Spring 2012 Courses

Undergraduate Courses

Introduction to Art History II: Renaissance to Today			Zell/Ribner
CAS AH112	TR 11:00-12:30	LAW AUD	Course Site
Major monuments and artists. Sequential development, from the Renaissance to the modern period, of major styles in architecture, sculpture, painting, graphic arts, and photography. Relationship of visual art to social and cultural trends.
Architecture: An Introduction			Scrivano
CAS AH205	TR 12:30-2:00		Course Site
Examination of the factors involved in architectural design including program, spatial composition, structure, technology, iconography, and the role of architecture in society. Discussion of major monuments of Western architecture and urbanism from ancient Egypt to the twenty-first century. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
Arts of Africa			Becker
CAS AH215	TR 11:00-12:30		Course Site
Exploration of key themes in royal art and architecture from western central, eastern, and southern Africa. Topics include state cosmology, dynastic history, palace architecture, royal regalia and ceremonies, court women, and the importance of art in diplomacy and war. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
Islamic Art and Architecture			Fetvaci
CAS AH220	MWF 10:00-11:00		Course Site
Examines key monuments of Islamic art and architecture within their historical and cultural context, and emphasizes the diversity within the visual cultures of the Islamic world. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
Medieval Art			Givans
CAS AH240	MWF 2:00-3:00
European art and architecture from the Fall of Rome through High Gothic. Covers media including sculpture, textiles, stained glass, and precious metalwork. Monuments treated are Rome’s great churches, the Book of Kells, the Bayeux Tapestry, and Chartres and Rheims cathedrals.
Renaissance Art			Cranston
CAS AH257	TR 9:30-11:00		Course Site
Survey of the arts in the Renaissance in Italy from the communes of the early fifteenth century to the courts of the sixteenth century.
Arts in America			Stein
CAS AH284	TR 12:30-2:00		Course Site
Survey of American painting, architecture, sculpture, prints, and photography from the early settlement in 1630 to the present. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
History of Photography			Sichel
CAS AH295	TR 11:00-12:30		Course Site
An introduction to the study of photographs. The history of the medium in Europe and America from its invention in 1839 to the present. After lectures on photographic theory and methodology, photographs are studied both as art objects and as historical artifacts.
Arts of Japan			Tseng
CAS AH326	TR 9:30-11:00		Course Site
This course presents a thematic study of the art and architecture of Japan from prehistory to the 20th century. In the discussions of major works, artists, and topics, emphasis will be placed on the various contexts within which art was created, valued, and used. The lectures intend to cover a broad range of artistic media (including painting, sculpture, ceramics, prints) and architectural building types (temples, palaces, castles, teahouses); special attention will be paid to projects that entailed the integration of multiple art forms.
Arts of Classical Greece			Martin
CAS AH333	TR 11:00-12:30		Course Site
Examines architecture, sculpture, painting, and metalwork of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. in their original contexts. Addresses such larger issues as development of portraiture; tension of “real” and “ideal”; roles and shifting iconographies of myth; and political use of monuments.
Nineteenth-Century Architecture in Europe and America			Morgan
CAS AH382	TR 2:00-3:30		Course Site
Survey of European and American architecture from 1750 to 1910. Explores issues in architecture, landscape architecture and city planning, and examines style, technology, and architectural theory.
Twentieth-Century Art from 1940 to 1980			Williams
CAS AH392	MWF 1:00-2:00		Course Site
Explores major currents in European and American art between 1940 and 1980. Examines the following movements and media in relation to key issues in postwar culture, politics and art criticism: Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, Minimalism, Conceptual art, Earthworks, body art, performance and video.
Contemporary African Art			Becker
CAS AH429	Tue 2:00-5:00		Course Site
This undergraduate seminar concentrates on contemporary African painting, sculpture, and photography from the period of 1950 to the present. We question and critique how the term contemporary is used in an African context and analyze the dichotomy that is made between “contemporary” and “traditional” African art. We also explore the influence of politics, colonialism, nationalism, and globalization on contemporary African art. The course also considers the reception of contemporary African art in Africa and beyond and considers the politics of display through an examination of international exhibitions.
Seminar in Contemporary Art: Women’s Performance			McNamara
CAS AH497	Fri 9:00-12:00		Course Site
This course will address performance art of the 1970s, focusing primarily on the work of artists Ana Mendieta, Carolee Schneemann, Adrian Piper and Marina Abramovic. Students will explore feminist art world activism that arose in the 1970s and address the role of performance as a vehicle to establish alternatives to traditional art world aesthetics and politics. We will read texts by Griselda Pollock, RoseLee Goldberg, Linda Nochlin, Lucy Lippard, Judith Butler, Laura Mulvey, Connie Butler, among others, and discuss recent exhibitions including WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution and 100 Years of Performance, which will be on view at the Boston University Art Gallery. The course will also touch on seminal artists as Lynn Hershman, Yoko Ono, Orlan, VALIE EXPORT, Linda Montano, Lygia Clark, Joan Jonas and Barbara T. Smith. Students are expected to give presentations about selected artists and topics in the class.
Religious Architecture in Islam: Mosques, Shrines, and Tombs			Fetvaci
CAS AH504	Mon 2:00-5:00		Course Site
This course will examine a select group of buildings from the Islamic world in terms of architecture and religious practice. Topics will include monuments such as the Ka’ba, the Dome of the Rock, and the Taj Mahal as well as themes like pilgrimage, tomb visitation, and ritual prayer.
Curatorship: José Luís Sert at Boston University			Scrivano
CAS AH521	Thu 3:00-6:00		Course Site
The George Sherman Union, the Mugar Memorial Library, and the School of Law are an imposing (and sometimes unwelcomed) presence on Boston University’s campus. Designed and realized during the 1960s by a team led by Spanish architect José Luís Sert (the Dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design between 1953 and 1969), these buildings are no doubt distinctive of the design culture of mid-century Boston, a moment of the architectural history of our city that needs a serious reappraisal. This course will research and prepare for an exhibition dedicated to Sert’s work at Boston University, scheduled to open at Boston University Gallery in 2014. Students will analyze the projects that will be displayed in the show and study the architects’ biographies, the general context of the history of architecture of the 1950s and 1960s, and comparable examples of designs for university campuses. Working in teams, students will also learn the practical elements of exhibition organization, consisting in the preparation of layouts, checklists, wall and object labels, sample catalogue entries, and press releases. They will also be introduced to the basics of museum techniques for gallery design, such as planning, budgeting, design, evaluation of shipping costs, preparation and installation, catalogue publication, and public relations. The course will consist of lectures, student discussions, and visits to buildings, archives and exhibitions.
High Renaissance and Mannerist Art: Michelangelo			Cranston
CAS AH557	Thu 11:00-2:00		Course Site
The seminar will consider the paintings, sculpture, and architecture executed by Michelangelo. The course will also attend to the poetry and letters written by Michelangelo, the relationship between word and images in his drawings, and impact of the artist and his work on the disciplines of art and architectural history.
Architectural Technology & Materials			Brown
CAS AH580	Thu 9:30-12:30		Course Site
An introduction to the history of architectural construction, technologies, and materials, and their consequences in the built environment. Students will receive a practical understanding of the building process and of its social and cultural contexts.
Impressionism Through Symbolism			Ribner
CAS AH589	Wed 9:00-12:00		Course Site
Major currents in nineteenth-century European art — from the painting of modern life by Manet and the Impressionists to evocations of the pain of desire by Rodin and Munch — are examined in light of contemporary developments in politics, science, religion, literature, music and the history of ideas. Class discussion of readings, both recent and classic, will be followed by an oral report and a final paper on a research topic.

Graduate Courses

Colloquium in Greek Art and Architecture		Martin
GRS AH733	Thu 2:00-4:00	Course Site
This colloquium (paired with AH333) considers the meanings of the classical as a concept, process, mode of representation, and ideal of collective identity. Topics include Greek classicism’s function in western and non-western traditions of art and archaeology; the changing roles of democracy, racism, and ethnicity in forging the classical ideal; status and the individual artist; Greek theories of vision and their relationship to naturalism and illusionism; and the rediscovery and use of the classical in Renaissance and Neoclassical art and architecture.
Colloquium on Nineteenth-Century Architecture		Morgan
GRS AH782	Tue 4:00-6:00	Course Site
Dilemma of style in nineteenth-century architecture; study of the relationship of architectural theory to the changing philosophy and aesthetic theory of the period. Development of functionalist theory. Students must also attend CAS AH 382.
Kyoto: Art, Architecture, and Urbanism		Tseng
GRS AH820	Thu 1:00-3:00	Course Site
This seminar explores the art, architecture, and urbanism of Kyoto, the Japanese imperial capital from the late 8th Century to the mid 19th Century. The course analyzes major artistic and architectural projects sponsored by successive generations of emperors, aristocrats, warriors, and priests, and places the projects in the context of the city’s cultural and urban development. Despite radical shifts in governance, urban configuration, topography, and cultural trends that occurred in Kyoto during the millennium under investigation, cultural continuity figured large as a conscious aim and rhetorical device among patrons and creators of the arts. Weekly readings will emphasize issues of lineage, heritage, and tradition.
Rembrandt		Zell
GRS AH863	Wed 2:00-4:00	Course Site
This course considers Rembrandt’s art and career within the context of his social and cultural worlds through a variety of art historical approaches. The class also embraces the complexities of pursuing a historical account of an artist who was not only shaped by his world, but also contributed to its “horizon of expectations.” Themes and issues that will guide our discussions include: The embattled state of connoisseurship; patronage, collecting, gift-giving, and the open market in seventeenth-century Holland; Rembrandt’s training and studio practices; artistic authority and self-representation; the crisis of the Christian image in the post-Reformation era; the graphic media and early modern print culture; women, the nude, and domesticity; landscape; and art theory and the consolidation of a classicist canon in Holland.
Visual Culture of the Civil War Era (1840-1870)		Hills
GRS AH886	Tue 9:00-11:00	Course Site
The seminar focuses on American visual culture of the Civil War era: Slavery, the Mexican War, Sectionalism, Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction (1865 to 1870), including paintings, sculpture, book illustration, graphics in the illustrated weeklies, photography, exhibitions, and organized urban spectacles. Topics will include but not be limited to: images of the conquest of Mexico, slavery and the slave auction in sculpture and paintings; illustrations for such books as Uncle Tom’s Cabin; images from the presidential campaigns of 1860 and 1864; the visual record of the Civil War in the illustrated press; the carnage of battle in the photographs of Matthew Brady and others; images of notorious prisons, such as Andersonville; picturing wartime activities of women including nurses, women soldiers, and women on the home front; the “Emancipation Proclamation” in popular imagery; images of the death and mourning of Lincoln; John Brown in graphics and text; visual conceptions of the Freedmen’s Bureau; and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in popular imagery.
German Art Since 1945		Williams
GRS AH895	Mon 10:00-12:00	Course Site
Covers important themes in the art of West Germany (1949 to 1990) and the reunified Germany. Key issues include the representation of history and trauma; memory and commemoration; art and politics; the changing status of painting; the rise of photographic practices; the international art market; post-Wall Berlin. Attention is devoted to important centers of production and influential individual artists (Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Anselm Kiefer, Hanne Darboven, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Rosemarie Trockel, Martin Kippenberger).