Art and Archaeology

The study of techniques, functions, and connoisseurship of drawings, and their place in the interpretation of the history of art. Drawings ca. 1400-1800 will be the major objects considered. Extensive use of the resources of the art museum. For department majors, this course satisfies either the Group 2 or 3 distribution requirement. Prerequisite: a course in Renaissance or baroque art or instructor's permission. One three-hour seminar.

Examines the global exchange in art and architecture between and among the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas in the period 1492-1800. The course focuses on the geographical, historical, religious, anthropological, and aesthetic aspects of issues such as cultural encounters, diffusion, transculturation, regionalism, and related topics. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 2 distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

Topics will focus on major figures, such as Palladio, Wren, and Piranesi; centers, such as Rome and Venice; or themes, such as architectural theory, the legacy of classical antiquity, and the villa. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 2 distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

This seminar will address various aspects of northern European art during the period late Middle Ages through early Renaissance. Prerequisite: a course in the art of this period or instructor's permission. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 2 distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

Topics in 17th- and 18th-century art and architecture. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 2 distribution requirement. Prerequisite: a course in the art of this period or instructor's permission. One three-hour seminar.

This seminar will focus in depth on a specific aspect of art, history, theory, and criticism in Europe between 1789 and 1914. Possible topics include French painting and its critics, portraiture and sociability, shifting conceptions of realism and naturalism, the onset of modernism, and representations of interior space. Prerequisites: a course in the art of this period or permission of the instructor. Visits to area museums. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 3 distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

Does art have an essential nature? Do different mediums--painting, sculpture, photography, film, television, video--have specific ontologies that demand specific methods? How is the autonomy of art debated, and why is this debate so central to modernism? With images and texts by primary artists and critics, the seminar will investigate the "ends" of art in the sense of posited goals and presumed deaths. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 3 distribution requirement. Prerequisite: a course in the art of this period or instructor's permission. One three-hour seminar.

Topics on the aesthetic and stylistic development of photography, including the study of movements and related critical theory, and on the artistic achievement of particular photographers. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 3 distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

Topics in contemporary painting, sculpture, or criticism in Europe and America since World War II. Prerequisite: a course in the art of this period or instructor's permission. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 3 distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

A study of some of the major themes and movements of modern architecture from the late 19th century to the present day. Students will be encouraged to examine the social and political context, to probe the architects' intellectual background, and consider issues of class and gender in their relation to architectural and urban form. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 3 distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

An intensive interdisciplinary study of the evolution of a city, such as Athens, Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Alexandria, or Antioch, where Greek civilization flourished through successive periods, from antiquity to the present. A study of the form and the image of the city as seen in its monuments and urban fabric, as well as in the works of artists, writers, and travelers. Prerequisite: instructor's permission. Two 90-minute classes.

An in-depth exploration of the history, theory, and interpretation of American art and visual culture from the colonial period to the present day. Topics covered will include race and representation in American art and culture; art and science; landscape art and theory; the Harlem Renaissance; and the art and artists of the Stieglitz circle. Visits to the Princeton University Art Museum as well as to other area museums (such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) will be an integral part of this course. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 3 distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

Apartheid, the political doctrine of separation of races in South Africa (1948-1990), dominated the (South) African political discourse in the second half of the 20th century. While it lasted, art and visual cultures were marshaled in the defense and contestation of its ideologies. Since the end of Apartheid, artists, filmmakers, dramatists, and scholars continue to reexamine the legacies of Apartheid, and the social, philosophical, and political conditions of non-racialized South Africa. Course readings examine issues of race, nationalism and politics, art and visual culture, and social memory in South Africa. AAS Subfield: GRE

A course that introduces students to questions and approaches (current and historical) that have shaped and that continue to shape the study of the History of Art.

Selected topics in the literature of art and architecture in Europe and the Americas from antiquity to the present.

This course is intended to ensure a continuing breadth of exposure to contemporary art-historical discourse and practices. It requires attendance and participation in the department lecture/seminar series. Students must take the course sequentially in each of their first four semesters and take the appropriate letter version of the course (A,B,C,or D) based on their semester of study. The course is taken in addition to the normal load of three courses per semester and is for first- and second-year graduate students only. Topics discussed cover all fields of Art History and address current questions and practices.

This course is intended to ensure a continuing breadth of exposure to contemporary art-historical discourse and practices. It requires attendance and participation in the department lecture/seminar series. Students must take the course sequentially in each of their first four semesters and take the appropriate letter version of the course (A,B,C,or D) based on their semester of study. The course is taken in addition to the normal load of three courses per semester and is for first- and second-year graduate students only. Topics discussed cover all fields of Art History and address current questions and practices.

This course is intended to ensure a continuing breadth of exposure to contemporary art-historical discourse and practices. It requires attendance and participation in the department lecture/seminar series. Students must take the course sequentially in each of their first four semesters and take the appropriate letter version of the course (A,B,C, or D) based on their semester of study. The course is taken in addition to the normal load of three courses per semester and is for first- and second-year graduate students only. Topics discussed cover all fields of Art History and address current questions and practices.

This course is intended to ensure a continuing breadth of exposure to contemporary art-historical discourse and practices. It requires attendance and participation in the department lecture/seminar series. Students must take the course sequentially in each of their first four semesters and take the appropriate letter version of the course (A,B,C,or D) based on their semester of study. The course is taken in addition to the normal load of three courses per semester and is for first- and second-year graduate students only. Topics discussed cover all fields of Art History and address current questions and practices.

This seminar explores topics in Greek Architecture from thematic perspectives and focused analysis of individual structures. Trends in ancient building practices and their cultural legacies are investigated in a holistic manner, from the drawing board and quarry to modern reception.

The seminar examines the ways Russian formalists and constructivists problematized the role and importance of form in their writing. We explore systemic views, paying especial attention to the role of structure (and deconstruction); we investigate the links between materiality and form, and, finally, we see how form, texture, and system - are localized in particular artistic or historical contexts. This is an interdisciplinary seminar, and during the semester we move back and from literature to cinema, and from architecture to painting.

The seminar pursues research on a varying set of topics (differing every year) on ancient Roman art and architecture.

In this seminar we examine representations of masculinity in modern European and American art, exploring how the complexity of gender appears in art and its reception. How did masculinity contribute to artists¿ formal and conceptual concerns, from revolutionary France to postwar New York? Topics include the masculine body, artistic brotherhoods, homoeroticism, historical trauma, the gendered dynamics of the studio, the politics of virility, and psychoanalytic approaches to art history. Readings open onto broader issues of gender, sexuality, and aesthetics, and bring feminist and queer critical approaches to the table.

Art history's disciplinary origins are inextricable from European colonialism and imperialism, and often work to uphold racialized concepts of development, civilization, style. The contemporary practice of art history demands that we acknowledge these origins while imagining a decolonized art history for the present. Drawing from decolonial paradigms, recent scholarship, and foundational texts of critical race studies, we work to analyze and actively reconfigure conventions of field formation, research, and format. In keeping with the political imperative of praxis, students workshop research topics and problems individually and collectively.

A seminar devoted to the long-standing problems concerning the tradition of Greek sculpture, most of which survives in later Roman copies. Replication was fundamental to ancient artistic practice and remains central to both its critical evaluation and its broad appreciation. Emphasis is on stylistic comparison of the surviving copies (Kopienkritik); critical engagement with the ancient written sources that attest the most famous works (opera nobilia); and the historiographic tradition in modern scholarship devoted to these works and the problems they pose.