COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Fall 2007

RSCP. 72100 - Introduction to Renaissance Studies: The Material Culture of Early Modern Privacy GC: M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3/4 credits, Prof. Elsky, [90177] Cross listed with ENGL 81100, C L 80900, ART 81500

This is a cross-disciplinary course that investigates how the ideal of privacy and its artistic representation in the early modern period can be understood in relation to early modern material culture.

The core theme of the course will be the historical differentiation between public and private realms and their material embodiment in interior architectural spaces, mostly domestic.

The course will be a combination of social and material history, architectural history, visual representation, and literature.

The course will be structured as follows: theory and methodology of investigating early modern material culture, including works by art historians, historians, and literary scholars; the emergence of privacy as a practice and ideal from the perspective of cultural and material history; the embodiment of the ideal of privacy in the new architecture and interior design of the period (readings will include primary sources—Alberti, Serlio, Wotton-- as well current scholarship on early modern architecture); visual (Italian and Dutch painting and prints) and literary (English, Italian, French) representation of private spaces.Assignments will include an oral report and term project, either a paper or annotated bibliography.

Because this is an interdisciplinary course with students from a variety of disciplines, students can work on topics related to their home discipline.

ART. 70600 - Pre-Columbian Art in South America GC: W, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. 3421, 3 credits, Prof. Quinones-Keber, [90435] Open to Art History students only. Permission of instructor and executive officer required for all others.

Archaeological discoveries and subsequent revisions about the peoples, societies, and arts of the South American continent have proliferated in recent years.

In this light, this course surveys the myriad art works, especially architecture, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, metalwork, produced by the numerous ancient cultures of South America.

While it focuses on art works produced in the Andean area from the site of Chavín in the early first millennium BCE to the Inca empire brought down by the Spanish invasion of the sixteenth century, it also includes those in northern South America and Amazonia.

Requirements include weekly readings, written critiques, and discussions.

Three (3) auditors permitted, but they will be expected to do all readings and participate in discussions.

Preliminary Reading:

View the South American collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The American Museum of Natural History and read the Preface and Introduction to Rebecca Stone-Miller, Art of the Andes, from Chavín to Inca, 2nd ed. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002.

ART. 70700 - Ottoman Art &Architecture, 1450-1600 GC: R, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3421, 3 credits, Prof. Bates, [90436] Open to Art History students only. Permission of instructor and executive officer required for all others.

The subtitle of this course might read, "The formation of an imperial art."

The focus will be on the transformation of the Ottoman sultanate into an empire following the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the creation of art and architectural forms that defined its enhanced status.

The artistic traditions from which the Ottoman Empire derived its inspiration were from the East as well as West: pre-Islamic and Islamic Turkic, Greco-Roman, Islamic/Asian, Byzantine/Christian, and contemporary European.

The amalgamation of such diverse sources took place during the period approximately between 1450 and 1600. We shall consider mainly architecture but will refer to Ottoman historical paintings, textiles, and objects that were used in court ceremonies.

Requirements for the course are: readings to be briefly discussed every week; a short research paper, 10-12 pages, and a take-home final examination.

Five (5) auditors permitted.

Preliminary reading

Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300-1600 (1973; pb. ed., 2001)

Pamuk, Orhan. My Name is Red (2001, also in pb)

If no previous course in Islamic art, read: Blair, S. & J. Bloom, The Art and Architecture of Islam, 1250-1800 (1994; also pb).

A visit to the Metropolitan Museum to view Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797 (closes on July 8, 2007).

ART. 71100 - Art & Architecture of Spain: Middle Ages-Renaissance GC: T, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3421, 3 credits, Prof. Dodds, [90439] Open to Art History students only. Permission of instructor and executive officer required for all others.

This course will explore the diverse, unique artistic interactions of Spain in the Medieval and Renaissance periods. It will include art and architecture that grows from both Christian and Islamic rules, and put particular emphasis on hybrid traditions.

These arts will be explored against the backdrop of a new historiography for Renaissance Spain that sees the contribution of this diverse and plural past in the character and development of Spain as a nation state, and in the artistic values it bequeaths to Baroque and to the New World.

Topics Include

Roman and Visigothic Arts

The Umayyads in Cordoba and "The Ornament of the World"

The Kingdom of Leon, the Pilgrimage to Santiago & the Creation of Spanish Romanesque

Intimacy and Desire: Poetry and the Arts of the Taifa Kings

Synagogue, Mosque and Church in a Cosmopolitan Age

The Arts of: The Almohads and the Papacy

Mudejar Arts: Spanish Identity; Plural Identity

Murcia and the birth of Castillian Colonialism

Seville: A Capital through Time

Gothic Painting in the Kingdom of Aragon

The Alhambra in Granada and changing meaning ofa monument: The Alhambra under the Catholic Kings & Carlos V

Early Isabelline Painting: Portraits of Spain, and of Spaniards

El Escorial and Spanish Classicisms

Painting and Sculpture of 'Modern Devotion':

The Plateresque: 'Romano' vs 'Morisco'

Preliminary Readings:

Maria Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, 2003.

ART. 75000 - Sacred & Profane Early Netherlandish Painting GC: M, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. 3421, 3 credits, Prof. Lane, [90976] Open to Art History students only. Permission of instructor and executive officer required for all others.

An investigation of the current controversy over the meanings and purposes of early Netherlandish religious paintings.

Lectures will examine recent challenges to traditional interpretations of major works by Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes, and Hans Memling, and will involve students in the debate over the concept of "disguised symbolism."

Problems of sources, attribution, chronology, and technique will also be considered.

Five (5) auditors permitted.

Preliminary Readings:

Barbara G. Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece: Sacramental Themes in Early Netherlandish Painting. New York: Harper and Row, 1984

Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1953.

ART. 81500 - Medicis as Collectors of Art GC: M, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3421, 3 credits, Prof. Richter, [90460] Open to Art History students only. Permission of instructor and executive officer required for all others.

Florence in the Renaissance was often referred to as the "new Athens" having achieved a cultural zenith rivaling that of Periclean Greece or Imperial Rome.

The Medici family dominated the city’s cultural and political growth during this entire extended period. From 1434 until 1492, they exerted power without holding any major office functioning as de facto rulers in a republic that was jealous of its liberty. The family survived temporary exile after the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent only to return stronger than ever as hereditary dukes in the 16th century, their power supplemented by their control over the papacy as well.

The Medici exercised authority both overtly and covertly through the manipulation and influence of their patronage. Patronage helped to build the most magnificent dynasty in Italian history whose artistic legacy formed the nucleus of the collections of both the Uffizi and Pitti Palace Museums.

This course will cover the history of the family from its obscure origins in Mugello in the 13^th century to the end of the 16^th century when a series of strategic arranged marriages placed the Medici at the very center of European power.

The Medici not only attracted the most significant artists of the period (Donatello, Botticelli, and Michelangelo), but the greatest politicians (Machiavelli), thinkers (Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola), writers (Guicciardini and Vasari) and religious zealots (Savonarola).

This course will focus on the intermeshing of family and civic goals that helped transform Florence into the epicenter of the Renaissance.

Topics will include the Medici collection of antiquities and decorative arts, the burgeoning interest in Northern European painting, the creation of public residences and private villas, as well as the grand decorative schemes of their great palazzi.

The rise of the Medici dynasty resulted in nothing less than the transformation of Florence from a medieval town to become the focus of international cultural and social life in Europe.

Students will be required to deliver an oral presentation and to write an extensive research paper. Three (3) auditors permitted.

Preliminary Reading:

Ames-Lewis, F., ed. The Early Medici and their Artists, London: Birkbeck College, 1995

Goldbert, E.L. Patterns in Late Medici Patronage, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983

Hibbert, H. The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall, New York: Perrenial, 1974

ENGL. 81400 - Shakespeare and Marlowe: Theatre & Culture in 1590's London GC: W, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits, Prof. Di Gangi, [90489]

Born in the same year as Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe had achieved greater prominence than Shakespeare in the London theater world of the early 1590s with innovative plays like Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta. Before his mysterious death in 1593 at the age of 29, he had produced such brilliant and influential works as Dr. Faustus and Hero and Leander.

In this course we will read the plays and poems of Marlowe alongside those of Shakespeare. Although Marlowe and Shakespeare were clearly aware of and responsive to each others work, we will not place too much emphasis on matters of direct influence and rivalry. Instead, we will consider the complex convergences and divergences in their use of the theatrical and cultural resources available to them.

We will examine Marlowe's and Shakespeare's treatment of topics such as heroism; self-fashioning; imperialism and nationalism; violence and war; monarchy; gender ideology; homoeroticism; pastoral; racial difference; orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the religious and social realms. We will also examine Marlowe's confrontation with classical authors (Ovid, Virgil, Lucan, Musaeus) and with contemporary authors such as Spenser, Greene, and Kyd.

The organization of the course will avoid some of the more familiar Marlowe-Shakespeare connections (e.g., The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice) in favor of positing more oblique or subtle cross-fertilizations (such as between The Jew of Malta and Titus Andronicus).

We will read all of Marlowe's plays as well as his poem Hero and Leander and his translations of Ovids Amores and Lucans Civil Wars.

Works of Shakespeare will include Titus Andronicus, 2 Henry VI, Richard III, Sonnets, and Venus and Adonis.

Requirements will include a class presentation, a few short papers, and one longer paper.

                                                            Top