HART B103 Survey of Western Architecture (1 Unit)
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.
HART B110 Introduction to Medieval Art and Architecture (1 Unit)
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.
HART B120 History of Chinese Art (1 Unit)
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.
HART B130 Renaissance Art (1 Unit)
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.
HART B140 The Global Baroque (1 Unit)
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.
HART B146 Introduction to Art and Technology (1 Unit)
This course explores the intersection of art and various forms of technology from the early modern period through the twentieth century. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.
HART B150 Nineteenth-Century Art (1 Unit)
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.
HART B151 Modern Art (1 Unit)
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.
HART B160 The Global Present (1 Unit)
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.
HART B161 Survey of Contemporary Art & Theory (1 Unit)
This class focuses on European and American art and theory from approximately 1960 to the present. We examine key aesthetic developments including Pop Art, Minimalism, institutional critique, performance, installation, and video. This course was formerly numbered HART B272; students who previously completed HART B272 may not repeat this course
HART B170 History of Narrative Cinema, 1945 to the present (1 Unit)
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.
HART B201 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Medieval/Modern (1 Unit)
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 architecture as well as their afterlives in the modern era, as realized through revivals of style and form, museum exhibition excavation, alteration and adaptation for reuse, etc. There are no prerequisites for this course. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.
HART B205 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Art, Death, and the Afterlife (1 Unit)
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.
HART B210 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: The Classical Tradition (1 Unit)
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.
HART B215 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Topics in South Asian Art (1 Unit)
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.
HART B220 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Landscapes, Art, & Racial Ecologies (1 Unit)
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.
HART B235 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Identification in the Cinema (1 Unit)
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.
HART B268 Telling Bryn Mawr Histories: Topics, Sources, and Methods (1 Unit)
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.
HART B275 Museum Studies: History, Theory, Practice (1 Unit)
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.
HART B276 Topics in Museum Studies (1 Unit)
This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B248.
HART B310 Topics in Medieval Art (1 Unit)
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.
HART B320 Topics in Chinese Art (1 Unit)
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.
HART B330 Topics in Renaissance and Baroque Art (1 Unit)
This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B323.
HART B331 Problems in Renaissance Art (1 Unit)
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. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor.
HART B333 Problems in Representation (1 Unit)
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. 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.
HART B340 Topics in Material Culture (1 Unit)
This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B345.
HART B343 Topics in Art & Technology (1 Unit)
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.
HART B346 The History of London Since the Eighteenth Century (1 Unit)
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.
HART B350 Topics in Modern Art (1 Unit)
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.
HART B365 Exhibiting Africa: Art, Artifact and New Articulations (1 Unit)
At the turn of the 20th century, the Victorian natural history museum played an important role in constructing and disseminating images of Africa to the Western public. The history of museum representations of Africa and Africans reveals that exhibitions—both museum exhibitions and “living” World’s Fair exhibitions— has long been deeply embedded in politics, including the persistent “othering” of African people as savages or primitives. While paying attention to stereotypical exhibition tropes about Africa, we will also consider how art museums are creating new constructions of Africa and how contemporary curators and conceptual artists are creating complex, challenging new ways of understanding African identities.This course was formerly numbered HART B279; students who previously completed HART B279 may not repeat this course.
HART B370 Topics in History & Theory of Photography (1 Unit)
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.
HART B375 Topics in Contemporary Art (1 Unit)
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.
HART B376 Topics in Interpretation and Theory (1 Unit)
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.
HART B380 Topics in Film Studies (1 Unit)
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.
HART B398 Senior Conference I (1 Unit)
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.
HART B399 Senior Conference II (1 Unit)
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.
HART B403 Supervised Work (1 Unit)
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.
HART B420 Museum Studies Fieldwork (1 Unit)
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. Note: Students are eligible to take up to two Praxis Fieldwork Seminars or Praxis Independent Studies during their time at Bryn Mawr.
HART B425 Praxis III (1 Unit)
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.
HART B610 Topics in Medieval Art (1 Unit)
This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.
HART B620 Topics in Chinese Art (1 Unit)
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.
HART B624 Topics in Dutch Painting (1 Unit)
This is a topics course. Course content varies.
HART B630 Topics in Renaissance Art (1 Unit)
This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.
HART B631 Problems in Renaissance Art (1 Unit)
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 B638, students who previously completed HART B638 may not repeat this course.
HART B632 Vasari (1 Unit)
This seminar focuses on Giorgio Vasari as painter and architect and above all as a founder of the Florentine Academy and the writer of the first modern history of the arts. Topics covered range across the arts of that time and then the questions any such critical accounting of the arts calls up, imitation, invention, the notion of the artist and however it is possible to capture in words what seems often to be beyond them. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor. This course was formerly numbered HART B636, students who previously completed HART B636 may not repeat this course.
HART B633 Problems in Representation (1 Unit)
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.
HART B640 Topics in Material Culture (1 Unit)
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.
HART B641 Topics in Baroque Art (1 Unit)
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.
HART B645 Palladio and Neo-Palladianism (1 Unit)
A seminar on the diffusion of Palladian architecture from the 16th century to the present.
HART B646 The History of London Since the Eighteenth Century (1 Unit)
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.
HART B650 Topics in Modern Art (1 Unit)
This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.
HART B655 Art of the Black Atlantic (1 Unit)
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.
HART B670 Topics in History and Theory of Photography (1 Unit)
This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.
HART B675 Topics in Contemporary Art (1 Unit)
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.
HART B676 Topics: Interpretation and Theory (1 Unit)
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.
HART B680 Topics in Film Studies (1 Unit)
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.
HART B685 Film Theory (1 Unit)
This is a topics course. Course content varies. An introduction to major developments in film theory and criticism. Topics covered include: the specificity of film form; cinematic realism; the cinematic “author”; the politics and ideology of cinema; the relation between cinema and language; spectatorship, identification, and subjectivity; archival and historical problems in film studies; the relation between film studies and other disciplines of aesthetic and social criticism. Each week of the syllabus pairs critical writing(s) on a central principle of film analysis with a cinematic example. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor. This course was formerly numbered HART B606; students who previously completed HART B606 may not repeat this course.
HART B699 Advanced Research Methods (1 Unit)
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.
HART B701 Supervised Work (1 Unit)
HART B705 Curatorial Praxis (1 Unit)
For students completing a curatorial internship only. Students on a F1 VISA require CPT authorization to engage in an internship off campus and must register for the course.
HART B800 Continuing Enrollment (0 Unit)
AFST B202 Black Queer Diaspora (1 Unit)
This interdisciplinary course explores over two decades of work produced by and about Black Queer Diasporic communities throughout the circum-Atlantic world. While providing an introduction to various artists and intellectuals of the Black Queer Diaspora, this course examines the viability of Black Queer Diaspora world-making praxis as a form of theorizing. We will interrogate the transnational and transcultural mobility of specific Black Queer Diasporic forms of peacemaking, erotic knowledge productions, as well as the concept of “aesthetics” more broadly. Our aim is to use the prism of Blackness/Queerness/Diaspora to highlight the dynamic relationship between Black Diaspora Studies and Queer Studies. By the end of this course students will have a strong understanding of how systems of power work to restrict the freedoms of Black Queer and Trans communities, and how Black LGBTQ people have lived, organized, and created in spite of and in response to these oppressions. This interdisciplinary undergraduate upper-level course will utilize academic texts accompanied by poetry, fiction, film, television, and visual art to understand Black Queer and Trans subjectivities.
ANTH B356 The Politics of Public Art (1 Unit)
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
ANTH B368 The Anthropology of Art (1 Unit)
The idea that “art is what makes us human” has a long lineage and is a key concept of enlightenment philosophy. The anthropology of art historically drew inspiration from this idea, with anthropologists arguing that creative expression was a universal feature of human society – proof of universal human equality. But if art is evidence of humanity’s common creative drive, art has also often been a profound site of inequality – the development of art was closely connected to colonial exploitation, racial segregation, gendered violence, and contemporary gentrification. In this course we will draw on anthropological scholarship to investigate this tension between art as a feature of common humanity and art as a site for the production of difference. If art makes us human, does some art make some of us more human than others? Prerequisite: Sophomore standing (minimum of at least 8 units) or higher.
ARCH B102 Introduction to Classical Archaeology (1 Unit)
A historical survey of the archaeology and art of Greece, Etruria, and Rome.
ARCH B204 Animals in the Ancient Greek World (1 Unit)
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.
ARCH B215 Classical Art (1 Unit)
A survey of the visual arts of ancient Greece and Rome from the Bronze Age through Late Imperial times (circa 3000 B.C.E. to 300 C.E.). Major categories of artistic production are examined in historical and social context, including interactions with neighboring areas and cultures; methodological and interpretive issues are highlighted.
ARCH B229 Visual Culture of the Ancient Near East (1 Unit)
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.
ARCH B240 Archaeology and History of Ancient Mesopotamia (1 Unit)
A survey of the material culture of ancient Mesopotamia, modern Iraq, from the earliest phases of state formation (circa 3500 B.C.E.) through the Achaemenid Persian occupation of the Near East (circa 331 B.C.E.). Emphasis will be on art, artifacts, monuments, religion, kingship, and the cuneiform tradition. The survival of the cultural legacy of Mesopotamia into later ancient and Islamic traditions will also be addressed.
ARCH B252 Pompeii (1 Unit)
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.
ARCH B254 Cleopatra (1 Unit)
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.
ARCH B256 Classical Myths in Art and in the Sky (1 Unit)
This course explores Greek and Roman mythology using an archaeological and art historical approach, focusing on the ways in which the traditional tales of the gods and heroes were depicted, developed and transmitted in the visual arts such as vase painting and architectural sculpture, as well as projected into the natural environment.
ARCH B301 Greek Vase-Painting (1 Unit)
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.
ARCH B615 Mystery Cults (1 Unit)
An investigation of the phenomenon of mystery cults, their foundation and dispersal from the Classical through Hellensistic and early Roman periods. A study of the topography and monuments of specific cults and of representation of mysteries in sculpture and painting.
ARCH B634 Problems in Classical Art (1 Unit)
This is a topics course. Topics vary. A seminar dealing with current issues in the art of ancient Greece and related traditions.
CHEM B208 Topics in Art Analysis (1 Unit)
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.
CITY B190 Form of the City: Histories of the Built Environment (1 Unit)
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.
CITY B253 Before Modernism: Architecture and Urbanism of the 18th and 19th Centuries (1 Unit)
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.
CITY B254 History of Modern Architecture (1 Unit)
A survey of the development of modern architecture since the 18th century.
CITY B306 Advanced Fieldwork Techniques: Places in Time (1 Unit)
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.
CITY B356 The Politics of Public Art (1 Unit)
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.
CITY B377 Topics in Modern Architecture (1 Unit)
This is a topics course on modern architecture. Topics vary.
CITY B378 Formative Landscapes: The Architecture and Planning of American Collegiate Campuses (1 Unit)
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.
COML B213 Theory in Practice: Critical Discourses in the Humanities (1 Unit)
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? 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 across multiple language traditions (Poe, Kafka, Camus, Borges, Calvino, Morrison, Djebar, Murakami, Ngozi Adichie) that we discuss along with our study of theoretical texts. We will discuss how to apply theory to the practice of interpretation and of academic writing, and how theoretical ideas shape what we are reading. The class will be conducted in English, with an additional hour taught by the instructor of record in the target language for students wishing to take the course for language credit.
ENGL B205 Introduction to Film (1 Unit)
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.
ENGL B336 Topics in Film (1 Unit)
This is a topics course and description varies according to the topic.
GERM B223 Topics in German Cultural Studies (1 Unit)
This is a topics course. Course content varies. Taught in English.
GSEM B608 Material Geologies (1 Unit)
This course mobilizes a humanistically informed approach to the study of geological materials, with a focus on late antique and medieval understandings of stones, minerals, metals, and land formation(s). Readings will encompass current perspectives on the diverse epistemologies of geology in the pre-modern world, from the magical and medicinal properties of gems, to the relation of stone and earth to concepts of empire, to mythologies of landscape and geomorphology. Students will explore primary textual sources such as ancient and medieval magical treatises, travel literature, and lapidaries, including works by Pliny the Elder, Procopius, Paul the Silentiary, and Michael Psellos. The course will also foreground visual and material culture, introducing students to both conventional and innovative methodologies and theoretical frameworks for exploring human understandings of the natural world from an interdisciplinary perspective. Students will work with Bryn Mawr’s outstanding collection of geological samples and will learn fundamentals of mineral identification and crystallography. Final projects are expected to build from students’ primary research interests and disciplinary investments. Course enrollment is limited to graduate students in the departments of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology; Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies; and History of Art.
GSEM B619 Death and Beyond (1 Unit)
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.
GSEM B623 Figures of Resistance: Classical and Modern (1 Unit)
The GSem will explore classical figures of resistance such as Prometheus, Antigone, Electra, Medea, and Lysistrata and their reception in modern art and cinema. The focus will be on films and other works of art that re-appropriate and transform the ancient characters and their stories. We will discuss in particular how modern filmmakers re-contextualize the classical figures to shed light on contemporary historical, political, and social issues. Films will include Tony Harrison, Prometheus (Great Britain, 1998), Liliana Cavani, The Year of the Cannibals (Italy, 1970), Amy Greenfield, Antigone/Rites of Passion (USA, 1991), Ingmar Bergman, Persona (Sweden, 1966), Miklós Jancsó, Electra, My Love (Hungary, 1974), Arthur Ripstein, Asi Es La Vida (Mexico, 2000), and Spike Lee, Chi-raq (USA, 2015). Readings will be drawn from texts on reception studies, film and gender theory, psychoanalysis, and political theory.
GSEM B624 Greek Tragedy in Performance (1 Unit)
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!
GSEM B625 Dots and Loops: Form and Aesthetics Across Time and Media (1 Unit)
Though it has long been at the heart of aesthetic criticism, the subject of form as an axis of methodological inquiry has regained conspicuous popularity in recent years. Scholars working across, and at the intersection of, various media--including but not limited to material culture, visual art, sound, film, and literature--have been thinking through the ways that form both informs and is informed by what were considered its various antitheses, such as history, politics, and the material archive. The presumed extrication of external “context” was integral to a hermeneutic of form. This was a driving factor, for instance, in nineteenth-century formalism, used to construct coherent narratives surrounding Classical Antiquity through archaeological and art historical understandings of ornament and architecture. These interests continued with the inception of Russian literary Formalism in the early twentieth century, and then French narratology of the midcentury, for whom Homeric form was particularly important. This seminar will examine the various modes of formalist analysis that have emerged in contemporary criticism and their relationships to the formalisms that have come before, studying them alongside artworks across media and through various global histories. How can form speak across Art History, Classics, and Archaeology and to projects that vary widely in their temporal and geographic scopes, we will ask? What does attention to form yield for interdisciplinary scholars, specifically? What are the scope and limits of thinking with lines, dots, loops, circles, squares, parabolas, and shapes of any kind?
GSEM B652 Interdepartmental Seminar: History and Memory (1 Unit)
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.
GSEM B654 War and Peace in the Ancient World (1 Unit)
For centuries history has been perceived, written and taught as a series of wars and periods of peace. Yet, the question remains: what does it mean when a city, a state or a nation is at war, and how do different cultures and societies conceptualize peace? This interdisciplinary seminar explores theories and practices of war and peace in the ancient world, examining the archaeological, epigraphic, and literary evidence. The archaeology of warfare will include battlefields, fortifications, arms and weapons, siege machines, war memorials, funerary monuments as well as the iconography of victors and victims. The literary sources that we will be reading, among them the Homeric epics, select passages from Greek and Roman historiography, philosophical and rhetorical works and ancient handbooks and manuals of warfare, will shed light on the recording of conflicts, the conduct of war, notions of power and peace, the depiction of leaders, the representation of violence, and strategies of commemoration. Investigating bodies of evidence, which are normally studied separately and within specific disciplinary formations, we aim to challenge the entrenched oppositions between archaeology, philology, and history and to engage in a discourse about the complex and changing conceptualizations of war and peace in the ancient world. We plan to have several guest lecturers. Students participating in this seminar will be expected to give oral presentations and to develop their special areas of interests in their research projects applying a variety of methods. No previous classics or archaeology training is required.
ITAL B218 Early-Modern Intersections: A New Italian Renaissance (1 Unit)
The period or movement commonly referred to as the Renaissance remains one of the great iconic moments of global history: a time of remarkable innovation within artistic and intellectual culture, and a period still widely regarded as the crucible of modernity. Although lacking a political unity and being constantly colonized by European Empires, Italy was the original heartland of the Renaissance, and home to some of its most powerful and enduring figures, such as Leonardo and Michelangelo in art, Petrarch and Ariosto in literature, Machiavelli in political thought. This course provides an overview of Italian culture from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century by adopting a cross-cultural, intersectional, and inter-disciplinary approach. The course places otherness at the center of the picture rather than at its margins, with the main aim to look at pivotal events and phenomena (the rise of Humanism, courtly culture, the canonization of the language), not only from the point of view of its protagonists but also through the eyes of its non-male, non-white, non-Christian, and non-heterosexual witnesses. The course ultimately challenges traditional accounts of the Italian Renaissance by crossing also disciplinary boundaries, since it examines not only literary, artistic, and intellectual history, but also material culture, cartography, science, technology, and history of food and fashion. All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students seeking Italian credits will complete their assignments in the target language.
ITAL B221 What is Aesthetics? Theories on Art, Imagination, and Poetry (1 Unit)
This course investigates how global thinkers, poets, and artists reflected in their works on the roles and powers of art, poetry, and human creativity. The course approaches this theme through a cross-cultural and trans-historical approach, which encompasses the Italian Humanism, which argued for the first time for the importance of aesthetic knowledge, as well as the Age of Enlightenment, which founded ‘aesthetics’ as a specific scientific discipline. Readings from these writers will show how artistic products, human imagination, and poetry are not just light-hearted activities but powerful cognitive tools which can reveal aspects of human history. If the human being is deemed to be a combination of reason and feeling – soul and body – art and poetry, which border both the rational and irrational realms, appear the most appropriate scientific tool to reveal the human essence and its destiny. The discussion will focus on pivotal global writers and philosophers such as Giambattista Vico and Giacomo Leopardi, who pioneered aesthetic, historical, literary, and anthropological ideas which are still crucial in the current theoretical debate on arts and poetry. All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students will have an additional hour of class for Italian credit.
ITAL B221 What is Aesthetics? Theories on Art, Imagination, and Poetry (1 Unit)
This course investigates how global thinkers, poets, and artists reflected in their works on the roles and powers of art, poetry, and human creativity. The course approaches this theme through a cross-cultural and trans-historical approach, which encompasses the Italian Humanism, which argued for the first time for the importance of aesthetic knowledge, as well as the Age of Enlightenment, which founded ‘aesthetics’ as a specific scientific discipline. Readings from these writers will show how artistic products, human imagination, and poetry are not just light-hearted activities but powerful cognitive tools which can reveal aspects of human history. If the human being is deemed to be a combination of reason and feeling – soul and body – art and poetry, which border both the rational and irrational realms, appear the most appropriate scientific tool to reveal the human essence and its destiny. The discussion will focus on pivotal global writers and philosophers such as Giambattista Vico and Giacomo Leopardi, who pioneered aesthetic, historical, literary, and anthropological ideas which are still crucial in the current theoretical debate on arts and poetry. All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students will have an additional hour of class for Italian credit.
ITAL B240 Philadelphia the Global City: The Italian Legacy across Time (1 Unit)
This course investigates the history and evolution of Philadelphia as a globalized and multi-ethnic city, using as a case study for this analysis the impact and legacy of transnational Italian culture across the centuries. By adopting a cross-cultural, trans-historical, and interdisciplinary approach, the course explores the influence that — along with and in intersection with many other cultural inputs — also Italian arts and cultures have exerted on the city, making it become the cosmopolitan and transnational urban environment that it is today. Throughout the centuries and way before Italy even started existing as a state, Philadelphians traveled to the peninsula and brought back objects to display in emerging cultural institutions or studied the country’s art and architecture styles to shape the evolving aspect of the city. Simultaneously, incoming immigration formed new neighborhoods — such as South Philly, home to the Italian Market — and Italian figures came to prominence and became part of the social fabric of the city. Nowadays, many non-profit organizations work to preserve the traces that Italian migrants left within Philadelphia’s multi-ethnic urban environment as well as to extend the city's global profile and celebrate its heritage and diversity. Through specific field trips, on-site experiential activities, and forms of civic engagement this course highlights both the enduring fascination of Philadelphians with Italy (or with the idea thereof) across the centuries and the role that the Italian Diaspora played in the development of the city. The course ultimately challenges geographical, chronological, and cultural boundaries by showing how places, arts, identities that today are perceived as ‘American’ have in most cases an intersectional, multi-ethnic, and cross-cultural history to tell. This course will be taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program. All readings and class discussion will be in English, and no knowledge of Italian is required. Students seeking Italian credits will complete their assignments in the target language.
ITAL B315 A Gendered History of the Avant-Garde (1 Unit)
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.
ITAL B326 Love, Magic, and Medicine: Poetical-Philosophical Bonds (1 Unit)
The course investigates how the concepts of love, magic, and medicine emerged and developed throughout early modernity and beyond. In exploring the fields of Philosophy, Medicine, and Magic, global thinkers, poets, and artists drew not only from classical sources, but were also deeply influenced by a wide range of models, such as fictional ancient sources, Islamic philosophy, and the Jewish Kabbalah. In this interesting syncretism, love was considered as an inspiration experienced by the entire universe, and magical practice was understood as a philosophy in action, which had the power to establish a bond of a loving nature between the different realms of reality. Magicians were therefore conceived as wise philosophers capable of joining this network of correspondences and controlling them (art)ificially. As a result, the figures of poets and artists interestingly merged into those of magicians of physicians, and poetry was conceived both as a magic able to arouse mental images stronger than real visions, and as a medicine able to exert a mental and physiological agency on the body. The course will approach these themes through a multi-disciplinary and trans-historical approach, which will include in the discussion a wide variety of figures, such as global early modern and modern philosophers, physicians, poets, artists, and composers.All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students will have an additional hour of class for Italian credit.
MEST B210 The Art and Architecture of Islamic Spirituality (1 Unit)
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.
SPAN B312 Latin American and Latino Art and the Question of the Masses (1 Unit)
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. Students seeking Spanish credit must have taken at least one Spanish course at the 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. Counts toward History of Art.