涩里番

This advanced pro-seminar introduces key concepts and practices of art-historical method. Each session will be led by a different faculty member from AHCS and will address critical debates in the field. Coordinated with the department鈥檚 lecture series, our sessions will focus on issues, ideas, and trends central to the current practice of the discipline and its historical formation. Providing orientation to the field and to the department, this course also emphasizes key skills and issues of professionalization. One week will be dedicated to the essential art of grant writing, preparing you for specific funding applications. As the semester progresses, we will also discuss career opportunities, conference participation, publication strategies and broader issues of professionalization.

Requirements/Method of Evaluation:

Weekly Responses and Participation: 25%
Departmental Lecture Essays: 20% (10% each)
Grant Writing: 10%
Final Research Paper: 45% (5% proposal, 10% presentation, 30% paper)

The modern uniqueness of the Caribbean resides in its connection to imperialism and colonialism. The Caribbean鈥檚 extreme hybridity, natural and human, was forced upon it through a process of colonization that included the extermination and forced out migration of Natives, the forcible transplantation of Africans and waves of European and other migration. Managing and understanding this rich and problematic diversity has simultaneously spawned histories of racial brutality, sexual exploitation and intrusive external representation, as well as organized resistance, transoceanic cultural survivals, and generations of great thinkers. This course will examine several different racial groups and their cultures, working comparatively between the Caribbean (English, French and Spanish) and other related regions of the Americas. This course combines an exploration of Caribbean art history, history, culture and thought in an effort to explore the unique histories and legacies of a diverse and complex region.

Requirements/Method of Evaluation:

Full participation is a fundamental requirement for students in a graduate course, particularly within a seminar situation. Classes will be discussion driven (by the students) and as such students are expected to attend all classes having read all required readings and having taken any additional steps to prepare themselves for an engaged contribution to the seminars. The final mark will reflect the student鈥檚 in-class participation, research skills, writing and communication skills.

Participation: 15%
Short Essay: 10%
Archival Presentations and Catalogue Entries: 25%
Seminar Presentation: 20%
Final Paper: 30%

Since the late 1990s, spatial art practices鈥攁 category that has expanded to include installation art, architectural and new media environments, situational and relational interventions, immersive settings and net localizations鈥攈ave set about a significant reconsideration of the aesthetics of space. This mutation is one in which contemporary art has progressively moved away from the 鈥減roblematization鈥� of space to engage with the 鈥渁ctivation鈥� of localities, location and localization processes鈥攁n activation that has increasingly entailed the participation of the spectator in the creation of the artwork, as well as his or her negotiation with public space. This shift is major insofar as it dramatically redefines notions and practices of spectatorship, visuality, spatial politics, and criticality. De-emphasizing the representational dimension of the artwork, moving away from the view that to perceive an artwork is mainly to produce internal representations of it, and questioning representation鈥檚 prevalence over reception, artistic practices have been increasingly concerned with the role of the spectator in the actual production of image and space. They also increasingly support the formation of 鈥渇lexible鈥� community bonds between spectators collaborating in the production of the artwork.

This reconsideration of spectatorship presents three major challenges to the art historian: (1) the need to explore analytical models that focus on the interactive (body/mind/space) processes of perception and cognition鈥攕uch as the enactive model (No毛) that describes perceptual experiences as tactile enactments conditioned by the body in action (by what we do) and by one鈥檚 possession of bodily skills (by what we know how to do); (2) the need to complicate these new understandings of spectatorship by bridging cognitive, cultural and social perspectives; and (3) the need to situate the development of spatial arts in the larger debate over the politics of aesthetics鈥攐ver the ways in which aesthetics is a form of (re)distribution of the sensible. The seminar will address these challenges by confronting five pivotal, relatively recent publications dealing with questions of participatory art, phenomenology, and cognitive approaches to mind and vision: Robin Clark, ed., Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface (2011); Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participation Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012); Adriana de Souza e Silva and Jordan Frith, Mobile Interfaces in Public Spaces: Locational Privacy, Control, and Urban Sociability (2012); Alva No毛, Action in Perception (2004); and Mark Rowlands, The New Science of the Mind: From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology (2012). Special focus will be given to: (1) the establishment of perceptual models that complicate the understanding of installational/environmental spectatorship, through the exploration of 鈥渆xtended,鈥� 鈥渆nactive,鈥� and 鈥渓ocational鈥� 聽phenomenology-oriented models of 聽perception; (2) the empirical understanding of these models in relation to specific case studies (including works by Pipilotti Rist, Christa Sommerer/Laurent Mignonneau, Blast Theory, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Seiko Mikami, Four Gentlemen, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Christian Nold, dLux MediaArts, and Simona Lodi & Les Liens invisibles); and (3) the introduction of mobile interfaces in spatial practices鈥攖he aesthetic exploration of spatial interfaces provided by mobile technologies (books, maps, Walkmans, CD players) and mobile technologies with location-awareness and Augmented Reality applications (iPods, smartphones, location-aware technologies whose localization capacities are enabled by the global positioning system (GPS), Wi-Fi or the triangulation of location by radio-waves)鈥攚hich has affected the 鈥減roblematization of space鈥� paradigm of earlier site-specificity practices.

Requirements/Method of Evaluation:

October 18: One-page outline of your research topic (to be submitted to all members of the seminar) - 10%.

November 28/29: 20 min oral presentation discussing the subject, hypothesis & corpus of your essay - 30%.

December 6: 20-25 pp essay on the work of an artist of your choice, dealing with the topic of the seminar - 60%.

This course will focus on two interwoven topics.

Firstly, it will examine the many visual and textual depictions of ill, sleeping, diseased, unconscious, tired and dead women that were so common in nineteenth-century French culture. By examining representations from a variety of disciplines 鈥� art, medicine, and literature 鈥� we will consider how and why various discourses constructed women as sick and in opposition to the healthy male norm. The images and objects we will investigate include: Salon paintings, medical atlases, clinical photographs, print and poster advertising, Impressionist paintings and pastels, wax models, and cartoons from the popular press.

Secondly, this course will examine how feminist art histories from the past 40 years have addressed these images of women. In recent years, it has been suggested that the study of nineteenth-century French art is tired, old and irrelevant. Similarly, feminist art history has been criticized as being out of date and as having lost its political drive. Most point out that feminist approaches have left the field of nineteenth-century art history (where it 鈥榦riginated鈥�) and settled into studies of contemporary art. By reading critically, we will analyze the historiography of feminist art history, and discuss its past, present and future.

Requirements/Method of Evaluation:

Participation: 15%
Discussion Leader: 20%
Research Presentation: 20%
Research Paper: 45%

This course introduces a number of theoretical approaches to the study of non-western histories, cultures, institutions, etc.聽 There are two primary objectives: to prepare students to read and analyze contemporary scholarly theory and practice; and to examine the goals and histories of various disciplines in constructing their object of study.聽 The aim is not merely to present some of the critical impasses of various disciplinary approaches, but more importantly to discuss alternatives.

Requirements/Method of Evaluation:

We will discuss the reading or readings indicated in the schedule on that date, with an emphasis on analyzing these texts in terms of their aims/hypotheses, assumptions/conclusions, and modes of analysis.聽 Students are expected to come to class prepared to discuss the readings.聽 The readings are organized around a certain problematic.聽 At the end of each unit, a response on that unit will be due, as marked on the schedule.聽 In general, the response will comprise five pages:聽 one page of critical summary for each of four different readings from that unit (which will be announced), with a fifth page presenting a more general response. There will be, in total, four of these five-page responses. Students are encouraged to use the fifth page to relate the readings to a specific research project, such that, in the course the term, student can develop a critical perspective for that project.聽 Students are welcome to write a short paper based on that project instead of the fourth response paper.

Participation: 20%
4 Responses: 20% each (80%)

This course deals with cities and with the place of culture within urban life. Its main focus is on the ways in which various cultural forms may be seen as contributing to the 鈥渕ediality鈥� of urban life 鈥� that is, to the storing, transmission and processing of information and cultural expression. The main focus of the course will be Montreal, but we will be looking at other cities as points of comparison and dealing in a more general sense with cities and their culture.

Note that those taking this course include both graduate students (MA and Ph.D students in Communications and Art History) and advanced undergraduates within the Canadian Studies minor program. While I do not anticipate any problems arising from this variety of levels, I ask that everyone be respectful of other students in the class.

Requirements/Method of Evaluation:

Attendance and participation: 20%.
Reading 鈥渉ighlights鈥� exercise: 20%.
Team-Based Urban Site Analysis: 30%.
Final Essay: 30%.

Recent years have seen the emergence of animal studies as a new field of study, simultaneously with new theoretical approaches in feminism, media studies, and science and technology studies, diversely articulated and styled 鈥� new materialism, object-oriented ontology, speculative realism, actor network theory, non-human agency. Animal studies and these theoretical approaches are coeval but not coterminus: there are points of contention as well as significant overlaps. This seminar aims to introduce animal studies in the light of such theoretical shifts, with attention to two issues in particular.聽 First, we will consider some ways in which non-human animals have entered into the study of different media and technologies, with an eye to how such concerns may (or may not) transform received paradigms.聽 Second, we will consider debates about evolutionary theory, to consider how the resulting 鈥渘ew materialisms鈥� affect our understanding of genealogy and writing of history, and to consider their ethical and political challenges.

Because this is an upper-level seminar, this course will consist largely of discussions of the assigned readings, and so students are expected to read all the materials assigned for class in advance, and to come to class prepared to pose questions and discuss materials. A student (or two students) will serve as facilitator for each class, soliciting questions and concerns and helping the class to prioritize discussion and to include everyone.

Requirements/Method of Evaluation:

A seminar paper of approximately 20-25 pages, with the proposal (10%) due on October 11.聽 Ideally, the proposal will build on the essays that you鈥檝e already read. The broader outline and bibliography (15%) is due on November 8.聽 The outline should either be in standard extended outline form or a written overview; either is fine provided I can assess how you are presenting and organizing the different parts of your analysis with respect to the course materials. The preliminary draft (25%) is due on November 27, and the final paper (30%) on December 14.聽 The additional 20% is participation. In addition to participating in discussions and serving as a facilitator, students will be asked to make a brief presentation of their research in class (about 10 minutes), simply to receive additional feedback.

Early modern art criticism conveys a fascination with the moving image鈥攁n artwork so strikingly lifelike that it appears to come alive. The force of the moving image is physical, immediate, and emotive. Such works consume their beholders, deploying stunning visual effects that move and even change their human interlocutors. In the words of one commentator, the viewer thus confronted by the incarnate artwork 鈥渂ecomes another person.鈥� This type of response to images has been largely repressed from art historical discourses that focus on the distanced intellectual interpretation and contemplation of the work of art as a closed field of knowledge. Frequently dismissed as a form of 鈥榩rimitivism鈥�, the living image is most often encountered in popular culture studies or anthropologies of the image. A reconsideration of the moving image thus has the potential to put art history in motion, animating and dynamically opening it to new objects, questions, temporalities, and methods of analysis. Engagement with the affective impact of images unsettles art historical categories of understanding, prompting us to reconsider key terms of analysis like representation, mimesis, spectatorship, meaning, and interpretation as mobile and transformative processes. In this seminar, we will thus seek to redress art historical neglect of the moving image and explore its multifaceted potentialities. If the power of such works was to stir viewers, how was the rhetorical force of the moving image mobilized to inspire or manipulate political, religious, colonial, and social actions?

Weekly discussions will take up a body of readings, but also a corpus of moving images and their particular modes of address. We will consider images that move (automata, mechanical moving pictures); images that appear to move or breathe (living statues, portraits, waxworks); images that physically and /or emotionally move or alter their viewers; and the transformative potential of images that migrate between cultures. Focusing on case studies, student research can take up any aspect of the moving image in the early modern period (1500-1700).

Requirements/Method of Evaluation:

Class participation and reading responses - 25%
Class presentation / discussion leader - 30% (15 x 2)
Paper Proposal - 10%
Oral presentation of research topic - 15%
Written research paper - 20% (due Apr 19)