RSCP. 72100 -Early Modern Cultural Translations: City, Nation, Empire GC: M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3/4 credits, Prof. Elsky, [92602] Cross listed with C L 80900 and ENGL 81100.

This course will focus on the various forms Renaissance and Early Modern culture has taken in geographic space. It will concentrate on the translation of culture across borders from the local to the national, the imperial, and the intercontinental.

We will draw on historical analysis to examine how cultural, literary, and visual forms are transformed as they are absorbed in new locations and new political-geographical formations. The central focus will be the processes by which cultural spaces are imagined, projected, and crossed.

Our starting point will be current debates over the kinds of borders in which culture is both produced and received; we begin with contemporary claims for the authenticity of local communities and counter-claims for large cross-cultural geographic space; we will consider how these claims bear upon debates concerning the "natural" locations of Renaissance and Early Modern culture.

The locations of culture to which we will attend include the Italian city state (especially Florence and Venice) and English, French, and Spanish nation states and transcontinental empire.

The course culminates in the New World synthesis of European and indigenous cultural forms that resulted from Early Modern trans-Atlantic exploration.

We will examine the historical conditions in which cities, states, and empires are imagined and formed, the symbiotic and violent ways cultures appropriate each other, and the forms in which those appropriations are artistically represented. Examples will be drawn from the historical, literary and visual traditions, including case histories and the theory of the state and empire; lyric, epic, travel narrative, and ethnographic description; prints, drawings, architecture, and cartography.

Particular attention will be devoted to the relation of the formal qualities of works to their geographical setting, especially where competing geographies and identity groups intersect.

Emphasis will be placed on critical approaches and research problems as illustrated in readings from political and cultural history, literary criticism, and art history as applied so such figures as Dante, Petrarch, Donne, Jonson, Shakespeare, Columbus, Las Casas, Oviedo, Garsilaso, Thevet, Léry, as well as the monuments of Venice and the major English and Spanish cartographic projects in Europe and the New World.

Because this a cross-disciplinary course, students are encouraged to introduce material drawn from their home discipline for discussion and assignments.

ART75010-Renaissance Sculpture: Ghiberti & Michelangelo GC: W, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Richter, [92075]

A basic paragone of the Renaissance centered on the debate over the primacy of painting versus sculpture. Despite Leonardo’s claim that the painter employed greater mental effort whereas the sculpture expended mostly physical energy many of his contemporaries thought otherwise.

Vasari (Lives of the Artists, 1550-1568) reserved his highest praise for Michelangelo. In doing so, he followed the lead of the great humanist-architect Alberti who dedicated his Della Pictura to five colleagues: Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Luca della Robbia, and Masaccio, who, with the exception of the last, were all sculptors.

This lecture course will focus on the casters, modelers, and carvers of the 15^th century. Topics of discussion will include the decoration of such great civic and community centers as the Baptistery, the guild church of Orsanmichele and the Campanile of Florence as well as those projects initiated by private enterprise.

Attention will be given not only to individual artists, but also to specific themes such as the humanist portrait and tomb.
The focus will expand beyond Florence to encompass other Tuscan centers as well as northern Italy.

From a theoretical viewpoint, several contemporary texts will be considered including Alberti’s De Statua (1433) and Ghiberti’s Commentarii. Course requirements include a research paper and a final, take-home exam. Three (3) auditors allowed.

Preliminary Readings:

Roberta J.M. Olson, Italian Renaissance Sculpture, New York: Thames & Hudson, 1992
John Pope-Hennessy, Italian Renaissance Sculpture, London: Phaidon, 2000 (ppbk ed.)

ART. 77100 - Colonial Art of Mexico & Peru,16th-18th Centuries GC: W, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Quinones-Keber, [92079]

This course examines the background, origins, and development of "colonial" art in the viceroyalties of Mexico and Peru. In lands formerly dominated by the imperials arts of the Aztecs and Incas respectively, some indigenous art forms were obliterated while others were appropriated to serve new purposes and patrons.

Renaissance (and later Baroque) artworks and artists also arrived in the Americas as Spain attempted to recreate European art traditions in the new viceroyalties.

This course thus focuses on the unique political, social, and artistic situations in the Americas that produced the distinctive character of Latin American art in the colonial period.

Requirements include weekly readings and discussions and a final paper. Auditors are permitted, but they will be expected to attend regularly, do all readings, and participate in discussions.

Preliminary readings:

Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. Art of Colonial Latin America. Phaidon, 2004. Introduction and Epilogue.

ART. 85020 - Memling & the Renaissance Portrait GC: M, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Lane, [92085]

A seminar centered on the exhibition, "Memling’s Portraits," at the Frick Collection, October 6 — December 31, 2005.

One or two class meetings may be held at the Frick Collection, in the exhibition itself. Introductory lectures willconsider early-fifteenth-century portraiture in Flanders and Italy, including independent portraits, devotional diptych. and triptychs, and donor portraits.

By the time the exhibition opens on October 6, the focus will have shifted to Memling’s influence on Renaissance portraiture, concentrating on but not limited to Italian portraiture from the 1470’S to 1510.

Student papers may focus on Memling’s influence on a single artist or on such topics as the use of trompe l’oeil in Renaissance portraiture, double portraits, female portraiture, and the patronage and/or purpose of a portrait or specific set of portraits.

Students will be expected to have a background in both Italian and Northern Renaissance Art.

Four lectures by curators and Memling scholars are scheduled at the Frick Collection in conjunction with the Memling exhibition, all at 6:00 p.m. The first is on Friday, October 7, the evening after the opening. The other three are on Wednesdays: October 26, November 16, and December 7. Students are strongly urged to attend these lectures if possible.

Preliminary Readings:

Lane Campbell. Renaissance Portraits. European Portrait Painting in the 14^th, 15^th and 16^th Centuries. New Haven and London, 1990.

Paula Nuttall. From Flanders to Florence. The Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400-1500. New Haven and London, 2004.

C L. 71000 - Cervantes & Crisis in European Fiction. GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Schwartz, [92453]

This course will focus on the study of Cervantes's Don Quijote (1605-1615) as a text that recreates early modern literary forms, while questioning the writing of fiction, from the perspective of Aristotle's Poetics and of related Italian theories of the novel.

Cervantes's work will be also analyzed in relation to its literary models - romances of chivalry; pastoral, Picaresque and Moorish novels, and Boccaccio's Decameron, among others, - and their philosophical contexts.

The function of madness as a fictional device will also be examined in connection with Erasmus's The Praise of Folly.

Other aspects of this complex narrative to be considered include its rhetorical and ethical background, as well as its treatment of popular discourses and classical adages.

Among the works to be read in addition to Don Quijote, are
Lazarillo de Tormes, The Praise of Folly, and some novelle from Boccaccio's Decameron. A bibliography of secondary sources will be distributed in class.

ENGL. 81400 -Reading Shakespeare Historically GC: W, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits, Prof. Di Gangi, [92257]

When reading Shakespeare, we are accustomed to taking into account contemporary attitudes on matters such as gender, social order, monarchy, and religion. Yet often these "contemporary attitudes" are conveyed second-hand, mediated and summarized by historians, editors, critics, and teachers.

By pairing selected plays of Shakespeare with various documents from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this course will explore what it means to read Shakespeare historically.

Which interpretive methods might be brought to bear on a "historical" reading of a Shakespeare play, and what factors might offer resistance to such a reading?
 

What kind of records constitute the historical archive and what kind of access do they offer to a culture four hundred years removed from our own?

How might we theorize the activity of reading "literary" texts in conjunction with "historical" texts?

How might such activity relate to or depart from the practices of new historicism? What kind of insight into Shakespearean drama can we gain through examination of contemporary sermons, medical tracts, political speeches, court cases, official records, and so on?

We will probably read about seven plays chosen from among the following: The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, 1 Henry IV, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Othello, Macbeth, and The Winter’s Tale.

We will be using the Bedford Texts and Contexts editions of the plays. For our purposes, the Bedford volumes usefully gather many relevant primary documents for each play, but we will also be analyzing and critiquing how the editors of the individual volumes select and frame the "relevant" texts and contexts (and omit other texts and contexts), and what influence the Bedford series might have on current pedagogical practice and issues of canonicity. (I have an immediate investment in these questions: during the course of the fall semester, I plan to be completing work on the Bedford edition of The Winter’s Tale).

We will also be using unedited primary texts from Early English Books On-Line.

Requirements include short papers, research projects, and class presentations/collaborative workshops.

HIST. 70500 - History of Childhood/Antquity-Modern Times GC: W, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. King, [92042] Cross listed with WSCP 81000

Studies the place children occupied in society and the way people have thought about children and childhood from antiquity through the twentieth century in Europe, the United States, and in non-Western societies.

It will look at child-rearing practices, the concept and practice of parenting, the problem of childhood disease and mortality, the education of children, the development of private and state-based programs for improving children’s lives, the ways in which the experience of childhood have been recalled, and the ways historians have attempted to reconstruct the history of the child.

Classes will be devoted to discussion of primary texts read in common. and monographs read by individual students, each of whom will read six for the term. Students will submit brief abstracts (1-2 pages) on their chosen six books.

There will be a take-home final exam (3-5 pages).

To read over the summer: Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, Trans. R. Baldick (New York: Vintage, 1965)

Syllabus available (and always updated online at http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/king/History/0500.F2005.Childhood.htm


MUS. 76001 - Topics in the Renaissance GC: M, 1:30-3:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. DeFord, [92399] Corequisite: 81201 - (Taught in conjunction with MUS 81202)

This pair of courses serves as an introduction to the advanced study of Renaissance music, focusing on issues of rhythm from ca. 1400 to ca. 1600.

It consists of two corequisite components: proseminar (1:30-3:30) and performance workshop (4:00-6:00), the latter devoted to singing pieces discussed in the proseminar from copies of original sources.

Topics are organized chronologically.

MUS 81202 Prof. DeFord Mondays 4-6pm Room 3491(Taught in conjunction with MUS 76002; see MUS 76002 for description.)

THEA. 85200 - Seminar:Golden Age in Spain & New Spain GC: R, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Graham Jones, [92336]

This course will focus on theatre and performance produced in Spain and Latin America during the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

Rather than treating Latin America as a colonial extension of the Spanish-speaking metropolis, we will take a transcultural approach to the two regions and read them through their constant (albeit often conflicted) dialogue with each other.

To do this we will discuss, apply, and critique the social, cultural, and literary theories of such scholars as Angel Rama, Néstor García Canclini, Walter Mignolo, and José Antonio Maravall.

The course will first look at theatre / performance practices in place in both regions before the arrival of the Spanish to the Americas and then proceed to an examination of Spain’s "Golden Age" of theatre as well as colonial theatre and performance in Latin America.

We will read autos sacramentales in addition to comedias and entremeses from both sides of the Atlantic; study accounts of Corpus Christi processions in Madrid and Cuzco in addition to reconstructions of pre-Hispanic performance-scripts; and seek out specific examples of transcultural encounter, such as those resulting from the translation of a Spanish play into Nahuatl or a colonial loa intended for a madrilero audience.

Among the authors whose plays we will read are Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca, Valdivieso, Cervantes, Ruiz de Alarcón, and sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

There will be six short response papers, in-class presentations, and a final research project