Archived: 2023-2024 Undergraduate Course Listings

Summer 2024

: PROFESSOR: Sheena Ellison

DESCRIPTION: This course is a survey of Western painting and sculpture from the Renaissance to the present. Because we will be covering a great deal of material in only one semester, the nature of the course is necessarily selective. The aim of the course is to introduce students to some of the major monuments, issues and themes in Western art. Through lectures, readings, and research, we will develop different ways of interpreting and viewing works of art in their historical and social contexts.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: Weekly Reflection Papers (25%); Midterm Exam (25%); Weekly Participation (20%); Final Exam (30%)

READINGS: NA
: PROFESSOR: Alessandra Mariani

DESCRIPTION: This course features the development of the built environment from the Renaissance to the present. Primarily focused on culturally significant Western architecture, it includes some references to non-Western buildings. Buildings and key architectural projects will be considered in relation to their cultural, social, political, and economic contexts. They will be analyzed through the concepts that gave them their form, their materiality, and their function. Students will gain an understanding of the language of architecture and its evolution, through a diversity of programs and typologies, as well as the technology that made them possible. The course will explore the following themes: the architecture of faith and power, image and representation, the role of architecture, the geometrization of space, rationalism and mechanization, eclecticism, resistance movements, form and function, globalization and formal experimentation.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: Midterm exam, formal analysis, Final exam

READINGS: TBD

Fall 2023/Winter 2024

: PROFESSOR: Brian Foss

DESCRIPTION: This course is a selective survey of art of the last 700 years, studying how art has reflected political, religious and social concerns of the societies in which it was produced and consumed. This is done through the introduction and analysis of major ideas, artists and artworks. Although the main focus is on the art of West, attention is also paid to the complex relationships between the visual art of Western and non-Western cultures. Major ideas, artists, and artworks are introduced and analyzed. Course activities and assignments develop basic visual analysis skills that are essential in today’s image-saturated world.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA

READINGS: TBA
: PROFESSOR: Alessandra Mariani

DESCRIPTION: This course is an introduction to the history of architecture from prehistory to the Renaissance. Major movements, themes and monuments of the Western world will be emphasized, while including some monuments of the non-Western tradition. Architectural works and the built environment will be presented from an historical perspective, but also from the political, social, spiritual, cultural climate that originally shaped them and gave them their meaning. Buildings will be examined in the context of the prevailing ideas characterizing the period during which they were built.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBD, but will include a midterm test, short writing assignments and a final exam

READINGS: TBD
: PROFESSOR: Alessandra Mariani

DESCRIPTION: This course features the development of the built environment from the Renaissance to the present. Primarily focused on culturally significant Western architecture, it includes some references to non-Western buildings. Buildings and key architectural projects will be considered in relation to their cultural, social, political, and economic contexts. They will be analyzed through the concepts that gave them their form, their materiality, and their function. Students will gain an understanding of the language of architecture and its evolution, through a diversity of programs and typologies, as well as the technology that made them possible. The course will explore the following themes: the architecture of faith and power, image and representation, the architecture of reason and autonomy, the role of architecture, the geometrization of space, mechanization and rationalism, resistance movements, form to function, globalization and formal experimentation, interdisciplinarity.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBD, but will include a midterm test, short writing assignments and a final exam

READINGS: TBD
: PROFESSOR: Stacy Ernst

DESCRIPTION: Art making in Canada is intertwined with its changing social and political realities. This course will emphasize the way artists have made and remade the space north of the 49th parallel from 1900 to the present. How have artists working in Canada used their art to address issues such as nationalism, sovereignty, colonization, decolonization, modernism, and postmodernism? At the end of the course, students will be familiar with a diverse breadth of art made in Canada, across a wide variety of media. They will be able to visually analyze and consider art works in their respective socio-political contexts using art historical language, terminology, and methodology.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBC but will likely include an in-class mid-term test, short writing assignments, and a final exam.

READINGS: TBA
: PROFESSOR: Victoria Nolte

DESCRIPTION: This course surveys roughly 5,000 years of artistic production, examining visual and material cultures and built environments within interconnected regional contexts in South and East Asia. Students will learn about artworks produced for a number of specific purposes, such as for religious rituals and ceremonies, for the imperial courts, global and domestic markets, the museum, and the state. Throughout the course we will discuss a wide variety of art practices, including bronzes, sculpture, ceramics, calligraphy, ink painting, miniature painting, garden design, and architecture. In the final weeks of the course we will examine cultural and socio-political transformations that have shaped global encounters with Asian art. The aim of the course is to familiarize students with histories of art and culture in Asia as well as to complicate conventional study of these histories. A key aspect of this course will be to examine art’s entanglements with religion and cultural belief systems, dynastic power, imperialism, identity, and modernity.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA

READINGS: TBA
: PROFESSOR: Stéphane Roy

DESCRIPTION: This course focuses on the techniques, materials and institutions of art history through lectures and workshops on subjects ranging from art historical research and writing to the materials of art. Numerous activities (workshops, guest speakers, etc.) will provide students with a better sense of the professional skills required in the field of art history, giving them exposure to works of art and to the professionals of art in a variety of institutions. Ultimately, this course aims to provide a truly unique perspective on art history by: 1) introducing students to those who “make” art history: artists, curators, scholars and conservators; 2) exposing students to the materiality of art.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA

READINGS: TBA
: PROFESSOR: Anke Kausch

DESCRIPTION: A survey of the visual arts of China from the Neolithic era to the present.
Artworks in various media will be studied in their historical, cultural, religious and philosophical context: early tomb art, ceremonial objects in bronze and jade, Buddhist sculpture, classical architecture and gardens, ceramics, traditional ink painting and calligraphy, as well as modern and contemporary art. Students will have the opportunity to view selected works of Chinese art first hand at the National Gallery of Canada

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA

READINGS: TBA
: PROFESSOR: Shannon Perry

DESCRIPTION: Tracing the invention(s) of photography, from the Daguerreotype to digital. The course focus is on the social, cultural and artistic and scientific impact of photography, primarily in France, England and the United States. In this introduction to the history of photography, historic and modern photographers such as Timothy O’Sullivan, Robert Capa, Weegee, Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz and Cindy Sherman are discussed, in context of a broader history.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA

READINGS: Mary Warner Marien “Photography: A Cultural History”
: PROFESSOR: Ming Tiampo

DESCRIPTION: This course considers Global Modernisms from the 19th century until 1989. The course focusses on intersections and parallels within Modernisms in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Taking Asia as a springboard for understanding modernity from a non-Western perspective, this class proposes an account of modernity and modernism that treats issues of colonialism, national culture, war, migration, and cultural transfer alongside discussions of industrialization, urbanization, progress, and aesthetic innovation typical of Euro-American treatments of modernism.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA

READINGS: Online Readings
: PROFESSOR: Marie Clausén

DESCRIPTION: One of the most notable things about the European Middle Ages is its remarkable architectural legacy: its castles and cathedrals, its monasteries and parish churches. These structures were built by master builders of such remarkable talent and vision that they dominate the skylines and cityscapes to this very day.
This course will offer a survey of all its many styles, including Early Christian, Byzantine, Ottonian, Carolingian, Anglo-Saxon, Romanesque, Anglo-Norman and Italo-Norman, as well as early, mature and late Gothic/Renaissance. The study of medieval art and architecture is not only the study of form, structure and style, but also provides an insight into medieval theology, liturgy, philosophy, law, and economic and social history.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA.

READINGS: Marilyn Stokstad and Michael W. Cothren, Art History, Volume 1, 6th edition (2017)
eText version: ISBN 9780134485256.
: PROFESSOR: Dijana O. Apostolski

DESCRIPTION: The Italian Renaissance has been considered the pinnacle of the visual, plastic, and literary early modern arts and the watershed of the modern sciences. This course focuses on complicating and disrupting this ubiquitous interpretation. The course will acquaint students with the major subjects and artists as well as the historically marginalized topics, works, and voices. Students will also be familiarized with the variety of ways scholars have approached the Italian Renaissance and given the opportunity to experience, read, write, and question art and art history from their proper perspectives. Placed under scrutiny, Italian Renaissance art will allow students to think critically about the contemporary world as they learn about the past.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: Participation/ Discussion 10%; Group Project and Presentation 15%; 2 Three-Page Papers 20%; Final Essay 35%; No Midterm and Final Exam.

READINGS: TBA
: PROFESSOR: Yelda Nasifoglu

DESCRIPTION: This course is an examination of architecture from the late medieval period to the 18th century with a focus on the European and Islamic worlds and their cross-cultural interactions with the world. The early modern period, spanning roughly between 1400 and 1750, was a transformative era for the development of architecture in our contemporary sense. This was a time of increased exchanges between Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, with complex results that included colonialism and attempts at socio-cultural and religious conversion. It saw the development of the Renaissance and competing geographical interpretations of ancient cultures, the explosive influence of print culture, the Scientific Revolution, and the rise of epistolary dissemination of ideas. Architecture was both influenced by these developments and became a vehicle for their growth and dramatic expansion. Taking on an interdisciplinary approach, the course will explore the development of architectural ideas and practices across diverse cultural and geographical landscapes. It will draw on the literary, material, and visual cultures of the period, along with buildings and infrastructure, to offer a critical and cross-cultural learning experience to the students.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA

READINGS: TBA
: PROFESSOR: Farrukh Rafiq

DESCRIPTION: This course closely examines the foremost Western art movements of the nineteenth century. Beginning with late-eighteenth century developments, we will cover Romanticism, Realism, Orientalism, Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism. While the course is primarily focused on movements in Europe, we will supplement our understanding of the material covered with a broader geographical and contextual approach, covering visual material produced in North America, Africa, and Asia to fully appreciate the global interconnectedness of these movements. In addition to painting, we will also look at photography, print media, and sculpture. At the end of this course, students will have gained a deep understanding of the foundations of nineteenth-century Western art, especially as informed by issues of colonialism, gender, and race.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA

READINGS: Digital readings to be provided online.
: PROFESSOR: Alessandra Mariani

DESCRIPTION: This course explores the origins of twentieth century architecture rooted in the technical, structural, material, and social innovations granted by the industrial revolution, followed by the rise and spread of the Modern Movement in Europe, America, and in other parts of the world. It examines the aesthetic and spatial configurations this movement, and its conclusion in the various revisions, critiques, and oppositions it was subjected to. It looks at the complexity and contradictions of the postmodern period through its formal and ideological investigations, and at the idea of a “globalized architecture”. Architects who defined these postures will be featured, as well as the principles and concepts that gave way to their built expressions, and the various historical, cultural, and social circumstances that furthered their development. Iconic projects will illustrate how technological development contributed to the emergence of new architectural languages and forms, and how these proliferated globally. Themes such as avant-garde, functionalism, international style, space-time, off-centre composition, transparency, utopia, brutalism, and deconstruction will contribute to identify the specificity of twentieth-century architecture.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: One reading summary, weekly short assignments, and a final exam.

READINGS: TBD
: PROFESSOR: Gul Kale

DESCRIPTION: What does architecture look like, sound like, smell like? How do we best communicate our experience of the designed environment? These are some of the questions this course explores through a series of site visits, class activities and multimedia projects.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: Students will be evaluated through participation in class and work on a wide variety of projects including descriptive and analytical writing, photography and podcasting.

READINGS: Required texts will be posted through the library’s digital reserves service ARES.
: PROFESSOR: Alessandra Mariani

DESCRIPTION: This course will define and explore the communication systems of architecture (drawings, models, writing, photography, film, exhibitions) through a historical survey of concomitant architectural theories, and technological developments. Representational practices will be examined along the agency and ideologies that they conveyed. A focus will be made on the way they transformed architectural knowledge and culture. The lectures will address the topics of harmony, proportions and distortions of the Renaissance, the impact of the linear perspective, the notion of Architecture parlante, the quest for utopias in the 20th century, the effect of photography and film on architecture, the role of academia, publications and ideology in the development of architectural representations (late 20th and 21st century), the prescriptive effect of exhibitions, and the trajectory and effects of computer-aided imagery production.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBD

READINGS: TBD
: PROFESSOR: Mitchell Frank

DESCRIPTION: Today a variety of research methods are available to art and architectural historians. In this course, we will examine a range of methods that art and architectural historians have used to understand and interpret visual and material culture. Through an exploration of some of the historical and theoretical foundations of art and architectural history, we will study the practices and problematics of a variety of methods and approaches.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA.

READINGS: Online Readings
: PROFESSOR: Michael Windover

DESCRIPTION: How is architectural history done? What methods are used and how has the methodology of architectural history changed over time? Through a combination of close, critical reading and class activities, this course trains students how to use some research methods and provides opportunities to put them into practice.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA, but will include written assignments, participatory activities, and the creation of an online, multimedia project

READINGS: Required texts will be posted through the library’s digital reserves service ARES.
: PROFESSOR: Carmen Robertson

DESCRIPTION: Visual Storytelling has deep roots in Indigenous cultures. Like oral stories, visual stories were shared through forms of intergenerational knowledge transmission. Complicated by colonialism, the ways visual stories are viewed and migrate has changed and been adapted. In this course we will discuss Indigenous visual stories of the past, present, and future that challenge linear timelines in a wide range of media within a Turtle Island/Canadian context. Taking advantage of Indigenous art exhibitions available and on display during the given semester, this course will explore story, storywork and storying in a variety of contexts and how it reflects the ways of knowing of Indigenous peoples in a range of territories.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA

READINGS: TBA
: PROFESSOR: Rosalie Smith McCrea

DESCRIPTION: This course critically surveys Jamaican landscape representations from Columbus’s contact in 1494 up to the present. It seeks to understand how through the decades of colonial, post-colonial and independent Jamaica was ‘landscape’ understood, recorded, printed, painted or photographed in aesthetic, strategic or commercial ways. The course broadens the definition of the word ‘landscape’ in that it considers recurring images, motifs and elements from the landscape as intentional on the part of the artist when transcribed to media such as Tortoiseshell in the 17th c or furniture design in the 19th c. As a Western Genre, ‘Landscape’ will encompass not only what the viewer observed in the present moment but also what was absent and recalled through memory for a different location. The course associates ‘landscape’ art after Jamaican independence with works of fantasy (secular or religious) when speaking of self-taught [Intuitive] artists and academically trained painters.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: 25% Mid-Term; 25% Oral Presentations: 50% Short Research Paper

READINGS: A Reading List will be put on reserve in the Library
: PROFESSORS: Kathy Armstrong, Malini Guha, Gül Kale

DESCRIPTION: This course takes a cross-disciplinary as well as intersectional approach to the topic of race and representation. Spanning a variety of artistic mediums including film, music, visual art and architecture, this course will explore the politics of representation, and the challenges as well as opportunities of producing works by artists, makers, and collectives from Black, Indigenous and racialized communities.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA

READINGS: TBA
: PROFESSOR: Paul Jasen

DESCRIPTION: This course is designed for emerging arts (and design) professionals in any field. Our focus is on developing fundamental skills in digital media production that will be of use to students planning careers in the arts sector or related industries. Through lessons, case studies, workshopping and collaborative production sessions, students will gain experience in the following areas: website design and development, image editing, audio recording and podcasting, streaming video, designing for print, social media integration and writing for the web. Students will leave this course having developed a multi-faceted portfolio project related to their field, as well as confidence and demonstrated proficiency using current media production tools and platforms.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: In-class workshopping activities; small, skills-building assignments; production of a multi-part media project on a topic of personal interest.

READINGS AND TECHNOLOGY: TBA
: PROFESSOR: Gul Kale

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 the late medieval period to the nineteenth 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 material culture in practical, philosophical, religious, and political contexts. Some themes include: orientalist discourses on the arts of the Islamic world, the notion of globalisation in Islamic art and architectural history, architectural poems, sacred geography, sound and architecture, surveying and hydraulic works, the uses of practical geometry, material culture and society, and multisensory experiences. The course will develop the necessary historical perspective and critical understanding of the Islamic world and beyond 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 presentations, readings, and discussions of selected primary and secondary sources.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA

READINGS: TBA
: PROFESSOR: Randi Klebanoff

DESCRIPTION: An exploration of ways in which artists from the 14th to the early 16th centuries used naturalistic depictions of the material world to convey the immaterial in Christian art. Readings in art history and theology will give us the tools to analyze artworks of revelatory inventiveness.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA. Components to include reading responses, discussion participation, presentation, and research paper. There will be no final exam.

READINGS: Online Readings
: PROFESSOR: Carol Payne

DESCRIPTION: This seminar will address the role that photography plays in conceptualizations of memory. We will draw on the rich body of literature on photography and memory as well as theory drawn from Memory Studies and Photo Studies. Along the way we will explore work by specific artists, historians, and theoreticians as case studies. These may include Ariella Azoulay, Roland Barthes, Tina Campt, Marianne Hirsch, Annette Kuhn, Martha Langford, Pierre Nora, and Barbie Zelizer. As a practical component of the course and part of our exploration of photography and memory, we will also engage with photo-based oral history. This will include discussions of literature on the intersections of oral history and photo studies. But it will also include a hands-on project by members of the class, conducting their own photo-based oral history.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: 50% Research Project; 20% Reader Responses; 15% Photo-based oral history assignment; 15% participation

READINGS: Assigned reading will be mainly available through BrightSpace and will not require purchase. (If I decide to order one or two books, I will let you know in advance.)
: PROFESSOR: Valentina Davila

DESCRIPTION: Through its built environment, this seminar will explore the diverse, stimulating, and multifaceted Latin American subcontinent. It will focus on the last century (1920-2020), the region’s most dynamic and exciting period from modernity to contemporary times. This overview will favour a cultural landscape methodology to identify how wealth and dispossession, power and oppression, and beauty and violence are intertwined and reflected in these diverse yet unified geographies. La Torre de David, also known as the world’s tallest favela, the unfinished Cuban Art Schools, and a group of tiny plastic homes known as petrocasas are some of the buildings included in this course. The design and construction of these buildings reflect the polarized Latin American discussions about the meaning of identity, colonialism, nationalism, and international interventions. Their form, scale, and materiality echo the tensions in the widespread dilemma between remaining faithful to their roots and traditions while adhering to cosmopolitan ideas of progress and globalization. The structures will always be studied in a broad cultural, political, and historical context to understand better the people, ideas, and events that collectively shaped the continent. Lectures will be delivered in person and will support student-led discussions

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA

READINGS: TBA
: PROFESSOR: Sarah Gelbard

DESCRIPTION: One of the most notable things about the European Middle Ages is its remarkable architectural legacy: its castles and cathedrals, its monasteries and parish churches. These structures were built by master builders of such remarkable talent and vision that they dominate the skylines and cityscapes to this very day.
This course will offer a survey of all its many styles, including Early Christian, Byzantine, Ottonian, Carolingian, Anglo-Saxon, Romanesque, Anglo-Norman and Italo-Norman, as well as early, mature and late Gothic/Renaissance. The study of medieval art and architecture is not only the study of form, structure and style, but also provides an insight into medieval theology, liturgy, philosophy, law, and economic and social history.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA.

READINGS: TBA