ART HISTORY PROGRAM PLANNING
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FALL 2021 ART HISTORY COURSES
(updated March 19, 2021, please continue to check back as more information becomes available)
Note all the courses listed below are subject to change. Please confirm the information by visiting the Columbia online course directory.
PROFESSOR |
COURSE |
COURSE TITLE |
TYPE |
DAY/TIME |
To Be Determined |
AHIS BC1001 |
Into to Art History |
4pt UG Lecture |
Monday/Wednesday |
|
AHIS BC3673 |
History of Photo |
4pt UG Lecture |
Tuesday/Thursday |
|
AHIS BC3970 |
Methods and Theories of Art History |
4pt AH Sr. Seminar |
Tuesday 2:10-4pm |
Anne Higonnet |
AHIS BC3667 |
Clothing |
4pt UG Lecture |
Tuesday/Thursday |
Anne Higonnet |
AHIS TBD |
Exhibition Planning and Programming; Subject: Childhood. |
4pt. CU Bridge Seminar |
Wednesday |
Jonathan Reynolds |
AHIS W4110 |
Modern Japanese Architecture |
3 pt CU |
Monday and Wednesday |
Jonathan Reynolds |
AHIS BC3970 |
Methods and Theories of Art History |
3pt |
Thursday |
John Miller |
AHIS BC3968 |
Art Criticism I |
4pt AH seminar |
Tuesday |
John Miller |
AHIS BC3003 |
Supervised Proj. in Photo |
3pt VA |
Monday |
Joan Snitzer |
AHIS BC3530 |
Advanced studio I |
3pt VA Sr. Studio |
Monday |
Joan Snitzer |
AHIS BC2005 |
Painting I |
3pt VA Studio |
Wednesday 2:10pm-6pm |
Joan Snitzer |
AHIS BC2007 |
Painting III |
3pt VA Studio |
Wednesday 2:10pm-6pm |
Rosalyn Deutsche |
AHIS BC3959 |
Senior research seminar |
AH Sr. Thesis Seminar |
Tuesday |
Rosalyn Deutsche |
AHIS BC3675 |
Feminism and Postmodernism in VA |
3pt UG Lecture |
Monday and Wednesday |
Greg Bryda |
On leave |
|||
Elizabeth Hutchinson |
On leave |
|||
Irena Haiduk |
On leave |
UNDERGRADUATE LECTURES
AHIS BC1001 INTRODUCTION TO ART HISTORY I
Attempting to offer an introduction to artistic creation on a global scale, this course is team-taught by specialists in a number of different cultural and historical traditions. In the fall semester we will discuss the art of Europe, the Middle East, India, Japan, and China, in periods ranging from the Paleolithic to the Renaissance. Museum trips are an integral part of the course. Note: weekly discussion groups to be arranged. Discussion Section Required.
Professor To be Announced 4pts Monday and Wednesday 2:40pm-3:55pm Note: weekly discussion groups to be arranged. Discussion Section Required.
AHIS BC3673 INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY
This course will survey selected social, cultural and aesthetic or technical developments in the history of photography, from the emergence of the medium in the 1820s and 30s through to the present day. Rather than attempt comprehensively to review every aspect of photography and its legacies in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the course will instead trace significant developments through a series of case studies. Some of the latter will focus on individuals, genres or movements, and others on various discourses of the photographic image. Particular attention will be placed on methodological and theoretical concerns pertaining to the medium.
Alexander Alberro 4 points Tuesday and Thursday 4:10pm-5:25pm Note: weekly discussion groups to be arranged. Discussion Section Required.
AHIS BC3667 CLOTHING
Human beings create second, social, skins for themselves. Across history and around the world, everyone designs interfaces between their bodies and the world around them. From pre-historic ornaments to global industry, clothing has been a crucial feature of people’s survival, desires, and identity. This course studies theories of clothing from the perspectives of art history, anthropology, psychology, economics, sociology, design, and sustainability. Issues to be studied include gender roles, craft traditions, global textile trade, royal sumptuary law, the history of European fashion, dissident or disruptive styles, blockbuster museum costume exhibitions, and the environmental consequences of what we wear today.
Anne Higonnet 4pts Tuesday and Thursday 2:40pm-3:55pm Note: weekly discussion groups to be arranged. Discussion Section Required.
AHIS BC3675 FEMINISM AND POSTMODERNISM
Examines art and criticism of the 1970s and 1980s that were informed by feminist and postmodern ideas about visual representation. Explores postmodernism as (1) a critique of modernism, (2) a critique of representation, and (3) what Gayatri Spivak called a radical acceptance of vulnerability. Studies art informed by feminist ideas about vision and subjectivity. Places this art in relation to other aesthetic phenomena, such as modernism, minimalism, institution-critical art, and earlier feminist interventions in art. Course Enrollment Notes: Limited to Juniors, Seniors, and Graduate Students.
Professor Rosalyn Deutsche 3 Points Monday and Wednesday 1:10-2:25
BRIDGE LECTURES
Note CU AH bridge lectures are courses open to both CU graduate students and advanced Barnard students.
AHIS W4110 MODERN JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE
This course will examine Japanese architecture and urban planning from the mid-19th century to the present. We will address topics such as the establishment of an architectural profession along western lines in the late 19th century, the emergence of a modernist movement in the 1920's, the use of biological metaphors and the romanticization of technology in the theories and designs of the Metabolist Group, and the shifting significance of pre-modern Japanese architectural practices for modern architects. There will be an emphasis on the complex relationship between architectural practice and broader political and social change in Japan.
Jonathan Reynolds 3pt Monday and Wendesday 10:10-11:25
UNDERGRADUATE SEMINARS
IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING APPLYING FOR BARNARD ART HISTORY SEMINARS
All Barnard Art History seminars are limited to 15 students and require an application for admission.
AHIS-BC3968 ART CRITICISM I
This course is a seminar on contemporary art criticism written by artists in the post war period. Such criticism differs from academic criticism because it construes art production less as a discrete object of study than as a point of engagement. It also differs from journalistic criticism because it is less obliged to report art market activity and more concerned with polemics. Art /Criticism I will trace the course of these developments by examining the art and writing of one artist each week. These will include Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland, Allan Kaprow, Robert Morris, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Smithson, Art & Language, Dan Graham, Adrian Piper, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Judith Barry and Andrea Fraser. We will consider theoretical and practical implications of each artist’s oeuvre.
John Miller 4pts Tuesday 11:00pm-12:50pm
NOTE THIS COURSE REQUIRES AN APPLICATION FOR ADMISSION. APPLICATIONS ARE DUE NO LATER THAN APRIL 5th. LINK TO ONLINE ART CRITICISM APPLICATION
BRIDGE SEMINARS
IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING APPLYING FOR CU AH BRIDGE SEMINARS: CU AH bridge seminars are open to both CU graduate students and Barnard students. Bridge seminars are limited to 15 students with instructor’s permission and require a Columbia Art History application for admission. Applications due August 9th at 5pm. LINK TO CU APPLICATION
AHIS GU4503 PLANNING & PROGRAMMING AN EXHIBITION SUBJECT: CHILDHOOD
This bridge seminar studies the history of childhood, through a 2022 Boston Institute of Contemporary Art exhibition. To Begin Again was planned to consider how we imagine childhood in our present moment. How do 20 of today’s major artists, many of whom are parents, and belong to an inclusive range of backgrounds, represent the beginnings of human life? Now, the socially stratified consequences of Covid-19 on families and education are also at stake. Due to Covid-19, the timing of the ICA exhibition has allowed an interval in which to re-think what exhibition programming might consist of, in light of the exhibition’s subject, and recent history. Thanks to a Harvard Radcliffe Institute grant, a virtual seminar will convene museum, childhood and education experts to discuss best practices and new possibilities. Students will attend the workshop as well as an artist’s talk, and meet with the exhibition curator, as well as several museum education professionals, to understand how a museum exhibition comes into being. Assignments will include practicing aspects of research and writing necessary to a successful exhibition.
Anne Higonnet, 4 points, Wednesday 12:10-2pm LINK TO CU APPLICATION
ART HISTORY MAJOR REQUIRED COURSES
AHIS BC3530 ADVANCED SENIOR STUDIO I
The Fall Advanced Senior Studio serves as a forum for senior Visual Arts majors to develop their studio theses. The priorities are producing a coherent body of studio work and understanding this work in terms of critical discourse. The class is comprised of group critiques and small group meetings with the instructor. Visiting lecturers and professional workshops will also be scheduled and required. Each student will develop an independent body of visual work that is both personal, original and also speaks to the social conditions of our time. Each student will be able to articulate, verbally and in writing, their creative process. Each student will acquire professional skill that will support their artistic practice in the future. Each student will learn how to present and speak about their work publicly.
Enrollment Note: course limited to Barnard Senior Art History: Concentration in Visual Arts majors
Joan Snitzer 4pts Monday 2:10pm-6:00pm
AHIS-BC3959 SENIOR RESEARCH SEMINAR
Independent research for the senior thesis. Students develop and write their senior thesis in consultation with an individual faculty adviser in art history and participate in group meetings scheduled throughout the senior year. Enrollment Note: course limited to Barnard Art History Majors
Rosalyn Deutsche 3pts Tuesday 6:10pm-8:00pm
AHIS-BC3970 METHODS & THEORIES OF ART HISTORY
Introduction to critical writings that have shaped histories of art, including texts on iconography and iconology, the psychology of perception, psychoanalysis, social history, feminism and gender studies, structuralism, semiotics, and post-structuralism.
4 points Enrollment Note: course limited only to Barnard Art History majors and is a course requirement for majors in Art History: Concentration in Art History
SECTION 001Alexander Alberro Tuesday 2:10-4pm
SECTION 002 Jonathan Reynolds Thursday 10:10-12pm
VISUAL ARTS COURSES
AHIS BC2005 and AHIS BC2007 PAINTING
This course will focus on individual and collaborative projects designed to explore the fundamental principles of image making. Students acquire a working knowledge of concepts in contemporary art through class critiques, discussion, and individual meetings with the professor. Reading materials will provide historical and philosophical background to the class assignments. Class projects will range from traditional to experimental and multi-media. Image collections will be discussed in class with an awareness of contemporary image production.
Joan Snitzer 3 points Wednesday 2:10-6pm Enrollment Note: COURSE LIMITED TO 18 STUDENTS. INSTRUCTORS PERMISSION REQUIRED BY APPLICATION DUE 4/6. LINK TO PAINTING APPLICATION
AHIS-BC3003 SUPERVISED PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECTS
Designed for students to conduct independent projects in photography. Priority for enrollment to the class will be Barnard College students who are enrolling in classes at ICP (International Center of Photography). The cost of ICP will be covered by Barnard College. All of the other students enrolling in the course (CC, GS SOA) will be responsible for their own ICP course expenses.
John Miller 3pts Monday11:00am-12:50pm Enrollment Note: students must attend first class for instructor’s permission
SUMMER 2021 BARNARD ART HISTORY COURSES
Please confirm all course information by visiting the Columbia University Online Directory of Summer 2021 Art History Classes.
· Summer A courses will be held from Monday, May 3, 2021 – Friday, June 14, 2021.
· Summer B courses will be held from Monday, June 28, 2021 – Monday, August 6, 2021.
· Summer course registration 3/8-3/15
Summer 2021 |
COURSE NUMBER |
COURSE TITLE |
INSTRUCTOR |
COURSE TYPE |
Time/Day |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Block A |
AHIS BC3853 |
|
Elizabeth Hutchinson |
Art History Seminar |
Wednesday/Friday 9:00am-12:10pm |
Block B |
AHIS BC2001 |
Drawing |
Irena Haiduk |
Visual Arts Studio |
Monday/Wednesday 9:00am-12:10pm |
Block B 06/28-08/06 |
AHIS BC2001 SECTION 002 |
Drawing Studio |
Ada Potter | Visual Arts Studio 3 points |
Monday/Wednesday 12:10am-3:00pm |
Block B 06/28-08/06 |
AHIS BC2018 | FREESTYLE | Connie Choi | Visual Arts Studio/Seminar 3 Points |
Monday/Wednesday 5:30pm-8:40pm |
Block B |
AHIS BC3666 |
Death Drive 3000 |
Irena Haiduk |
Visual Arts Studio/Seminar |
Monday/Wednesday 1pm-4:10pm |
AHIS BC2001 DRAWING STUDIO
This course will explore drawing as an open-ended way of working and thinking that serves as a foundation for all other forms of visual art. The class is primarily a workshop, augmented by slides lectures and videos, homework assignments, and field trips. Throughout the semester, students will discuss their work individually with the instructor and as a group. Starting with figure drawing and moving on to process work and mapping and diagrams, we will investigate drawing as a practice involving diverse forms of visual culture.
REGISTRATION AND ENROLLMENT NOTES: Course limited to 18 students per section. Instructor's permission required for admission. Applications due by April 9th.
DOWNLOAD DRAWING COURSE APPLICATION HERE
(Block B 06/28-08/06) 3 points
SECTION 001 Irena Haiduk - Monday and Wednesday 9:00am-12:10am
SECTION 002 Ada Potter - Monday and Wednesday 12:10pm-3:00pm
AHIS BC2018 FREESTYLE
In this seminar, students will explore the multiple modes of expression apparent in the practices of contemporary artists of African descent, and the complex set of aesthetic, philosophical, and political motivations that they expose. Throughout the course, students will investigate a series of questions, including: Which widely-held norms does freestyling—or operating through “a relentless and unbridled expression of the self”—resist? How does global citizenship and an expanded diasporic consciousness inform emergent art practices? How do the after-effects of displacement radically change an artist’s process? What insights do these new practices produce or allow? Students will be encouraged to think critically about questions such as these, and to formulate their own lines of inquiry and art historical research. Additionally, students will be challenged to experiment with and think seriously about their own subjectivities in ways that intersect with the questions and concepts that arise from this investigation. Weekly guest speakers (artists, curators, and art historians) will reflect on their individual practices to ground, expand on, and complicate the ongoing conversations within the seminar.
REGISTRATION AND ENROLLMENT NOTES: Course limited to 15 students with Instructors' permission. Application required. Applications are due by April 9th.
DOWNLOAD FREESTYLE COURSE APPLICATION HERE
(Block B 06/28-08/06) 3 points Monday and Wednesday 5:30pm-8:40pm
Connie Choi
AHIS BC3666 DEATH DRIVE 3000
“The aim of all life is death,” Sigmund Freud’s historic words do not appear strange today. Under siege of the perpetual breaking news cycle, the apocalypse is easy to imagine. Will it be an asteroid, a zombie virus or an all out nuclear war? Death Drive 3000 returns to the inanimate. Through a variety of reading, writing, and making projects, this seminar studies the implications of our unbound and limitless death drive. Can any viable futures be located under the regimes of such imagination, futures that do not involve disposing of ourselves? From de Sade to Malabou to Clausewitz, topics include primary nature, partial objects, necrosodomy, dismemberment, omophagia, suicide pacts, plagues, holocausts, total war, and other symptoms of our collective end. "Not for the faint of heart.
REGISTRATION AND ENROLLMENT NOTES: Instructors' permission required. Attend first class. Limited to 18 students. Application required due by APRIL 5.
DOWNLOAD DEATH DRIVE CORSE APPLICATION HERE
(Block B 06/28-08/06) 3 points Monday and Wednesday 1pm-4:10pm
Irena Haiduk
AHIS BC3853 EXHIBITING MODERN INUIT SCULPTURE
In this seminar, students will create a physical and digital exhibition of stone sculptures produced by Inuit artists in the late twentieth century for exhibition and sale outside their communities. The physical exhibition in 2021 will be installed in the rotunda of Low Library on the Columbia campus and will feature ten pieces owned by Columbia Art Properties; the exhibition will open in late June. The digital exhibition will be centered on a timeline that puts the Columbia works in historic context. To broaden and deepen the experience of artists, subjects and art centers, I have selected approximately 40 pieces of Inuit sculpture and graphic arts from the Brooklyn Museum which students will study during our visits there and which can be used in the online exhibition.
REGISTRATION AND ENROLLMENT NOTES: COURSE LIMITED TO 15 STUDENTS WITH INSTRUCTOR'S PERMISSION. NOTE APPLICATION DUE 3/10/21 REQUIRED.
DOWNLOAD APPLICATION HERE
(Block A 05/03-06/14) 4 points Wednesday/Friday 9am-12:10pm
Elizabeth Hutchinson
SPRING 2021 BARNARD ART HISTORY COURSES
Please confirm all course information by visiting the Columbia University Online Directory of Spring 2021 Art History Classes.
SPRING 2021 |
COURSE NUMBER |
COURSE TITLE |
INSTRUCTOR |
COURSE TYPE |
---|---|---|---|---|
FULL Semester Course |
AHIS BC1002 |
Intro to Art History |
Anne Higonnet |
Lecture
|
FULL Semester Course |
AHIS UN2405 |
Twentieth-Century Art |
Alex Alberro |
Lecture
|
FULL Semester Course | AHIS BC2355 | Apocalypse | Greg Bryda | Lecture 4 pts |
FULL Semester Course |
AHIS BC3003 |
Supervised Projects in Photography |
John Miller |
Visual Arts
|
FULL Semester Course |
AHIS BC3031 |
Imagery and Form
|
Joan Snitzer |
Visual Arts/Seminar
|
FULL Semester Course |
AHIS BC3531 |
Visual Arts Advanced Senior Studio |
John Miller |
Visual Art Senior Studio |
FULL Semester Course |
AHIS BC3668 |
Making Visual
|
Joan Snitzer |
Art History Seminar
|
FULL Semester Course |
AHIS BC3844 |
Revolution
|
Anne Higonnet |
Art History Seminar
|
FULL Semester Course |
AHIS BC3910 |
Contemporary Photography and Related Media |
Joanna Lehan |
Art History Seminar
|
FULL Semester Course |
AHIS BC3976 |
Japanese Photography |
Jonathan Reynolds |
Art History Seminar
|
FULL Semester Course |
AHIS BC3982 |
Seventeenth-Century
|
Adam Eaker |
Art History Seminar
|
FULL Semester Course |
AHIS BC3984 |
Curatorial Positions
|
Valerie Smith |
Art History Seminar
|
FULL Semester Course |
AHIS W4502 |
Sin and Sodomy |
Greg Bryda |
Art History
|
Block A Courses |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
|
Block B Course |
AHIS BC3846 |
Designing
|
Irena Haiduk |
Visual Arts/Seminar
|
Spring B Course |
AHIS BC3933 |
Buoyancy |
Irena Haiduk |
Visual Arts/Seminar
|
BARNARD ART HISTORY UNDERGRADUATE LECTURES
AHIS-BC1002 INTRODUCTION TO ART HISTORY II (full semester course)
The second part of the Introduction to Art History goes from about 1400 to 2021, circles the world and includes all media. Every class meeting is organized around one historical theme, which is launched at the start of class by a work of contemporary art. How, over time, has humanity expressed its dreams, fears, and identities in visual form? How does beauty deal with experience? Note: In-class breakout sessions and weekly forums are required.
Anne Higonnet 4pts Monday and Wednesday 2:40pm-3:55pm
AHIS-BC2355 APOCALYPSE (full semester course)
This lecture course explores how art and architecture responded to changing attitudes toward death, the afterlife, and the end of the world over the course of the European Middle Ages, from early Christian Rome to the dawn of the Protestant Reformation in Germany. Medieval illustrations of the Book of Revelation in New York collections will play a central role in discussions of plague, rapture, and “eschatology”—or concerns over the fate of the soul at the end of time. We will analyze the visual culture associated with ordinary people preparing for their own death and the deaths of loved ones, saints and Biblical figures whose triumph in death served as exemplars for the living, and institutional and individual anxieties over humankind’s destiny on Judgment Day. Artworks under consideration will encompass various media and contexts, including monumental architecture and architectural relief sculpture, tomb sculpture, wall painting, manuscript painting, reliquaries, and altarpieces. The course satisfies the major requirement's historical period of 400-1400.
Note: Required 1 hour weekly discussion sections to be arranged.
Enrollment Note: Limited to 60 Students
Greg Bryda 4pts M/W 10:10-11:25pm
AHIS-UN2405 TWENTIETH-CENTURY ART (full semester course)
The course will examine a variety of figures, movements, and practices within the entire range of 20th-century art—from Expressionism to Abstract Expressionism, Constructivism to Pop Art, Surrealism to Minimalism, and beyond–situating them within the social, political, economic, and historical contexts in which they arose. The history of these artistic developments will be traced through the development and mutual interaction of two predominant strains of artistic culture: the modernist and the avant-garde, examining in particular their confrontation with and development of the particular vicissitudes of the century’s ongoing modernization. Discussion section complement class lectures. Course is a prerequisite for certain upper-level art history courses.
Note: Required 1-hour weekly discussion sections to be arranged.
Alexander Alberro 4pts T/TH 4:40-5:25pm
BARNARD SEMINAR COURSES
SEMINAR ENROLLMENT NOTES: Most Barnard Art History seminars are limited to 15 students and require an application for admission. Spring 2021 seminar applications are due no later than Friday, November 6th at 5pm. NOTE WE HAVE EXTENDED THE DEADLINE TO THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19th. Submit your typed application by email directly to the Barnard Art History Department office arthistory@barnard.edu. The department will notify students of the course rosters via email by the week of November 23rd. DOWNLOAD A BARNARD ART HISTORY SEMINAR APPLICATION
AHIS-BC3668 MAKING VISUAL: A TALE OF TWO CITIES (full semester course)
This seminar considers recent developments necessitated by classroom restrictions during the COVID-19 crisis. The experience of virtual communication is developing as one reads this course description. This course intends to develop visual skills that are both flexible and productive for communication in a global environment. Collaborating with creative educators from the digital and design fields living in Berlin, Germany, will enhance class participants' engagement and attention to online learning. The seminar's individual and collaborative projects and innovations can and will be useful well into the future with and without geographical and environmental restrictions.
Integrated into skills learned in a traditional studio course is a series of four workshops introducing class participants to relevant approaches for extending the reach of their artistic work through innovative methods and technologies. The workshops' core focus is on learning essential conceptual and practical art studio skills hand-in-hand with the knowledge of technology and software platforms (Miro, StopMotion, Adobe Premiere After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, InDesign, Google Sheets, Google Slides, and Zoom). In addition, student participants volunteer tutorials in a variety of selected digital programs and interactive platforms. By gaining facility both with the software platforms and collaborations without geographic restrictions, students have the opportunity to develop a broad range of communication strategies in cooperative, digital and visual image production. Students will execute a series of individual and collaborative projects developed to enhance an understanding of visual subjects.
Note: Small required group meetings Wednesday, 2:30-3:30pm
Enrollment Note: Class is limited to 15 students with instructor’s permission. Seminar application required - due on November 19th, 2020 Download application here)
Joan Snitzer 4pts Art History Seminar Wednesdays 12:10–2:00pm + Small-Group Meetings Wednesdays 2:30-3:30pm
AHIS-BC3844 REVOLUTION AND ART (full semester course)
In 1789, a French revolution shook the government foundation of Europe, and with it, all the arts. The principles of monarchy were rejected, women gained unprecedented freedoms, and French slavery was abolished. How did the arts express those upheavals? A reaction against the Revolution began by 1805. An emperor crowned himself, slavery was reinstated, and women’s rights were revoked. How did the arts deal with this backlash?
Enrollment Note: Class is limited to 15 students with instructor’s permission. Seminar application required - due on November 19th, 2020 Download application here)
Anne Higonnet 4pts Wednesday 10:10-12pm
AHIS-BC3910 CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY AND RELATED MEDIA (full semester course)
An introductory survey of contemporary photography and related media through the framework of current exhibitions in New York City. Exhibitions of photography and video play a particular role in mirroring the present moment, which finds political themes front and center. Prevalent are exhibitions that redress (art) historical erasure, present counter histories, or take direct aim at specific governmental policies of systems. Through virtual visits to NYC galleries and museums (approximately 8 trips), we will take stock of which artists are showing, in what contexts, and unpack both artistic and curatorial strategies. In addition to class discussion of what we’ve seen, during our time in the classroom, we will look back at select landmark photography exhibition to chart evolutions in the medium, and their interrelation with politics.
Enrollment Note: Class is limited to 15 students with instructor’s permission. Seminar application required - due on November 19th, 2020 Download application here)
Joanna Lehan 4pts Art History Seminar Thursday 12:10-2pm
AHIS-BC3928 DUTCH SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ART (full semester course)
This course is devoted to a close examination of Dutch art of the seventeenth century, one of the most celebrated chapters in the history of art. Students will be exposed to seminal art historical texts on the period, with a focus on such topics as the rise of the modern art market, the imagery of everyday life, and intersections between art and gender.
Enrollment Note: Class is limited to 15 students with instructor’s permission. Seminar application required - due on November 19th, 2020 Download application here)
Adam Eaker 4pts Day/Time Monday 10:10-12pm
AHIS-BC3933 BUOYANCY (Block B Course)
“Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.” - Michael Caine. We do not live our own desires. Pressing ourselves into heavy molds not made for our bodies compresses us, tears our skin, and bruises our features. It is hard to breathe. We sink. Weight harbors the downward pull. It attaches itself in many ways but there are countless ways to set it down, to be free. This takes practice and skill. The common task of this visual arts seminar is to distinguish ourselves from the weight we carry. Through a variety or reading, writing, and making activities we shall seek out and contact levity: that gravity that changes our bodies, make us light of touch, aerates and propels us toward the state of buoyancy. Not for the faint of heart.
Enrollment Note: Class is limited to 18 students. Instructor’s permission to enroll is required. Attend first day of class for enrollment selection.
Irena Haiduk 4pts Art History/Visual Arts Seminar Monday and Wednesday 1:10-3:55pm
AHIS-BC3960 SENIOR RESEARCH SEMINAR (full semester course)
(REQUIRED COURSE FOR SENIOR VISUAL ARTS MAJORS – no application required)
Course open to Barnard Art History majors only. Independent research for the senior thesis. Students develop and write their senior thesis in consultation with an individual faculty adviser in Art History and participate in group meetings scheduled throughout the senior year.
Rosalyn Deutsche 4pt Art History Majors Seminar Tuesday 6:10pm-8:00pm
AHIS-BC3976 JAPANESE PHOTOGRAPHY (full semester course)
This course will examine the history of Japanese photography from the middle of the 19th century to the present. The class will be organized both chronologically and thematically. Throughout its history, photography has been an especially powerful medium for addressing the most challenging issues facing Japanese society. Among the topics under discussion will be: tourist photography and the representation of women within that genre in the late 19th century, the politics of propaganda photography, the construction of Japanese cultural identity through the representation of “tradition” in photography, and the interest in marginalized urban subcultures in the photography of the 1960s and 1970s. Although the course will be focused on Japan, the class will read from the literature on photography elsewhere in order to situate Japanese work within a broader context.
Enrollment Note: Class is limited to 15 students with instructor’s permission. Seminar application required - due on November 19th, 2020 Download application here)
Jonathan Reynolds 4pts Art History Seminar Thursday 10:10-12pm
AHIS-BC3984 CURATORIAL POSITIONS, 1969-PRESENT (full semester course)
Contemporary exhibitions studied through a selection of great shows from roughly 1969 to the present that defined a generation. This course will not offer practical training in curating; rather it will concentrate on the historical context of exhibitions, the theoretical basis for their argument, the criteria for the choice in artists and their work, and exhibitions internal/external reception.
Enrollment Note: Class is limited to 15 students with instructor’s permission. Seminar application required - due on November 19th, 2020 Download application here)
Valerie Smith 4pts Art History Seminar Tuesday 10:10-12pm
AHIS-BC4846 DESIGNING DESIGN II: SPACE IS THE PLACE (Block B Course)
The way an environment is made remains deeply embedded within it. Our environments shape us like our families, they nourish and educate us, they prejudice us. What if they were not a given? If our relationship to them was something we choose and shape, less of a blood relation, more of a lifelong friendship? A friend is an equal with their own agency and will, a partner in play and life. Friendship is a place where we interact, welcome each other and make the world together. The common task of this class is to devise a studio for making living environments to study how we could make, exhibit and live with art. Through a variety of individual and group readings and assignments, in class case-studies and interviews we will test our preconceptions of space and time so that we may experience and inspire the state of being present. We will study and practice presence to form intimate bonds with interior, exterior, bodily and narrative environments already in existence and of our own making.
Enrollment Note: Class is limited to 18 students. Instructor’s permission to enroll is required. Attend first day of class for enrollment selection.
Irena Haiduk 4pts Art History/Visual Arts Seminar
Block B Monday and Wednesday 9:10-11:55am
COLUMBIA ART HISTORY BRIDGE SEMINAR OPEN TO BARNARD UNDERGRADUATES
AHIS-GU4521 SIN AND SODOMY (full semester course)
For the unrepentant sins of their inhabitants God had Sodom and Gomorrah, the ignominious twin cities from Genesis, shattered to smithereens. Throughout the Middle Ages, the tale was invoked to justify harsh judgment of mortal sins of the flesh and “unnatural” sex acts, in particular those occurring between members of the same sex. This bridge seminar focuses on the church’s desire to control the potential of human sexuality to subvert its order of “natural” law. Through historical texts and artworks from the period, we will analyze the wide diversity of medieval attitudes toward non-normative sex and eroticism in a variety of contexts, from the construction of the phenomenon of sodomy in early and high medieval exegesis, the eradication of pre-Christian fertility rituals in northern and eastern Europe, the playful undermining of gender roles in secular medieval romances, to illicit accounts of public sex in pleasure gardens and bath houses, and monumental hellscapes rendered with graphic visualizations of sexual violence. Moving chronologically through the Middle Ages, we will end by addressing modern questions surrounding the sexuality of Jean the Duke of Berry and Albrecht Dürer, and Hieronymus Bosch’s fixation with butt play. Discussion will be informed by critical readings in queer theory, feminism, and gender studies by Jack Halberstam, David Halperin, Susan Stryker, to name a few, and by medievalists employing these methods, such as Roland Betancourt, Caroline Walker Bynum, Michael Camille, Dyan Elliott, and Robert Mills.
Enrollment Note: This is a Columbia Art History bridge seminar limited to 15 students with instructor’s permission. Columbia seminar application required - Appy by January 4, 2021 LINK TO APPLICATION
Greg Bryda 3pts Wednesday TBD.
VISUAL ARTS COURSES
ENROLLMENT NOTE FOR VISUAL ARTS COURSES: Students must attend first class for instructor’s permission to register.
AHIS BC3531 ADVANCED SENIOR STUDIO II (Full semester course)
(REQUIRED COURSE FOR SENIOR AH VA MAJORS)
Advanced Senior Studio II is a critique class that serves as a forum for senior Visual Arts majors to develop and complete one-semester studio theses. The priorities are producing a coherent body of studio work and understanding this work in terms of critical discourse. The class will comprise group critiques and small group meetings with the instructor. Virtual field trips and visiting artist lectures will augment our critiques. Please visit: https://arthistory.barnard.edu/senior-thesis-project-art-history-and-visual-arts-majors
Enrollment Notes: Limited to Barnard Senior AH VA Majors
Note: 1 hour weekly required meetings to be arranged.
John Miller 3pts Monday 5:00-7:00pm
AHIS-BC3003 SUPERVISED PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECTS (full semester course)
Designed for students to conduct independent projects in photography. Priority for enrollment to the class will be Barnard College students who are enrolling in classes at ICP (International Center of Photography). The cost of ICP will be covered by Barnard College. All of the other students enrolling in the course (CC, GS SOA) will be responsible for their own ICP course expenses.
Enrollment Note: Course limited to 18, with priority to Barnard Art History majors.
John Miller 3pts Monday11:00am-12:50pm
AHIS-BC3031 IMAGERY AND FORM IN THE VISUAL ARTS (full semester course)
(MAJOR REQUIREMENT FOR AH VA MAJORS, JR's and Sr's Only)
This seminar examines the usage of art-historical material and cultural theory within artistic practice.
Students explore the nature of communication, dialogue, history, and practice common in contemporary visual art. Students develop constructive and critical discourses relevant to today’s visual culture and cultivate criteria for viewing, understanding, and creating artworks within a contemporary art community. Enrollment Note: class is limited to 16 with the instructor’s permission.
Enrollment Note: Course limited to 15, with priority given to Jr and Sr AH VA majors.
Joan Snitzer 4pts Monday 2:10pm-4:00pm