QUICK LINKS TO FALL 2023 ONLINE BC AH SEMINAR AND VISUAL ARTS COURSE APPLICATIONS
DUE NO LATER THAN APRIL 12, @ 5PM
AHIS BC3856 Greg Bryda - Medieval Craft, Science and Art application form
AHIS BC3883 Renee Green, Barnard Orzeck Fellow - Cinematic Migrations application form
AHIS BC3968 John Miller - Art Criticism application form
AHIS BC3933 Irena Haiduk - Buoyancy application form
AHIS BC3984 Valerie Smith - Curatorial Positions application form
AHIS BC2005 and AHIS BC2007 PAINTING PAINTING APPLICATION
- PLEASE READ THE BELOW VERY IMPORTANT LIMITED ENROLLMENT COURSE PROTOCOLS-
Please email the BC AH office asap if, after you have been accepted into a course, you decide not to register. This way, we can admit a student off the waitlist. If you have been accepted into a course, you are still required to attend the first class meeting in September to secure your spot. If you do not attend the first class meeting in September, you will lose your spot and the professor will assume you are not taking the course and will admit another student off the waitlist.
FALL 2023 ART HISTORY COURSES
Please visit the CU Directory of Classes for an the most up-to-date list and day/time and room locations. All the below course info is subject to change.
UNDERGRADUATE LECTURES
AHIS BC1001 INTRODUCTION TO ART HISTORY I (Barnard Course)
The first half of the Introduction to Art History explores premodern art and architecture around the world, from cave paintings to Song dynasty landscapes and Renaissance sculpture. Lectures and discussion sections are organized around themes, including nature and naturalism, death and the afterlife, ornament and abstraction, gender and sexuality, colonialism and conversion, and ritual and divinity. Visits to museums across New York are also an integral component to the course.
NOTE: Weekly Discussion Section Required. Sign up to be arranged at the beginning of the semester.
Greg Bryda 4pts Monday and Wednesday 2:40pm-3:55pm Location: 304 Barnard Hall
AHIS UN2412 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ART IN EUROPE (Columbia Course)
This course will examine the history of art in Europe from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. This was a period of dramatic cultural change, marked by, among other things, the challenging of traditional artistic hierarchies; increased opportunities for travel, trade, and exchange; and the emergence of “the public” as a critical new audience for art. Students will be introduced to major artists, works, and media, as well as to key themes in the art historical scholarship. Topics will include: the birth of art criticism; the development of the art market; domesticity and the cult of sensibility; the ascension of women artists and patrons; and the visual culture of revolution. The emphasis will be on France, Italy and Britain, with forays to Spain, Germany, Austria, Russia and elsewhere.
F. Baumgartner 3 pts Tuesday/Thursday 10:10-11:25, 612 Schermerhorn Hall
AHIS UN2415 HISTORY PAINTING AND ITS AFTERLIVES (Columbia Course)
This course will study the problematic persistence of history painting as a cultural practice in nineteenth century Europe, well after its intellectual and aesthetic justifications had become obsolete. Nonetheless, academic prescriptions and expectations endured in diluted or fragmentary form. We will examine the transformations of this once privileged category and look at how the representation of exemplary deeds and action becomes increasingly problematic in the context of social modernization and the many global challenges to Eurocentrism. Selected topics explore how image making was shaped by new models of historical and geological time, by the invention of national traditions, and by the emergence of new publics and visual technologies. The relocation of historical imagery from earlier elite milieus into mass culture forms of early cinema and popular illustration will also be addressed.
J. Crary Tuesday and Thursday 4:10-5:25, Location: 612 Schermerhorn Hall
AHIS UN2427 TWENTIETH CENTURY ARCHITECTURE (Columbia Course)
This course examines some of the key moments of architectural modernity in the twentieth century in an attempt to understand how architecture participated in the making of a new world order. It follows the lead of recent scholarship that has been undoing the assumption that modern twentieth-century architecture is a coherent enterprise that should be understood through avant-gardist movements. Instead, architecture is presented in this course as a multivalent and contradictory entity that has nonetheless had profound impact on modernity. Rather than attempting to be geographically comprehensive, the course focusses on the interdependencies between the Global North and the South; instead of being strictly chronological, it is arranged around a constellation of themes that are explored through a handful of buildings, cities, and landscapes as well as texts. Reading primary sources from the period under examination is a crucial part of the course.
NOTE: Weekly Discussion Section Required. Sign up to be arranged at the beginning of the semester.
Z. Çelik 4pts Monday and Wednesday 1:10-2:25, Location: 612 Schermerhorn Hall
AHIS UN2602 ARTS OF JAPAN (Columbia Course)
Survey of Japanese art from the Neolithic through the Edo period, with emphasis on Buddhist art, scroll painting, decorative screens, and wood-block prints.
NOTE: Weekly Discussion Section Required. Sign up to be arranged at the beginning of the semester.
M. McKelway 4 pts Tuesday and Thursday 10:10-11:25, Location: 807 Schermerhorn Hall
AHIS BC3667 CLOTHING (Barnard Course)
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.
NOTE: Weekly Discussion Section Required. Sign up to be arranged at the beginning of the semester.
Anne Higonnet 4pts Tuesday and Thursday 2:40pm-3:55pm Location: 304 Barnard Hall
UNDERGRADUATE SEMINARS
IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING APPLYING FOR ART HISTORY SEMINARS
Both Barnard and Columbia Undergraduate Art History seminars are limited to 15 students and require an application for admission. Please click on links for each course application. Barnard seminar applications are due April 12 at 5pm.
Note the links to the links to all the undergraduate seminars will be posted on the CU Directory of Classes
AHIS UN3103 ROMAN VILLAS: THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF AN ANCIENT LIFESTYLE (Columbia Course)
The villa—the countryside residence that Roman aristocrats used both for running landed estates and as a leisure retreat from city life—is one of the most characteristic features of the ancient classical world. From the late Republic on, it was the locus where a new and distinctive lifestyle was developed. The seminar is designed to introduce students to the main aspects of the architecture and figural decoration of Roman villas by focusing on well-known examples from the Vesuvian area.
Enrollment Note: Seminar limited to 15 students and requires an application for admission due no later than April 12 at 5pm. Roman Villas application form – check the CU Directory of Classes
F. de Angelis 4 pts 6:10-8pm 930 Schermerhorn
AHIS UN3413 NINETEENTH-CENTURY CRITICISM (Columbia Course)
This course examines a diverse selection of texts that have a crucial bearing on the formation of concepts of modernity and on new aesthetic practices in nineteenth-century Europe and North America. Using works of art theory, fiction, poetry, and social criticism, the seminar will trace the emergence and development of new models of cultural and subjective experience and their relation to social and historical processes. Readings include work by Diderot, Schiller, Carlyle, Poe, Baudelaire, Ruskin, Emerson, Huysmans, Pater, Nietzsche and Henry Adams.
Enrollment Note: Seminar limited to 15 students and requires an application for admission due no later than April 12 at 5pm. Nineteenth Century Criticism application form check the CU Directory of Classes
J. Crary 4 pts Monday 4:10-6 Location: 934 Schermerhorn Hall
AHIS UN3708 BEYOND EL DORADO: MATERIALS, VALUES, AND AESTHETICS IN PRE-COLUMBIAN ART HISTORY (Columbia Course)
In this seminar, we will investigate ancient and indigenous art, materials, and aesthetics from areas of what is today Latin America. Taking advantage of New York’s unrivaled museum collections, we will research Pre-Columbian gold and silver work, as well as equally precious stone, shell, textile, and feather works created by artists of ancient Mexico, Central America, and Andean South America. We will also study latter-day histories of collecting, reception, display, appropriation, and activism that shape contemporary understandings of Pre-Columbian art.
Enrollment Note: Seminar limited to 15 students and requires an application for admission due no later than April 12 at 5pm. Beyond El Dorado application form – Check the CU Directory of Classes
L. Trever 4 pts Monday 12:10-2pm Location: 806 Schermerhorn Hall
AHIS BC3856 MEDIEVAL CRAFT, SCIENCE AND ART (Barnard Course) NEW COURSE
This undergraduate seminar investigates the history of science through the study of artworks and monuments and the materials and techniques of their manufacture. Because the course’s method hinges on the marriage of theory and practice, in addition to discussions in the seminar room, several sessions will take the form of workshops with artisans and conservators (e.g. stonemasons, illuminators, gardeners), or “laboratory meetings” where students will conduct their own hands-on experiments with materials as part of Professor Pamela Smith’s Making and Knowing Project. Topics to be explored include but are not limited to: metallurgy and cosmogeny, paint pigments and pharmacology, microarchitecture and agriculture, masonry and geology, manuscripts and husbandry, and gynecology and Mariology.
Enrollment Note: Seminar limited to 15 students and requires an application for admission due no later than April 12 at 5pm. Medieval Craft, Science and Art application form
Greg Bryda 4pts Wednesday 10:10-12 Location: TBD
AHIS BC3883 CINEMATIC MIGRATIONS (Barnard Course) NEW COURSE TAUGHT BY BARNARD'S 2023 ORZECK FELLOW / VISITING ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Desire for cinema perhaps existed before its creation. The variety of ways this longing has been addressed in the past and present open ongoing possibilities to explore and form the basis of inquiry in this seminar/production workshop. With the desire and dreams of potential also came words, statements, essays, radical aspirations, and manifestos. Via a combination of immersive viewing and analysis, readings, and encounters with time-based works, including the seminar participants’ productions, Cinematic Migrations will investigate declarations and questions, for example: “An invention without a Future,” and “What became of 21st century cinema?” The course explores migrations of cinematic ideas, contexts, formats, and histories in relation to varied contexts through a multifaceted look at cinema's transmutations, its emergence on local and national levels, as well as global migrations. The course also examines the transformation caused by online video, television, spatial installations, performances, dance, and many formats and portable devices, as well as the theory and context of film's categorization, dissemination, and analysis. Presentations, screenings, readings, guests, and experimental transdisciplinary projects broaden the perception of present cinema. As this course engages what can be made and what has been made, the study of the essay film, as an incredibly porous and agile form, will recur as a node to consider regarding forms of thinking and production. In addition to viewing films and reading about them, each student will undertake a semester-long project that implements processes derived from the models studied in class. This project will be decided upon by the student in relation to their interests and an intersection with material screened and read: it can be a short moving image work, a paper, an audio work, a slide show, any aesthetic form ignited by the porous concept of Cinematic Migrations and their own interests. Note: The class sessions are four hours long so they can encompass screenings and discussions.
Enrollment Note: Seminar limited to 15 students and requires an application for admission due no later than April 12 at 5pm. Cinematic Migrations application form
Renee Green, Barnard 2023 Orzeck Visiting Artist Fellow Thursday 12:10-4pm Location: TBD
AHIS BC3968 ART CRITICISM I (Barnard Course)
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.
Enrollment Note: Seminar limited to 15 students and requires an application for admission due no later than April 12 at 5pm. Art Criticism application form
John Miller 4pts Tuesday 11:00pm-12:50pm Location: TBD
AHIS BC3933 BUOYANCY (Barnard 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: Seminar limited to 15 students and requires an application for admission due no later than April 12 at 5pm. Buoyancy application form
Irena Haiduk 4pts Tuesday 2:10-5pm Location: TBD
AHIS BC3984 CURATORIAL POSITIONS 1969-PRESENT (Barnard 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: Seminar limited to 15 students and requires an application for admission due no later than April 12 at 5pm. Curatorial Positions application form
Valerie Smith 4 Credits Thursday 10:10-12pm Location: TBD
BRIDGE LECTURES
CU AH bridge lectures are advanced courses open to both BC and CU undergraduate students and CU graduate students. Bridge Lectures do not require an application.
AHIS Gxxx CHINESE ART: CENTER AND PERIPHERY (Columbia Course)
More info to come. Check the CU online course directory for further information.
Xu, 3 pts Tuesday and Thursday 2:40-3:55pm Location: 912 Schermerhorn Hall
AHIS G4042 AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTISTS IN THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES (Columbia Course)
This course is a survey of visual production by North Americans of African descent from 1900 to the present. It will look at the various ways in which these artists have sought to develop an African American presence in the visual arts over the last century. We will discuss such issues as: what role does stylistic concern play; how are ideas of romanticism, modernism, and formalism incorporated into the work; in what ways do issues of postmodernism, feminism, and cultural nationalism impact on the methods used to portray the cultural and political body that is African America?
K. Jones 3 pts Tuesday and Thursday 4:10-5:25pm 807 Schermerhorn Hall
AHIS G4044 NEO-DADA AND POP ART (Columbia Course)
This course examines the avant-garde art of the fifties and sixties, including assemblage, happenings, pop art, Fluxus, and artists' forays into film. It will examine the historical precedents of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Carolee Schneemann and others in relation to their historical precedents, development, critical and political aspects.
B. Joseph Monday and Wednesday 2:40-3:55pm Location: 612 Schermerhorn Hall
AHIS G4110 MODERN JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE (Columbia Course)
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 3pts Monday and Wednesday 10:10am-12pm Location: 807 Schermerhorn Hall
AHIS G4131 MEDIEVAL ART I: FROM LATE ANTIQUITY TO THE END OF BYZANTIUM (Columbia Course)
A survey of Early Christian and Byzantine art from its origins in the eastern provinces of the Late Roman Empire through the Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The course is the first segment of a two-part survey of medieval monuments offered by the Department of Art History and Archaeology.
H. Klein 3 pts Monday and Wednesday 4:10-5:25, Location: 612 Schermerhorn
BRIDGE SEMINARS
IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING CU AH BRIDGE SEMINARS
CU AH bridge seminars are advanced courses open to both BC and CU undergraduate students and CU graduate students.
Bridge seminars are limited to 15 students with the instructor’s permission and require a Columbia Art History application for admission. Application deadline to be determined. Note links to the CU AH bridge seminar applications are posted on the CU Directory of Classes
AHIS G4546 GILLES DELEUZE: THINKING IN ART (Columbia Course)
The philosophy of Gilles Deleuze has emerged as one of the richest, most singular adventures in post-war European thought; Foucault considered it the most important in France, and more generally, in the 20th century. In all of Deleuze's work there is a search for a new 'image of thought.' But how did art figure in this search, and how did the search in turn appeal to artists, writers, filmmakers, architects, as well as curators or critics? In this seminar, we explore the complex theme of 'thinking in art' in Deleuze, and its implications for art in the 21st century or for the global contemporary art of today. NOTE THIS COURSE REQUIRES AN APPLICATION FOR ADMISSION. (CU seminar application info and link to come)
J. Rajchman 4pts Wednesday 4:10-6 Location: Schermerhorn 807
AHIS Gxxx THE ROUTES OF CHARLES V (Columbia Course)
More info to come. Check the CU online course directory for further information
D. Bodart, 4 pts Tuesday 4:10-6pm Location: Schermerhorn 934
BARNARD ART HISTORY MAJOR REQUIRED COURSES
AHIS BC3530 ADVANCED SENIOR STUDIO I (Barnard Visual Arts Course)
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 requirement for majors in Art History: Concentration in Visual Arts and limited to Barnard Art History Senior Concentration in Visual Arts majors.
Joan Snitzer 4pts Monday 2:10pm-6:00pm Location: 600 West 116th Street 8th Floor VA Sr. Studios)
AHIS-BC3959 SENIOR RESEARCH SEMINAR (Barnard Art History Written Senior Thesis Course)
Independent research for the written Art History 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 and a course requirement for majors writing an Art History senior thesis.
Rosalyn Deutsche 3pts Tuesday 6:10pm-8:00pm Diana Center Location to be Announced
AHIS-BC3970 METHODS & THEORIES OF ART HISTORY (Barnard Art History Majors Requirement)
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.
Enrollment Note: Course limited to Barnard Art History majors and a course requirement for majors in Art History: Concentration in Art History.
SECTION 001 Jonathan Reynolds 4pts Tuesday 2:10-4pm Diana Center Location: TBD
SECTION 002 Elizabeth Hutchinson 4pts Wednesday 2:10-4pm Diana Center Location: TBD
VISUAL ARTS COURSES
AHIS BC2005 and AHIS BC2007 PAINTING (Barnard Visual Arts)
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.
Instructor to be Determined 3 points Wednesday 2:10-6pm Location: 402 Diana Center Visual Arts Studio
Enrollment Note:
COURSE IS LIMITED TO 18 STUDENTS.
INSTRUCTORS PERMISSION IS REQUIRED BY APPLICATION DUE 4/12.
LINK TO PAINTING APPLICATION
AHIS BC3003 SUPERVISED PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECTS (Barnard 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 courses 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 Monday 11:00am-12:50pm Enrollment Note: students must attend first class for instructor’s permission. Course limited to 15 students with priority going first to AH and VA majors then by seniority.