Spring 2006 | Courses | Art History and Archaeology

ARTH489C Special Topics in Art History: Post-Narrative. Post-Modern. Post-Hong Kong Film (Professor Metcalf)
W 3:30-7 (Will meet in Hornbake Library Nonprint Media Services)

ARTH496 Methods of Art History and Archaeology (Professor Georgievska-Shine)
M 3-5:30 (ASY 3217)

ARTH498 (PermReq) Directed Studies in Art History I. Individual Instruction Course
TBD

ARTH499 (PermReq) Honors Thesis. Individual Instruction Course
TBD

HONR269K African Arts: Declarations of Being (Professor Ed DeCarbo)
Tu/Th 12:30-1:45 (ASY 3217)

Graduate Courses

ARTH 608: Studies in Ancient Art
The Art of Egyptian Afterlife
Professor Marjorie Venit
Thursday 12-2:40 (ASY 4304)
This colloquium will interrogate images, objects, architecture, ancient texts (in translation), and secondary sources in order to illuminate the mutable concept of the afterlife in ancient Egyptian thought from earliest times through the Roman period. It is intended as a broad survey of Egyptian eschatological beliefs and practices and their material manifestation. Issues of class, gender, and sexuality will be addressed when appropriate and the intersecting beliefs of contemporaneous cultures may also be brought to bear.

ARTH 739: Seminar in Seventeenth-Century Northern European Art
Frans van Mieris and Dutch Genre Painting
Professor Arthur Wheelock
Monday 3-5:40 (ASY 4304)
This course will examine the range and character of seventeenth-century
Dutch genre paintings, with special attention given to Frans van Mieris,
an artist who will be the focus of a monographic exhibition to be held
at the National Gallery in the spring of 2005. Issues that will be
examined include the style of painting and the types of narrative
moments depicted by Van Mieris and his contemporaries, including Gerrit
Dou, Jan Steen, Gerard ter Borch and Johannes Vermeer. It will look at
the relationship between such scenes and literary traditions. It will
also examine the function of genre painting within Dutch society, both
in terms of its moralizing character and its pictorial appeal. Finally,
it will consider issues of autograph replicas, and the relationship of
portraiture to genre painting.

ARTH 758: Seminar in American Art
Seminar in American Art: A vade mecum [for such introspective questions as “What am I doing? For whom am I doing it? And why?”]
Professor Elizabeth Johns
Tuesday 12-2:40 (ASY 4304)
Using works on display in the Washington-Baltimore area, we will examine basic questions about our discipline that we easily overlook in our enthusiasm for our work.

Some of these questions are: 1) Why do we choose to study the American field? a particular artist? a certain painting or sculpture? 2) What is the distinction we choose to make when we call a painting, sculpture, photograph, or decorative work an “object” or a “work of art” or an “artwork”? 3) With whom are we having a dialogue when we research an object? When we write about the object? What is the relationship to a work of art of our research on it? Of the history of others' research on it? 4) To whom are we speaking when we put a work of art on the wall and accompany it with a text label? 5) What story do we tell when we write about or display two (or three or four ...) works of art?

Readings for the course, related to these questions, include those on canonicity, changing conceptions of space, the politics of race and gender, and the hermeneutics of display. After our introductory session, the first six classes will be devoted to class discussions of readings and museum visits. Students will prepare response papers of three double-spaced pages for each session, commenting on two to three points in the readings or museum visits that led to reflection about course work, previous reading or viewing, or life experience. By Feb. 28, students will have chosen a research topic on a work of art/object in the Washington/Baltimore area. The project is to be carried out with the topics addressed and self-consciousness practiced in our discussions. After spring break, students will give a brief progress report on their project, from notes. The final paper, also a work in progress, will be due May 16; it should be 15 to 20 pages in length, with full footnote and bibliographic apparatus.

ARTH 759: Seminar in Twentieth-Century Art
Minimalism
Professor Joshua Shannon
Tuesday 3-5:40 (ASY 4304)
In this course we will undertake an intensive investigation of Minimalism, considering it not only as the central movement in American sculpture of the 1960s but also as a watershed in contemporary art. We will pay especially close attention to works by Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and Robert Morris; our readings will include critical texts of the time as well as the major histories and reconsiderations. While cultivating a full understanding of the existing literature, the course also aims to raise historical and theoretical questions not yet addressed to this influential art. Each student will write a research essay on a tightly focused topic.

ARTH 789A: Selected Topics in Art History
American Modernism(s)
Professor Renée Ater
Wednesday 3-5:40 (ASY 4304)
This course examines the formulation of American modernism(s). I use the “s” at the end of modernism to propose that the current definition needs to be expanded to include artists who have been traditionally omitted from the scholarly discussion. We will explore where and how it originated—is the Armory Show of 1913 the inception moment? Who were its progenitors and heirs? Should we understand this moment solely through a small band of “exceptional” artists or can we broaden it to include artists such as Aaron Douglas who worked in a figurative style that engaged avant-garde principles? How are race, gender, and religion marginalized in the discussion of modernism in the United States ? In The Great American Thing , Wanda Corn argues that American modernism can be distinctively defined by a dichotomy between its transatlantic character and its “rooted” quality. What and whom can be considered “modern” in the United States ? What role does the city play in constructing a vision of modernity? How do we resolve issues of abstraction and representation during the period? Must modernism be equated with radical experimentation of style? What is the role of nationalism in shaping American modernism?