Art History

The visual arts and architecture constitute a central part of human expression and experience, and both grow from and influence our lives in profound ways that we might not consciously acknowledge. In this course, we will explore intersections between the visual arts and cultural, political, and social history. The goal is to teach students to deal critically with works of art, using the methods and some of the theories of the discipline of art history. This course is not a survey but, rather, will have as its subject a limited number of artists and works of art and architecture that students will learn about in depth through formal analysis, readings, discussion, research, and debate. We will endeavor to understand each work from the point of view of its creators and patrons and by following the work's changing reception by audiences throughout time. To accomplish this, we will need to be able to understand some of the languages of art. The course, then, is also a course in visual literacy—the craft of reading and interpreting visual images on their own terms. We will also discuss a number of issues of contemporary concern; for instance, the destruction of art, free speech and respect of religion, the art market, and the museum. Students will be asked to schedule time on weekends to travel to Manhattan on their own or in the College van to do assignments at various museums in New York. You will need to leave several hours for each of these visits and will keep a notebook of comments and drawings of works of art. There will be weekly conferences first semester and biweekly conferences second semester in the first-year studies.

This course will examine the use of mythic imagery in the visual arts of the Greeks and peoples of ancient Italy from the eighth century BCE to the beginning of the Roman Empire. We will consider all visual artistic media—both public and private. We will focus largely on problems of content or interpretation, with special attention to the role of patronage in the choice and mode of presentation of the mythic themes. In order to appreciate the underlying cultural or religious significance of the myths and their visual expression, we will also examine the relation of the artworks to contemporary literature, especially poetry, and the impact of significant historical events or trends.

Fall: Homeric and Archaic Greece
In the fall semester, we will examine the earlier Greek development from the Geometric to the Archaic periods, focusing on the paradigmatic function of mythic narratives—especially the central conception of the hero and the role of women in Greek religion and society. Group discussion will concentrate on the social function of myth and myth in early Greek poetry, as well as key historical or political developments such as the emergence of tyranny and democracy.

Spring: From Classical Greece to Augustan Rome
The spring semester will begin with examining the use of myth during the Classical period, focusing on the impact of the prolonged conflict with the Persian Empire and the great monuments of Periklean Athens. We will then consider Greek myth in the later Classical and Hellenistic periods and the absorption of Greek myth by the Etruscans and early Romans. The course will conclude with the adaptation of Greek myth within the emerging Roman Empire. Group discussion will focus on the relation between myth and an emerging Greek conception of history and ethnography and, finally, on the interrelation of poetry and art in Augustan Rome.

This course will explore the art and architecture of Spain and of Latin America as its lands emerged from colonialism to forge strong independent identities. We will focus on selected topics, including extraordinary artists such as El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, Cabrera, and Aleijadinho, as well as on complex issues surrounding art and identity in contested and textured lands—in particular, Casta painting, colonialism, and arts of revolution and national identity. Students may, if they wish, extend their conference work to later artists (e.g., Diego Rivera, Frida Khalo, José Bedia, Belkis Ayón, among others).

This course departs from hegemonic accounts of modernism to tell the story of modernism through the work of underrepresented artists—artists of the Black Atlantic, queer and trans artists, artists of color, women artists, and artists seen as “outside” the canon. Looking geographically to Europe, North America, South America, and East Asia, we will investigate how artists responded to fascism, colonization and anti-colonial protest, war and mass migration, the legacies of enslavement, and rationalized forms of labor. We will look to discourses of leftist politics and collectivity, feminist struggle, abolitionism and antiracist discourse. What representational strategies did artists use to respond to modernity, to remake the world anew? The emphasis of this course is on the global plurality of modernism, shifting our understanding of where modernism was produced, when, and by whom. This course serves as an introduction to art history in the sense that it will equip students with the basic tools of close, slow looking and of descriptive writing about art, art historical research, and practices of curatorial display while also introducing students to broad and diverse histories of modern art. The course will also include field trips to New York City museums. This course is a lecture-seminar hybrid: One lecture a week will introduce you to the broader movements; weekly group conferences will look at specific case studies and scholarly approaches to writing about contemporary art.

This course will explore the architecture and visual arts of societies in which Islam is a strong political, cultural, or social presence. We will follow the history of some of these societies through the development of their arts and architecture, using case studies to explore their diverse artistic languages from the advent of Islam through the contemporary world. We will begin with an introduction to the history surrounding the advent of Islam and the birth of arts and architecture that respond to the needs of the new Islamic community. We will proceed to follow the developments of diverse artistic and architectural languages of expression as Islam spreads to the Mediterranean and to Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America—exploring the ways in which arts can help define and express identities for people living in multiconfessional societies. We will then draw this exploration into the present day, in which global economics, immigration, and politics draw the architecture and artistic attitudes of Islam into the global contemporary discourse. Our work will include introductions to some of the theoretical discourses that have emerged concerning cultural representation and exchange and appropriation in art and architecture. One of our allied goals will be to learn to read works of art and to understand how an artistic expression that resists representation can connect with its audience. And throughout this course, we will ask: Can there be an Islamic art?

Fall: Early Christian Art and Architecture
In the fall, this course will examine the emergence and development of Christian art in the Mediterranean and Europe during the later ancient and early medieval periods. Here, this development will be considered directly in connection with the emergence and eventual dominance of Christianity itself within the Roman Empire, with appropriate attention to Christian religious belief and theology as a significant factor in the artistic development. The course will consider all artistic media but primarily painting, sculpture, and architecture. We will begin by assessing how art and architecture were used to project the power and ideology of the Roman Empire, both in the public and in the private sphere. We will then examine how existing traditions of Roman art were gradually adapted to create a specifically Christian artistic production, first in the private sphere and then in a public, more monumental setting as the Roman state began officially to embrace and promulgate Christianity. In the fall, the course will focus largely on the western regions of the Roman Empire up to and just beyond its collapse in the course of the fifth century.

Spring: Byzantine Art and Architecture From Theodosius to the Fall of Constantinople
In spring, we will focus on the further development of Christian art and architecture in the surviving East Roman or “Byzantine” Empire, beginning at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries and focusing extensively on the apogee of Byzantine art in the so-called “Age of Justinian.” Here, we will consider not only the art of the imperial center of Constantinople but also the regional variations in the early Byzantine development across the Balkans, Anatolia or Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, North Africa, and Egypt. As the semester progresses, we will then consider the impact of an emerging and expanding Islamic Empire on a gradually shrinking Byzantine world. We will study the effect of these changes on the nature and output of artistic production in the regions that Byzantium struggled to retain while also considering the repeated impact of Byzantine art on the medieval art of western Europe. The course will culminate with the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

This seminar will look at Italian art in the 15th and 16th centuries to reflect on the complex relationship of art and politics, poised between patronage and imposition, artistic autonomy and subservience, worldly interests and spiritual preoccupations. Within the larger picture of Renaissance Italian art and its chronological development, we will investigate specific artistic episodes against the backdrop of political motivations and ideological tensions of both patrons and artists. We will focus on selected artworks to discover messages and meanings embedded in their style and iconography and to understand how art objects were used to promote specific ideologies and leaders but also as tools to negotiate with God and the divine power— invoking favor and, occasionally, giving thanks. This course will involve one field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Preserving monuments and collecting old artifacts is an important characteristic of complex societies since their inception. Collecting antiquities and investigating the past was a crucial aspect of Medieval and Renaissance European culture. In the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, collecting and studying the material legacy of the Christian past became an important component of European antiquarianism. This seminar class will explore practices of antiquarianism from the Medieval world to the modern era, with a main focus on Renaissance and post-Reformation European culture. We will examine changing motivations behind the preservation and collection of the old, as well as different types of collections. The creation of museums of ancient objects in the West in the 19th century will also receive attention, along with the problematic relationship between museums and European colonialism. A conversation with an expert on the contemporary crisis of antiquities in the Middle East and on what can be done to protect and preserve endangered archeological sites and objects in the area will end this course.

This course looks closely at the art museum as a site of contest and critique: How are museums not neutral spaces but, rather, powerful institutions that shape narratives about the objects that they collect and display? Readings will consider the origins of the modern art museum in Europe in the 17th century and explore how the conventions of display impacted art’s reception and meaning. We will analyze histories of institutional critique to look at how artists have taken aim at the museum as a site of discursive power, raising questions about the kinds of value judgments that go into determining what counts as art. We will look closely at current discourses of decolonizing the museum, weigh how museums should confront their colonizing histories of systemic racism, and explore histories of exhibitions of Indigenous and African and African Diasporic art, as well as how museums shape historical memory. This course will include field trips and conversations with visiting speakers. Because this course considers the historiography of art, some previous course work in art history is required; but with its broad coverage, this course will have something for everyone regardless of their background.

Images wavered in the sunlit trim of appliances, something always moving, a brightness flying, so much to know in the world. —Don Delillo, Libra

A few cartoons lead to cataclysmic events in Europe. A man’s statement that he “can’t breathe” ricochets across North America. A photograph printed in a newspaper moves a solitary reader. A snapshot posted on the Internet leads to dreams of fanciful places. Memories of a past year haunt us like ghosts. What each of these occurrences has in common is that they all entail the force of images in our lives, whether these images are visual, acoustic, or tactile in nature; made by hand or machine; circulated by word of mouth; or simply imagined. In this seminar, we will consider the role that images play in the lives of people in various settings throughout the world. In delving into terrains at once actual and virtual, we will develop an understanding of how people throughout the world create, use, circulate, and perceive images—and how such efforts tie into ideas and practices of sensory perception, time, memory, affect, imagination, sociality, history, politics, and personal and collective imaginings. Through these engagements, we will reflect on the fundamental human need for images, the complicated politics and ethics of images, aesthetic and cultural sensibilities, dynamics of time and memory, the intricate play between the actual and the imagined, and the circulation of digital images in an age of globalization and social media. We will also consider the spectral, haunting qualities of many imaginal moments in life. Readings are to include a number of writings in anthropology, art history, philosophy, psychology, cultural studies, and critical theory. Images are to be drawn from photographs, films and videos, paintings, sculptures, drawings, street art and graffiti, religion, rituals, tattoos, inscriptions, novels, poems, road signs, advertisements, dreams, fantasies, and any number of fabulations in the worlds in which we live and imagine. The seminar will be held during two class sessions each week during the fall and spring terms. Along with that, students will meet individually with the instructor every other week through the course of each semester to discuss their ongoing academic and creative work. In the fall semester, we will all also meet every other week in an informal group setting to watch films together, discuss student research and writing projects, and engage creatively with images and imaginal thought.

How does a chronic illness affect a person’s orientation to the everyday? What are the social and political forces that underpin life in a homeless shelter? What is the experiential world of a blind person, a musician, a refugee, or a child at play? In an effort to answer these and like-minded questions, anthropologists have become increasingly interested in developing phenomenological accounts of particular lived realities in order to understand—and convey to others—the nuances and underpinnings of such realities in terms that more general social or symbolic analyses cannot achieve. In this context, phenomenology offers an analytic method that works to understand and describe in words phenomena as they appear to the consciousnesses of certain peoples. The phenomena most often in question for anthropologists include the workings of time, perception, selfhood, language, bodies, suffering, and morality as they take form in particular lives within the context of any number of social, linguistic, and political forces. In this course, we will explore phenomenological approaches in anthropology by reading and discussing some of the most significant efforts along these lines. Each student will also try their hand at developing a phenomenological account of a specific social or subjective reality through a combination of ethnographic research, participant observation, and ethnographic writing.

In the years following its emergence in the late 1800s, film quickly became an enormously popular art form, as well as a large and lucrative industry. The American film industry had reached worldwide dominance and began to exercise an enormous influence upon American culture. Focusing primarily on films produced by major Hollywood studios, this course will examine the relationship between the artistic and industrial sides of film, as well as the cultural impact and implications of its status as popular and “mass” art. Course sessions will include an introduction to the terminology and techniques used to analyze films, as well as the fundamentals of academic writing and research. During the first semester, our focus will be on the rise of Hollywood cinema as both an industry and a set of storytelling techniques, with a particular emphasis on the ways that cinema shaped American identity, ideology, and culture. We will consider, in particular, how film raised questions about the relationship between “high” and “mass,” or “popular,” arts and how different forms of filmmaking both determined and destabilized these categories. Other topics to be covered in the first semester will include the role of race, gender, and class in representation and spectatorship, the development of distinct film genres, and the role played by Hollywood during key moments in 20th-century history (Great Depression, World War II). Topics to be covered during the second semester will include the relationship between film and other media (television, Internet), the role of technology in shaping film form and content, the decline of the Hollywood studio system, the relationship between Hollywood studios and African American filmmakers and audiences, and the changing role of Hollywood in American life from 1960s to the present. During the fall semester, students will meet with the instructor weekly for individual conferences. In the spring, conferences will take place on a biweekly basis.

Why is the topic of laughter so often siloed or scorned in discussions of high art, literature, and the sciences? Why don’t we take laughter seriously as a society? How many professors does it take to teach a course on laughter? (Two more than usual!) In this lecture-seminar, students will develop a highly interdisciplinary understanding of laughter as a human behavior, cultural practice, and wide-ranging tool for creative expression. Based on the expertise of the three professors, lectures will primarily investigate laughter through the lens of psychology, film history, and visual arts. The goal of the course is to think and play across many disciplines. For class assignments, students may be asked to conduct scientific studies of audience laughter patterns, create works of art with punchlines, or write close analyses of classic cinematic gags. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the building blocks of laughter; classic devices of modern comedy; and laughter as a force of resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Topics to be discussed include the evolutionary roots of laughter as a behavior; the psychological substrates of laughter as a mode of emotional and self-regulation; humor in Dada, surrealism, performance art, and stand-up comedy; jokes and the unconscious; comic entanglements of modern bodies and machines; hysterical audiences of early cinema; and how to read funny faces, word play, spit takes, toilet humor, and sound gags.

Animation is a magical medium that is unique because it has the potential to combine all of the art forms: painting, drawing, sculpture, music, dance, acting, writing...the list is endless. This course, with a focus on experimentation, will begin with a series of workshops that are designed to help students tap into their inner vision as artists. Each of us, as diverse individuals, have something within our soul that makes us special and unique. The goal and challenge of this course is to help students discover who they are as artists/animators. What do they want to say? This will be accomplished through a variety of lessons and workshops, both abstract and representational, which will include: cut-out stop-motion, sequential drawing, metamorphosis, object animation, and working with and interpreting sound. These techniques will be coupled with some of the fundamental principles of animation, such as timing and spacing, staging, follow through, and acting for animation. In addition to lectures and demonstrations, animated short films from all over the world will be screened in class. This is vital to help students understand the infinite possibilities of what an animated film can be and how to translate their own ideas through this powerful time-based medium. By semester’s end, each student will have completed five short animated experiments, ranging in length from 30 seconds to one minute, that will demonstrate an understanding of many of the techniques and principles discussed in class. Students are required to provide their own external hard drives and some additional art materials. Software instruction will include Adobe AfterEffects, Adobe Premier, and Dragonframe.

Animation is a unique discipline within filmmaking. Often relying less on words and more on visual interpretations, animation offers unlimited conceptual possibilities for the creative screenwriter. This course will focus on the creation and development of story, characters, and the multiple styles and methods of expressing a narrative in highly visual terms. The first segment of the course delves into the art of writing pantomime; creating scripts, outlines, and storyboards; and referencing legendary animated films that utilize wordless stories. From there, the class will move into defining music and creating stories within the framework of prerecorded media. We then progress to the various styles of script writing, from voice over narration to interviews and finally to dramatic dialogue and writing for characters. Specific limitations and possibilities are discussed, mostly within the context of the differences between animation and live-action writing, as well as comparing structures of the short story, feature script, and serial script. Throughout the course, students are encouraged to explore a diversity of personal experiences, expressing stories that may not be traditionally heard or brought into a script and film format. By the nature of its inherent use of aesthetic and its ability to reflect the multitude of visual material and stories of this complex world, animation is particularly good at embodying diverse experiences and cultures. The art of animated storytelling is a conceptual and highly visual and personal exercise; therefore, throughout the duration of this course, I encourage students to accompany written work with visual references—whether photographs or drawings. The final project for the course will be to complete a fully developed script for a five- to ten-minute short animated film.

Animation is a magical medium that is unique because it has the potential to combine all of the art forms: painting, drawing, sculpture, music, dance, acting, writing...the list is endless. This course, with a focus on experimentation, will begin with a series of workshops that are designed to help students tap into their inner vision as artists. Each of us, as diverse individuals, have something within our soul that makes us special and unique. The goal and challenge of this course is to help students discover who they are as artist/animators. What do they want to say? This will be accomplished through a variety of lessons and workshops, both abstract and representational, that will include: cut-out stop-motion, sequential drawing, metamorphosis, object animation, and working with and interpreting sound. These techniques will be coupled with some of the fundamental principles of animation, such as timing and spacing, staging, follow through, and acting for animation. In addition to lectures and demonstrations, animated short films from all over the world will be screened in class. This is vital to help students understand the infinite possibilities of what an animated film can be and how to translate their own ideas through this powerful, time-based medium. By semester’s end, each student will have completed five short, animated experiments, ranging in length from 30 seconds to one minute, that will demonstrate an understanding of many of the techniques and principles discussed in class. Students are required to provide their own external hard drives and some additional art materials. Software instruction will include Adobe AfterEffects, Adobe Premier, and Dragonframe.

Qualified students will attend the twice-weekly group conferences for Intermediate Greek (see course description) and complete all assignments required for those conferences.

Qualified students will attend the twice-weekly seminar meetings for What Should I Do? Democracy, Justice, and Humanity in Ancient Greek Tragedy (see course description under Literature) and complete the reading assignments for that course. Students will also meet in group conference twice a week to read (in Greek) and discuss one ancient Greek tragedy selected by the group. 

What are the distinctive features of our “modern” civilization? A partial list would include representative democracy, political parties, nationalism, religious pluralism and secularization, mass production, rapid technological change, consumerism, free markets, a global economy, and unceasing artistic experimentation. All these characteristically modern things became established in the 19th century, and most of them were pioneered by Europeans. Yet in Europe, with its ancient institutions and deeply-rooted traditions, this new form of civilization encountered greater resistance than it did in that other center of innovation, the United States. The resulting tensions between old and new in Europe set the stage for the devastating world wars and revolutions of the 20th century. In this course, we will examine various aspects of the epochal transformation in ways of making, thinking, and living that occurred in Europe during what historians call the “long 19th century” (1789–1914). We will also survey the political history of the period and consider how the development of modern civilization in Europe was shaped by the resistance it encountered from the defenders of older ways. During the first semester, we will consider events and developments that transpired between 1760 and 1860: the French Revolution and conquests of Napoleon, the flourishing of Romanticism, the appearance of modern industry in Great Britain, the emergence of the principal modern political ideologies (conservativism, liberalism, socialism), and the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. In the spring, we will look at subsequent developments up to 1914: the unification of Italy and Germany, the rise of mass politics, imperialism, and the outbreak of World War I. We will also examine trends in thought and in the arts, such as French Impressionism, fin de siècle irrationalism, and the post-1890 avant-garde.

South Asia, a region at the geographic center of the world’s most important cultural, religious, and commercial encounters for millennia, has a rich history of cultural exchanges. Its central location on the Indian Ocean provided it with transnational maritime connections to Africa and Southeast Asia, while its land routes facilitated constant contact with the Eurasian continent. The region has witnessed numerous foreign rules, from the early Central Asian Turkic dynasties to the Mughals and, finally, the British. After gaining independence from British colonial rule, the region was eventually partitioned into three different nations—India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh—each with its distinctive form of government. South Asia has produced a significant diaspora worldwide, preserving its cultural heritage and creating further cultural exchanges with the adopted nations, thereby influencing global culture. Despite facing development challenges and political instability, South Asia is rapidly developing within the capitalistic world economy and becoming an important player on the global scene, both politically and culturally. This course will provide students with a survey of South Asia from the era of the early Indus Civilization to the present. Lectures and sources will trace major political events and the region’s cultural, ecological, and economic developments that have significantly shaped South Asian history. Students will analyze both primary and secondary sources, enhancing their understanding of this diverse society. They are expected to engage in lectures, reading, class discussions, group work, and writing to examine the major themes and debates in South Asian history and develop sound arguments.

The Indian Ocean is the third-largest ocean in the world and contributes almost 30 percent to the total oceanic realm of our planet. Current scholars have defined the Indian Ocean to include the oceanic and littoral spaces in the southwest from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, to the Red Sea in the north, then horizontally through to the South China Sea in the east, and down to Australia in the southeast. Commerce around the Indian Ocean continued as a web of production and trade that spanned across the ports of India, the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Europe. Indian Ocean ports were the fulcrum of maritime trade that precipitated spontaneous transcultural interactions between traders and inhabitants of different geographic regions who mingled there to exchange commodities. Ships followed monsoons or seasonal wind patterns, and sailors were obliged to wait at length for return departures from ports, which was a significant cause of cultural transfer. Various religions, including Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, were mobile across the Indian Ocean networks; and extant beliefs, practices, and material cultures are evidence. The study of the Indian Ocean World (IOW), as some historians have termed it, is a newly emerging field in world history. New evidence from historical research of the last 30 years has recovered the lost significance of this region, which was the center of a robust and complex trade and cultural network for a millennium and that continues today. This course is designed to provide students with a survey of Indian Ocean world history from the medieval to the colonial era. Lectures and sources will help students deepen their knowledge of peoples and cultures around the Indian Ocean and gain a wider appreciation for the transnational trade and cultural and religious networks that existed there. Students will learn to examine that globalization is not a modern phenomenon but, rather, an ongoing aspect of the Indian Ocean. Each week, students will evaluate sources that explore the discrete regions of the Indian Ocean, their people, and the religious networks, commercial exchanges, migrations, and political events that they engender to make a complex and dynamic connected history. Students are expected to engage in lectures, reading, class discussions, group work, and writing to examine the major themes and debates in Indian Ocean history and develop sound arguments.

This course, for students with no previous knowledge of Italian, aims at providing a complete foundation in the Italian language, with particular attention to oral and written communication and all aspects of Italian culture. The course will be conducted in Italian after the first month and will involve the study of all basic structures of the language—phonological, grammatical, and syntactical—with practice in conversation, reading, composition, and translation. In addition to material covering basic Italian grammar, students will be exposed to fiction, poetry, songs, articles, recipe books, and films. Group conferences (held once a week) aim at enriching the students’ knowledge of Italian culture and developing their ability to communicate. This will be achieved by readings that deal with current events and topics relative to today’s Italian culture. Activities in pairs or groups, along with short written assignments, will be part of the group conference. In addition to class and the group conferences, the course has a conversation component in regular workshops with the language assistant. Conversation classes are held twice a week (in small groups) and will center on the concept of Viaggio in Italia: a journey through the regions of Italy through cuisine, cinema, art, opera, and dialects. The Italian program organizes trips to the Metropolitan Opera and relevant exhibits in New York City, as well as the possibility of experiencing Italian cuisine firsthand as a group. The course is for a full year, by the end of which students will attain a basic competence in all aspects of the language.

This course aims at improving and perfecting the students’ speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills, as well as their knowledge of Italy’s contemporary culture and literature. In order to acquire the necessary knowledge of Italian grammar, idiomatic expressions, and vocabulary, a review of all grammar will be carried out throughout the year. As an introduction to modern Italian culture and literature, students will be introduced to a selection of short stories, poems, and passages from novels, as well as specific newspaper articles, music, and films in the original language. Some of the literary works will include selections from Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg, Gianni Rodari, Marcello D’Orta, Clara Sereni, Dino Buzzati, Stefano Benni, Antonio Tabucchi, Alberto Moravia, Achille Campanile, and Elena Ferrante. In order to address the students’ writing skills, written compositions will be required as an integral part of the course. All material is accessible on MySLC. Conferences are held on a biweekly basis; topics might include the study of a particular author, literary text, film, or any other aspect of Italian society and culture that might be of interest to the student. Conversation classes (in small groups) will be held twice a week with the language assistant, during which students will have the opportunity to reinforce what they have learned in class and hone their ability to communicate in Italian. When appropriate, students will be directed to specific internship opportunities in the New York City area, centered on Italian language and culture.

In this practicum-style class—meeting weekly at the Yonkers Public Library (YPL) Riverfront Branch—we will pursue projects that will directly support efforts at the library to build and publicize an LGBTQ+ archival collection. Class readings will discuss the risks, challenges, and rewards of building queer history through archival collections, especially in the context of a public institution like YPL. For conference work, students will participate in one of three group projects at YPL. The Oral History Project group will run public dialogue circles on LGBTQ+ issues in Yonkers and conduct oral histories to be housed in YPL’s public digital archives. The archives acquisition project will build physical and digital collections at the library and develop archival finding aids to assist patrons with archival research. The exhibition group will develop a small exhibition at YPL, sharing Yonkers and Westchester-area history and showcasing existing materials in YPL’s archival collection, including materials developed by the first two project groups. Students will ideally have have some level of experience with queer studies as an academic discipline, archival research, or applied work at nonprofits or other archives, libraries, and/or museums.

This course will examine literature written by late 19th- and 20th-century Italian women writers. In the newly unified Italy, middle-class women began in great numbers to access and contribute to literature as both readers and writers. The increasing presence of women writers caused great upheaval, as the male literary establishment viewed the potential for a disruption to the canon. The anxiety caused by their presence is visible in the manner in which they were dismissed as imitating male literary models, accused of excessive sentimentality and self-disclosure, or dubbed by critics il pericolo roseo, “the pink danger” (L. Zuccoli, Corriere della sera, March 24, 1911). Yet, many of these women writers reveal sophistication in their ability to experiment with genres and styles and engage with some of Italy’s literary movements (e.g., verismo, futurism, magic realism, neorealism) and intellectuals, as well as crucial historical events such as fascism and World War II. As we will see, they often question or reverse traditional depictions of femininity. They show an awareness of the social roles and expectations demanded of them and often interrogate such roles and some of the tropes present in the works of the time (e.g., the femme fatale, the self-sacrificing wife and mother). Many of them assert their own defiant voice and their own perspective as women writers, (re)claiming a place in the canon of Italian literature. In this course, we will explore how their works address social issues related to family, marriage, and women’s changing roles, as well as the place of women’s writing in the Italian literary canon. Our readings will include works by Marchesa Colombi (M. A. Torriani), Sibilla Aleramo, Grazia Deledda, Ada Negri, Rosa Rosà, Paola Masino, Renata Viganò, Joyce Lussu, Anna Banti, Anna Maria Ortese, Alba de Céspedes, Elsa Morante, Natalia Ginzburg, and Dacia Maraini. These works will be examined in dialogue with the literary production and ideas of male or canonical authors. Primary sources will range from fiction (novels, short stories, and fictional diaries) to autobiographical texts, poems, plays, and newspaper articles; these sources will be supplemented by secondary readings on women’s literature and history and on occasion by films. No previous knowledge of Italian is required. Students proficient in Italian may opt to read sources in the original. Conference topics may include the study of a particular author, literary text, or topic relevant to the course and that is of interest to the student. As an FYS course, students will meet individually in conference with the instructor/don every week until October Study Days and every two weeks after that.

Athens, London, Paris, Berlin, New York...the history of Western theatre has always been associated with cities, their politics, their customs, their geography, their audiences. This course will track the story of theatre as it originates in the Athens of the fifth-century BCE and evolves into its different expressions and practices in cities of later periods, all of them seen as “capitals” of civilization. Does theatre civilize, or is it merely a reflection of any given civilization whose cultural assumptions inform its values and shape its styles? Given that ancient Greek democracy gave birth to tragedy and comedy in civic praise of the god Dionysos—from a special coupling of the worldly and the sacred—what happens when these genres recrudesce in the unsavory precincts of Elizabethan London, the polished court of Louis XIV, the beer halls of Weimar Berlin, and the neon “palaces” of Broadway? Sometimes the genres themselves are challenged by experiments in new forms or by performances deliberately situated in unaccustomed places. By tinkering with what audiences have come to expect or where they have come to assemble, do playwrights like Euripides, Brecht, and Sarah Kane destabilize civilized norms? Grounding our work in Greek theatre, we will address such questions in a series of chronological investigations of the theatre produced in each city: Athens and London in the first semester; Paris, Berlin, and New York in the second.

Are human beings capable of self-government? What does that require? As modern authoritarian movements imperil democratic institutions, norms, and the rule of law, ancient Greek tragedies illuminate values and aspirations underpinning democracy and modern liberal ideals of justice, equality, and universal human rights. Tragedy and democracy emerged simultaneously in ancient Athens in the late 6th century BCE and flourished throughout the 5th century BCE. Ancient Greece never achieved egalitarian politics or anything close to universal human rights, but Athenian tragedies emphasize the essential equality of all human beings in our vulnerability to suffering and death. Surviving plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides dramatize the costs of tyranny, anger, vengeance, and cruelty—to perpetrators, as well as to victims. Commending honesty, generosity, and compassion, tragedies locate nobility not in genetic inheritance, group affiliation, socioeconomic status, numerical superiority, or even moral or ideological convictions but, rather, in our conduct as individuals. Tragedies expose the consequences of human words and actions, as characters make choices conducive to success or failure for themselves and their communities. State-sponsored and publicly performed, tragedies made self-reflection and self-criticism a fundamental feature of Athenian democratic politics and society. “What should I do?” encapsulates the central question of every ancient Greek tragedy and every moment of our own lives. This course is designed for anyone interested in understanding the false promise of authoritarianism and appreciating the origins, goals, and possibilities for a free, humane, equitable democratic society.

Theatre emerges from social rituals; and as a communal exercise, theatre requires people to work together toward a common purpose in shared and demarcated physical space. Yet, the very notion of “character,” first expressed in the indelibly defining mask of the ancient Greek protagonist, points paradoxically toward the spirit, attraction, and trial of individuation. And so we have been given Medea, Hamlet, and Tartuffe, among the many dramatic characters whose unique faces we recognize and who speak to us not only of their own conflicts but also of something universal and timeless. In the 19th century, however, the Industrial Revolution, aggressive capitalism, imperialism, Darwinism, socialist revolution, feminism, the new science of psychology, and the decline of religious clarity about the nature of the human soul—all of these, among other social factors—force the question as to whether individual identity has point or meaning, even existence. Henrik Ibsen, a fiercely “objective” Norwegian self-exile, and Anton Chekhov, an agnostic Russian doctor, used theatre—that most social of arts—to challenge their time, examining assumptions about identity, its troubling reliance on social construction, and the mysteries of self-consciousness that elude resolution. The test will be to see how what we learn from them equips us—or fails to do so—in a study of August Wilson, an African American autodidact of the 20th century, whose plays represent the impact, both outrageous and insidious, of American racism on “characters” denied identity by definition.

From Karen Tei Yamashita’s novel, I Hotel, to Emmanual Han’s photographic series, America Fever, contemporary Asian American artists and writers have often mined the historical record for creative inspiration. In this course, we will explore how 20th- and 21st-century Asian American novelists, poets, photographers, and painters have turned to the arts in order to reimagine major events in US history. Beginning with the Gold Rush (1848-1855) and concluding in the early 2000s, our chronology will be expansive, as we pay particular attention to how artists and writers have turned to their chosen media forms in order to craft more inclusive representations of American history. At the same time, we will interrogate the ethical implications and historical limitations of reconstructing and reimagining the past—especially in relation to themes of migration, violence, erasure, and identity. In reading across time periods and genres, students will ultimately develop a deeper understanding of the key themes and methods that inform the interdisciplinary field of Asian American studies. Likely artists will include: Stephanie Shih, Martin Wong, Zarina, Albert Chong, Hung Liu, Linda Sok, and Phung Huynh. Likely authors will include: C. Pam Zhang, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Ocean Vuong, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Mohsin Hamid. Readings will be supplemented by primary sources and mini lectures, which will contextualize our creative readings within larger socio-historical frames.

Why is the topic of laughter so often siloed or scorned in discussions of high art, literature, and the sciences? Why don’t we take laughter seriously as a society? How many professors does it take to teach a course on laughter? (Two more than usual...) In this lecture-seminar, students will develop a highly interdisciplinary understanding of laughter as a human behavior, cultural practice, and wide-ranging tool for creative expression. Based on the expertise of the three professors, lectures will primarily investigate laughter through the lens of psychology, film history, and visual arts. The goal of the course is to think and play across many disciplines. For class assignments, students may be asked to conduct scientific studies of audience laughter patterns, create works of art with punchlines, or write close analyses of classic cinematic gags. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the building blocks of laughter; classic devices of modern comedy; and laughter as a force of resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Topics to be discussed include the evolutionary roots of laughter as a behavior; the psychological substrates of laughter as a mode of emotional and self-regulation; humor in Dada, surrealism, performance art, and stand-up comedy; jokes and the unconscious; comic entanglements of modern bodies and machines; hysterical audiences of early cinema; and how to read funny faces, word play, spit takes, toilet humor, and sound gags.

In public discourse, we are bombarded with assertions of the newly “global” nature of the contemporary world. This assertion assumes that former stable categories of personhood, ideational systems, nation, identity, and space are now fragmented and transcended by intensified travel, digital technology, and cross-cultural contact. This seminar is based on the premise that people have traveled throughout history; current global moves are but the most recent manifestation of a phenomenon that has historically occurred in many forms and places. This long(er) view of mobility will allow us to rethink and reexamine not only our notions of travel but their shifting connotations and significance across time and space. We will explore how supposed stable categories—such as citizen, refugee, nation, and commodity—are constructed and consider several theoretical approaches that help us make sense of these categorizations, the processes accompanying their normalization and dissemination, and their underlying assumptions. Our questions will include: What are the political, navigational, and epistemological foundations that go into mapmaking and schemas of classification? How do nomads change into settled city dwellers or wageworkers? How does time become disciplined? How does travel change into tourism? How do commodities travel and acquire meaning? What is the relationship between legal and illicit moves? How do technologies of violence, such as weapons and drugs, circulate? What is the meaning of their circulation in different contexts? How do modern technologies enable time/space compression? What are the shifting logics of globalization? What is their relationship to our notions and constructions of authenticity, subjectivity, and identity? During the fall semester, we will begin by developing an analytical approach toward our topic (which we will continue to develop throughout the year). We will then consider the implications of classification, categorization, and mapping. For the remainder of the semester, we will follow the travel(s) of ideas, commodities, and people. In the process, we will begin to think about questions of time/space compression. In the spring, we will return to some of the themes of the fall semester but examine them in a different context and through a different lens. Among our concerns in the spring semester will be issues of fusion and hybridization in cultural practices regarding people and things (e.g., food, music, romance, families); shifting places (e.g., borders, travel, and tourism); time/space compression through new technologies of travel and communication; and drugs, terror, violence, and poverty. As our sources, we will rely primarily on interdisciplinary analytical writings but will also include travel narratives, literature, and films.

This course reexamines the notion of the void not as land ripe for building real-estate capital but as space for cultural expression. Students choose a void from infrastructural areas, parks, empty unused buildings, or land that has often transformed with histories of erasure and dispossession. We can discover the urban void in many forms, from abandoned retail spaces to empty lots. Urban planner Bernardo Secchi in 1984 described urban voids concerning industrial typologies as “urban fractures, areas with no current function or use or character,” while architect Ignasi de Sola-Morales in 1995 described them as “terrain vague,” which were abandoned “land in its potentially exploitable state.” How can we define “the void” without understanding a solid? The solid and void relationship can be observed in the Nolli Map of Rome, with a solid-void/figure-ground representation of urbanity. One can argue that this fundamental tool is also used in suburban and rural areas to record and derive data for our use to plan, build, design, and destroy more buildings and irresponsibly inhabit the land. The idea of representing a solid as private and void as public is key, given that the public has a notion of belonging to the people of society and perhaps their perception of the environment that they shape. On the other hand, private is not private. An individual or a group can own a specific property. Is this true? And if so, how can we elaborate on these relationships toward a definition of the void that transgresses this limited solid-void notion? The course will unfold, analyze, and investigate the primary case study through its history, present, and eventual future by developing research through exercises that include, but are not limited to, drawing representation, experimental collages, and photomontages using the readings at its core. Questions arise about the aspects that characterize the voids and the contextual clues related to the community and cultural sedimentation. The goal is to put forth a project to design an intervention as a response to the research and promote commoning practices, whether it be housing, economic solidarity, or a place of care. What does the context need? Who is it for, and why? Responses could interface with political, economic, and social concerns with the varying matters that exist but also with an underlying conceptual underpinning of their interconnectedness of site, land, and the collective.

In this course, students will draw from a live model using a variety of drawing materials, techniques, and artistic approaches. The purpose of this course is to help students obtain the basic skill of drawing the human form, including anatomy; observation of the human form; and fundamental exercises in gesture, contour, outline, and tonal modeling. In the shorter drawings, students will explore the fundamentals of drawing, such as measurement, mark-making, value structure, and composition. Observational drawing will be used as a point of departure to examine various strategies to construct a visual world. Students will proceed to develop technical and conceptual skills that are crucial to the drawing process. The work will fluctuate between specific in-class and homework assignments.

In this course, students will learn about color and composition through observation and imagination, exploring value, intensity, hue, temperature, vectors, edges, shapes, translating volume to a 2D surface, and more. Projects will focus on direct observation from still life, collage, the live model, and imagination. Students will learn the basics of painting: using acrylic paint and other water-soluble painting materials, mixing and desaturating paint colors on a palette, and using a variety of brushes and mediums. Demos and dynamic in-class exercises will be the pillar of this experience. Students will develop basic knowledge of art history and contemporary painting through thematic slide lectures and assignments.

In this experimental studio class, we will explore how to digest, appropriate, reconfigure, and rewrite popular media using mostly, but not only, painting, drawing, and collage and also open to video, animation, sculpture, and performance. We will examine how artists operate as consumers and as catalysts, motors, and destroyers of TV, film, music, social media, and advertisement. Slideshows, readings, and presentations will exemplify the tight relationship between art and popular media throughout history, and contemporary art and will serve as inspiration for students to create their own works. Students will be encouraged to deconstruct their own spectacles of adoration and critique and celebrate images that are impactful to them. We will promote generative group conversations, studio time, experimentation, collaboration, creativity, and improvisation.

In this introduction to painting course, students will learn about color and composition through observation and imagination—exploring value, intensity, hue, temperature, vectors, edges, shapes, translating volume to a 2D surface, and more. Projects will focus on direct observation from still life, collage, the live model, and imagination. Students will learn the basics of painting: using acrylic paint and other water-soluble painting materials, mixing and desaturating paint colors on a palette, and using a variety of brushes and mediums. Demos and dynamic in-class exercises will be the pillar of this experience. Students will develop basic knowledge of art history and contemporary painting through thematic slide lectures and assignments.

Experiment and explore contemporary performance art. Through surveying a range of important artworks and movements, we will review the histories, concepts, and practices of performance art. Born from anti-art, performance art challenges the boundaries of artistic expression through implementing, as material, the concepts of space, time, and the body. Examples of artists that we will review are John Cage, Joan Jonas, Adrian Piper, Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, Simone Forti, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Pope.L, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Janine Antoni, Suzanne Lacy, Aki Sasamoto, and Anna Halprin, to name a few. We will review dialogues and movements introducing performance art, such as art interventions, sculpture, installation art, institutional critique, protest art, social media, video art, happenings, dada, comedy, sound art, graphic notation, scores, collaboration, and dance/movement. Students will be able to relate the form and function of performance art through research, workshopping ideas, experimentation, and improvisation—thereby developing the ability to confidently implement any method of the performance art genre.

Since the early 20th century, artists have explored performance art as a radical means of expression. In both form and function, performance pushes the boundaries of contemporary art. Artists use the medium for institutional critique, for social activism, and to address the personal politics of gender, sexuality, and race. This course approaches performance art as a porous, transdisciplinary medium open to students from all disciplines, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, video, filmmaking, theatre, dance, music, creative writing, and digital art. Students learn about the legacy of performance art from the 1970s to the present and explore some of the concepts and aesthetic strategies used to create works of performance. Through texts, artists’ writings, video screenings, and slide lectures, students are introduced to a range of performance-based artists and art movements.

This course is designed to introduce students to a range of printing techniques while also assisting them in developing individual visual imagery through the language of printmaking. Students will work with intaglio, relief, monotype, and monoprint techniques. As means to explore their individual idea, students will investigate a wide range of possibilities offered by printmaking techniques and will experiment with inks and paints, stencils, multiple plates, and images altered in sequence. Students will develop drawing skills through the printmaking medium and experiment with value structure, composition, mark-making, and interaction of color. Students will begin to develop a method to investigate meaning, or content, through the techniques of printmaking. There will be an examination of various strategies that fluctuate between specific in-class assignments and individual studio work. In-class assignments will be supplemented with PowerPoint presentations, reading materials, video clips, group critiques, and homework projects. Students will explore the history of printmaking media, the evolution of subject matter and technique, and the relationship of graphic arts to the methods of mechanical reproduction.

This introductory course will explore the fundamentals of sculpture, with an emphasis on how objects function in space and the connections between two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms. This class will focus on the process of building and constructing and working with varied materials and tools. Students will explore various modes of making, binding, building, fastening, and molding, using wood, cardboard, plaster, and found materials. Using Richard Serra’s Verb List as inspiration, students will use verbs as a guide for building. Technical instruction will be given in the fundamentals of working with hand tools, as well as other elemental forms of building. This course will include an introduction to the critique process, as well as thematic readings with each assignment. Alongside studio work, the class will look at historical and contemporary artists, such as Jessica Stockholder, Martin Puryear, Judith Scott, Rachel Whiteread, Simone Leigh, Louise Nevelson, Alexander Calder, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Eva Hesse, and Louise Bourgeois, among others.

Layered, built, found, saved, applied, collected, arranged, salvaged...Jean Dubuffet coined the term “assemblage” in 1953, referring to collages that he made using butterfly wings. Including found material in a work of art not only brings the physical object but also its embedded narrative. In this course, we will explore the various ways in which the found object can affect a work of art and its history dating back to the early 20th century. We will look at historical and contemporary artists, such as Joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenberg, Hannah Höch, Betye Saar, Richard Tuttle, Rachel Harrison, and Leonardo Drew. This course will tackle various approaches, challenging the notions of “What is an art material?” and “How can the everyday inform the creative process?”

This course is a comprehensive introduction to Rhino7 for Mac OS X and additive digital fabrication. 3D software and digital fabrication have a variety of uses in contemporary art and the real world. The course covers basic model manipulation, rendering operations, and 3D printing; we will also explore ways of adapting more advanced 3D modeling techniques. In the first half of the semester, students will gain the technical knowledge needed for a rigorous exploration of 3D modeling in Rhino through a series of small projects. The second half of the course will focus on working toward the student’s approved project of their choosing. By course end, students will have the opportunity to output their work via 3D printing, 2D rendered visualization, and more. This multidisciplinary digital sculpture studio is open to interdisciplinary projects. Although not required, students are welcome to pursue the digital fabrication of the whole or part/s of their final projects.

This course is an open-ended exploration of the links between drawing and sculpture. Students will explore drawing as a means of communicating, brainstorming, questioning, and building. Assignments will promote experimentation and expand the ways that we use and talk about drawing by interrogating an inclusive list of materials. The course will consider unusual forms of mark making, such as lipstick left on a glass and a tire track on pavement. Each student will cultivate a unique index of marks, maintaining his/her own sketchbook throughout the course. The class will provide contemporary and historical examples of alternate means of mark making, such as John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Ana Mendieta, Robert Smithson, Fred Sandback, Gordon Matta-Clark, David Hammons, and Janine Antoni, among others.

This is a course with writing at its center and other arts—mainly, but not exclusively, visual—around it. We will read all kinds of narratives, children’s books, folk tales, fairy tales, graphic novels...and try our hand at many of them. Class reading will include everything from ancient Egyptian love poems to contemporary Latin American literature. For conference work, students have created graphic novels, animations, quilts, a scientifically accurate fantasy involving bugs, rock operas, items of clothing with text attached, nonfiction narratives, and dystopian fictions with pictures. There will be weekly assignments that involve making something. This course is especially suited to students with an interest in another art or a body of knowledge that they’d like to make accessible to nonspecialists.

From Milton (Satan) to Dryden to Dr. Johnson to Coleridge to De Quincey to Melville (Ahab) to Woolf to Auden to Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim to Kurosawa (Throne of Blood and Ran) to Peter Brook (The Mahabharata) to Julie Taymor to Taylor Swift...writers, artists, performers, and thinkers in the West, the East, and the South have gained enormous mileage by appropriating, purloining, replying to, adapting, being enraged by, and escaping Shakespeare—or merely by living under his shade. We will plunge into the enormous and still billowing artistic energy generated by this person. We will look at eight major plays, one a week, from every phase of his career—with a sampling of their critical and scholarly paraphernalia—and examine the writerly problems he faced and how he solved them and examine closely his incomparable rhetorical skills. We will try to pluck the heart out of the mystery of this most mysterious artist in order to help ourselves as artists. Conference projects, designed to be presented to the class, can comprehend poetic responses, fictive or dramatic responses, films and multimedia concoctions, or critical or essayistic responses to the entire body of work or to one of its many elements. It has been said that Shakespeare invented the idea of the human. We will think about this. Sonnet sequences are welcome.