| Title | Instructor | Location | Time | All taxonomy terms | Description | Section Description | Cross Listings | Fulfills | Registration Notes | Syllabus | Syllabus URL | Course Syllabus URL | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ARTH 0501-401 | Spiegel-Wilks First-Year Seminar: The Art of Care | Aaron Levy | The primary goal of the first-year seminar program is to provide every first-year student the opportunity for a direct personal encounter with a faculty member in a small setting devoted to a significant intellectual endeavor. Specific topics are posted at the beginning of each academic year. This Spiegel-Wilks seminar focuses exclusively on contemporary art. | ENGL0365401 | Arts & Letters Sector (all classes) | |||||||||
| ARTH 1020-401 | The Artist in History,1400-Now |
Shira N. Brisman Andre Dombrowski |
WF 12:00 PM-12:59 PM | This course is an introduction to the history of art in a global context from the early 1400s to the present. Lectures will introduce students to significant moments in artistic production in both the Western and Eastern hemispheres through focused studies on crucial aspects of exchange between cultures and continents. Covering an era of increasing economic transactions, imperial conquests, and industrialization, this course will build recursively through themes such as: the emergence of authorial identity and models of artistic collaboration, the traffic of artistic materials and techniques and their adaptation in different cultural settings, and the foregrounding of art to both document and initiate political change. Developing vocabularies to discuss painting, sculpture, architecture, and prints, as well as photography and film, students will learn to analyze art's decisive role during times of social transformation, including modernization, colonization, and technological advances. We will also examine the role of broad-reaching media and the advent of art criticism in forming public opinion. Assignments will encourage students to think widely across geographies and study intimately local examples in the Philadelphia museums. This course fulfills Sector III: Arts and Letters and counts towards the History of Art major and minor requirements. | VLST2320401 | Arts & Letters Sector (all classes) | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | |||||||
| ARTH 1040-401 | Art of Global Asia | Sonal Khullar | WF 10:15 AM-11:14 AM | This course surveys flows of ideas, images, and objects across, within, and beyond Asia. It considers how the art of Asia is and has been global from antiquity through the present, and introduces 'Asia,' 'globality,' and 'art' as key terms and concepts that shift over time and place. Artistic traditions are presented within broader historical, cultural, social, and economic frameworks, with attention to their local and regional significance. Trade, exchange, and interaction between cultures and groups, including but not limited to artists, pilgrims, merchants, warriors, and rulers, and the transmission of concepts through languages, religions, and philosophies, will be highlighted throughout. We shall address problems of iconophilia and iconoclasm, narrative and temporality, archeology and historiography, ritual and religion, sovereignty and kingship, gender and sexuality, colonialism and nationalism, diasporas and migration as they pertain to the images, objects, and sites of our study. We shall make use of local resources at the Penn Museum and Penn Libraries, as well as other sites, to show how objects retain and inflect these ideas. The course builds out from a central focus on the arts of South Asia or the arts of East Asia, depending upon the specialty of the faculty member teaching the course, with additional faculty offering guest lectures as available. Students with a background in art history, studio art, architecture, history, religion, literature, anthropology, and/or South or East Asian Studies are especially welcome. | VLST2340001 | Arts & Letters Sector (all classes) | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | |||||||
| ARTH 1060-001 | Architect and History | Mantha Zarmakoupi | TR 12:00 PM-12:59 PM | The built environment shapes our lives and this course tackles its underpinning design principles and qualities as well as social and cultural contexts. It is an interpretative look at the built environment or, more precisely, at the ways in which monuments and cities are designed, represented, perceived and construed over time. It introduces students to the interrelated fields of architecture, art history, and urbanism and explores great architectural monuments and cities from the modern to the ancient period, from the US across Europe and from the Mediterranean to Asia. We will assess the built environment as culturally meaningful form and examine a body of historical and cultural material relevant to its interpretation. In doing so, the course seeks to foster a critical understanding of the cultural and artistic processes that have influenced architectural and urban design. The focus will be on understanding these works as results of skilled workmanship as well as social and cultural products. We will tackle ancient and modern perceptions of these monuments and cities by analyzing form, design, structure and by addressing their perceptual qualities through 3D reconstructions and virtual environments, as well as sketchbook assignments. This course fulfills Sector IV, Humanities and Social Sciences. | Hum & Soc Sci Sector (new curriculum only) | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||
| ARTH 1070-401 | Television and New Media | Knar E Gavin | MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | How and when do media become digital? What does digitization afford and what is lost as television and cinema become digitized? As lots of things around us turn digital, have we started telling stories, sharing experiences, and replaying memories differently? What has happened to television and life after “New Media”? How have television audiences been transformed by algorithmic cultures of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video? Social media platforms such as Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook have blurred the lines between public and private spaces, and ushered in a heightened sense of immediacy to mediations of everyday life. How have (social) media transformed socialities as ephemeral snaps and swiped intimacies become part of the "new" digital/phone cultures? This is an introductory survey/exploratory course and we discuss a wide variety of media technologies and phenomena that include: Internet of Things, hacking, trolls, “FAKE NEWS,” distribution platforms, AI/ChatGPT, surveillance tactics, social media, data centers and race in cyberspace. We also examine emerging mobile phone cultures in the Global South and the environmental impact of digitization. Course activities include analyzing/producing TikTok videos and Instagram curations. The course assignments consist of take-home mid-term of short answer-type questions, a short comparative TV essay, and a take home end-term of long answer-type questions. | CIMS1030401, COML1031401, ENGL1950401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 1070-601 | Television and New Media | W 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | How and when do media become digital? What does digitization afford and what is lost as television and cinema become digitized? As lots of things around us turn digital, have we started telling stories, sharing experiences, and replaying memories differently? What has happened to television and life after “New Media”? How have television audiences been transformed by algorithmic cultures of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video? Social media platforms such as Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook have blurred the lines between public and private spaces, and ushered in a heightened sense of immediacy to mediations of everyday life. How have (social) media transformed socialities as ephemeral snaps and swiped intimacies become part of the "new" digital/phone cultures? This is an introductory survey/exploratory course and we discuss a wide variety of media technologies and phenomena that include: Internet of Things, hacking, trolls, “FAKE NEWS,” distribution platforms, AI/ChatGPT, surveillance tactics, social media, data centers and race in cyberspace. We also examine emerging mobile phone cultures in the Global South and the environmental impact of digitization. Course activities include analyzing/producing TikTok videos and Instagram curations. The course assignments consist of take-home mid-term of short answer-type questions, a short comparative TV essay, and a take home end-term of long answer-type questions. | CIMS1030601, COML1031601, ENGL1950601 | ||||||||||
| ARTH 1080-401 | World Film History to 1945 | Ian Fleishman | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | This course surveys the history of world film from cinema's precursors to 1945. We will develop methods for analyzing film while examining the growth of film as an art, an industry, a technology, and a political instrument. Topics include the emergence of film technology and early film audiences, the rise of narrative film and birth of Hollywood, national film industries and movements, African-American independent film, the emergence of the genre film (the western, film noir, and romantic comedies), ethnographic and documentary film, animated films, censorship, the MPPDA and Hays Code, and the introduction of sound. We will conclude with the transformation of several film industries into propaganda tools during World War II (including the Nazi, Soviet, and US film industries). In addition to contemporary theories that investigate the development of cinema and visual culture during the first half of the 20th century, we will read key texts that contributed to the emergence of film theory. There are no prerequisites. Students are required to attend screenings or watch films on their own. | CIMS1010401, COML1011401, ENGL1900401 | Arts & Letters Sector (all classes) | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | |||||||
| ARTH 1080-402 | World Film History to 1945 | Hugo Salas | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | This course surveys the history of world film from cinema's precursors to 1945. We will develop methods for analyzing film while examining the growth of film as an art, an industry, a technology, and a political instrument. Topics include the emergence of film technology and early film audiences, the rise of narrative film and birth of Hollywood, national film industries and movements, African-American independent film, the emergence of the genre film (the western, film noir, and romantic comedies), ethnographic and documentary film, animated films, censorship, the MPPDA and Hays Code, and the introduction of sound. We will conclude with the transformation of several film industries into propaganda tools during World War II (including the Nazi, Soviet, and US film industries). In addition to contemporary theories that investigate the development of cinema and visual culture during the first half of the 20th century, we will read key texts that contributed to the emergence of film theory. There are no prerequisites. Students are required to attend screenings or watch films on their own. | CIMS1010402, COML1011402, ENGL1900402 | Arts & Letters Sector (all classes) | ||||||||
| ARTH 1090-401 | World Film History 1945-Present | Julia Alekseyeva | MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | Focusing on movies made after 1945, this course allows students to learn and to sharpen methods, terminologies, and tools needed for the critical analysis of film. Beginning with the cinematic revolution signaled by the Italian Neo-Realism (of Rossellini and De Sica), we will follow the evolution of postwar cinema through the French New Wave (of Godard, Resnais, and Varda), American movies of the 1950s and 1960s (including the New Hollywood cinema of Coppola and Scorsese), and the various other new wave movements of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (such as the New German Cinema). We will then selectively examine some of the most important films of the last two decades, including those of U.S. independent film movement and movies from Iran, China, and elsewhere in an expanding global cinema culture. There will be precise attention paid to formal and stylistic techniques in editing, mise-en-scene, and sound, as well as to the narrative, non-narrative, and generic organizations of film. At the same time, those formal features will be closely linked to historical and cultural distinctions and changes, ranging from the Paramount Decision of 1948 to the digital convergences that are defining screen culture today. There are no perquisites. Requirements will include readings in film history and film analysis, an analytical essay, a research paper, a final exam, and active participation. | CIMS1020401, COML1022401, ENGL1901401 | Arts & Letters Sector (all classes) | ||||||||
| ARTH 1090-402 | World Film History 1945-Present | Sasha D Krugman | R 12:00 PM-2:59 PM | Focusing on movies made after 1945, this course allows students to learn and to sharpen methods, terminologies, and tools needed for the critical analysis of film. Beginning with the cinematic revolution signaled by the Italian Neo-Realism (of Rossellini and De Sica), we will follow the evolution of postwar cinema through the French New Wave (of Godard, Resnais, and Varda), American movies of the 1950s and 1960s (including the New Hollywood cinema of Coppola and Scorsese), and the various other new wave movements of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (such as the New German Cinema). We will then selectively examine some of the most important films of the last two decades, including those of U.S. independent film movement and movies from Iran, China, and elsewhere in an expanding global cinema culture. There will be precise attention paid to formal and stylistic techniques in editing, mise-en-scene, and sound, as well as to the narrative, non-narrative, and generic organizations of film. At the same time, those formal features will be closely linked to historical and cultural distinctions and changes, ranging from the Paramount Decision of 1948 to the digital convergences that are defining screen culture today. There are no perquisites. Requirements will include readings in film history and film analysis, an analytical essay, a research paper, a final exam, and active participation. | CIMS1020402, COML1022402, ENGL1901402 | Arts & Letters Sector (all classes) | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | |||||||
| ARTH 1500-401 | Eye, Mind, and Image |
Shira N. Brisman Ian F Verstegen |
TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | Visual Studies 101 provides an introduction to the collaboration of eye, mind, and image that produces our experience of a visual world. How and what do we see? How do we perceive color, space, and motion? What is an image? Does seeing vary across cultures and time? What can art tell us about vision? Is there a 21st-century form of seeing? This course combines different approaches to the study of vision, drawing from psychology, cognitive science, philosophy, history of art, and fine art. Professors representing two or three disciplines present lectures that demonstrate the methods of their disciplines and draw connections across fields. This course combines different approaches to the study of vision, drawing from psychology, cognitive science, philosophy, history of art, and fine art. Professors representing two or three disciplines present lectures that demonstrate the methods of their disciplines and draw connections across fields. | VLST1010401 | Hum/Soc Sci or Nat Sci/Math (new curriculum only) | ||||||||
| ARTH 2094-401 | Dress and Fashion in Africa | Ali B. Ali-Dinar | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | Throughout Africa, social and cultural identities of ethnicity, gender, generation, rank and status were conveyed in a range of personal ornamentation that reflects the variation of African cultures. The meaning of one particular item of clothing can transform completely when moved across time and space. As one of many forms of expressive culture, dress shape and give forms to social bodies. In the study of dress and fashion, we could note two distinct broad approaches, the historical and the anthropological. While the former focuses on fashion as a western system that shifted across time and space, and linked with capitalism and western modernity; the latter approach defines dress as an assemblage of modification the body. The Africanist proponents of this anthropological approach insisted that fashion is not a dress system specific to the west and not tied with the rise of capitalism. This course will focus on studying the history of African dress by discussing the forces that have impacted and influenced it overtime, such as socio-economic, colonialism, religion, aesthetics, politics, globalization, and popular culture. The course will also discuss the significance of the different contexts that impacted the choices of what constitute an appropriate attire for distinct situations. African dress in this context is not a fixed relic from the past, but a live cultural item that is influenced by the surrounding forces. | AFRC2324401, ANTH2024401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 2240-601 | Art of Mesopotamia | Anastasia A Amrhein | MW 5:15 PM-6:44 PM | Visual expression was first developed in Mesopotamia in the same environment as the invention of writing. This lecture class will introduce the arts of the major periods of Mesopotamian History ending with the "cinematic" effects achieved by the Assyrian artists on the walls of the royal palaces. The strong connection between verbal and visual expression will be traced over the three millennia course of Mesopotamian civilization from the earliest periods through the imperial art of the Assyrians and Babylonians of the first millennium BCE. The class and the assignments will regularly engage with objects in the collections and on display in the galleries of the Penn Museum. | NELC0060601 | |||||||||
| ARTH 2269-401 | Classical Myth and the Image | Ann L Kuttner | MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | The peoples of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds shared a vast body of stories about human and not-human beings set in a legendary deep past or supernatural present - "Classical myth." Even their neighbor cultures took up those stories (or, sometimes, gave them). The stories as spoken, read, or performed turn up in surviving ancient literature. But from the very point when Greek myth began to be written down, those stories were told with images also. Many arts of the Mediterranean world explored myth at temples and sanctuaries, in civic spaces, theaters, parks, houses and palaces, for tombs and trophies - and even on the body upon weapons, clothes and jewelry. Love and desire and hate, hope and fear and consolation, war and peace, pleasure and excitement, power and salvation, the nature of this world and the cosmos, justice and duty and heroism, fate and free will, suffering and crime: mythological images probed the many domains of being human in order to move the emotions and minds of people (and of gods). Our class samples this story art to ask about its makers and viewers and contexts. What, also, were relations between images and texts and language? What about religious belief vs invention, truth vs fiction? What might it mean to look at this ancient art today, and to represent the old stories in post-ancient cultures? The class introduces ways of thinking about what images and things do; we will read in some relevant literature (drama, epic, novels, etc); and our Penn Museum will be a resource. No prerequisites--no prior knowledge of art history, archaeology, myth or Mediterranean antiquity is assumed. | ARTH6269401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||
| ARTH 2699-401 | Wolf Humanities Lecture: Art in the Arab World from Revolution to Revolution (1880-2020) | Alessandra Amin | TR 5:15 PM-6:44 PM | The Wolf Humanities Center is Penn’s interdisciplinary humanities research center based in the School of Arts & Sciences. Each year the Wolf Humanities Center hosts postdoctoral scholars as they conduct research and teach one course on the center’s annual theme. | ARTH6699401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||
| ARTH 2730-401 | History of Photography | Gregory M. Vershbow | MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | A history of world photography from 1839 to the present and its relation to cultural contexts as well as to various theories of the functions of images. Topics discussed in considering the nineteenth century will be the relationship between photography and painting, the effect of photography on portraiture, photography in the service of exploration, and photography as practiced by anthropologists; and in considering the twentieth century, photography and abstraction, photography as "fine art", photography and the critique of art history, and photography and censorship. | ARTH6730401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 2810-401 | Modern Architecture,1900-Present | Concetta Martone | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | The architecture of Europe and America from the late nineteenth century until the present is the central subject of this course, but some time is also devoted to Latin American and Asian architecture and to the important issues of modern city planning. Topics discussed include the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Art Deco, the International Style, and Post-modernism. The debate over the role of technology in modern life and art, the search for a universal language of architectural communication, and the insistent demand that architecture serve human society are themes that are traced throughout the course. Among the important figures to be considered are Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Robert Venturi, and Denise Scott Brown. The course includes weekly discussion sessions and several excursions to view architecture in Philadelphia. | ARTH6810401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||
| ARTH 2930-401 | British Cinema: Film, Television, and Transatlantic Screen Culture | James English | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | This course explores an aspect of cultural studies intensively. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings. | CIMS2420401, COML2420401, ENGL2420401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 2954-401 | Collecting Media | Shannon Mattern | MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | We may be tethered to global networks, streaming content from around the planet, joining in conversation (or conspiracy) with folks from all corners of the earth, but we also live in places with local characters and concerns, among people with local needs and contributions. What happens when we lose the local media — the newspapers and broadcast outlets — that bind and inform our localized communities? In this course we’ll consider the important roles served by our place-based media, as well as what’s lost when our local modes of communication collapse. But we’ll also consider what might be gained if we think more generously about what constitutes local media — and if we imagine how they might be redesigned to better serve our communities, our broader society, and our planet. Through readings, listening and screening exercises, occasional in-class field trips and guest speakers, and low-barrier-to-entry in-class labs, we’ll study local news; local book cultures, including libraries and bookshops and independent printers; local music scenes, including performance venues and record shops and music reviewers; local infrastructures of connection and distribution, including post offices and community digital networks; local data creators and collectors; local signage and interactive public media; local emergency communication resources; local whisper networks and town gossip; and a selection of other case studies that reflect students’ interests. | CIMS2954401, CIMS6954401, ENGL2954401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 2960-401 | Contemporary Art | Gwendolyn D Shaw | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | Many people experience the art of our time as bewildering, shocking, too ordinary (my kid could do that), too intellectual (elitist), or simply not as art. Yet what makes this art engaging is that it raises the question of what art is or can be, employs a range of new materials and technologies, and addresses previously excluded audiences. It invades non-art spaces, blurs the boundaries between text and image, document and performance, asks questions about institutional frames (the museum, gallery, and art journal), and generates new forms of criticism. Much of the "canon" of what counts as important is still in flux, especially for the last twenty years. And the stage is no longer centered only on the United States and Europe, but is becoming increasingly global. The course will introduce students to the major movements and artists since 1980, with emphasis on social and historical context, critical debates, new media, and the changing role of the spectator/participant. | ARTH6960401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||
| ARTH 3000-301 | Undergraduate Methods Seminar | Huey Gene Copeland | T 12:00 PM-2:59 PM | Topic varies from semester to semester. This course, required for history of art majors, acquaints students with a wide variety of historical and contemporary approachees to studying art, architecture, material culture, and visual culture. | ||||||||||
| ARTH 3020-301 | Methods of Object-Study: Understanding Works of Art on Paper |
Nancy E Ash Thomas J Primeau |
This immersive hands-on seminar introduces students to methods of analyzing the material, physical, and visual aspects of objects in a museum, gallery, or library context. Students will receive training in curatorial practices, close observational skills, and precise descriptive terminology for materials and techniques. They also will learn about essential tools of conservation and technical analysis. | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||||
| ARTH 3070-401 | The Rise of Image Culture: History and Theories | Tanya A Jung | W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | Today images are everywhere; two centuries ago, they were rare. This seminar considers key historical and theoretical contexts for this change and its social consequences. With the help of some of the strongest critics and theorists of image culture, we will consider five interrelated aspects of the rise of image culture. - First, we will explore how new media and mechanical reproduction has changed the idea of the image over in the free market. - Second, we will explore how images operate through the psyche and gaze and how that operation is tied to social and political power. - Third, we will examine how representations make meaning and form identity in coded systems. - Fourth, we will consider the relationship between visual space and concepts of reality. And finally, we will interrogate how the physical and digital material that images are made from affects their meaning. | VLST3030401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 3200-301 | Aegean Bronze Age Art Seminar: Frescoes | Elizabeth Shank | M 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | In this class, we will explore the art and cultures of the Aegean Bronze Age in Greece, a period from roughly 3,300-1,100 BCE. The geographic regions of the Greek Mainland, the Cycladic islands, and the island of Crete were home to complex cultural groups that formed a unique Bronze Age society. Topics will vary from semester to semester, and may include and not be limited to the examination of the architecture, pottery, wall paintings, stone carvings, jewelry, seals, weapons and other metalwork, and the iconography of these prehistoric arts. We will also delve into issues of the organization of society and the distribution of power, the role of women and men, trade and the unique position of the (rather small) Aegean world as it existed between two huge powerhouses of the ancient Mediterranean: the Ancient Near East and Egypt. | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | |||||||||
| ARTH 3782-401 | Local Media | Shannon Mattern | T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | There are tens of billions of videos on YouTube; a similar number of photos on Instagram; seven million items in the Penn Libraries; remains from more than 12,000 people stored in the Physical Anthropology Section of the Penn Museum; roughly 250 surveillance cameras capturing footage across our campus; over one million seed varieties stored in the Svalbard Seed Vault; tens of thousands of meters of frozen samples in the U.S. Geological Survey’s Ice Core Facility — and, most likely, one huge, messy folder into which you dump all of your email. For thousands of years, cultural critics have lamented the onslaught of “information overload,” and for just as long, people have derived systems for collecting, organizing, storing, and facilitating access (or not) to media — whether Spotify playlists or cuneiform tablets or massive image files from NASA’s space telescopes. In this course we’ll consider the past, present, and future — as well as the pragmatics, politics, and aesthetics — of organizing media and information in archives, libraries, and other media assemblages. Through readings, listening and screening exercises, occasional field trips and guest lectures, a few low-stakes student presentations and group collaborations, fun design exercises, art explorations, and potential collaborations with external cultural heritage organizations, we’ll study why and how we collect media; why it matters for myriad scholarly fields, industries, creative practitioners, and communities; and how we might do it better. | CIMS3782401, ENGL2982401, URBS3782401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 3820-401 | Film Exhibition and Moviegoing | Chenshu Zhou | R 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | Cinema has always had an audience. From its first appearances in cafes, tea houses, and variety shows to today's fragmented, digital consumption, cinema continues to exist in relation to different ways of looking and experiencing. This course examines how films have been shown and how audiences have watched films in diverse historical and cultural contexts. We will explore how the ways in which film screenings were organized shape both the films being shown and audiences' moviegoing experiences. Based on historical and site-specific investigations, we will also reflect on how our modes of engaging with cinema impact conceptions of what cinema is, what it will be, and what it can be. Unlike most film courses, this course does not focus on analyzing films, but look into the operations of cinema as an institution. There will be field trips to local movie theaters and a final collective project that asks students to curate a special film screening (in-person or online) using innovative formats. | CIMS3810401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 3831-401 | Queer Art Seminar: Queer Saints: from St. Sebastian to Derek Jarman | Sara Vakili | T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | This course explores art and art history from a Queer Studies perspective, in a global and cross-cultural context. Topics vary from semester to semester and stretch widely in terms of geography and chronology. | GSWS3831401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 3873-401 | The Animation Of Disney | Linda R. Simensky | M 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | No organization has exerted as much influence on popular culture and the art form of animation as The Walt Disney Company. For decades, Disney films were the standard by which all other animated films were measured. This course will examine the biography and philosophy of founder Walt Disney, as well as The Walt Disney Company’s impact on animation art, storytelling and technology, the entertainment industry, and American popular culture. We will consider Disney's most influential early films, look at the 1960s when Disney’s importance in popular culture began to erode, and analyze the films that led to the Disney renaissance of the late 1980s/early 1990s. We will also assess the subsequent purchase of Pixar Animation Studios and the overall impact Pixar has had on Disney. The class will also look at recent trends and innovations, including live-action remakes and Disney+. | CIMS3203401, ENGL0593401, FNAR3184401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||
| ARTH 3901-401 | Romantic Comedy | Meta Mazaj | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | We may know what it is like to fall in love, but how do movies tell us what it is like? Through an exciting tour of American and World cinema, we will analyze the moods and swings, successes and failures of love in romantic comedy, one of the most popular but generally overlooked and taken for granted genres. We will turn a spotlight on it by examining what elements and iconography constitute the “romcom” genre, what specific qualities inform its sub-groupings such as screwball, sex comedy or radical romantic comedy, how they are related to their historical, cultural and ideological contexts, and what we can learn about their audiences. Watching classic as well contemporary examples of the genre, from City Lights (1931), It Happened One Night (1934) and Roman Holiday (1953), to Harold and Maude (1971), Annie Hall (1977), How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days (2003) and Her (2013), we will problematize this overly-familiar cinema to make it new and strange again, and open it up to creative analysis. | CIMS2021401, ENGL2942401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 3912-401 | Transnational Cinema | Meta Mazaj | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This is a course in contemporary transnational film cultures and world cinema. The course will examine the idea of world cinema and set up a model of how it can be explored by studying contemporary film in various countries. We will explore ways in which cinemas from around the globe have attempted to come to terms with Hollywood, and look at forces that lead many filmmakers to define themselves in opposition to Hollywood norms. But we will also look at the phenomenon of world cinema in independent terms, as “waves” that peak in different places and times, and coordinate various forces. Finally, through the close case study of significant films and cinemas that have dominated the international festival circuit (Chinese, Korean, Iranian, Indian, etc.) we will engage with the questions of which films/cinemas get labeled as “world cinema,” what determines entry into the sphere of world cinema, and examine the importance of film festivals in creating world cinema. | CIMS2012401, COML2012401, ENGL2930401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 3989-401 | "In the Dark We Can All Be Free": Black Queer, Feminist & Trans Art(s) of Abolition | Che Gossett | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | If the afterlife of slavery, as Saidiya Hartman argues, is an aesthetic problem, what then is the relationship between abolition and aesthetics? How has the ongoing project of abolition been an aesthetic enterprise, and how does art shape its aims and horizon -- historically, presently and in afro-futuristic imaginary of the to come? How might the analytics of black studies, feminist theory, and trans studies, in their co-implicacy and entanglement, prompt a rethinking of aesthetics -- both its limits and possibilities? In this course we will consider the art(s) of the Black radical tradition, trans art, queer art and feminist art and theory, alongside a grounding in aesthetic theory, and explore the work of a constellation of scholars in Black studies, art history and artists including Saidiya Hartman, Laura Harris, Fred Moten, Huey Copeland, American Artists, fields harrington, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Tourmaline, Juliana Huxtable, Kiyan Williams, Simone Leigh, Alvin Baltrop, Tina Campt, (and more) to consider how abolition is activated in contemporary Black queer, trans and feminist visual art. | AFRC2800401, GSWS2800401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 5050-640 | Picturing Humanity: The Body in Western Art, 1400-Today | Kendra J Grimmett | R 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | This seminar satisfies a requirement in the Master of Liberal Arts Degree program through the College of Liberal and Professional Studies. | ||||||||||
| ARTH 5090-401 | African Art Seminar: Africa, Ivory, and Art History | Vanicleia Silva Santos | T 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | This seminar covers aspects of the arts and visual/material cultures in Africa, including the global African diaspora, throughout the continent's history. Topics will vary from semester to semester. | AFRC5091401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 5110-401 | Topics in South Asian Art: The Art of Everyday Life in South Asia | Sonal Khullar | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This seminar engages topics in the history and theory of South Asian art from antiquity to the present emphasizing global connections and comparisons. Topics vary from year to year and might include the arts of the book in South Asia; Indian Ocean art worlds; and fragments, ruins, and traces in the art of South Asia. We shall explore objects in area collections and incorporate special excursions and programs when possible. A background in South Asian studies or languages is not required. Students from related disciplines such history, anthropology, literary studies, religious studies, feminist studies, cinema and media studies, and architecture are welcome. | SAST5110401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||
| ARTH 5252-401 | Late Antique Art and Artifact Seminar | Ann L Kuttner | T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | What is 'Late Antiquity'? In 312 when Roman emperor Constantine inaugurated a Christian empire, 'Roman' culture was centuries old. The period ca. 200-650 CE saw profound transformations that launched Medieval, Byzantine and Islamic traditions. In this epoch of upheaval destruction was frequent but partial: Rome long survived, Constantine's 'new Rome,' Constantinople flourished, and around the Empire both proto-global visual culture and local forms prospered. Roman cultural models authorized both innovation and passion for tradition: we critique art-historical models for Late Antique 'decline', analyse habits of material reuse and curation, and look at new Christian and Jewish roles for Roman things as well as polytheist visual survival. Foreign allies and enemies interacted with Greco-Roman Late Antiquity; we visit them too, as in the early Islamic palaces. Media discussed include not just 'monumental' painting, mosaic, sculpture, but also silver, ceramic, ivory, figural textile, glass, painted books, jewelry, coins and more. We look too at Late Antique texts on art, objects, space and viewership. This seminar is open to graduate and undergraduate students. | AAMW5252401, CLST7405401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||
| ARTH 5280-401 | Hellenistic Cities Seminar | Mantha Zarmakoupi | M 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | A new form of city and of urban life developed and spread during the Hellenistic period. The new political social and economic conditions resulting from the victories of Alexander the Great and the emergence of the Macedonian kingdoms deeply affected civic life and form. Hellenistic cities were not independent poleis but subject to absolute monarchs and were open to all residents regardless of their geographical origins. Civic life assumed a cosmopolitan character and the urban setting became an arena for the propaganda of the Hellenistic rulers. This course will examine the architectural and urban developments of the Hellenistic period together with central political institutions and religious and social practices that were associated with them. In studying a diversity of visual, material and textual evidence—such as urban form, architectural and sculptural monuments, as well as literary sources and epigraphic evidence—the course will address both the structure of the urban fabric and the socio-political situation of the Hellenistic polis. The purpose of the course will be to shed light on the principles of urban planning as well as the realities of civic life in the Hellenistic period. | AAMW5280401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||
| ARTH 5360-401 | Manuscript Arts in the Islamic World | Marianna Simpson | R 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | This hands-on seminar will explore the long tradition of manuscript-making and manuscript-makers in the Islamic world, using the extensive collections of Arab, Persian, Turkish and Indian volumes at the University of Pennsylvania and the Free Library of Philadelphia. These include copies of the Qur'an (Islam's holy text) and other religious, scientific, historical and literary texts. Emphasis will be placed on traditional materials and artistic techniques, specifically calligraphy, binding, illumination and illustration, as well as on production methods and the historical, social, and economic contexts in which manuscripts were made, used and collected from early Islamic times to the early modern period. Also at issue will be the ways that Islamicate manuscripts were transformed over the centuries as they journeyed from their diverse places of origin (Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Iran, India, etc.) to Philadelphia. The goal is to develop the art historical skills involved in the study of Islamicate codices, through close examination, discussion and presentation, and to recognize that every manuscript has a story. Most of the class sessions will be held either at the Kislak Center in Van Pelt Library or at the Free Library on the Parkway. | NELC5405401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||
| ARTH 5690-401 | Inside the Archive | Liliane Weissberg | T 1:45 PM-3:44 PM | What is an archive, and what is its history? What makes an archival collection special, and how can we work with it? In this course, we will discuss work essays that focus on the idea and concept of the archive by Jacques Derrida, Michel de Certeau, Benjamin Buchloh, Cornelia Vismann, and others. We will consider the difference between public and private archives, archives dedicated to specific disciplines, persons, or events, and consider the relationship to museums and memorials. Further questions will involve questions of property and ownership as well as the access to material, and finally the archive's upkeep, expansion, or reduction. While the first part of the course will focus on readings about archives, we will invite curators, and visit archives (either in person or per zoom) in the second part of the course. At Penn, we will consider four archives: (1) the Louis Kahn archive of architecture at Furness, (2) the Lorraine Beitler Collection of material relating to the Dreyfus affair, (3) the Schoenberg collection of medieval manuscripts and its digitalization, and (4) the University archives. Outside Penn, we will study the following archives and their history: (1) Leo Baeck Institute for the study of German Jewry in New York, (2) the Sigmund Freud archive at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., (3) the German Literary Archive and the Literturmuseum der Moderne in Marbach, Germany, and (4) the archives of the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. | COML5771401, GRMN5770401, JWST5770401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 5780-301 | American Art Seminar: Art in Philadelphia in the 19th Century | Michael Leja | T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This seminar focuses on special topics in the art of the United States. Recent examples have included: portraiture in the US, Philadelphia as an art center, early mass visual culture, and Abstract Expressionism. It is open to all graduate students and undergraduate students with permission of the instructor. | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | |||||||||
| ARTH 6269-401 | Classical Myth and the Image | Ann L Kuttner | MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | The peoples of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds shared a vast body of stories about human and not-human beings set in a legendary deep past or supernatural present - "Classical myth." Even their neighbor cultures took up those stories (or, sometimes, gave them). The stories as spoken, read, or performed turn up in surviving ancient literature. But from the very point when Greek myth began to be written down, those stories were told with images also. Many arts of the Mediterranean world explored myth at temples and sanctuaries, in civic spaces, theaters, parks, houses and palaces, for tombs and trophies - and even on the body upon weapons, clothes and jewelry. Love and desire and hate, hope and fear and consolation, war and peace, pleasure and excitement, power and salvation, the nature of this world and the cosmos, justice and duty and heroism, fate and free will, suffering and crime: mythological images probed the many domains of being human in order to move the emotions and minds of people (and of gods). Our class samples this story art to ask about its makers and viewers and contexts. What, also, were relations between images and texts and language? What about religious belief vs invention, truth vs fiction? What might it mean to look at this ancient art today, and to represent the old stories in post-ancient cultures? The class introduces ways of thinking about what images and things do; we will read in some relevant literature (drama, epic, novels, etc); and our Penn Museum will be a resource. No prerequisites--no prior knowledge of art history, archaeology, myth or Mediterranean antiquity is assumed. | ARTH2269401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||
| ARTH 6699-401 | Wolf Humanities Lecture: Art in the Arab World from Revolution to Revolution (1880-2020) | Alessandra Amin | TR 5:15 PM-6:44 PM | The Wolf Humanities Center is Penn’s interdisciplinary humanities research center based in the School of Arts & Sciences. Each year the Wolf Humanities Center hosts postdoctoral scholars as they conduct research and teach one course on the center’s annual theme. | ARTH2699401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||
| ARTH 6730-401 | History of Photography | Gregory M. Vershbow | MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | A history of world photography from 1839 to the present and its relation to cultural contexts as well as to various theories of the functions of images. Topics discussed in considering the nineteenth century will be the relationship between photography and painting, the effect of photography on portraiture, photography in the service of exploration, and photography as practiced by anthropologists; and in considering the twentieth century, photography and abstraction, photography as "fine art", photography and the critique of art history, and photography and censorship. | ARTH2730401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 6810-401 | Modern Architecture,1900-Present | Concetta Martone | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | The architecture of Europe and America from the late nineteenth century until the present is the central subject of this course, but some time is also devoted to Latin American and Asian architecture and to the important issues of modern city planning. Topics discussed include the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Art Deco, the International Style, and Post-modernism. The debate over the role of technology in modern life and art, the search for a universal language of architectural communication, and the insistent demand that architecture serve human society are themes that are traced throughout the course. Among the important figures to be considered are Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Robert Venturi, and Denise Scott Brown. The course includes weekly discussion sessions and several excursions to view architecture in Philadelphia. | ARTH2810401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 6960-401 | Contemporary Art | Gwendolyn D Shaw | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | Many people experience the art of our time as bewildering, shocking, too ordinary (my kid could do that), too intellectual (elitist), or simply not as art. Yet what makes this art engaging is that it raises the question of what art is or can be, employs a range of new materials and technologies, and addresses previously excluded audiences. It invades non-art spaces, blurs the boundaries between text and image, document and performance, asks questions about institutional frames (the museum, gallery, and art journal), and generates new forms of criticism. Much of the "canon" of what counts as important is still in flux, especially for the last twenty years. And the stage is no longer centered only on the United States and Europe, but is becoming increasingly global. The course will introduce students to the major movements and artists since 1980, with emphasis on social and historical context, critical debates, new media, and the changing role of the spectator/participant. | ARTH2960401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do | ||||||||
| ARTH 7150-401 | Japanese Art Seminar: The Japanese Illustrated Book in Context | Julie N Davis | R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This seminar engages specific topics in Japanese art history from 1600 to the present, with the specific focus varying from year to year. Previous topics have included: the concept of the artist; gender and its representation; the visualization of place from the early modern to the present; collecting, the market, modernity, and the construction of the field; print cultures; among others. Sessions will be conducted on site, in museums, galleries, and libraries, as available. Assignments vary depending upon the focus of the seminar. Japanese language ability useful but not necessary; curiosity and engagement required. | EALC8140401 | Perm Needed From Instructor | ||||||||
| ARTH 7880-301 | 20th Century American Art Seminar: Art History After Intersectionality | Huey Gene Copeland | M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This seminar examines the history of art, artists, and artistic movements that emerged in the United States during the twentieth century. It may also engage with histories of visual culture, criticism, and the theory of art. Specific topics vary from semester to semester. | ||||||||||
| ARTH 7911-401 | East Asian Screen/Bodies | Chenshu Zhou | T 12:00 PM-2:59 PM | How have screen media interacted with bodies in East Asia? This graduate seminar hopes to use the “/” symbol to bring to light different ways screens have recorded, archived, addressed, and transformed both human and non-human bodies in East Asia. A central narrative thread of the course is the archeology of screen-based media. We will connect the contemporary proliferations of screens of various sizes, shapes, and properties to the television screen, the collective screen of cinema, and the traditional furniture screen. Course readings will be interdisciplinary, bringing into dialogues inquiries and methodologies found in art history, cinema and media studies, science and technology studies (STS), and performance studies. Another focus of the course is reflecting on and developing strategies for grounding broad, theoretical frameworks in the specific geopolitical space of East Asia. Any given screen situation will be examined in relation to both the nation state and transnational forces, as the intersection between the technological, the material, the cultural, and the historical. | CIMS7911401, EALC7301401 | |||||||||
| ARTH 7941-301 | Contemporary Art and Theory Seminar: Futures Foregone: Photography Beyond the West | R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This seminar focuses on special topics in the history and theorization of art and visual culture made (mostly) after the 1960s in, and about, a range of places around the world. Topics might include but are not limited to “The Aesthetics of Solidarity”; “What is Contemporary Form?”; “Decolonization and Decoloniality in History and Practice;” “Temporality and Timeliness in Recent Art”; “What is a Photograph?“; and, “Writing Art Writing Now.” When they are not focused on problematics or theoretical frames of this sort, courses might also be dedicated to the study of individual artists, movements, exhibitions, or territories. When possible, classes will align with local/regional art exhibitions, and it is also possible we may travel to conduct on-site research as the situation allows. Open to all graduate students. |