This course considers the linked arts of the United States, England, and France in the period between 1865 and 1918 looking at specific case study artists, structures, social movements, and literary works. We will focus on the arts and institutions endorsed by the wealthy and, equally, works of art and literature designed to critique and correct the architecture, manners, and activities of the era’s transatlantic elite. We will investigate, among other institutions and topics, the Salon and the Louvre; the École des Beaux Arts; Hull House; Shingle Style architecture and Arts and Crafts potteries; Adirondack camps; international expositions in Chicago, Paris, Philadelphia, Vienna; the Open Range; the Athens of the West, as well as the establishment of the Metropolitan and other ambitious museums. Authors include Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, Edith Wharton, Henry Adams, Booker T. Washington, Thorstein Veblen, John Ruskin, Jacob Riis, and Henry James.

Artists, architects and designers whose works we will consider include Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Henry Ossawa Tanner, John Ruskin, William Morris, L. C. Tiffany, Augustus St. Gaudens, Edmonia Lewis, Stanford White, Henry Hobson Richandson, Julia Morgan, Frederick Law Olmsted, Thomas Nast, Frances B. Johnston, Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Arnold Genthe, and Edward Steichen.

This course fulfills the following Major requirements: Geographical area (A) or (C) and Chronological period (III), based on the topic of the final research paper or project.