Global Arc

An in-depth exploration of the history, theory, and interpretation of American art and visual culture from the colonial period to the present day. Topics covered will include race and representation in American art and culture; art and science; landscape art and theory; the Harlem Renaissance; and the art and artists of the Stieglitz circle. Visits to the Princeton University Art Museum and other area museums (such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) will be an integral part of this course. For department majors, this course satisfies the 1400-1800 and 1800-present historical period distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

Museums have long disciplined conducts and framed ways of seeing through the production and reproduction of dominant values. But can they also act as instruments of transformation, even emancipation? This course investigates the museum and the exhibition as sites of experimentation within the overlapping spheres of art, society, and technology, with particular focus on their implications and enactment in Latin America. Key components will be hands-on work with the collections of Latin American art in the Princeton University Art Museum and Marquand and Firestone Libraries, as well as visits to museums and artist's studios in New York.

This seminar focuses on the classical and traditional arts of the Yoruba and Igbo peoples of Southern Nigeria. Through readings on key aspects of the groups' philosophies, ritual practices, aesthetics and socio-cultural formations, we examine the conceptual bases and formal conditions of the arts of the two groups, and rethink earlier scholarship on Igbo and Yoruba art, politics and visual cultures.

Easily recognized as among the most important examples of canonical African art, Kongo sculpture, textiles, and ritual design are famous for their conceptual density, stylistic variety and rigorous abstraction. The course examines the role of art in the life of the Kongo Kingdom and related peoples, from the arrival of Spanish explorers and missionaries in the 15th century, through the era of Belgian colonization from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, to the period since political independence in 1960. The seminar coincides with and will explore the Kongo Across the Waters exhibition at the Princeton University Museum.

This seminar examines the impact of the International Monetary Fund's Structural Adjustment Program, military dictatorships, and political crises on artistic production in the 1980s, and the dramatic movement of African artists from the margins of the international art world to its very center since the 1990s. How familiar or different are the works and concerns of African artists? What are the consequences, in Africa and the West, of the international success of a few African artists? And what does the work of these Africans at home and in the West tell us about the sociopolitical conditions of our world today?

Contrary to the notion that the Nazi defeat of 1940 marked the decline of art in France, this course examines how artists in France drew upon the legacies of the avant-garde with a renewed sense of commitment in order to express their wartime experiences, address themselves to the public, contest social norms and engage the political sphere. Through the study of aesthetic experiments across media and readings in existentialist, feminist and Marxist philosophy, artists' writings, art criticism and art history, we investigate how art was politicized by artists and their publics from the Nazi Occupation through the French riots of 2005.

Who were the Vikings, at home or abroad? How did their raiding and settlement change the history of the British Isles and western Europe? This course will study the political, cultural, and economic impact that Norse expansion and raiding had on early medieval Europe. It will also look at the changes in Scandinavia that inspired and resulted from this expansion. Sources will include contemporary texts, sagas and epic poetry, material culture, and archaeological excavations.

This course examines the relationship of art and medicine in the construction and production of race in the British Empire from the early modern period until the beginning of the twentieth century. We will analyze how image-making has been used in the development of medical knowledge and how scientific concepts of vision and natural history have been incorporated into art making. We will then examine how these intersections were deployed to visualize and, sometimes, challenge continually changing meanings about human and geographical difference across Britain and its colonies.

Rembrandt is an artist we feel we know, perhaps because he painted, etched and drew so many self-portraits. His art is characterized by an intense intimacy and humanity. Even in his own day, he was lauded for his ability to depict emotions in his narrative scenes, which elicit our empathy. His portraits are not mere likenesses but manage to imply the sitters' inner life. His technical virtuosity, whether it be with paint, pen and ink, or etching needle, is peerless. In this seminar, we will study all aspects of Rembrandt's art and examine his works held by the PUAM and museums in NYC in order to understand his universal appeal.

The museum traces its origins to the cabinet of curiosities and to princely collecting, and took form during the European Enlightenment as a way of ordering knowledge, often advancing nationalistic purposes. Today's museums draw deeply on these traditions while facing essential challenges: How must it respond to the digital age and to a world of increasingly porous borders? What must it do to assure its continuing relevance and survival? Through a series of case studies, this course will grapple with the ways in which museums look to the past and posit new, more "activist" ways of being.