Graduate courses are offered at the 200 and 300 levels. Two-hundred-level
courses are open to undergraduates who receive permission from the instructor;
300-level courses are open exclusively to graduate students.
Two-hundred-level courses are primarily topics courses; their subject
usually changes each semester. To check the listings for two-hundred-level
courses offered next term, see the Duke University ACES
web page. The following 300-level courses are taught periodically:
30l. Museum Studies. Introduction to the organization
and functions of the museum in preparation for the presentation of a
student organized exhibition. Most of the semester will be spent in
independent study, researching the scholarly, critical essays for the
catalog.
Museum Staff
302. Museum Studies. Completion of research for an
exhibition and preparation of the catalog. Students will actively participate
in catalog design and production. They will also be responsible for
every phase of planning and installing the exhibition as well as interpreting
it to the public through lectures and tours.
Museum Staff
303. Critical Approaches to Exhibitions and Museums. An
introduction to the historical context and critical analysis of exhibitions
from curiosity cabinets to ethnological museums to the national museum
to postmodern spectacles with special attention to the development of
the fine art museum as a distinctive site of visual display and consumption.
Special attention to relevant works of critical theory and critical
museum practices. Abe
340. Goya and David: Enlightenment and Unreason. A comparative study exploring the artists' contrasting responses to contemporary currents in art, philosophy and politics; examination of Goya and David as historiographical subjects; exploration and critique of biographical strategies in art history. McWilliam.
341. Nationalism and Visual Culture Since 1789. Theories of nationalism, national identity and nationhood; cultural expression as a medium for nationalism; historical study of nationalist theories from Taine to the present day. Art history and national essentialism. National myths and the representation of heroes; the representation of the military; national enemies and subject peoples. National symbols and popular culture; the invention of national traditions; historicism and the visual construction of collective identities. Regionalism, folk art and the cult of the land; the representation of place in conceptions of nationhood. Nostalgia, from ¿Merrie England¿ to the Wild West. Nations covered include Britain, France, Germany & America. McWilliam.
350. Topics in Japanese Art. Problems and issues in
a specific period or genre of Japanese Art. Specific focus varies from
year to year. Consent of instructor required. One course. Weisenfeld
355. Death and Burial in the Middle Ages: The Impact on Architectue and Sculpture. Course will study attitudes towards the dead and the fate of the soul in the middle ages, and the impact of changing approaches to burial on architecture and planning in the medieval city. One course. Bruzelius
362. Theatricality in Art: Staging Public Life in the Classical
World. The idea that life is a stage was a pervasive one in
antiquity and reflects the importance of the theater as a cultural and
civic institution. This course explores the concept of theatricality
and its effects on art and life in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds.
We consider such diverse topics as public funerals, festival processions,
the statesman as actor, costumes, masking, and portraiture, and the
popularity of theatrical imagery in domestic decoration. We also explore
the influence of and resistance to the Greek theater and theatricality
in Roman politics and culture. Dillon
363. The Imagery of Empire: Roman Historical Reliefs.
Genre of sculpture that emerged in late Republic as major vehicle for
visual transmission of imperial ideology. Representing the emperor engaged
in a variety of activities, these images helped to construct and communicate
the power and grandeur of the Roman Empire to its citizens. Examining
a broad range of Roman historical reliefs, we consider how sculptural
styles and narrative strategies were used to represent imperial histories,
and explore the range of messages these images conveyed. Issues of center
versus periphery and the visual dynamics of “Romanization”
are also considered. Dillon
364. Primitivism, Art, and Culture. This seminar studies
concepts of the ‘primitive’ in western culture, considering
attitudes towards race, class and gender. Particular attention will
be paid to the function of primitivism within modernist discourse and
to critical evaluations of the concept of primitivism in the fields
of anthropology, literary criticism, cultural geography, and cultural
history. Leighten
365. Italian Futurism. Seminar investigates the development of the futurist movement from its beginnings in 1909 through the 1920s. Studies the art of futurist painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carr, and Gino Severini in tandem with that of literary figures such as F. T. Marinetti, Ardengo Soffici, and Giovanni Papini. Special attention given to interdisciplinary debates over the role of futurism in the pre- and postwar development of fascism in Italy, as well as the relation of futurism to other European movements. Consent of instructor required. Antliff.
366. British Modernism in the Early Twentieth-Century.
A seminar focusing on the development of modernism in England, from
the creation of a British Fauvist movement in 1910 to the advent of
Vorticism during World War I. Topics covered include Roger Fry and the
Omega Workshops, J. D. Fergusson and the British Fauvists, the Vorticism
of Wyndham Lewis, Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and the criticism
of Vorticists T. E. Hulme and Ezra Pound. These movements will be studied
in the light of political ideology, literary theory, and gender studies.
Antliff
367. Cubism and Cultural Politics. This seminar studies
the Cubist movement in pre-World War I Paris, considering art theory
and production within the matrix of cultural politics and current critical
debates in the field. Focus will range over significant figures, including
Georges Braque, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon,
Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand
Léger, Jean Metzinger, Pablo Picasso and others. Antliff or Leighten
368. Anarchism and Modernist Art. Studies of the anarchist
theories of Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Reclus, Stirner and others
as they relate to the art of Courbet, Seurat, Signac, Pissarro, Cézanne,
Kupka, Kandinsky, Picasso, Severini and other artists involved in anarchist
discourse. Attention will be paid to current interest in anarchism in
dialogue with various forms of marxism within contemporary theoretical
debate. Antliff or Leighten
369. Modernism and Cultural Politics. Issues of politics
and art of the modernist period in Europe, focusing on movements significantly
involved with and influenced by political thought and activism—from
anarchism and marxism to nationalism, neocatholicism, royalism and fascism—and/or
subject to recent politicized art historical interpretation. Topics
may include Neo-impressionism; Symbolism; Catalanisme and early Picasso;
Fauvism; primitivism; Cubism; Futurism; Purism; the Bauhaus; De Stijl;
Russian avant-gardism; Dada; and Surrealism. Leighten
370. Art of the Courts in Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century
Europe. This course will examine the major courts of Europe
in France, England, Germany, and Italy to study the development of court
culture and the relationships and exchanges between the different courts
through marriage alliances, exchanges of presents, and shifts in taste
and style. Our particular focus will be the courts of Louis IX in France,
Henry III and Edward II in England, and the court of Naples from 1266
onwards. Patterns of spirituality, family relationships, and the role
of women and books will be particularly important topics. Bruzelius
371. Art and Culture in the Angevin Kingdom of Naples.
This seminar will study the importation of French culture to Italy after
the conquest of Charles of Anjou in 1266. The focus of the seminar will
be the shift within the Kingdom of Naples from models and styles derived
from northern Europe to a focus on the environment of Rome, Tuscany,
and the Mediterranean basin by the end of the thirteenth century. Topics
will include patterns of patronage, the production of books and manuscripts,
the construction of civic and religious monuments, tomb sculpture, and
city planning. Bruzelius
372. Western Monasticism and its Buildings. The development
of monastic planning and space within the western tradition. The concept
of the cloister and its position, the disposition of utilitarian buildings,
and the relationships between decoration (painting, sculpture) and spiritual
life; the rejection of the enclosed monastic life as a result of the
founding of the mendicant orders. The monastic life and its spaces for
men were reinforced for women with new types of regulations on barriers,
grills, and access to the lay public and the sacraments, a process that
for the Middle Ages culminates with the bull Pericoloso of Boniface
VIII in 1297. Bruzelius
373. The Paris Salon: Artists, Critics and Institutions 1815-1900.
Approaches the major exhibition of contemporary French painting and
sculpture from multiple perspectives, highlighting involvement of successive
political regimes in regulating the artistic economy. Analysis of artists’
relationships with-and attempts to modify-the Salon structure, the emergence
of alternative exhibiting venues, and the growth of the commercial art
market. Particular emphasis on contemporary critical responses to artworks,
viewed in the light of wider changes in journalism and the literary
market place. Crucial texts and controversies over particular works
will be examined in depth. The implications of reception theory for
art history will be explored. McWilliam
374. Jerusalem. This seminar assesses the contribution of Jerusalem's buidings to its contentiousness from Biblical to modern times. Particular sites (Me'a she'rim, the Dome of the Rock, the Holy Sepulchre, the Kotel or Wailing Walll, the souk, the Israeli Supreme Court, the Museum of the Seam, the Fence, etc.) considered in the context of the urban history of the city from the time of Jesus through Arab, Crusader, Turkish and British rule to contemporary Israeli control. How these places act upon the religious imagination and how they affect the ideological positions of their users (and their abusers) discussed on the basis of photographs, archaeological reports, news reports, novels, sacred texts and diaries. One course. Wharton
376. Through a Glass, Diasporally: Photography, Film, and Video.
This seminar will examine photographic, cinematic, and other mass media
images of people of African descent as a means of exploring questions
that have recently been asked about racial and cultural identities in
the "black Atlantic;” the “burden” of racial
representations; and art produced during this era of “mechanical
reproduction.” Images of blacks as seen in ethnographic, documentary,
and fine art photography; silent and sound film; and broadcast television
and video art, past and present, by both black and non-black artists,
will be the focus of this seminar, along with assorted critical writings
about mass media images of blacks. Powell
377. Performing Gender/Exhibiting Race. Studying the
intersections of race and gender in art since 1945 invites a host of
visual subjects and methodological strategies. In addition to close
examinations of works by artists like Barkely Hendricks, David Hammons,
Adrian Piper, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Faith Ringgold, and Kara Walker,
this seminar will trace the theorizing of gender and race through historical
documents and contemporary writings. Powell
378. Outsiders and Insiders. In Europe and the Americas
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, cultural critics began
in earnest to differentiate between artistic production that emanated
from learned, “civilized” communities and artistic production
that emerged from an uneducated, “barbaric” population.
This course will explore this phenomenon in all of its permutations,
from the Beaux-Arts and Völkerkunde ideals in museological history,
to the art world debates and theoretical discourses surrounding such
cultural constructs as primitivism, modernism and popular culture. Rather
than a singular examination of the concept of “folk-versus-fine
art” that re-inscribes the art historical hierarchy, this course
will examine this and other concepts of artistic “outsiders”
and “insiders” from a variety of positions, taking into
account nationality, class, literacy, economics, race and gender in
the categorization and evaluation of art and artists. Powell
379. Fascism East and West: The Visual Culture of Japan, Germany,
and Italy. Through a close analysis of cultural production
and aesthetics, this course will examine the relationship between the
politics of fascism and its symbolic practices; how forms of rituals,
myths, and images played a crucial role in the formation of the fascist
regime’s self-identity and the formation of the national fascist
subject. Materials will include painting, sculpture, architecture, photography,
graphic design, mass media, film, and forms of public spectacle and
pageantry. Weisenfeld
380. Art and Markets. One casualty of the tradition
of focusing on market structures, workshop practices, or on the careers
of famous artists, has been the systematic study of the numerous creative
shifts in producing, buying, selling, copying, and exporting all sorts
of visual material as part of the historical (historian's) context.
This course identifies new research that negotiates various possibilities
in reuniting ideas, theories, and reception codes different from those
we currently identify. Various scenarios generated here will focus on
unexpected interplays between images and audiences, within their local,
timely, and particular socioeconomic frame. Van Miegroet
381. Destinations. Consideration of architectures
of play, escape and healing. The history and physical form of sites
from antiquity to the present (e.g. the Roman and Byzantine spa at Hieropolis,
the pilgrimage shrine at Lourdes; Disney World) will be studied through
primary sources and theoretical texts. C-L: Rel. 381. Wharton
382. Art and Commodity. Exploration of relations between
unique objects (relic, monument, art work) and evolving markets in the
West from late antiquity to the present. Economics and theoretical texts
(e.g. Aquinas, Adam Smith, Mauss, Appadurai) as well as historical and
art historical works (e.g. Schapiro, Greenberg, Belting, Mitchell) will
provide the ground for both formal and social understanding of particular
works of art. Wharton
383. Art and Text. This seminar concerns ekphrasis,
the problem of using verbal representation to describe visual representation.
We will study the interrelation between artists’ theoretical writings
and visual productions. Students may work on art and texts in all traditional
and experimental visual art media, as well as in photography, video,
film, and electronic multimedia. Stiles
384. Art and Memory. Art can be a form for the remembrance,
construction, recapitulation, and visualization of memory. This seminar
considers theories of memory, cognition, and perception, traumatic memory,
dissociation, and recovered memory, flashbulb memory, as well as eidetic
and other anomalous forms of memory as they are displayed in all traditional
and experimental visual art media, including photography, video, film,
and electronic multimedia. Stiles
385. Art, Violence and Taboo. Art provides an unparalleled
liminal space for the presentation and representation of violence, destruction,
sadism, masochism, and other breaches of moral code otherwise controlled
and legislated against in civil society. This seminar considers theories
and practices of violence and taboo. Students may work on this subject
in all traditional and experimental visual art media, including photography,
video, film, and electronic multimedia. Stiles
386. Fascism, Art and Ideology. A study of the cultural
politics of European fascism, from its origins in the synthesis of nationalism
and socialism before World War I, to its final eclipse in 1945. Art
and architecture in Britain, France, Italy and Germany will be analyzed
in terms of contemporary debates over what constituted a fascist aesthetic.
The art and writing of the Symbolists, Futurists, Vorticists, Le Corbusier,
German Expressionists, and various German and Italian realists will
be considered in light of theories of fascism. Antliff
387. Art History and Representation. Art history as
well as art objects are sites of contestation for producers, patrons,
consumers and scholars. The seminar will be concerned with the production
of art history through various forms of representation, broadly construed,
with special attention to issues of aesthetics, social context, historical
location and enunciative position.Practices of collecting, translation,
display and knowledge formation will be considered in order to explore
the heterogeneous genealogy of art history. Abe
389. Spatial Practices. Space, once a vacuum in which action took place, is now broadly acknowledged as a formidable matrix that shapes agency. From medieval refectories toStarbucks, from Jerusalem to Las Vegas, from mikvaot to hot spring spas, space produced for human use has in turn managed human performance. How space works--as reassuring or threatening, as ordering or disordering--is the subject of this seminar. By reading selected theoretical texts (e.g. Lefebvre, Habermas, Eliade, Zizek) and mapping specific historical landscapes, we will become more aware of the ways space has shaped history and informed the objects of our scholarly research. Wharton.
391/392. Individual Research in Art History. Directed
research and writing in areas unrepresented by regular course offerings.
Staff
