Global Arc

A hands-on introduction to the methods and theories of excavation and to the archaeology of ancient Greece. Students participate in a 6-week excavation season, where they will learn how to excavate and survey, and how to record, analyze, and interpret what they find. Onsite training and discussion complemented by seminars, guest lectures, and regional trips.

In this class we will examine the history, function, theory and meaning of the icon. We will also examine the icon's influence upon the discourses of Modernism. A more practical aspect of this class is that participants in the course will work with the Princeton University Art Museum's icon collection and with its collection of icon painter's preparatory drawings. The class will provide participants with a broad grounding in questions pertaining to the icon. For majors, this course satisfies the 400-1400 historical period distribution requirement.

This course explores the technology and function of books in historical perspective, asking how illuminated manuscripts were designed to meet (and shape) cultural and intellectual demands in the medieval period. Surveying the major genres of European book arts between the 7th-15th centuries, we study varying approaches to pictorial space, page design, and information organization; relationships between text and image; and technical aspects of book production. We work primarily from Princeton's collection of original manuscripts and manuscript facsimiles. Assignments include the option to create an original artist's book for the final project.

Water in the bathroom, gas in the kitchen, heat in the living room: what Western Europe and North America consider basic needs in obvious, purpose-based, domestic spaces are relatively new. All appeared between the late 17th and early 20th centuries. What dynamic between society and family that made the emergence of the apartment building possible? What motivated authorities and private developers to support public infrastructures, from sewage systems to street lights, gas and water networks? This course will provide students with tools to criticize the notion of domestic comfort, public efficiency, urbanism, and "progress."

Art in late antiquity has often been characterized as an art in decline, but this judgment is relative, relying on standards formulated for art of other periods. Challenging this assumption, we will examine the distinct and powerful transformations within the visual culture of the period between the third and sixth centuries AD. This period witnesses the mutation of the institutions of the Roman Empire into those of the Christian Byzantine Empire. The fundamental change in religious identity that was the basis for this development directly impacted the art from that era that will be the focus of this course.

Painting and sculpture of the formative years of the early Renaissance in Italy (ca. 1250-1400) with emphasis on the cultural, social, and religious concerns that found expression in art. Topics include the relationship between art and piety, the effect of the Black Death, and the rediscovery of the classical heritage. For department majors, this course satisfies the 400-1400 historical period distribution requirement. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

Celebrating Rembrandt Year, this class surveys painting, sculpture, architecture and the graphic arts of the Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands) from 1580-1750 in relation to art elsewhere in Europe and the world. Dutch art is seen in relation to its historical circumstances, including cross-cultural developments in Europe, Asia and Americas. Extensive use of the Princeton University Art Museum with visits to New York.

The class surveys connections in art of different cultures and continents throughout the world from the first civilizations to the present. Attention will be paid to distinctive and related forms of culture and their expression in art and architecture that includes trade, migration, gift exchanges, war and economics.

The 18th century saw the emergence of the first architectural and engineering schools. Architects and engineers started to compete all over Europe in a time when technical knowledge and efficiency were becoming as important as experience and learnedness. This course provides students with a survey of 18th-century European architecture in the light of the rivalry between two trades on the verge of professionalization. The first weeks will be devoted to the actors of the building world before focusing on the fields of contest between architects and engineers and how this battle defined the nature of each profession, between art and science.

This course will focus upon prints or drawings studied from original works of art. All periods of European art may be considered along with occasional Asian objects. Classes will be conducted in the Princeton University Art Museum, New York (museum and dealer and/or auction house), and possibly Washington D.C. (National Gallery of Art). For fall 2016 the course will study drawings from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.