Archived: 2019-2020 Undergraduate Course Listings
Fall 2019/Winter 2020
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- Instructor: Morgan Currie
- Description: This course is a broad historical survey of different artistic traditions from prehistory to the Renaissance that explores how works of art were produced, and what roles they played in their societies. Principle theories of art from the ancient and medieval worlds will also be introduced. Students will gain the ability to recognize images from a wide range of times and places, and their relationships with the societies and cultures where they originated. Course activities develop basic formal and contextual analysis skills that are valuable in today’s image-saturated world.
- Textbook: TBD
- Evaluation: Visual analyses – 25%; Midterm test – 25%; Final Exam – 35%; Tutorial participation – 15%
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- Instructor: Sheena Ellison
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- Instructor: Peter Coffman
- Format: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour per week.
- Description: This survey of Western architecture to approximately 1600 serves as a foundation to subsequent courses in art, architecture and architectural history, and can also be a stand-alone exploration of history viewed through the lens of the built environment. It roams from Neolithic tombs to Greek and Roman temples to medieval castles to Islamic palaces to Renaissance churches and palazzi – with a great deal in between. In all cases, the buildings will be situated on a broad cultural and historical landscape, connecting them to the ideas, events and circumstances that originally gave them meaning.
- Evaluation: Quiz, tutorial participation and attendance, midterm, short essay, exam.
- Course text: TBA
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- Instructor: Gül Kale
- Description: This course will examine global architectural history and theory from 1500 to the present. It explores the architectural and urban history of diverse regions such as Europe, India, Africa, the Americas, the Middle East, China, and Japan through key buildings and infrastructure. The course will lay the framework for understanding the fabrication, perception, and experience of the built environment and artifacts by different communities. It will simultaneously look at the ways in which ideas, people, and goods circulated between cities. Some of the themes include: architecture and ritualistic space; the public role of the architect; imperial cities and buildings; public festivals in urban squares; decision-making for urban projects; architecture and politics; architectural design; sacred space; visual experience and urban landscape; gardens and theatrical space; architecture and world fairs; city and cinematic space; urban views and photography; and architecture and urban modernization. Shared architectural ideas that shaped the built environment, as well as were shaped by specific cultural, social, political, and scientific contexts will be discussed through examining selected architectural concepts and works. The course will integrate various modes of interdisciplinary knowledge from the arts, humanities, sciences, and technology and disseminate them as the means of historical inquiry and critical and creative thinking on global architectural history and theory.
- Evaluation process: Participation, research project, midterm and final exams.
- Required text: TBA
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- Instructor: Brian Foss
- Description: This course surveys art made in Canada since c.1900, looking at leading artists through the lens of major themes in 20th-century and contemporary art and society. How have artists tried to define “Canada” in their art? What questions have they asked about the relationship between personal identity, group or regional identity, and Canadian identity as a whole? How have they expressed interests in gender, race, and social responsibility? In other words, how has 20th-century and contemporary art in Canada tried to make sense of this huge country during more than a century of extreme changes both in how art itself has been defined and in how Canada has imagined itself?
- Evaluation process: TBA
- Required text: TBA
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- Instructor: Allan J. Ryan, New Sun Chair in Aboriginal Art and Culture
- Email: allan.ryan@carleton.ca, website: www.trickstershift.com
- Description: This course presents a selective survey of pre-contact, historic, and contemporary arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeast, Eastern Woodlands, Great Plains and Prairies and the Subarctic regions of North America. The aim of the course is to develop a familiarity with the richness of First Peoples art forms in their regional diversity and temporal depth from time immemorial to the present. A wide range of traditional media and materials will be examined, from sculpture, architecture, birchbark and hide painting to basketry, quillwork and beadwork. The role that art has played in expressions of cosmological beliefs, political power, group identity, and/or presentation of the individual self will also be explored. Specific attention will be paid to the impact on the arts of colonization, gender, and touristic commodification of Indigenous culture. Cultural continuity expressed and maintained through the arts will be an ongoing theme, as will the foregrounding of Indigenous “fine arts” production in these regions over the last four decades, with a particular emphasis on Canadian First Nations artists, and expressions of cultural resistance and survivance.
- Required texts: (available at Haven Books, corner of Sunnyside and Seneca):
Berlo, Janet Catherine and Ruth B. Phillips, Native North American Art, 2nd Edition, (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)
Whiteford, Andrew Hunter. North American Indian Arts. Golden/St. Martin’s Press.
Readings and images viewed in class will be available electronically on the course website. Additional readings, videos and DVDs will be placed on reserve in the MacOdrum Library. - Tentative Grading breakdown:
Short report on visit to the Canadian Museum of History – 15%
Two short reports on attendance at two public Indigenous events – 10%
Midterm exam – 30%
Library research assignment – 15%
Final exam – 30%
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- Instructor: Allan J. Ryan, New Sun Chair in Aboriginal Art and Culture
- Contact: allan.ryan@carleton.ca, website: www.trickstershift.com
- Description: This course presents a selective survey of pre-contact, historic and contemporary arts of Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast, the American Southwest and the Arctic regions of North America. The goal of the course is to develop a familiarity with the richness of Native American artforms in their regional diversity and temporal depth, from time immemorial to the present day, in a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, architecture, pottery, textiles, jewelry, graffiti, tattoos and even cartoons. The role art plays in expressions of political power, group identity, cosmological belief and presentation of the individual self will be explored. Throughout the course, specific attention will be paid to the impact of colonialism, gender, touristic commodification of artistic styles, and the creation of “art” as a special category of cultural production.
- Required texts (available at Haven Books, corner of Sunnyside and Seneca):
Berlo, Janet Catherine and Ruth B. Phillips, Native North American Art, 2nd Edition (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)
Whiteford, Andrew Hunter. North American Indian Arts. Golden/St. Martin’s Press.
Images viewed in class will be made available on the course website as PowerPoint files. Additional readings will be placed on the course website with a running list of Indigenous events happening in the local community that you are encouraged to attend or participate in. Videos viewed in class will be available online or placed on reserve in the MacOdrum Library. - Tentative Grading breakdown:
Short report on Canadian Museum of History visit – 15%
Two short reports on attendance at two public Indigenous events – 10%
Midterm exam – 30%
Gallery research assignment – 15%
Final exam – 30%
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- Instructor: Victoria Nolte
- Description: This course examines artistic production in China, India, and Japan from the 11th century to the present, identifying the forms, functions, and theories of art and art-making central to the development of Asian art as a field of study. Students will learn about artworks produced for a variety of different contexts such as the imperial court, the market, the museum, and the state. The aim of the course is to both familiarize students with discourses concerning the production of art and visual culture in Asia as well as to complicate how we have conventionally studied non-Western art. A key aspect of this course will be to rethink modern art practices in these contexts not as breaks with tradition but as critical engagements with place, history, and national identity.
- Evaluation: TBA
- Required text: TBA
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- Instructor: Stephane Roy
- Description: A core course that focuses on hands-on experience of the techniques, materials and institutions of art history through lectures and workshops on subjects such as art historical research and writing, the materials of art, professional skills and site visits to art institutions. Restricted to Honours Art History Majors.
- Evaluation (tentative):
Three reaction papers (3 x 20%)
Assignment (25%)
Participation (15%) - Course format: 3-hour weekly lectures/field trips
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- Instructor: Birgit Hopfener
- Description: This course provides an introduction to Chinese art history and its cultural foundations. Based on close examinations of art objects and their respective cultural, historical, religious and socio-political contexts of production, the seminar introduces ritual bronzes, the tomb of the first Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, Buddhist art, calligraphy, and ink painting as central research subjects in Chinese art history. We will study media, materials and techniques of Chinese art and learn how the worldviews of Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism have constituted specific visual cultures and concepts of art. The course introduces students to pre-modern art, but also examines how contemporary artists have been critically engaging with traditions.
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- Instructor: Morgan Currie
- Description: This course is an historical overview of the principal trends and ideas in Islamic art and architecture from the time of the Prophet Muhammad to the early fifteenth century. It begins with the establishment of Islam in the seventh century, its relationship with the wider world of Late Antiquity, and the specific demands that the new religion placed on visual culture. From there, we will examine the role of art and architecture in expressing and shaping the cultures and dynasties that made up the Islamic world. The material is rich and varied, including monumental mosques and palaces, delicate miniatures, fine metal and glasswork, textile and calligraphic arts, and sculpture. Individual classes will introduce major stylistic trends through representative works, then explore how these relate to social, cultural, and religious themes.
- Textbook: TBD
- Evaluation:
Midterm test – 30%
Research Essay – 30%
Final Exam – 40%
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- Instructor: Mitchell Frank
- Description: This course traces developments in 19th-century painting, graphic art, sculpture, and architecture. It introduces students to artists, art works, and issues central to the relationship between art and modernity.
- Evaluation: To be announced, but will likely include in-class assignments, essay, mid-term exam and final exam
- Textbook: To be determined
- Class Format: 2 classes a week of 1.5 hours each
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- Instructor: Peter Coffman
- Format: Lecture (two 1.5-hour lectures per week).
- Description: The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were a time of enormous intellectual and creative activity, social upheaval, and technological innovation. The architecture of the period both reflected and informed its turbulent and fascinating era. This course will explore the styles, building types, key monuments and intellectual frameworks of architecture ranging from the most florid Baroque to the strictest Neo-Classicism through revived medievalism and the restless experimentation with new forms, materials, and building types that characterized this era.
- Evaluation: Project proposal, Mid-term, Essay/design assignment, final exam.
- Course text: Harry Francis Mallgrave, Architectural Theory: Volume I – An Anthology from Vitruvius to 1870; other readings posted online.
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- Instructor: Jill Carrick
- Description: This course explores the great visual breakthroughs of early 20th century European modern art. Through focus on movements such as Cubism, Futurism, Russian Constructivism, Dada, and Surrealism, the class investigates what one historian perceptively described as the “demolition of the received visual order”. How did modern art re-imagine the world? What were modernism and the avant-garde? How did artists picture desire and sexuality, political change and social contestation, and the dramatic technological transformations of their century?
- Required textbook: Arnason, H. and Mansfeild, E.: History of Modern Art. Assessment will include two in-class exams and a final written assignment. Details to be announced at beginning of semester.
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- Instructor: Shannon Perry
- Description: Since it first captured the public imagination during the late 1830s, photography has become a phenomenally popular and influential visual form. Today, as works of art, reportage, personal mementos, legal documents, commercial advertisements, images on FaceBook and other social networking sites and in many other applications, photographs are ubiquitous and powerful conveyors of cultural meaning. This course will investigate the cultural history of the photograph from the nineteenth century to the present. We will look at and discuss a range of photographic forms considering both their production and reception.
- Evaluation: Short assignments, paper, and final exam.
- Required text: Mary Warner Marien, Photography: A Cultural History 4th Edition
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- Instructor: Michael Windover
- Description: The twentieth century witnessed dramatic changes to the designed environment globally and this course examines some of the reasons why and how. How did architects, builders, designers, patrons, and users respond to the changing conditions of modernity–to the social, economic, cultural, and political factors affecting life in the twentieth century? Students discuss ideas and projects related to the notion of “modern architecture” (or “modern architectures”), how the “Modern Movement” was conceptualized, and how and why it was critiqued. Themes explored include: architecture as a representation of modern ideas, the impact of modernization on architecture and the urban fabric, and the politics of built (and virtual) forms.
- Evaluation: TBA
- Texts: TBA
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- Instructor: Peter Coffman
- Format: One three-hour meeting per week.
- Prerequisite: Restricted to students in the BA Honours or General History and Theory of Architecture program.
- Description: This is a course about looking at and writing about architecture. Through a series of site visits and a variety of in-class exercises, students will develop skills and methods for interpreting and analysing the built environment. Given the hands-on nature of the course, participation in field trips and classroom activities is mandatory.
- Evaluation: Short written assignments, design/visual assignments, and in-class assignments.
- Course Text: TBA
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- Instructor: Mitchell Frank
- Description: This course explores art and architectural history’s methods, practices and problematics. We will examine the historical and theoretical foundations of art and architectural history from the Renaissance through its development as an academic discipline in the nineteenth century, up to the mid-twentieth century. Focusing on major figures, we will study the traditional tools of the discipline, including biographical approaches, theories of form and style, content and iconography, feminism and Marxism. Special attention will be given to museums as institutions of collection, display, and education.
- Assessment: Reading reports, a mid-term test, and a final essay.
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- Instructor: Michael Windover
- Description: This course examines the practice of architectural history. We ask some fundamental questions including: What is architectural history? How is research on the history of the designed environment carried out? Who does this work and why? Students will learn about different research methods and theoretical frameworks used in the writing of architectural history and will put them into action for course assignments.
- Evaluation: TBA
- Texts: TBA
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- Instructor: Randi Klebanoff
- Description: The study of current methodologies and research tools employed by art historians.
- Precludes additional credit for ARTH 3106 (no longer offered).
- Prerequisite(s): Third-year standing or higher in Art History, or permission of the Discipline.
- Format: Seminar three hours a week.
- Description: This will be a seminar based on shared readings, discussions, lectures, with assignments including course reading journals, discussion facilitations, a research paper and presentation.
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- Instructor: Jill Carrick
- Description: This course explores contemporary art in the global context from 1945 to the present. The 20th and 21st centuries have seen the rise of an extraordinary range of innovations in the visual arts. How have artists reimagined the role and language of art in response to dramatically shifting cultural conditions? Topics examined include movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art and Postmodernism, and practices such as object art, performance art, and installations.
- Classes are based on readings, illustrated lectures, class discussion, and museum visits. Details of assessment to be announced at beginning of semester.
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- Instructor: Sophia Harrison-Holmes
- Description: What role can art play in the development of global citizenship for the twenty-first century, permeated as it is by the conditions of spatial displacement, economic precarity, and general flux? With critical cosmopolitanism as its intellectual point of departure, this course considers contemporary artists as powerful agents of cosmopolitan ethics. Focusing on established and emerging contemporary artists working in the mediums of installation, sculpture, painting, animation, film, photography, and performance, we will take a thematic approach in investigating the multiple “visible and invisible contexts” which recent works of art illuminate. Issues to be explored relate to intellectual, cultural, and political practices such as envisioning worlds, reviving traditions, or resisting oppression; to historical forces, such as imperialism, national sovereignty, and global capitalism; and to the current global crises of mass migration and climate change.
- Evaluation: A combination of written and oral components of varying lengths – details TBA.
- Required text: TBA
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- Instructor: Morgan Currie
- Cross-listed with ARTH 4809
- Description: The humanist movement that began in Renaissance Italy had a tremendous impact on the visual culture of the time and centuries of art history to follow. The image of antiquity was established as a model for modern designers, art and design became subjects of theoretical treatises, and the artist rose in social status. This course will look at the cultural impact of Renaissance humanism through the architecture of the period. Close analysis of significant works will give students a thorough understanding of the theory and practice of the humanist architect, while serving as a springboard to explore larger cultural themes. Major figures like Alberti, Bramante, Michelangelo, and Palladio will be examined along with vernacular designs and technical innovations.
- Evaluation: This is a split-level course meaning students can enroll at the 3000 or 4000 level. Students at the 3000 level will be evaluated on the basis of a midterm and final exam as well as a term paper of approximately eight pages. 4000 level students will not sit the tests but will write a seminar-type paper of approximately sixteen pages for the research experience and two short response pieces during the term.
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- Instructor: Morgan Currie
- Cross-listed with ARTH 4809
- Description: Raphael is a central figure in the history of Western art; the preeminent painter of the High Renaissance in his lifetime and the backbone of centuries of Academic theory to follow. Ironically, this has made it easier to overlook what an innovative artist he really was. This course will examine the work of Raphael within its social and ideological contexts, with a particular focus on his years in Rome, where for a little over a decade, his vision shaped the artistic culture. Attention will also be paid to the historiography of Raphael; how he was cast in the role of model artist by subsequent observers, and what that tells us about the history of art.
- Evaluation: This is a split-level course meaning students can enroll at the 3000 or 4000 level. Students at the 3000 level will be evaluated on the basis of a midterm and final exam as well as a term paper of approximately eight pages. 4000 level students will not sit the tests but will write a seminar-type paper of approximately sixteen pages for the research experience and two short response pieces during the term.
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- Instructor: Daniel Millette
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- Instructor: Michael Windover
- Perspectives on Interiors
- Description: Interiors pose particular problems for historians. Whereas exterior envelopes often remain relatively stable over time, interiors are frequently altered to meet changing needs, desires, and aspirations. Yet interiors offer great potential. They frame much of everyday life and can provide insights into how people live, interact, and express themselves. How and what can we learn from interiors? What methods do historians use to open lines of inquiry into interiors?
- Evaluation: TBA
- Texts: TBA
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- Visual Storytelling in Contemporary Indigenous art
- Instructor: Carmen Robertson
- Cross-listed with ARTH 4005
- Description: Stories have long been integral to Indigenous arts practices. In this seminar course, students will analyze ways in which storytelling shapes contemporary Indigenous art. A range of works by contemporary Indigenous artists offer directions and applications to understand performative and visual storytelling methods within particular cultural contexts. Much of this course is devoted to studying Indigenous ways of teaching and learning inform story. The art of Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau will serve as a basis for understanding how contemporary artists utilize visual storytelling through depictions of story but also through performative embodiment of story. How do artists like Morrisseau and those creating art today address intergenerational knowledge transmission in mediums and contexts with galleries? How are political and ethical dimensions of colonialism embodied through visual storytelling? The course will introduce students to ways of researching Indigenous arts beyond western forms of analysis through a series of interdisciplinary theoretical readings beyond the discipline of art history, Indigenous stories, and art works, alongside selected contemporary art exhibitions provide materials for this exploration. In the course’s final weeks, students will explore the implications of visual storytelling in contemporary gallery settings in ways that intersect with their own research interests.
- Readings: TBD
- Evaluation: Seminar Facilitation, Exhibition Critique, Research Paper
- Learning Outcomes:
- Recognize relationships between specific cultural traditions and the use of story in contemporary artistic expressions;
- Analyze the ways in which Norval Morrisseau’s visual language draws on Anishnaabek intergenerational knowledge transmission.
- Evaluate ways in which performativity and story shape contemporary Indigenous art expressions.
- Conduct research in the library and art gallery.
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- Global Art History: Discourses, histories and methodological approaches
- Instructor: Birgit Hopfener
- Cross-listed with ARTH 5115
- Description: This course will provide a critical introduction to discourses, socio-political contexts, histories, scholars, institutions, concepts, and methodological approaches of Global Art History since the beginning of “Weltkunstgeschichte” (world art history) discourses in 20th century Europe until today’s discourses of World Art Studies, Post-colonial Art History, Global Art History, Transnational Art and Transcultural Art History. Among others, we will study and compare the meaning of figures such as cultural influence, diffusion, transfer, circulation, exchange, contact, migration, entanglement, interaction, negotiation. We will study and examine descriptive and analytical concepts of cultural contact such as hybridity, creolization, metissage, appropriation, reconfiguration, and resonance, and will study methodological approaches such as discourse analysis, cultural translation, and relational comparison. The course will be an intensive reading course.
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- Instructor: Gül Kale
- Special topic: Intersections between Islamic Architecture, Art, and Science
- Description: This course will focus on the link between architecture, art, science, and knowledge with a special emphasis on the Ottoman Empire and its interactions with the wider Islamic and the Mediterranean worlds from 1453 to the late eighteenth century. The course will examine how diverse Islamic societies produced and reacted to artifacts that had a transforming effect on places and people. The literary, material, and visual cultures of the period will be examined to understand the built environment and artifacts in cultural, philosophical, religious, and political contexts. Some themes include: foundations of architecture and arts, mythical origins of cities, sacred geography, sound and architecture, land surveying and hydraulic works, practical geometry in artistic production, poetics of making, and wondrous objects. The course will develop the necessary historical perspective and the cultural understanding of the Islamic world for students. It aims at strengthening how students explore and analyze architecture and artwork in a cross-cultural context from an interdisciplinary perspective. The course comprises a series of lectures, readings, and discussions of selected primary and secondary sources.
- Evaluation: Presentation of readings, participation, papers.
- Required text: TBA
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- Instructor: Randi Klebanoff
- Prerequisite(s): ARTH 2300 and fourth-year standing in Art History, or permission of the Discipline.
- Seminar: Three hours a week
- Description: Developments in Renaissance naturalistic representation were claimed both as the rebirth of the achievements of ancient Greece and Rome and in more recent memory as the beginning of modernity, defining a turn from religion to worldly experience and from Scriptures to science. This course will explore the pre-modernity of Renaissance art, examining ways in which naturalism was cleverly deployed to depict a nature that was quite literally not what it seemed: the materialization of a theocentric cosmos.
- Evaluation: Seminar based on shared readings, discussions, lectures, with assignments including course reading journals, discussion facilitations, a research paper, and presentation.
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- Instructor: Shannon Perry
- Description: The course will trace the role of the photographer and the use of photography in the periodical market, focusing on the period 1900-1999. We will examine the use of photography from its first appearances in early illustrated news, to the introduction of online commercial content, and the impact of these photographs/photographers on consumers’ visual literacy in the 20th century. Topics to be explored include: development of photojournalism; evolving role of the “photojournalist”; fashion photography / photographers; advertising / commercial photography; role of photo editors; rise and demise of picture magazines, such as LIFE.
- Evaluation: TBA
- Required text: TBA
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- Instructor: Daniel Millette
- Description: The architectural landscape that comprises Indigenous communities persists within sets of traditional practices that extend to the distant past, albeit not necessarily obvious to the outside viewer. When added to the vast ethnographical, archaeological and historical record, the whole makes for a rich corpus to better understand the broader Canadian architectural sphere. Through directed readings set within targeted themes, seminar discussions and individual student research projects, this seminar course will focus on specific case studies that highlight “architecture as culture” and “culture as architecture” within First Nation communities across Canada.
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- Instructor: Morgan Currie
- Cross-listed with ARTH 3809
- Description: The humanist movement that began in Renaissance Italy had a tremendous impact on the visual culture of the time and centuries of art history to follow. The image of antiquity was established as a model for modern designers, art and design became subjects of theoretical treatises, and the artist rose in social status. This course will look at the cultural impact of Renaissance humanism through the architecture of the period. Close analysis of significant works will give students a thorough understanding of the theory and practice of the humanist architect, while serving as a springboard to explore larger cultural themes. Major figures like Alberti, Bramante, Michelangelo, and Palladio will be examined along with vernacular designs and technical innovations.
- Evaluation: This is a split-level course meaning students can enroll at the 3000 or 4000 level. Students at the 3000 level will be evaluated on the basis of a midterm and final exam as well as a term paper of approximately eight pages. 4000 level students will not sit the tests but will write a seminar-type paper of approximately sixteen pages for the research experience and two short response pieces during the term.
-
- Instructor: Morgan Currie
- Cross-listed with ARTH 3809
- Description: Raphael is a central figure in the history of Western art; the preeminent painter of the High Renaissance in his lifetime and the backbone of centuries of Academic theory to follow. Ironically, this has made it easier to overlook what an innovative artist he really was. This course will examine the work of Raphael within its social and ideological contexts, with a particular focus on his years in Rome, where for a little over a decade, his vision shaped the artistic culture. Attention will also be paid to the historiography of Raphael; how he was cast in the role of model artist by subsequent observers, and what that tells us about the history of art.
- Evaluation: This is a split-level course meaning students can enroll at the 3000 or 4000 level. Students at the 3000 level will be evaluated on the basis of a midterm and final exam as well as a term paper of approximately eight pages. 4000 level students will not sit the tests but will write a seminar-type paper of approximately sixteen pages for the research experience and two short response pieces during the term.
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- Contemporary art in the global context: Art practices, discourses, histories and institutions
- Instructor: Birgit Hopfener
- Description: What is contemporary art in the global context? How to examine and interpret art beyond conventional national frameworks of art history? What concepts of ‘the contemporary’ exist around the world and what are histories of contemporaneity? A focus of this course is the question of how contemporary art is constituted through multiple and sometimes entangled histories and epistemologies. Based on examinations of agents, such as artists and curators, institutions, and discourses of contemporaneity and global art history, we will examine the question of what constitutes contemporary art in the global context and learn about methodological approaches to contemporary art in the global context.
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- Instructors: Stéphane Roy and Mitchell Frank
- Description: ARTH 5010 is a full-year course for incoming MA students in Art History. The course combines critical theory with practical skills, both aimed to provide students with a solid foundation for graduate study in Art History. Over the course of the year, you will read widely in current Art Historical theory, produce a research paper drawing on theory, encounter key research resources and tools, produce a catalogue entry based on primary and secondary research, write a detailed research proposal, and learn to write and present an academic conference paper.
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- Instructor: Ruth Phillips
- Cross-listed with: CLMD 6902 and ANTH 5807
- Description: This seminar explores the global engagements with artistic modernism pursued by artists outside the West during the twentieth century. Its comparative structure is intended to reveal both common patterns that inform world modernisms and unique features that reflect local experiences and negotiations of modernity. By adopting a global framework, we will expand the times and places of modernist artistic production and problematize art historical narratives which define it as an exclusively European invention of the first half of the twentieth century. Readings will centre on the visual arts of colonized and Indigenous societies in North America, Africa, India, and the Pacific.
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- Defining Beauty/Towards Indigenous Aesthetics
- Instructor: Carmen Robertson
- Cross-listed with: CDNS 5003A / CLMD 6103
- Description: Viewing Indigenous contemporary art in a gallery does not always easily reveal effective ways to consider the works. This course provides graduate students with effective pathways of analysis of Indigenous aesthetics in contemporary Indigenous arts. Such concepts emerge from deep considerations of cultural epistemologies and ontologies. Through a series of interdisciplinary readings, observations, and oral narratives, notions of Indigenous aesthetics in relation to both arts and art exhibitions will be investigated in order to forge deeper understandings of Indigenous aesthetic concerns. Relational understandings of land, language, and intergenerational knowledge transmission will guide the formulation of research directions in this seminar. Building on a foundation of aesthetics, there will be room for other critical concerns, such as issues particular to Indigenous curation.
- Required text: Vine Deloria, The World We Used To Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men (Golden CO: Fulcrum Publications, 2006).
- Evaluation: Seminar facilitation, exhibition critique, research paper
- Learning Outcomes:
- Identify and describe relationships between specific cultural traditions and contemporary artistic expressions;
- Analyze theoretical directions related to epistemology and other philosophical underpinnings of Indigenous artistic expressions;
- Evaluate ways in which Indigenous aesthetics impact curatorial applications.
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- Global Art History: Discourses, histories, and methodological approaches
- Instructor: Birgit Hopfener
- Cross-listed with: ARTH 4008
- Description: This course will provide a critical introduction to discourses, socio-political contexts, histories, scholars, institutions, concepts, and methodological approaches of Global Art History since the beginning of “Weltkunstgeschichte” (world art history) discourses in 20th century Europe until today’s discourses of World Art Studies, Post-colonial Art History, Global Art History, Transnational Art, and Transcultural Art History. Among others, we will study and compare the meaning of figures such as cultural influence, diffusion, transfer, circulation, exchange, contact, migration, entanglement, interaction, and negotiation. We will study and examine descriptive and analytical concepts of cultural contact such as hybridity, creolization, métissage, appropriation, reconfiguration, and resonance, and will study methodological approaches such as discourse analysis, cultural translation, and relational comparison. The course will be an intensive reading course.
-
- Visual Storytelling in Contemporary Indigenous art
- Instructor: Carmen Robertson
- Cross-listed with: ARTH 4005
- Description: Stories have long been integral to Indigenous arts practices. In this seminar course, students will analyze ways in which storytelling shapes contemporary Indigenous art. A range of works by contemporary Indigenous artists offer directions and applications to understand performative and visual storytelling methods within particular cultural contexts. Much of this course is devoted to studying Indigenous ways of teaching and learning that inform story. The art of Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau will serve as a basis for understanding how contemporary artists utilize visual storytelling through depictions of story but also through the performative embodiment of story. How do artists like Morrisseau and those creating art today address intergenerational knowledge transmission in mediums and contexts with galleries? How are political and ethical dimensions of colonialism embodied through visual storytelling?
- The course will introduce students to ways of researching Indigenous arts beyond western forms of analysis through a series of interdisciplinary theoretical readings beyond the discipline of art history, Indigenous stories, and artworks, alongside selected contemporary art exhibitions providing materials for this exploration. In the course’s final weeks, students will explore the implications of visual storytelling in contemporary gallery settings in ways that intersect with their own research interests.
- Readings: TBD
- Evaluation: Seminar Facilitation, Exhibition Critique, Research Paper
- Learning Outcomes:
- Recognize relationships between specific cultural traditions and the use of story in contemporary artistic expressions;
- Analyze the ways in which Norval Morrisseau’s visual language draws on Anishinaabe intergenerational knowledge transmission;
- Evaluate ways in which performativity and story shape contemporary Indigenous art expressions.
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- Instructor: Michael Windover
- Title: Fantasy and Façade: Art Deco and Meanings of Modernity
- Description: The term “Art Deco” was coined in the 1960s to describe a rich and sometimes contradictory collection of designed objects and spaces. Modern but not “Modernist” and often associated with fantasy (even fun) at a time of economic and political extremism, the term has been used to discuss cultural production transcending medium, geography, and social class. This course investigates some of the meanings of Art Deco and its value as a stylistic label. Is it useful to discuss a streamlined refrigerator alongside a Chanel dress, the set of a Hollywood blockbuster with a medical arts building, a skyscraper in Shanghai and a Bakelite radio receiver? We will examine recent scholarship on architecture and design more generally (from fashion to industrial) and debate the use and limits of “Art Deco”. The course will involve site visits to examine Art Deco architecture and design firsthand as we consider its heritage value today.
- Evaluation: TBA
- Texts: TBA