Courses

HART B103 Survey of Western Architecture

Spring 2024

The major traditions in Western architecture are illustrated through detailed analysis of selected examples from classical antiquity to the present. The evolution of architectural design and building technology, and the larger intellectual, aesthetic, and social context in which this evolution occurred, are considered. This course was formerly numbered HART B253; students who previously completed HART B253 may not repeat this course.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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HART B110 Introduction to Medieval Art and Architecture

Fall 2023

This course takes a broad geographic and chronological scope, allowing for full exposure to the rich variety of objects and monuments that fall under the rubric of "medieval" art and architecture. We focus on the Latin and Byzantine Christian traditions, but also consider works of art and architecture from the Islamic and Jewish spheres. Topics to be discussed include: the role of religion in artistic development and expression; secular traditions of medieval art and culture; facture and materiality in the art of the middle ages; the use of objects and monuments to convey political power and social prestige; gender dynamics in medieval visual culture; and the contribution of medieval art and architecture to later artistic traditions. This course was formerly numbered HART B212; students who previously completed HART B212 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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HART B120 History of Chinese Art

Not offered 2023-24

This course is a survey of the arts of China from Neolithic to the contemporary period, focusing on bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the Chinese appropriation of Buddhist art, and the evolution of landscape and figure painting traditions.This course was formerly numbered HART B274; students who previously completed HART B274 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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HART B130 Renaissance Art

Fall 2023

A survey of painting in Florence and Rome in the 15th and 16th centuries (Giotto, Masaccio, Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael), with particular attention to contemporary intellectual, social, and religious developments. This course was formerly numbered HART B230; students who previously completed HART B230 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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HART B140 The Global Baroque

Spring 2024

Global Baroque examines the Baroque style both within and beyond Europe, moving from Italy, France, Spain and Flanders to seventeenth-century India, Iran, Japan and China, the New World, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Kongo. We will study the role of Baroque art in early modern politics, religious missions and global trade; the emergence of princely collections of wonders and cartography; the flourishing of new and wondrous art materials; and the changing role of the artist and artisan in this period. We will consider the Baroque as an invitation for emotional engagement, as a style of power that was complicit in the violence of European colonialism, and as a tool of cultural reclamation used by artists across the world. As a class, we will work to construct an art history of The Global Baroque that also attends to the complex specificities of time and place. This course was formerly numbered HART B240; students who previously completed HART B240 may not repeat this course.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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HART B150 Nineteenth-Century Art

Not offered 2023-24

This course takes a transnational approach to the history of art from the Age of Revolution (beginning in the late-eighteenth century) through the industrial globalization of the late-nineteenth century. Lectures, readings and class discussions will engage key artistic and historical developments that shaped art and culture during this period. This course was formerly numbered HART B233; students who previously completed HART B233 may not repeat this course.

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HART B151 Modern Art

Fall 2023

This course traces the history of modernism from ca. 1890 to ca. 1945. Lectures, readings, and class discussions will engage key artistic and historical developments that shaped art and culture during the modern period. This course was formerly numbered HART B260; students who previously completed HART B260 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

Counts Toward Visual Studies

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HART B160 The Global Present

Spring 2024

This course navigates the global geography of art, from 1989 to the present. This course was formerly numbered HART B266; students who previously completed HART B266 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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HART B161 Topics in Contemporary Art and Theory

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course explores art and its interpreters, from 1945 to the present.This course was formerly numbered HART B272; students who previously completed HART B272 may not repeat this course

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HART B170 History of Narrative Cinema, 1945 to the present

Spring 2024

This course surveys the history of narrative film from 1945 to the present. We will analyze a chronological series of styles and national cinemas, including Classical Hollywood, Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, and other post-war movements and genres. Viewings of canonical films will be supplemented by more recent examples of global cinema. While historical in approach, this course emphasizes the theory and criticism of the sound film, and we will consider various methodological approaches to the aesthetic, socio-political, and psychological dimensions of cinema. Readings will provide historical context, and will introduce students to key concepts in film studies such as realism, formalism, spectatorship, the auteur theory, and genre studies. Fulfills the history requirement or the introductory course requirement for the Film Studies minor. This course was formerly numbered HART B299; students who previously completed HART B299 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Film Studies

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HART B201 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Medieval/Modern

Section 001 (Fall 2023): Byzantine Icons, Then and Now

Fall 2023

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course is writing intensive. This course examines intersections between the medieval and modern worlds through art and architecture. Students study medieval works of art and/or architecutre as well as their afterlives in the modern era, realized through revivals of style and form, museum exhibition, archaeologicaly excavation, alteration and adaptation for reuse, etc. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or an introductory course in any field of Medieval Studies (e.g., History, Literature, etc.) or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Current topic description: This course examines the devotional painting tradition of Byzantium (fourth to fifteenth centuries) and explores its impact on subsequent traditions of early modern, modern, and contemporary art. Students consider icons from the perspectives of iconography, style, function, and materiality. Focus then shifts to how Byzantine painting inspired subsequent artists, who often reworked and updated the conceptual frameworks informing the medieval icon tradition.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward MECANA Studies

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HART B205 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Art, Death, and the Afterlife

Spring 2024

This course is writing intensive. This course aims to explore how art was used as a symbolic form to overcome death and to assure immortality in a variety of archaeological, philosophical, religious, sociopolitical, and historical contexts. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art. This course was formerly numbered HART B112; students who previously completed HART B112 may not repeat this course.

Writing Intensive

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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HART B210 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: The Classical Tradition

Fall 2023

This course is writing intensive. An investigation of the historical and philosophical ideas of the classical, with particular attention to the Italian Renaissance and the continuance of its formulations throughout the Westernized world. This course was formerly numbered HART B104; students who previously completed HART B104 may not repeat this course. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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HART B215 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Topics in South Asian Art

Not offered 2023-24

This course is writing intensive. This course examines the representations of gods, plants, humans and animals in the Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Islamic artistic traditions of India. It traces both the development of naturalistic representations, as well as departures and embellishments on naturalism in the painting, sculpture, architecture, metalwork and textiles of South Asia. The course will consider the spiritual, social, political and aesthetic motivations that led artists to choose naturalistic or supernatural forms of representation.This course was formerly numbered HART B102; students who previously completed HART B102 may not repeat this course. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Writing Intensive

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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HART B220 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Landscapes, Art, & Racial Ecologies

Not offered 2023-24

This course is writing intensive. This course uses art, visual, and material culture to trace the plantation's centrality to colonial and post-colonial environments in the Atlantic World from the eighteenth century to the present, as a site of environmental destruction as well as parallel ecologies engendered by African-descended peoples' aesthetic and botanical contestation. Objects to be considered include landscape painting, plantation cartography, scientific imagery, environmental art, and ecologically motivated science fiction. This course was formerly numbered HART B111; students who previously completed HART B111 may not repeat this course. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

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HART B235 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Identification in the Cinema

Spring 2024

This course is writing intensive. An introduction to the analysis of film and other lensed, time-based media through particular attention to the role of the spectator. Why do moving images compel our fascination? How exactly do spectators relate to the people, objects, and places that appear on the screen? Wherein lies the power of images to move, attract, repel, persuade, or transform their viewers? Students will be introduced to film theory through the rich and complex topic of identification. We will explore how points of view are framed by the camera in still photography, film, television, video games, and other media. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art and Film Studies. Fulfills Film Studies Introductory or Theory course requirement. This course was formerly numbered HART B110; students who previously completed HART B110 may not repeat this course.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Film Studies

Counts Toward Visual Studies

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HART B268 Telling Bryn Mawr Histories: Topics, Sources, and Methods

Not offered 2023-24

This course introduces students to archival and object-based research methods, using the College's built environment and curatorial and archival collections as our laboratory. Students will explore buildings, documents, objects, and themes in relation to the history of Bryn Mawr College. Students will frame an original group research project to which each student will contribute an individual component. Prerequisite: An interest in exploring and reinterpreting the institutional and architectural history of Bryn Mawr College and a willingness to work collaboratively on a shared project.

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HART B275 Introduction to Museum Studies

Fall 2023

Using the museums of Philadelphia as field sites, this course provides an introduction to the theoretical and practical aspects of museum studies and the important synergies between theory and practice. Students will learn: the history of museums as institutions of recreation, education and leisure; how the museum itself became a symbol of power, prestige and sometimes alienation; debates around the ethics and politics of collecting objects of art, culture and nature; and the qualities that make an exhibition effective (or not). By visiting exhibitions and meeting with a range of museum professionals in art, anthropology and science museums, this course offers a critical perspective on the inner workings of the museum as well as insights into the "new museology." Not open to first-year students. Enrollment preference given to minors in Museum Studies. This course was formerly numbered HART B281; students who previously completed HART B281 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Museum Studies

Counts Toward Visual Studies

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HART B276 Topics in Museum Studies

Section 001 (Spring 2023): African Arts in Diaspora

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B248.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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HART B310 Topics in Medieval Art

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Medieval Manuscripts
Section 001 (Fall 2023): Art and Medieval Jewish Communities

Fall 2023

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Current topic description: Art and Medieval Jewish Communities: What does medieval Jewish art look like? How were Jewish people and Jewish practices represented in the art of other medieval communities? This course explores art and material culture produced between c. 300-1500 CE in contexts as diverse as late antique Rome, Umayyad Spain, and Gothic France. Looking at a wide variety of media, it will trace histories of Jewish devotion and self-representation. It will also study how art reflects the multiple relationships of subversion, appropriation, appreciation, tolerance, and oppression that Jewish communities met in different medieval contexts.

Course does not meet an Approach

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HART B320 Topics in Chinese Art

Section 001 (Fall 2022): Art and Environment in Traditional China

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Course does not meet an Approach

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HART B330 Topics in Renaissance and Baroque Art

Section 001 (Fall 2023): Palladio and neo-Palladianism
Section 001 (Spring 2024): The Fresco

Fall 2023, Spring 2024

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B323.

Current topic description: This seminar is concerned with the idea of architecture in the Renaissance and with Palladio in particular. But it is also concerned, at a wider level and at different moments and indeed in culture beyond Italy, with the idea of the villa, the country house and all that is invoked by the idea of living and building, not in a city,, but beyond it in the country.

Current topic description: The Fresco

Course does not meet an Approach

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HART B340 Topics in Material Culture

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Textiles of Asia
Section 001 (Spring 2024): Manuscripts

Spring 2024

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B345.

Current topic description: This course explores the materiality, contents, and use of books produced during the long Middle Ages (5th-16th centuries). Focusing on a wide range of manuscripts -- from prayer books to romances, bestiaries, and histories -- the seminar will emphasize the special communicative power of images and texts that are bound together. Guided by visits to Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, it will explore the physical structures of medieval codices, the developing iconographies of major image programs, and the ways in which manuscripts have been used, collected, and interpreted from the Middle Ages to the present.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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HART B346 The History of London Since the Eighteenth Century

Spring 2024

Selected topics of social, literary, and architectural concern in the history of London, emphasizing London since the 18th century. This course was formerly numbered HART B355; students who previously completed HART B355 may not repeat this course. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Course does not meet an Approach

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HART B350 Topics in Modern Art

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Monuments: Past, Present and Future
Section 001 (Fall 2023): Flexner Seminar - Trauma's Traces

Fall 2023

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Current topic description: If testimony is the mechanism by which traumatic experience is belatedly reconfigured into speech/narrative form, visual culture is another crucial site of belated expression and encounter. Anchored by theory, animated by cultural objects, and in tandem with the Flexner Lectures, the seminar will work through the possibilities and limits of visual representation in the aftermath, or in the wake, of trauma.

Course does not meet an Approach

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HART B355 Art of the Black Atlantic

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art. This course was formerly numbered HART B326.

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HART B370 Topics in History & Theory of Photography

Section 001 (Spring 2023): the Afterlife of Photography,

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art. This course was formerly numbered HART B308.

Course does not meet an Approach

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HART B375 Topics in Contemporary Art

Section 001 (Fall 2022): Art & Technology

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art. This course was formerly numbered HART B380.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

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HART B376 Topics in Interpretation and Theory

Section 001 (Fall 2023): 20th C. Theories of Signs and Images

Fall 2023

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Current topic description: 20th C. Theories of Signs and Images: This seminar provides a survey of major theorists of the 20th century, with a particular focus on writings related to the interpretation of signs and images, e.g. theories relevant to students of art history. We will read a series of significant, paradigm-shifting theoretical texts in chronological order, paired with relevant works of art and film.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Film Studies

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HART B380 Topics in Film Studies

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Contemp Art & Film/Phila

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art and Film Studies. This course was formerly numbered HART B334.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Film Studies

Counts Toward Visual Studies

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HART B398 Senior Conference I

This course is open only to History of Art senior majors; permission of the instructors is required for registration. A critical review of the discipline of art history in preparation for the senior thesis. Capstone in the major; culminates in the senior thesis proposal.

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HART B399 Senior Conference II

This course is open only to History of Art senior majors; permission of the instructors is required for registration. A seminar for the discussion of senior thesis research and such theoretical and historical concerns as may be appropriate. Interim oral reports. Capstone in the major; culminates in the senior thesis.

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HART B403 Supervised Work

Advanced students may do independent research under the supervision of a faculty member whose special competence coincides with the area of the proposed research. Consent of the supervising faculty member and of the major adviser is required.

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HART B420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

This course provides students a forum in which to ground, frame and discuss their hands-on work in museums, galleries, archives or collections. Whether students have arranged an internship at a local institution or want to pursue one in the Bryn Mawr College Collections, this course will provide a framework for these endeavors, coupling praxis with theory supported by readings from the discipline of Museum Studies. The course will culminate in a final presentation, an opportunity to reflect critically on the internship experience. Prior to taking the course, students will develop a Praxis Learning Plan through the Career and Civic Engagement office. All students will share a set syllabus, common learning objectives and readings, but will also be able to tailor those objectives to the specific museum setting or Special Collections project in which they are involved.

Counts Toward Museum Studies

Counts Toward Praxis Program

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HART B425 Praxis III

Students may register for this course with approval of a faculty supervisor in conjunction with internship projects in the college's collections and other art institutions in the region.

Counts Toward Praxis Program

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HART B610 Topics in Medieval Art

Section 001 (Spring 2024): Africa & Byzantium

Spring 2024

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B620 Topics in Chinese Art

Section 001 (Fall 2022): Art and Environment in Traditional China
Section 001 (Spring 2023): Rethinking the Silk Road Art

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor. This course was formerly numbered HART B639.

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HART B630 Topics in Renaissance Art

Section 001 (Fall 2023): Palladio and Neo-Palladianism

Fall 2023, Spring 2024

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B633 Problems in Representation

Not offered 2023-24

This seminar examines, as philosophy and history, the idea of realism, as seen in the visual arts since the Renaissance and beyond to the 19th and 20th centuries.Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor. This course was formerly numbered HART B645, students who previously completed HART B645 may not repeat this course.

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HART B640 Topics in Material Culture

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Textiles of South Asia

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor. This course was formerly numbered HART B646.

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HART B641 Topics in Baroque Art

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor. This course was formerly numbered HART B640.

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HART B646 The History of London Since the Eighteenth Century

Not offered 2023-24

Selected topics of social, literary, and architectural concern in the history of London, emphasizing London since the 18th century. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B650 Topics in Modern Art

Section 001 (Fall 2023): Flexner Seminar - Trauma's Traces

Fall 2023

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B655 Art of the Black Atlantic

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B626; students who previously completed HART B626 may not repeat this course. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B675 Topics in Contemporary Art

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B680. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B676 Topics: Interpretation and Theory

Section 001 (Fall 2023): 20th C. Theories of Signs and Images

Fall 2023

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B651. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B680 Topics in Film Studies

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Contemporary Art & Film in Philadelphia

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B661. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B699 Advanced Research Methods

Spring 2024

This is a workshop designed to support graduate students in the History of Art in independent research and writing projects at any stage, including MA theses, preliminary exams, researching and writing a dissertation prospectus, or writing drafts of dissertation chapters. May be taken more than once for credit; mandatory for graduate students beyond coursework stage except by permission of primary advisor.

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HART B701 Supervised Work

Fall 2023, Spring 2024

Supervised Work

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ANTH B356 The Politics of Public Art

Spring 2024

In this class we will explore the politics of public art. While we will look at the political messaging of public art, we will also seek to understand how public art, through its integration into a social geography, has a political impact beyond its meaning. We will see how art claims public space and structures social action, how art shapes social groups, and how art channels economic flows or government power. By tracing the ways that art is situated in public space, we will examine how art enters into urban contest and global inequality. Class activity will include exploration of public art and students will be introduced to key concepts of urban spatial analysis to help interrogate this art. One 200-level course in Social Sciences, Humanities, or Arts fields, or permission of the instructor

Course does not meet an Approach

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ARCH B102 Introduction to Classical Archaeology

Fall 2023

A historical survey of the archaeology and art of Greece, Etruria, and Rome.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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ARCH B204 Animals in the Ancient Greek World

Spring 2024

This course focuses on perceptions of animals in ancient Greece from the Geometric to the Classical periods. It examines representations of animals in painting, sculpture, and the minor arts, the treatment of animals as attested in the archaeological record, and how these types of evidence relate to the featuring of animals in contemporary poetry, tragedy, comedy, and medical and philosophical writings. By analyzing this rich body of evidence, the course develops a context in which participants gain insight into the ways ancient Greeks perceived, represented, and treated animals. Juxtaposing the importance of animals in modern society, as attested, for example, by their roles as pets, agents of healing, diplomatic gifts, and even as subjects of specialized studies such as animal law and animal geographies, the course also serves to expand awareness of attitudes towards animals in our own society as well as that of ancient Greece.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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ARCH B229 Visual Culture of the Ancient Near East

Not offered 2023-24

This course examines the visual culture of the Ancient Near East based on an extensive body of architectural, sculptural, and pictorial evidence dating from prehistoric times through the fifth century BCE. We will explore how a variety of surviving art, artifacts, sculpture, monuments, and architecture deriving from geographically distinct areas of the ancient Near East, such as Mesopotamia, the Eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia, and Iran, may have been viewed and experienced in their historical contexts, including the contribution of ancient materials and technologies of production in shaping this viewing and experience. By focusing on selected examples of diverse evidence, we will also consider how past and current scholarly methods and approaches, many of them art-historical, archaeological, and architectural in aim, have affected the understanding and interpretation of this evidence. In doing so, we will pay special attention to critical terms such as aesthetics, style, narrative, representation, and agency.

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ARCH B252 Pompeii

Not offered 2023-24

Introduces students to a nearly intact archaeological site whose destruction by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E. was recorded by contemporaries. The discovery of Pompeii in the mid-1700s had an enormous impact on 18th- and 19th-century views of the Roman past as well as styles and preferences of the modern era. Informs students in classical antiquity, urban life, city structure, residential architecture, home decoration and furnishing, wall painting, minor arts and craft and mercantile activities within a Roman city.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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ARCH B254 Cleopatra

Fall 2023

This course examines the life and rule of Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Ptolemaic Egypt, and the reception of her legacy in the Early Roman Empire and the western world from the Renaissance to modern times. The first part of the course explores extant literary evidence regarding the upbringing, education, and rule of Cleopatra within the contexts of Egyptian and Ptolemaic cultures, her relationships with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, her conflict with Octavian, and her death by suicide in 30 BCE. The second part examines constructions of Cleopatra in Roman literature, her iconography in surviving art, and her contributions to and influence on both Ptolemaic and Roman art. A detailed account is also provided of the afterlife of Cleopatra in the literature, visual arts, scholarship, and film of both Europe and the United States, extending from the papal courts of Renaissance Italy and Shakespearean drama, to Thomas Jefferson's art collection at Monticello and Joseph Mankiewicz's 1963 epic film, Cleopatra.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

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ARCH B301 Greek Vase-Painting

Not offered 2023-24

This course is an introduction to the world of painted pottery of the Greek world, from the 10th to the 4th centuries B.C.E. We will interpret these images from an art-historical and socio-economic viewpoint. We will also explore how these images relate to other forms of representation. Prerequisite: one course in classical archaeology or permission of instructor.

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ARCH B303 Classical Bodies

Not offered 2023-24

An examination of the conceptions of the human body evidenced in Greek and Roman art and literature, with emphasis on issues that have persisted in the Western tradition. Topics include the fashioning of concepts of male and female standards of beauty and their implications; conventions of visual representation; the nude; clothing and its symbolism; the athletic ideal; physiognomy; medical theory and practice; the visible expression of character and emotions; and the formulation of the "classical ideal" in antiquity and later times.

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ARCH B501 Greek Vase Painting

Not offered 2023-24

This course is an introduction to the world of painted pottery of the Greek world, from the 10th to the 4th centuries B.C.E. We will interpret these images from an art-historical and socio-economic viewpoint. We will also explore how these images relate to other forms of representation. Prerequisite: one course in classical archaeology or permission of instructor.

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ARCH B634 Problems in Classical Art

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Topics vary. A seminar dealing with current issues in the art of ancient Greece and related traditions.

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CHEM B208 Topics in Art Analysis

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course and topics will vary. All courses will cover a variety of methods of analysis of works of art centered around a specific theme. Using both completed case studies and their own analysis of objects in the Bryn Mawr College collection, students will investigate a number of instrumental methods of obtaining both quantitative and qualitative information about the manufacture, use and history of the objects. This course counts towards the major in History of Art.

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CITY B190 The Form of the City: Urban Form from Antiquity to the Present

Spring 2024

This course studies the city as a three-dimensional artifact. A variety of factors, geography, economic and population structure, politics, planning, and aesthetics are considered as determinants of urban form.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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CITY B253 Before Modernism: Architecture and Urbanism of the 18th and 19th Centuries

Not offered 2023-24

The course frames the topic of architecture before the impact of 20th century Modernism, with a special focus on the two prior centuries - especially the 19th - in ways that treat them on their own terms rather than as precursors of more modern technologies and forms of expression. The course will integrate urbanistic and vernacular perspectives alongside more familiar landmark exemplars. Key goals and components of the course will include attaining a facility within pertinent bibliographical and digital landscapes, formal analysis and research skills exercised in writing projects, class field-trips, and a nuanced mastery of the narratives embodied in the architecture of these centuries.

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CITY B254 History of Modern Architecture

Fall 2023

A survey of the development of modern architecture since the 18th century.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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CITY B306 Advanced Fieldwork Techniques: Places in Time

Not offered 2023-24

A hands-on workshop for research into the histories of places, intended to bring students into contact with some of the raw materials of architectural and urban history. A focus will be placed on historical images and texts, and on creating engaging informational experiences that are transparent to their evidentiary basis.

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CITY B377 Topics in Modern Architecture

Section 001 (Fall 2022): East Asian Architecture
Section 001 (Spring 2023): Reading Architecture
Section 001 (Spring 2024): Multiplicity & Singularity in later 19th C. Archit

Spring 2024

This is a topics course on modern architecture. Topics vary.

Current topic description: Multiplicity & Singularity in later 19th C. Architecture: An examination of later 19th C. architecture, with particular focus on issues of multiplicity and singularity.

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CITY B378 Formative Landscapes: The Architecture and Planning of American Collegiate Campuses

Not offered 2023-24

The campus and buildings familiar to us here at the College reflect a long and rich design conversation regarding communicative form, architectural innovation, and orchestrated planning. This course will explore that conversation through varied examples, key models, and shaping conceptions over time.

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ENGL B205 Introduction to Film

Not offered 2023-24

This course is intended to provide students with the tools of critical film analysis. Through readings of images and sounds, sections of films and entire narratives, students will cultivate the habits of critical viewing and establish a foundation for focused work in film studies. The course introduces formal and technical units of cinematic meaning and categories of genre and history that add up to the experiences and meanings we call cinema. Although much of the course material will focus on the Hollywood style of film, examples will be drawn from the history of cinema. Attendance at weekly screenings is mandatory.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Film Studies

Counts Toward Visual Studies

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ENGL B336 Topics in Film

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course and description varies according to the topic.

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FREN B213 Theory in Practice:Critical Discourses in the Humanities

Not offered 2023-24

By bringing together the study of major theoretical currents of the 20th century and the practice of analyzing literary works in the light of theory, this course aims at providing students with skills to use literary theory in their own scholarship. The selection of theoretical readings reflects the history of theory (psychoanalysis, structuralism, narratology), as well as the currents most relevant to the contemporary academic field: Post-structuralism, Post-colonialism, Gender Studies, and Ecocriticism. They are paired with a diverse range of short stories (Poe, Kafka, Camus, Borges, Calvino, Morrison, Djebar, Ngozi Adichie) that we discuss along with our study of theoretical texts. The class will be conducted in English with an additional hour in French for students wishing to take it for French credit.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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GERM B223 Topics in German Cultural Studies

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Under Surveillance: From ETA Hoffmann to Christa W

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Recent topics include Remembered Violence, Global Masculinities, and Crime and Detection in German. Current topic description (spring 2023): Under Surveillance: Literature and Visual Culture from the Enlightenment to the Present. Taught in English.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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GSEM B619 Death and Beyond

Fall 2023

The question of what happens after the moment of death has always fascinated humanity - at one moment there is a living person, the next only a corpse; where did the person go? Every culture struggles with these questions of death and afterlife - what does it mean to die and what happens after death? This seminar will examine a variety of types of evidence - archaeological, poetic, and philosophical - to uncover ideas of death and afterlife in some of the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world, with particular attention to the similarities and differences between ideas of death and beyond in the cultures of Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. Van Gennep's model of death as a rite de passage provides the basic structure for the class, which is divided into three sections, each concerned with one section of the transition: Dying - leaving the world of the living; Liminality - the transition between the worlds; and Afterlife - existence after death. This anthropological model allows us to analyze the different discourses about death and afterlife.

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GSEM B624 Greek Tragedy in Performance

Not offered 2023-24

In this seminar we will approach Greek dramatic texts from two angles: theoretically and experientially. On the one hand, we will be reading (in English translation) the tragedies of the three great playwrights of Classical Athens-Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides-while examining their treatment of myth, systems of metaphor and imagery, and the role of the chorus, as well as the relevance of Greek tragedy for subsequent centuries down to the present day. Special attention will be given to such themes as fate and predestination; relation between mortals and immortals; disability; euthanasia; slavery; and the impact of war on women and children. On the other, concurrent with our textual analysis, we will be reading Constantin Stanislavski, Michael Chekhov and other modern theater theorists. We will be applying these acting techniques to the texts in practice (i.e., performing them in class!) as we ask the question, What can be gained from stepping inside the plays and trying them on? No prior acting experience is necessary: just a curiosity about bringing ancient texts to life through the medium of one's body!

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GSEM B652 Interdepartmental Seminar: History and Memory

Section 001 (Fall 2022): History and Memory

Not offered 2023-24

The seminar will begin by establishing the categories of history and memory, as they have been constituted across the humanistic disciplines, defining and refining the epistemological and ontological distinctions between the two. Readings will be drawn first from the writings of Nietzsche and Freud and then move to the work of Barthes, Caruth, Connerton, Foucault, Guha, Gundaker, La Capra, Margolit, Nora, Sebald, Todorov, and Yerushalmi. Once a grounding context is established, the second half of the seminar will be organized around a set of categories, ranging from the material to the theoretical, through which we will continue our explorations in history and memory, among them, the following: trauma, witness, archive, document, evidence, monument, memorial, relic, trace. It is here that we would each draw specifically on our own disciplinary formations and call upon students to do the same. The seminar would, of course, be open to all students in the graduate group.

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ITAL B213 Theory in Practice:Critical Discourses in the Humanities

Fall 2023

What is a postcolonial subject, a queer gaze, a feminist manifesto? And how can we use (as readers of texts, art, and films) contemporary studies on animals and cyborgs, object oriented ontology, zombies, storyworlds, neuroaesthetics? In this course we will read some pivotal theoretical texts from different fields, with a focus on race&ethnicity and gender&sexuality. Each theory will be paired with a masterpiece from Italian culture (from Renaissance treatises and paintings to stories written under fascism and postwar movies). We will discuss how to apply theory to the practice of interpretation and of academic writing, and how theoretical ideas shaped what we are reading. Class conducted in English, with an additional hour in Italian for students seeking Italian credit.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

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ITAL B308 Rome as Palimpsests: from Ruins to Virtual Reality

Not offered 2023-24

From the urban dream that Raphael confessed to pope Leo X in the middle of the Renaissance to the parkour on the top of the Colosseum in the Assassin's Creed videogames, Rome has always been both a memory and a vision: a place of nostalgia and endless potential. In this course we will investigate some crucial places, moments, and ideas in the modern history of this ancient capital of Western culture: XVI century Mannerist painting and the Pop Art of Piazza del Popolo, the early modern re-uses of the Colosseum and its cubic clone designed under fascism, the narrations of Romantic grand-tours and the ones of contemporary postcolonial authors. We will adopt a trans-historical and inter-disciplinary perspective, focusing on the main attempts to revive the glory of the ancient empire. We will try to understand weather Italy's capital is a museum to be preserved, an old laboratory of urban innovations, a cemetery, a sanctuary, or simply an amalgam of past and future, glory and misery, beauty and horror. For Italian majors you will have an additional hour for credit. Prerequisite: One two-hundred level course for students interested in taking the course towards Italian credits.

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MEST B210 The Art and Architecture of Islamic Spirituality

Spring 2024

This course examines how Muslim societies across time and space have used art and architecture in different ways to express and understand inner dimensions of spirituality and mysticism. Topics to be studied include: the calligraphical remnants of the early Islamic period; inscriptions found on buildings and gravestones; the majestic architecture of mosques, shrines, seminaries, and Sufi lodges; the brilliant arts of the book; the commemorative iconography and passion plays of Ashura devotion; the souvenir culture of modern shrine visitation; and the modern art of twenty-first century Sufism. Readings include works from history, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, and the history of art and architecture.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward MECANA Studies

Counts Toward Visual Studies

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RUSS B238 Topics: The History of Cinema 1895 to 1945

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

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