This course offers a critical introduction to museums—their fraught histories, their roles in contemporary society, and their possible futures. Looking across cultural contexts, we will study museums not only as repositories of objects but as multifaceted and contested social spaces. We will focus on the relationships between museums and their diverse communities, including artists, visitors, staff, funders, and neighbors.
(Offered as ARHA 199 and ARCH 199) Expressionist art developed during moments of profound transformation and crisis, against a back drop of devastating wars and fears of an apocalypse, yet filled with utopian promise and radical dreams of a better existence -- a world in many ways not unlike our own. A literary, cinematic, architectural, photographic and visual art, Expressionism mined the tensions between alienation and empathy, matter and spirit, representation and abstraction, politics and community, the city and the natural world.
(Offered as ARHA 191 and MUSI 191) This course explores sound as a medium of art-making with a rich history and radical potential within contemporary culture. Techniques covered will include listening exercises and non-musical scores, creative manipulation of analog media, and building lo-fi electronics. Accompanying readings draw from acoustic ecology, critical sound studies, afro-futurism, and media theory to contextualize collective exploration. Students will be expected to create studio-based art for critique. No musical experience is required.
Spring 2025. Professor House.
(Offered as ARHA 157, ARCH 157, and BLST 193) This course engages the buildings, cities, and landscapes of the former colonies of Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean. Beginning with the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, the non-European territories, which once comprised the lucrative possessions of modern European empires, quickly became independent states charged with developing infrastructure, erecting national monuments, and handling the influx of laborers drawn to the metropolises formed as sleepy colonial towns grew into bustling postcolonial cities.
In this introductory course we will explore over four hundred years of British art and design. Global interest in British art and design endures, as seen in the phenomena of period dramas like Bridgerton and the spread of Arts & Crafts patterns for interior decor. But what were the historical contexts that gave rise to these styles, and how do we understand, or perhaps misunderstand, these histories in the present?
This course proposes an art history of weather from the vantage point of our climate crisis. Weather is omnipresent, uncontrollable, and ever-changing, qualities that make it difficult to represent. Yet diverse observers have long attempted to picture weather, from painters creating aesthetic effects, to meteorologists seeking accurate forecasts, to activists pursuing political change. In this course, we will consider how and to what ends weather has been given visual form.
(Offered as ARHA 117 and FAMS 222) This introductory course is designed for students with no prior experience in video production. The aim is both technical and creative. We will begin with the literal foundation of the moving image—the frame—before moving through shot and scene construction, lighting, sound-image concepts, and final edit. In addition to instruction in production equipment and facilities, the course will also explore cinematic form and structure through weekly readings, screenings and discussion.
(Offered as ARHA 117 and FAMS 222) This introductory course is designed for students with no prior experience in video production. The aim is both technical and creative. We will begin with the literal foundation of the moving image—the frame—before moving through shot and scene construction, lighting, sound-image concepts, and final edit. In addition to instruction in production equipment and facilities, the course will also explore cinematic form and structure through weekly readings, screenings and discussion.
An introduction to black-and-white still photography. The basic elements of photographic technique will be taught as a means to explore both general pictorial structure and photography's own unique visual language. Emphasis will be centered less on technical concerns and more on investigating how images can become vessels for both ideas and deeply human emotions. Weekly assignments, weekly critiques, readings, and slide lectures about the work of artist-photographers, one short paper, and a final portfolio involving an independent project of choice.
An introductory course in the fundamentals of drawing. This course will be based in experience and observation, exploring various techniques and media in order to understand the basic formal vocabularies and conceptual issues in drawing; subject matter will include still life, landscape, interior, and figure. Weekly assignments, weekly critiques, final portfolio.
Limited to 14 students with 4 seats reserved for first-year students. Fall and Spring semesters. Fall and Spring: Visiting Assistant Professor Flanagan.
