Courses

ARCH B101 Introduction to Egyptian and Near Eastern Archaeology

Spring 2024

A historical survey of the archaeology and art of the ancient Near East and Egypt.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward MECANA Studies

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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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 B203 Ancient Greek Cities and Sanctuaries

Not offered 2023-24

A study of the development of the Greek city-states and sanctuaries. Archaeological evidence is surveyed in its historic context. The political formation of the city-state and the role of religion is presented, and the political, economic, and religious institutions of the city-states are explored in their urban settings. The city-state is considered as a particular political economy of the Mediterranean and in comparison to the utility of the concept of city-state in other cultures.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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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.

Writing Intensive

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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 B317 Cultural Heritage and Endangered Archaeology

Not offered 2023-24

This course will examine how and why archaeological sites are 'endangered'. Primarily focusing on the Near East and North Africa (the MENA region), we will examine the different types of archaeological and heritage sites found across this broad region, and some of the threats and disturbances affecting them. We will consider how different interest groups and stakeholders view, value and present historical and archaeological sites to the general public, as well as the success of modern initiatives and projects to safeguard the heritage of the MENA region. Our research will consider the ethics of cultural preservation, as well as the issues and problems encountered by heritage specialists working in areas of modern conflict. Whilst not all damage can be prevented, the course will consider how different threats and disturbances might be mitigated. Prerequisite: Upper level 300-level course. Students should have completed at least two 100 level/200 level courses in either classical or near eastern archaeology.

Writing Attentive

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward MECANA Studies

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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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.

Writing Intensive

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FREN B105 Directions de la France contemporaine

Spring 2024

Ce cours a pour objet les dynamiques et les tensions qui structurent ou déstructurent la France contemporaine. Dans quelle mesure la France a-t-elle profité de la colonisation et de l'esclavage pour devenir la France ? Le modèle républicain est-il mis à mal par ce qu'on appelle les "communautarismes", ou n'est-il lui même qu'un déguisement du communautarisme de la majorité ? Quel est ce "séparatisme" qui menacerait la cohésion nationale et les valeurs universalistes de la France ? Pourquoi la laïcité est-elle en crise aujourd'hui ? L'État de droit peut-il demeurer un État de droit face au djihadisme ? L'arbitrage impossible entre priorité sanitaire et priorité économique montre-t-il que le pouvoir politique est devenu impuissant ? Les travaux à rendre vous permettront de vous exprimer dans des formats innovants (podcast, présentation vidéo, réalisation de pages Internet) et de perfectionner vos compétences à l'oral aussi bien qu'à l'écrit. Prerequisite: FREN 005 or 101.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Museum Studies

Counts Toward Visual Studies

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GEOL B210 Cataloging Collections

Section 001 (Fall 2022): Minerals, Museums/Wstrn Colnsm

Not offered 2023-24

This course is an introduction to cataloguing as an integral component of museum collections management. Students will consider the history, theories, and practices of cataloguing as a museum practice as it relates to the different objectives of various types of museums (art, natural history, science, history, zoological). Students will explore how cultural attitudes, institutional policies, and social expectations have historically influenced, and continue to shape, the development of collections management policies and procedures, while undertaking projects related to collections research and cataloguing. They will evaluate and recommend standardized vocabularies to build a collections database that accommodates more complex histories while optimizing searchability. They will engage with instructors who are actively involved in the professional operations of and calls to "decolonize" collections, becoming trained in the fundamentals of cataloguing collections as they actively rethink these structures and contribute to object records.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Data Science

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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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 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.

Writing Intensive

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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)

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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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 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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HIST B237 Themes in Modern African History

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Public History in Africa
Section 001 (Spring 2024): Public History in Africa

Spring 2024

This is a topics course. Course content varies

Current topic description: This course will explore the colonial and postcolonial practices in public history. It will address the following question: in an age of "fake news" and "history wars", how can we understand the relationship between the public and the place of the past? Topics will include exhibitions; museum practices and colonial outlooks; commemorations and identities; monuments; film, popular history and memory; heritage and regeneration; oral history and public engagement; and public policy. We will also discuss ongoing inter-sectional and interdisciplinary decolonizing approaches to breaking received hierarchies and narratives. The course will also introduce students to the methodological and theoretical issues in the practice of public history.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

Counts Toward International Studies

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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HIST B349 Topics in Comparative History

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Indigenous Peoples/Frontiers

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Topics vary.

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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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.

Writing Intensive

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ITAL B315 A Gendered History of the Avant-Garde

Spring 2024

The very concept of 'avant-garde' is steeped in a masculine warlike imagery, and the founding manifesto of Futurism even glorifies 'contempt for the woman'. Yet, feminine, queer, androgynous, and non-binary perspectives on sexual identity played a central role - from Rimbaud to current experimentalism - in the development of what has been called 'the tradition of the new'. In this seminar we will explore such a paradoxical anti-traditional tradition through texts, images, sounds, and videos, adopting a historical prospective from early 20th century movements to the Neo-Avant-Garde. We will unearth the stories and works of great experimentalists who have been neglected because of their gender. We will deal with poems made up entirely of place names, of recorded noises, of typographical symbols. Taking advantage of the college's collection and library, we will try to read texts with no words, surreal stories, performances, objects, and we will make our own avant-garde experiments. Course taught in English, no previous knowledge of Italian required.

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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PSYC B231 Health Psychology

Fall 2023

This course will provide an overview of the field of health psychology using lecture, exams, videos, assignments, and an article critique. We will examine the current definition of health psychology, as well as the theories and research behind many areas in health psychology (both historical and contemporary). The course will focus on specific health and social psychological theories, empirical research, and applying the theory and research to real world situations. Prerequisite: Introductory Psychology (PSYC B105) or Foundations of Psychology (PSYC H100). Students may take either this course or HLTH/PSYC H245 not both.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Health Studies

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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SPAN B312 Latin American and Latino Art and the Question of the Masses

Not offered 2023-24

The course examines the ways in which Latin American and Latino texts (paintings, murals, sculptures, and some narratives) construct "minor," "featureless" and "anonymous" characters, thus demarcating how and which members of society can and cannot advance a plot, act independently and/or be agents of change. By focusing the attention on what is de-emphasized, we will explore how artistic works, through their form, are themselves political actors in the social life of Latin America, the US, and beyond. We will also consider the place of Latin American and Latino Art in the US imaginary and in institutions such as museums and galleries. Prerequisites: Course is taught in English and is open to all juniors or seniors who have taken at least one 200-level course in a literature department. Students seeking Spanish credit must have taken BMC Spanish 120 and at least one other Spanish course at a 200-level, or received permission from instructor. Course does not meet an Approach. Counts toward Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies. Counts toward Museum Studies.

Writing Attentive

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward International Studies

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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