 1 | CCN: 04853

This course will examine models of connectivity and interaction in relation to human cognition and cultural production. Critical readings will include Bateson, Luhmann, Manovich, Deleuze, Lima, Tufte and Bertin. ...

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Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Blackness and Visuality Course Number: R1B Section 2 | CCN: 04856

Seulghee Lee

“Blackness” designates both the constitutive marker of the odious Enlightenment concept of “race” as well as the cultural life that emerges despite and beyond that mark. Since “blackness” also already designates this foundational tension as a problem of the visual field, one mightprivilege sight as a way to...

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Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Tativille Course Number: R1B Section 3 | CCN: 04859

What is the Metropolis?  Or rather, what is meant by Metropolis?  In 1973, the Italian philosopher – and eventual mayor of Venice – Massimo Cacciari offered the following response: “the Metropolis,” he concluded, “is the general form assumed by the...

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Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Freedom of Expression: Modern Art and Politics Course Number: R1B Section 4 | CCN: 04862

Amy Kim

This course explores the relationship between art and politics through a focus on the theme of the freedom of expression in the twentieth century. Although it is often assumed that certain forms of art are covered under the First Amendment...

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Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Art and Space: Tian’anmen Since 1911 Course Number: R1B Section 5 | CCN: 04865

Yi Yi (Rosaline) Kyo

Since 1911, the area of Tian’anmen Gate and Square has gone through major spacial and architectural renovations. Along with these physical changes, the area has developed into a highly charged space for political theatre and protest. This class will consider artworks in...

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Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Ambiguities Course Number: R1B Section 6 | CCN: 04868

Catherine Telfair

Much of the study of art history involves the identification and categorization of objects, and the resulting articulation of a stylistic and historical trajectory for the development of art. This endeavor, important as it is for our understanding of art...

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Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Greek Athletics in Ancient Art Course Number: R1B Section 7 | CCN: 04871

Erin Babnik

This course is intended to allow students with an interest in art history to develop the basic writing, reading, research, and analysis skills that are necessary for formulating or engaging with substantive ideas about visual media. As a means to...

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Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: The Art of Memory and Memorial Culture Course Number: R1B Section 8 | CCN: 04874

Keerthi Potluri

This course interrogates the relationship between art and the archive of memory. How does art inspire, sustain, and foreclose memory, and in what ways does the impulse to remember influence the creation of art? In particular, what do minimalist and postmodern sculpture...

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Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Tativille Course Number: R1B Section 9 | CCN: 04876

What is the Metropolis?  Or rather, what is meant by Metropolis?  In 1973, the Italian philosopher – and eventual mayor of Venice – Massimo Cacciari offered the following response: “the Metropolis,” he concluded, “is the general form assumed by the...

[Show more]

Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Networks as Art, Networks as Art History Course Number: R1B Section 10 | CCN: 04857

 This course will examine models of connectivity and interaction in relation to human cognition and cultural production. Critical readings will include Bateson, Luhmann, Manovich, Deleuze, Lima, Tufte and Bertin. ...

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Art and Architecture in Japan Course Number: HA 35 | CCN: 04898

Gregory Levine

This course—and introductory survey—asks you to look precisely at art and architecture in or associated with Japan, doing so with a sort of “double-vision.” By this I mean the following: we can, and should, study a work’s visual-material and contextual...

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Introduction to the Italian Renaissance Course Number: HA 62 | CCN: 04909

Lisa Regan

The Italian Renaissance is often described as the beginning of modernity. This is because the Renaissance is the first coherent articulation of a number of ideas – from the role of the individual within society to the rise of capitalism...

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Theories and Methods of Art History Course Number: HA 100 | CCN: 04910

Whitney Davis

Required of majors in History of Art. This course introduces theories and methods of art history that have played a major role in its intellectual and professional formation from the later eighteenth century to the present day. The approach is...

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Introduction to Islamic Art and Architecture (Also Near Eastern Studies C121A) Course Number: HA C121A | CCN: 04922

Heba Mostafa

This course introduces the art and architecture of the Islamic world, examining transformations from pre-Islam up to the present. The course explores the main features of the built environment of Muslim communities throughout the Central Islamic lands, Central Asia and...

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Sacred Arts in China Course Number: HA 131A | CCN: 04934

Patricia Berger

This course deals with two millennia of art that was produced in China to serve ritual purposes and especially with the role that images played in defining doctrine and belief in two traditions: Daoism and Buddhism.  We begin with a look...

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Letters & Science Big Ideas Course: Art and Science in the Middle Ages (Also History C188A) Course Number: HA C156B | CCN: 05027

Massimo Mazzotti

In this course we explore the intersections of art and science in medieval, modern, and contemporary history. Our aim is twofold. First, to show the close interaction between these two fields, and of the way in which historically they have...

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The Dutch Golden Age Course Number: HA 172 | CCN: 04970

Elizabeth Honig

In the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic (what we now call Holland) was home to a rich and unique visual culture; it was also perhaps the first truly modern society. In this course, we will study Dutch pictures with a...

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Visual Culture in Early Modern France: Renaissance to Enlightenment Course Number: HA 175 | CCN: 04982

Todd Olson

This course will examine French art and visual culture from the 16th century to the mid-18th century. Beginning with the architecture, processions, painting, prints and decorative arts of the School of Fontainebleau, the course addresses the development of the Royal...

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Histories of Photography Course Number: HA 182 | CCN: 04994

Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Julia Bryan-Wilson

This course examines the history and strangeness of this medium from its simultaneous invention in more than one country during the early nineteenth century to its practice by artists (and non-artists) today. We will introduce students to the rich theoretical...

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Sculpture Since Rodin Course Number: HA 186A | CCN: 05014

Jessica Maxwell

By 1900, famous sculptor Auguste Rodin and others of his cohort successfully renovated the traditional practice of sculpture — the academic modeling of ideal figures based on neoclassical precedents in celebration of national heroes, institutions and middle class values. In its place, arose the beginning...

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Ancient Portraiture and Biography (Also Classics 130) Course Number: HA 190B / Classics 130 | CCN: 05015

Christopher Hallett

Important individuals in Greek and Roman society were commemorated both in honorific portraits—bronze and marble statues set up in public places—and in biographies written to record for posterity their lives and achievements.  In this class we will be reading a...

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Theory of the Copy (Also Rhetoric 189.2) Course Number: HA 190F.3 | CCN: 05058

Winnie Wong

The course surveys critical controversies surrounding fakes, forgeries, imitations, and appropriations from the Late Renaissance to the present day, in European, American, Australian and Chinese art. Each of the images and objects we will examine sparked extensive debates in art...

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Whistler to Whiteread: Art in Britain since 1875 Course Number: HA 190G | CCN: 05065

Rather than offering a broad survey, this lecture course will examine some of the key episodes and developments in British art in the period, from J.A.M. Whistler’s radical Falling Rocket—a painting so apparently slapdash and formless that it led to a...

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Undergraduate Seminar: Representing the Body in Indian Art Course Number: HA 192A | CCN: 05066

Figural art, both in the form of sculpture and painting, comprises much of art production from India. There is a wide variety in the modes of depicting the human body – over time, region, and across media. In this seminar...

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Undergraduate Seminar: Mural Painting in the Ancient Americas Course Number: HA 192B | CCN: 05067

Lisa Trever

In this seminar we will study the mural paintings of palaces, temples, and tombs from pre-Hispanic Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru. Our corpus includes the ancient Maya sites of San Bartolo, Bonampak, Xultún, and Calakmul; Teotihuacan and Cacaxtla in Central Mexico...

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Undergraduate/Graduate Seminar: The Alterity of Ornament Course Number: HA 192D.2 / HA 262 | CCN: 05303

Todd Olson

Instructor Approval Required This course proposes to explore the Renaissance origins of three closely interrelated stylistic categories, the Gothic, grotesque, and arabesque, and the ways in which they engage with the perceived alterity of ornament.  Both the Gothic and grotesque were...

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Undergraduate/Graduate Seminar: New Perspectives on Flemish and French Tapestry, 1600–1800 Course Number: HA 192E / HA 270 | CCN: 04854

Visiting Professor Koenraad Brosens

Despite the fact that tapestry played a pivotal role in the art, liturgy, and propaganda of the courts and churches of late medieval and early modern Europe, in later centuries the medium was long and largely overlooked by art historians...

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Undergraduate/Graduate Seminar: Readings in African American Art / Black Visual Culture Course Number: HA 192F.1 / HA 281 | CCN: 05069

Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby

Undergraduates—instructor approval required.   Room share with African American Studies 144 and African American Studies 240. This seminar entails intensive reading of books on the visual representation of and by African Americans from the 19th to 21st centuries, including photography, painting, sculpture...

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Undergraduate/Graduate Seminar: Visuality, Virtuality and Visibility Course Number: HA 192F.3 / HA 290.1 | CCN: 05075

Whitney Davis

Instructor Approval Required. The seminar develops and tests a comprehensive framework for analysis of pictoriality in the visual field, deploying certain traditions of art-historical reasoning in combination with intellectual resources drawn from philosophical psychology (especially the theory of depiction), visual studies...

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Teaching History of Art Pedagogy Course Number: HA 375 | CCN: 05258

Elizabeth Honig

Instructor approval required. This seminar satisfies a University-wide requirement that all first-time Graduate Student Instructors take a pedagogy course. It can be taken concurrently with a first teaching assignment or in the semester before beginning teaching. The class will encourage you...

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Graduate Seminar: Graduate Seminar in Object Analysis Course Number: HA 290.2 | CCN: 05183

Margaretta Lovell, Patricia Berger

Supported by a special Mellon Foundation grant, this course will draw on the expertise of senior conservators in the Bay Area to give art history (and other) graduate students better understanding concerning the nature of the materials and the fabrication...

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Graduate/Undergraduate Seminar: Visuality, Virtuality and Visibility Course Number: HA 290.1 / HA 192F.3 | CCN: 05180

Whitney Davis

The seminar develops and tests a comprehensive framework for analysis of pictoriality in the visual field, deploying certain traditions of art-historical reasoning in combination with intellectual resources drawn from philosophical psychology (especially the theory of depiction), visual studies, and phenomenological...

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Graduate Seminar: Rethinking American Art Course Number: HA 289 | CCN: 05177

Margaretta Lovell

A re-examination of the social and cultural meanings of American painting (as well as some sculpture and decorative arts objects) of the 18th, 19th,  and 20th centuries, focusing on works in the collection of the deYoung Museum, San Francisco.  The class will...

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Graduate/Undergrad Seminar: Readings in African American Art / Black Visual Culture Course Number: HA 281 / HA 192F.1 | CCN: 05174

Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby

Undergraduates—instructor approval required Room share with African American Studies144 and African American Studies 240. This seminar entails intensive reading of books on the visual representation of and by African Americans from the 19th to 21st centuries, including photography, painting, sculpture and conceptual...

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Graduate/Undergraduate Seminar: New Perspectives on Flemish and French Tapestry, 1600–1800 Course Number: HA 270 / HA 192E | CCN: 05171

Visiting Professor Koenraad Brosens

Despite the fact that tapestry played a pivotal role in the art, liturgy, and propaganda of the courts and churches of late medieval and early modern Europe, in later centuries the medium was long and largely overlooked by art historians...

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Seminar in Chinese Art: Working Across Cultures Course Number: HA 230 | CCN: 05165

Patricia Berger

This seminar will focus on the problems—visual, linguistic and philosophical—that art historians face when working across or between cultures. We will focus on the late imperial period and specifically on the appropriations and translations of visual schemes and technologies of...

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Graduate/Undergraduate Seminar: The Alterity of Ornament Course Number: HA 262 / 192D.2 | CCN: 05168

Todd Olson

This course proposes to explore the Renaissance origins of three closely interrelated stylistic categories, the Gothic, grotesque, and arabesque, and the ways in which they engage with the perceived alterity of ornament.  Both the Gothic and grotesque were defined in...

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Proseminar: Traditions of Art History Writing in the 20th Century Course Number: HA 200 | CCN: 05162

The purpose of this course is to familiarize you with the way in which art history has developed since the late 19th century.   It is important that you understand not only where our discipline stands today but also how it...

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