The
of The
Ph.D. Program in
Art History
FALL 2009 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS & PRELIMINARY READINGS
If you purchase your books through http://www.gc.cuny.edu/bookshop,
you will have these discount prices (through arrangement with Amazon.com and
other retailers) and the Mina Rees Library will receive a 5-7% donation for the
purchase of library books. Most of these
books, of course, are also available to borrow from the
N.B. Lecture
classes are limited to 20 students,
Methods of Research is limited to 15
and seminar classes are limited to 12
students. Three overtallies are allowed
in each class, but written permission from the instructor and from the
Executive Officer and/or the Deputy Executive Officer is required.
ART 70000 - Methods of Research
GC: Mon.,
4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Long, Rm. 3421, [96882]
Office
Hours: Wed. 4:30-6:00 p.m. Email:
rcwlong@aol.com
This course will examine a variety of methodological approaches
associated with the practice of art history in the twentieth century.
Beginning with formalist interpretations, we will proceed to discuss
iconographical, social/political, psychoanalytic, post-structuralist, feminist,
gender, and post-colonial approaches. Among the authors to be discussed
will be Adorno, Barthes, Benjamin,
Preliminary
Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (1939) and “Towards a
Newer Laocoon” (1940) in Art in Theory, 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing
Ideas, 2nd ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (
Susan Platt, Art and Politics in the 1930s: Modernism, Marxism,
and Americanism (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1999), 219-224, 246-250.
ART 70010 – Topics
in Art History: Visual Culture in U.S.
History, 1776-1976
GC:
Mon., 6:30-8:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Brown, Rm. TBA, [96883]
Office
Hours: TBA. Email: jbrown@gc.cuny.edu
Historical understanding is like
a vision, or rather like an evocation of images." Inspired by Johan
Huizinga's insight, this course will explore the ways visual culture
illuminates and alters our understanding of major themes and eras in U.S.
history. We will investigate the manner in which different visual media
documented, articulated, and embodied conditions, relations, ideas, identity,
and issues from the American Revolution to the Cold War. Critically evaluating
a range of historiographic approaches, this course also will consider the
impact and efficacy of using visual evidence to study the past. Four (4)
auditors permitted.
FALL 2009 - COURSE
DESCRIPTIONS
ART 72000 – Topics
in Ancient Art and Architecture: Ancient
Portraiture
GC:
Wed., 6:30-8:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Kousser, Rm. 3421, [96884]
Office
hours: Wed. 5:30-6:30 p.m. 8:30-9:30 p.m. Email: rkousser@brooklyn.cuny.edu
This
course analyzes the development of portraiture from Classical Greece through
the later Roman Empire. It draws on
recent scholarship to call into question the traditional definition of
portraiture as “descriptive likeness”
and aims to present a broader and more nuanced view of the ancient portrait as
a genre. The course will consider both canonical
monuments such as the Primaporta Augustus and less familiar works such as
painted mummies from Roman Egypt and the imaginary portraits of poets and
philosophers of the Hellenistic era. In
addition, we will make use of the Metropolitan Museum’s newly installed
Greco-Roman galleries, among the best collections of ancient portraits in
America. Major topics will include the
royal image, class and gender representation, the categories of center and
periphery as applied to portraiture, and the mutilation and destruction of
images. Course requirements include a
short oral report/paper and a final.
Auditors permitted.
Preliminary
reading
Richard
Brilliant, Portraiture (Harvard
University Press, 1991).
ART 75010 - Topics
in Italian Renaissance and Mannerist Art and Architecture: Renaissance Sculpture: Ghiberti to
Michelangelo
GC:
Wed., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Richter, Rm. 3421, [96885]
Office Hours: Wed. 3:00-4:00 p.m. Email:
erichter@hunter.cuny.edu
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 15th 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 permitted.
Preliminary
reading
Roberta J.M. Olson, Italian Renaissance Sculpture, New York:
Thames & Hudson, 1992
John Pope-Hennessy, Italian Renaissance Sculpture, London:
Phaidon, 2000 (ppbk ed.)
FALL
2009 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 75050 - Topics
in Baroque Art and Architecture to 1750: Van Dyck to Rembrandt: Seventeenth-Century
Northern European Portraiture
GC: Mon., 2:00-4:00 P.M., Prof. Atkins, Rm.,
3421, [96886]
Office
Hours: Mon. 4:00-5:00 p.m. Email: Christopher.atkins@qc.cuny.edu
This
course will explore the proliferation of portraiture in the seventeenth-century
in Flanders, England, and the Dutch Republic. We will study the various
permutations of this phenomenon from state portraits to images of the new
merchant elite to group portraits of civic guards to self portraits. In so
doing we will probe how portraits functioned, the emerging self-awareness
registered by many of these images, the roles of self-consciously crafted
styles, and the place of portraiture within artists’ business strategies. Major
figures who will receive extended consideration include Van Dyck, Rubens, Hals,
and Rembrandt, among others. Auditors
permitted.
Preliminary Readings:
Westermann,
Mariët. A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic
1585-1718. Yale University, rev. ed. 2004.
ART 76020 - Topics in
Modern Art: Paris: Capital of the 20th
Century: From 1900 Spectacle to Situationist “Dérive”
GC: Tues., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Golan,
Rm. 3421, [96887]
Office
Hours: Tues. 12:00-2:00 p.m. Email: rgolan@gc.cuny.edu
No city has been been more relentlessly
transformed into an artifact than
Primary sources will include: Louis Aragon, Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, André Breton, Michel de Certeau, Guy Debord, Michel Foucault, Yona Friedman, and Henri Lefebvre. Secondary sources: Libero Andreotti , Larry Busbea, Margaret Cohen, Hal Foster, James Herbert, Denis Hollier, Tom McDonough; Pat Morton, Kristin Ross, and Debora Silverman. Auditors by permission of instructor.
Preliminary Readings:
Walter Benjamin, Paris Capital of the 19th Century
(on e-reserve)
André Breton , Nadja, 1928 (buy)
Guy Debord, Situationist Texts (on e-reserve)
FALL
2009 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 76020 - Topics in Modern Art: Watteau and his
Legacy, 1700-1880
GC: Tues., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Sund,
Rm. 3421, [96888]
Office Hours: Tues.
3:30-4:00 p.m. 6:30-7:00 p.m. Email: judysund@att.net
Designed to complement the Metropolitan Museum’s fall 2009 exhibition, “Watteau, Music and Theater,” this lecture course will examine the brief career of Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), with particular attention to his interest in and uses of musical metaphors, masquerade, and themes drawn from the Commedia dell’Arte. Watteau’s legacy, as played out in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, will be examined through discussions of pictures and texts by (among others) Boucher, Fragonard, Daumier, Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, Picasso, the Goncourt Brothers, Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine. Can fulfill Early Modern or Modern distribution requirements. Auditors permitted.
Preliminary Readings:
Sarah Cohen, “Un Bal continuel:
Watteau’s Cythera Paintings and Aristocratic Dancing in the 1710s,” Art History, June 1994, 160-81.
Georgina Cowart, “Watteau’s Pilgrimage to Cythera and the Subversive Utopia of the Opera Ballet,” The Art Bulletin, September 2001, 461-78.
A.P. Mirimonde, “Les sujets musicaux chez Antoine Watteau,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1961, 249-88.
Julie-Anne Plax, “Gersaint’s Biography of Antoine Watteau: Reading Between the Lines,” Eighteenth Century Studies, summer 1992, 545-64.
ART
76030 – Topics in Architecture, Urbanism, and Design: Modernity in
Architecture: The History of an Idea, 1890-Present
GC: Thurs., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Maciuika,
Rm. 3421, [96889]
Office
Hours: Thur. 6:15-7:15 & by
appointment. Email: john.maciuika@baruch.cuny.edu
To what
advantage can an analysis of the "history of modern architecture" be
converted to a "history of the idea of modernity in architecture?"
Whereas a “history of modern architecture” retains an assurance of a tradition
in the making, a history of the idea of modernity in architecture offers an
opportunity to assess the underlying assumptions governing the formation of
such movements as Expressionism, the International Style, Rationalism, Critical
Regionalism, Postmodernism, and Deconstruction. Combining readings, lecture,
and discussion of architectural history as well as intellectual history, this
course will ask the question: In what ways can modernity itself be profitably
historicized for a richer understanding of architecture in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries? The course will begin with a discussion of two essays:
Stephen Toulmin, “What is the Problem About Modernity,” in his book, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity;
and Raymond Williams, “When Was Modernism?” in his The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists. Auditors permitted.
Preliminary Readings:
Stephen Toulmin, “What is the Problem About
Modernity,” in his book, Cosmopolis: The
Hidden Agenda of Modernity
Raymond Williams, “When Was Modernism?” in his The Politics of Modernism: Against the New
Conformists
FALL
2009 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART
77000 – Topics in Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture: Pre-Columbian Ritual Arts
GC: Wed. 11:45 A.M.-1:45
P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Quiñones-Keber, Rm. 3421 [96890]
Office
Hours: Wed. 2:00-3:30 p.m. Email: equinones@gc.cuny.edu
This course is an introductory survey of the voluminous arts
of the Pre-Columbian Americas from about 1500 BCE to the contact period of the
early 16th century. Given the
extensive geographic territory involved, immense time span, and extraordinary
diversity of material, coverage will be selective. Our focus will be on the arts produced for
religious and ritual purposes by, for example, the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec
peoples of Mesoamerica (mainly
Requirements include weekly readings, written critiques, and
discussion, and a final examination.
Five (5) auditors permitted, but they will be expected to do all
readings and participate in discussions
Preliminary Readings
Pasztory, Esther. Pre-Columbian
Art.
ART
79000 – History of Photography: 19th Century Photography
GC: Tues. 9:30-11:30 A.M., 3 credits, Prof. Batchen, Rm. 3421, [96891]
Office Hours: Tues. 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Email: gbatchen@gc.cuny.edu
Roland Barthes described the emergence of photography in the early nineteenth century as an "anthropological revolution in man's history" and a "truly unprecedented type of consciousness." This lecture class aims to examine this proposition by tracing the history of photographic ‘consciousness’ in the nineteenth century as it develops within a number of specific thematics, from the medium’s conception in the late 18th century through to debates in the early 20th century about photography’s relationship to artistic and social issues. The class’s structure will allow for individual sessions to combine a formal, illustrated presentation with some detailed discussion of particular photographers, images and texts. Taken as a whole, the class will look at photography as a cultural phenomenon as much as an art form, critically studying the various discursive arenas that this new medium helped to foster and redefine. Auditors by permission of instructor.
Preliminary
Readings:
Gordon
Baldwin, Looking at Photographs: A Guide to Technical Terms (Getty Museum,
1991).
Douglas Nickel, ‘History of Photography: The
State of Research,’ The Art Bulletin, Vol. LXXXIII, No. 3 (September 2001), 548-558.
FALL
2009 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART
79400 – Aesthetics of Film
GC: Mon. 4:15-8:15 P.M.,
3 credits, Prof. Chris, Rm. TBA, [96892]
This course introduces students to the art of cinema, through examination of the qualities, history, and analysis of cinematic form. Approaching aspects of film aesthetics in a variety of genres and forms (for example, melodrama, film noir, the Western, and the musical, as well as documentary, animated, and experimental films), the course will provide students with opportunities to master the fundamental vocabulary of film analysis, including mise-en-scène, shot composition, montage, continuity editing, and camera movement, and other concepts. The course will consider relationships among the aesthetics of film, television, and new digital and interactive media, as well as aesthetic adaptations to changing technologies and industrial formations, from the Kinetoscope to the nickelodeon to the movie palace and multiplex; and from theater to television screens, home theaters, and small format mobile devices. Interrogating relationships between sound and image, style and meaning, production and reception, we will seek to understand the sensory and narrative pleasures of film art: aesthetics is, after all, the philosophy of beauty. Auditors by permission of instructor.
ART
80020 - Seminar: Selected Topics in the
Art and the Architecture of Africa, the Pacific, and Native North America:
Masking as an Art Form in Africa, North America, and Melanesia
GC: Thurs., 9:30-11:30 A.M., 3
credits, Prof. Corbin, Rm. 3416, [96893]
Office Hours: Thurs. 11:30
a.m.-12:30 p.m. & by appointment. Email:
TBA
This seminar will study masking as an art form in Africa, North America, and Melanesia in the Pacific. Each student will be expected to attend class regularly, to read class assignments and be able to discuss them in class. In addition, each student will present an hour long in-class seminar report (circa 45 minute presentation, 15 minute discussion, with power point/or slides) on an in-depth study of masking from one of the three regions covered in the seminar. The masks should be on display in New York at the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Museum, and/or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A final research paper—circa 12-15 pages of double-spaced text, with additional footnotes, bibliography, list of illustrations, and illustrations—will be required of each student in the class. No auditors.
Preliminary Reading
George Corbin, Native
arts of North America, Africa and the South Pacific: An introduction,
N.Y. 1988, chapters 1-3, 5- 9.
FALL
2009 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 85050
- Seminar: Selected Topics in Baroque Art and Architecture to 1750: French
Painting During the Reign of Louis XV
GC: Mon., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Bailey, Rm. 3416, [96895]
Office hours: TBA Email: TBA
This seminar introduces the major figures in French painting from the end of Louis XIV’s reign to the maturity of François Boucher. It considers the institutional and practical conditions through which French art transformed itself during the first half of the 18th century, with an emphasis on pedagogy and patronage - training in the still juvenile Académie royale and the conditions of interior decoration in royal and aristocratic residences. The emergence of Paris as the centre of artistic activity will form a sub-text in the seminar, particularly in approaching the work of Watteau and Chardin. History painting of the two generations prior to Boucher’s ascendancy around 1740 is another significant theme, with particular attention to the work of Charles de La Fosse, François Lemoyne, and Jean-François de Troy. We will conclude with a review of Salon practice and the emergence of art criticism, particularly with regard to Greuze’s genre painting and its reception in the 1760s. Auditors permitted.
Preliminary readings:
TBA
ART 86010—Seminar: Selected Topics in Late 18th
and 19th - Century Art and Architecture: Embodiment in 18th-and
19th-Century French Art
GC: Wed. 11:45 A.M. – 1:45 P.M., 3
credits, Prof. Lindheim, Room 3307, [97765], Cross listed with WSCP 81000
Office Hours: TBA Email: TBA
This class will examine the
symbolic and ideological force of representations of bodies in eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century French art. We will consider the ways in which depictions of
the ideal male and female form have served as vehicles to engage with questions
of sexuality, gender and race as they intersect with nationhood, empire and
public life. We will also discuss how embodied images function as sites of both
performance and contestation. Our goal will be to reconsider the work of David,
Girodet, Inges, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, and Puvis de
Chavannes but we will also study nineteenth-century photography and popular
culture (prints, magazines, museum displays). Readings will examine recent
debates on these topics from within art history, cultural studies and women’s
studies.
Preliminary readings:
TBA
FALL 2009 - COURSE
DESCRIPTIONS
ART 86010 Seminar: Selected
Topics in Late 18th and 19th- Century
Art and Architecture: Changing Places: the Role of Travel, 1750-1900
GC: Tues. 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof.
Mainardi, [96896]
Office Hours:
Tues. 1:45-2:45 p.m. Email:
pmainardi@gc.cuny.edu
With the development of roads and railroads, artists, critics and collectors traveled more than their predecessors ever did, and yet only recently, with globalization, has the role of travel in 18th and 19th century art become a topic of major interest. Numerous recent exhibitions and monographs have explored the various motivat ions, destinations, and influences of travel in this period. This seminar will introduce students to this literature and encourage them to contribute to it. Topics will include: the Grand Tour; art training; inspiration from other arts or cultures (ranging from the standard sojourn in Italy to trips farther afield to North Africa, the Near East, the Pacific); exile, whether temporary (Pissarro, Monet) or permanent (David, Goya, Courbet); nationalism and the spread of tourism; the growing importance of museums, collections, and international exhibitions; travel literature and prints. Students will give a presentation of their research subject, and complete a publishable written paper based on the class presentation and subsequent critique. Auditors by permission of instructor.
Preliminary Readings:
Preliminary readings according to students’ interests. Students may consult with Prof. Mainardi in advance for more specific bibliography.
ART
86020 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Modern Art: Global New York, 1915-45
GC:
Mon., 11:45 A.M -1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Manthorne, Rm. 3421, [96899]
Office
Hours: Mon. 2:00-4:00 p.m. Email: kmanthorne@gc.cuny.edu
This seminar explores New York City as a site of international artistic exchange, with artists from all over the world living, working, and training here. The phenomenon of European exiles in the interwar years is well known, as is the presence of the Mexican Muralists. We discover, however, that from the dawn of the 20th century New York was already a thriving art metropolis. We explore multiple facets of the city as sites of global dynamics: museums, commercial galleries, art publishing industry, state/government support for the arts, and art academies. The Art Students League alone drew contingencies from Europe, Asia, and across the Americas, as did the 1939 World’s Fair. Establishing these exchanges, we critique and in part re-write the prevailing construct that New York became a world art city after WWII. As a contributor to the exhibition to reopen El Museo del Barrio in Fall 2009 -- New York Nexus – I put special attention on the presence of Latin American and Latino/a artists in my opening lectures. Tours of the exhibition and discussions with in-house curators will enhance our studies, as will visits to extant murals by visiting artists in NY. The presence of Asian pictorial artists is another understudied aspect of this phenomenon. While the instructor presents material on the above topics, students will conduct in-depth research on any related topic of her or his choosing, write a 20-page research paper, and deliver an oral presentation to the class. Depending on the paper topic, this seminar can be considered for distribution as a course in modern /contemporary; art of the US; or art of Latin America.
No auditors permitted.
Preliminary reading:
Barbara Haskell, The
American Century. Art & Culture, 1900-1950 (NY: Whitney Museum, 1999)
for general background; Aidan White, “Locating Art Worlds: London and the
making of Young British Art,” Area 35
(Sept. 2003): 251-63 (on jstor) as a model for thinking about art worlds.
FALL 2009 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 86020 – Seminar: Selected Topics in Modern Art: Reconsidering
the Bauhaus
GC:
Wed.,
Office
Hours: Wed. 4:30-6:00 p.m. Email:
rcwlong@aol.com
This course has been designed to coordinate with an exhibition of the Bauhaus opening in November of 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art. Lectures, including ones by curators of the exhibition as well as ones by art and architectural historians, will provide a context for the emergence of the foremost art school in Germany’sWeimar Republic and for a reconsideration of its goals and legacy. Students will prepare an oral report and paper on a variety of topics associated with Bauhaus production, including design, housing, painting, performance, photography, and sculpture, as well as issues related to gender, race, and religion. In addition, topics focusing on the cross-fertilization of the Bauhaus with German, Soviet, Central European, and American culture may be considered. Auditors by permission of instructor.
Preliminary
readings:
Kathleen James-Chakraborty, introduction to Bauhaus Culture: From Weimar to the Cold War (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), xi – xix.
ART
86040 - Seminar: Selected Topics in
Contemporary Art: Former West: The Early ‘90s
GC: Thurs.,
Office Hours: Thurs. 4:00-6:00 p.m. Email: cbishop@gc.cuny.edu
This course will examine the impact of the fall of Communism upon art of Eastern and Western Europe after 1989. Topics to be covered include: art world decentralisation, the rise of new institutions and exhibition infrastructures, expanding markets, rising nationalisms and transnational identity, activist and socially-engaged art, the ‘post-communist condition’, and ‘ostalgia’ (nostalgia for communism). Sources will include works of art, exhibitions, catalogues, magazines, and theoretical attempts to elaborate the new world order and its impact on cultural production. The course forms part of a long-term exhibition research project Former West led by Charles Esche and Maria Hlavajova (http://www.formerwest.org/). Auditors accepted with permission (five maximum).
Preliminary
Readings:
Barbara
Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic (eds), The Manifesta Decade: Debates on
Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe, MIT Press/Roomade
Books, 2006
Piotr
Piotrowski, ‘Between Place and Time: a critical geography of ‘new’ Central
Europe’, in Thomas Dacosta Kaufman and Elizabeth Pilliod (eds), Time and Place:
The Geohistory of Art, Ashgate Publishing, 2005, pp.153-172
FALL 2009 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART
87300 – Seminar: Selected Topics in American Art and Architecture: Modernism
and Historicism in American Architecture and Design between the Two World Wars
GC: Thur., 11:45 A.M -1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof.
Bletter, Rm. 3416, [96900]
Office Hours: Wed. 2:00-3:00 or
after class Email: rbletter@gc.cuny.edu
The
Brooklyn Museum exhibition catalogue The Machine Age in America 1918-1941
(1986) will form the core of a critical discussion that will differentiate,
more clearly than this publication, between the social underpinnings of the
expansionist twenties and the Depression-era thirties. It will also
attempt to define the flowering of the American skyscraper in the twenties as a
phenomenon of the commercially freewheeling “Jazz Age” rather than the “Machine
Age.” The course will expand H.-R. Hitchcock’s layered historical model to deal
with the avant-garde, the historicizing Beaux-Arts, as well as popular
commercial styles (Art Deco and Streamlined Moderne). Further, it
will explore institutional structures such as the Metropolitan Museum’s
and MoMA’s influence on architecture and crafts together with the newly
conceived profession of industrial design. The impact of exhibitions
(Chicago Century of Progress, the 1939 New York World’s Fair) will be examined
for their projection of a synthesized modernity. Sheldon & Martha
Cheney’s Art and the Machine (1936) will be contrasted with Lewis
Mumford’s critical stance against technology. Among the individuals to be
discussed are architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Eliel Saarinen, Hugh Ferriss,
Raymond Hood, Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, and Julia Morgan; industrial
designers Norman Bel Geddes, Raymond Loewy, Walter Dorwin Teague, Donald
Deskey; and artist-designers Eva Zeisel, Frederick Kiesler, and Isamu
Noguchi. It will conclude with the influx of European Modernists in the
thirties and the conflict this created for many American practicioners. A
research paper based on the seminar presentation of the student’s choice is
required. Auditors permitted.
Preliminary readings:
Richard
Guy Wilson et. al., The Machine Age in America (Brooklyn Museum/Abrams,
1986).
Lisa Phillips, et.al., High Styles: Twentieth-Century American Design
(Whitney Museum/Summit, 1985): first three essays by Hanks, Gebhard, and
Bletter.
ART 89000 – Seminar: Selected Topics in the History of
Photography: Histories of Photography
GC: Wed., 9:30-11:30 A.M., 3
credits, Prof. Batchen, Room 3421, [96901]
Office Hours: Wed. 11:30
a.m.-12:30 p.m. Email: gbatchen@gc.cuny.edu
Participants in this seminar class will be invited to write their
own history of photography. The class will begin by looking at the history of
that history, and will then consider various alternatives to it. Particular
attention will be paid to the accounts provided by two major survey-histories of
photography, Michel Frizot’s A New History of Photography (1998) and Mary
Warner Marien’s Photography: A Cultural History (2002). The class
will consider how a selection of specific topics or individual photographers
might be incorporated into this type of historical account (eg. the invention
of photography, the photo album, Malian photography, the work of Andreas
Gursky) but will also examine other ways of doing history. Students will be
asked to prepare a publication proposal for a history of photography, complete
with conceptual rationale and chapter breakdown, and they will then write a
chapter of that history. No auditors.
Preliminary readings:
Douglas
Nickel, ‘History of Photography: The State of Research,’ The
Art Bulletin,
Vol. LXXXIII, No. 3 (September 2001), 548-558.
Joan Fontcuberta, ‘Revisiting the
Histories of Photography,’ Photography: Crisis of History (Barcelona: Actar, 2004), 6-17.
Peggy Ann Kusnerz, ‘Survey
Histories of Photography,’ History of Photography, 25: 4 (Winter 2001), 384-390.
FALL 2009 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 89600 – Seminar: Selected Topics in Film Studies:
Film History I, 1895-1930
GC: Mon.,
1930
seems to be a meaningful date separating early silent cinema from synchronized
sound films. The decades preceding
witnessed important social and political changes that included fin-de-siècle
developments, the Progressive era, World War I, the Weimar Republic, the
Bolshevik Revolution, the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras in Japan. Cinema, the first electric mass medium, was
born and forged under these exciting periods of monumental changes. Hence we can understand it best as part and
parcel of the modernist movement both in art, culture and society. This course will examine cinema not only as
texts, but also as social practices. The class explores cinema of the US and
Hollywood amid the variety of international cinemas, from France, Italy,
Germany, and Soviet Union, and Japan, as well as the globalization of cinema at
this early stage. Topics will include pre-cinema, emergence of cinema, cinema
of attraction, development of narrative cinema, changing social meanings of
cinema, industrialization of cinema, national cinemas, exhibition and reception
of cinema of the period. The course will also investigate the practices and
methods of the cinematic historiography.
Students
will write a 15+ page seminar paper on a research topic of their choosing that
has been approved by the professor and will conduct a smaller-scale historical
research project making use of archival resources. In addition, students need to contribute
weekly to online discussion on Blackboard. Auditors by permission of
instructor.
ART
89600 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Film Studies: Antonioni and Fellini: The
Challenges of Italian (Post) Modernist Cinema
GC: Tues., 6:30-10:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Lombardi,
Rm. TBA, [96903], Cross listed with FSCP 81000 and CompLit 86500
This
course will juxtapose the rich and complex film production of two Italian auteurs, Federico Fellini and
Michelangelo Antonioni. While Fellini and Antonioni’s films differ in style,
narrative preference, and political orientation, they evidence a common
self-reflexive concern for the relationship of cinematic images, sounds, and
stories. Neorealism will serve as a
starting point for an analysis of Fellini’s postmodern negotiation of
autobiographical surrealism as well as Antonioni’s peculiar reframing of
cinematic modernism. This course will
analyze Antonioni and Fellini’s most important films, placing their work in
(film) historical contexts, and theorizing their interest in the aesthetics of
cinematic representation and the politics of storytelling.
Students
will be asked to watch 2 movies a week, one in class and one at home, so that
by the end of the course they will be familiar with the majority of these
filmmakers’ work. Films to be screened
include: Story of a Love Affair
[Antonioni, 1950], The Vanquished
[Antonioni, 1953], Love in the City
[Antonioni/Fellini, 1953], La Strada [Fellini,
1954], La Dolce Vita [Fellini, 1960],
and Ginger and Fred [Fellini, 1986],
among others. Auditors by permission of
instructor.
The course will be conducted in
English and all films will be screened with English subtitles.
FALL 2009 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART
89600 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Film Studies: Film and American Culture in
the 1930s
GC: Tues., 2:00-5:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Dickstein,
Rm. TBA, [96904], Cross listed with FSCP 81000 and ENGL 87400
This
course will focus on the role of film, writing, the visual arts, music, and
popular culture during a period of social and economic upheaval: America in the
1930s. It will explore some of the leading film genres of the period, including
gangster movies, backstage musicals, dance films, monster movies, screwball
comedies, and dramas or documentaries about the social and economic conditions
of the Depression itself, from I Am a
Fugitive from a Chain Gang to The
Grapes of Wrath. Each week, films viewed at home or on reserve in the
library will be juxtaposed with film shown in class, sometimes in unlikely
combinations. Special attention will be paid to the work of Frank Capra and
Howard Hawks, to the role of comedy in a period of social crisis, to the
evolution of major studio styles, the economic situation of the industry
itself, and the role of other socially meaningful art forms during the
Depression, including drama, the novel, documentary photography, music, and
mural painting. Readings will include some works of fiction, journalism, and
social history, as well as selections from film histories such as Andrew
Bergman, We’re in the Money, Molly
Haskell, From Reverence to Rape,
James Harvey, Romantic Comedy in
Hollywood, Elizabeth Kendall, The
Runaway Bride, Maria DiBattista, Fast-Talking
Dames, and Thomas Schatz, The Genius
of the System. Assigned writing from the period itself will include novels
by John Steinbeck, Nathanael West, and Budd Schulberg, along with plays by
Clifford Odets. Students will be expected to deliver an oral report and produce
a 15-page term paper. Auditors by permission of instructor.
ART
89600 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Film Studies: The Philosophy of Motion
Pictures
GC: Tues., 11:45-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Carroll,
Rm. TBA, [96905], Cross listed with FSCP 81000 and HIL 77800
In the
last two decades, there has been an explosion of interest on the part of
philosophers in motion pictures. They
have opened debates on a number of different issues. In this course, we will
survey some of the major disputes in the philosophy of motion pictures. Among them are: the artistic status of film,
the issue of medium specificity, the question of “what is cinema?”, the nature
of the cinematographic image, the nature of editing, and motion pictures in
relation to morality, politics, and knowledge.
Text will include: Wartenburg and Curran’s anthology Philosophy of Film; Carroll and Choi’s
anthology The Philosophy of Film and
Motion Pictures; and Carroll’s The
Philosophy of Motion Pictures.
Students will be required to offer class presentations and submit a
final paper. Auditors by permission of
instructor.
FALL 2009 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART
89600 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Film Studies: Postcolonial Francophone Cinema
GC: Mon., 6:30-8:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Carlson,
Rm. TBA, [96906], Cross listed with FSCP 81000 and French 87400
The
course will survey major issues and artistic trends of the past fifty years of
filmmaking from the Francophone world. To do so, we will examine the works of
six multilingual directors of Francophone descent: Merzak Allouache (Algeria),
Denys Arcand (Canada), Tran Anh Hung (Vietnam), Addellatif Kechiche (Tunisia),
Raoul Peck (Haiti), and Ousmane Sembene (Senegal). Each director will be
represented by two films. The films may include Cyclo, Lumumba, Black Girl, Bab El-Oued City, The Barbarian Invasions, and The
Secret of the Grain, among others. A number of questions will inform the
course. How do the films portray France’s relations with its former colonies?
How do the films distinguish themselves from or ally themselves to tendencies
in the French cinema? How do the films define themselves as national,
international or transnational? How can the films be read in relation to other
postcolonial discourses and artistic forms? Students will write a brief
analytic paper and a longer research essay. The course will be taught in
English. Readings will be available in English and French. Auditors by permission of instructor.
FSCP
81000 - Seminar: Alfred Hitchcock & His Legacy
GC: Wed., 4:15-8:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Kapsis,
Rm. TBA, [97092], Cross listed with THEA 81500 & ASCP 81500
This
course examines Alfred Hitchcock’s career as well as his legacy, with special
concern for how his influence is reflected in the contemporary thriller genre.
In the first part, we will examine Alfred Hitchcock's motion pictures as well
as his popular television series in relation to the network of influences which
combined to produce them, including Hitchcock's personal eccentricities, the
contexts of the thriller genre, the film industry, the film art world, and the
wider society. In the second part, we will explore how Hitchcock's work has
influenced the careers of important American directors, especially Brian De
Palma, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Jonathan Demme, and Steven Spielberg. The
centerpiece of this course is an updated version of Multimedia Hitchcock (MH) ---a dynamic interactive computer program
I originally developed for the Museum of Modern Art, as part of their
celebration of the Hitchcock Centennial in 1999. MH consists of six principal chapters: Biographical Profile; Classic Hitchcock
Sequences; Marketing Hitchcock; The Dynamics of Film Collaboration; Critics’
Voices; and The Legacy. These
multimedia essays are complemented by Hitchcock on Hitchcock, a textual and
audio-video database of the director’s own written and spoken remarks on his
films, and a comprehensive Filmography,
linked to an electronic Archive of
reviews, commentaries, multimedia clips and other Hitchcock-related materials.
Each student enrolled in the seminar will receive a DVD/ROM disc copy of the
program. Students will prepare several
short essays based on the readings and assignments from MH, present in class a
close analysis of a classic Hitchcock sequence, and complete a critical essay
(10-15 pages) on a film director, American or foreign, whose
work has been heavily influenced by Hitchcock.
Auditors by permission of instructor.