ADVANCED PRO-SEMINAR SEMINAR DESCRIPTION AND EXPECTATIONS

Transcription

1 ADVANCED PRO-SEMINAR ARTH 600. Fall Semester Thursdays, , Arts W 220 C. Hilsdale (cecily.hilsdale@mcgill.ca). Office hours: Tuesdays, or by appointment SEMINAR DESCRIPTION AND EXPECTATIONS This advanced pro-seminar introduces art historical methodologies and historiographies. Each session will be led by a different faculty member and will address critical debates in the field. These sessions will focus on issues, ideas, and trends central to the current practice of the discipline and its historical formation. As an orientation both to the field and to the department, two sessions are devoted to professionalization issues. Week four is dedicated to grant writing and will prepare students for specific funding applications, with an emphasis on the SSHRC grant. Students will draft research statements according to the SSHRC guidelines, which will then undergo peer review in class (further details will be given in advance of the session). The final week will explore the futures of Art History from a professional standpoint. We will discuss career opportunities, conference participation, publication strategies, and we will also go over key resources for the field. The two professionalization sessions will be led jointly by Professors Hilsdale and Hunter and will be held on Wednesday evenings rather than the regularly scheduled time slot on Thursday. At its core this seminar is intended to prepare students for a productive and engaged graduate career. Three key skills, all central to advanced art historical research, will be developed in this seminar: I. Close and careful reading and analysis. For every assigned reading it is essential to consider how the author constructs an argument. What kind of evidence is being marshaled and in support of what larger claim? What are the broader implications of the text and where and how are they being articulated? In order to hone your reading skills, you are asked to respond in writing to the assigned reading on a regular basis. II. Clear and critical written exposition. This is a writing intensive seminar. In addition to the grant proposal, students will produce two critical essays in response to departmental lectures and a final research paper due at the end of the seminar on December 6 th. III. Confident oral presentation skills. As in most graduate seminars, students will lead a research presentation in advance of the final paper. Student presentations are scheduled for on November 25 th, the penultimate class of the seminar.

2 METHOD OF EVALUATION Final course evaluation will be based on the following four categories: I. Weekly Responses and Participation: 10% Ten percent of your final mark will be based on your participation in seminar. This includes thoughtful and engaged discussion in class as well written responses to the readings. Students are required to respond in writing to the readings for the dates marked by an asterisk in the seminar schedule (eight of nine sessions total). These written responses may take the shape of short questions, clarifications, connections, and/or observations. The ideal response would include one or two thoughtful discussion questions that demonstrate a command of the issues and endeavor to spark conversation and/or debate. Responses must be posted to the WebCT course web site on the discussions page by midnight the Wednesday night before class. II. Departmental Lecture Essays: 20% (10% each) Over the course of the semester, four departmental lectures are scheduled: Krista A. Thompson on September 23, Beat Brenk on September 30, Thomas Schlich on October 21, and Kristina Huneault on November 4. You are expected to attend all of these lectures (and encouraged to ask questions and introduce yourselves to the speaker afterward!). You are also to write responses to two of the four lectures. Your responses are not meant to be evaluative but rather to recognize the larger art historical debates with which the lectures are engaged. Each lecture response should include a brief introduction to the author (via internet sleuthing) and a concise summary of the lecture. The bulk of the essay, however, should situate the content of the lecture within the field. The following questions may guide your response: What are the stakes of the research? How might the research relate to other current debates in the field? Does the research relate to any of the readings for the course? What lessons are to be drawn from the research that might inflect one s own research? Each response should be 2-4 pages in length (double spaced with standard formatting). You may submit them at any point during the term until Friday November 12 at the latest. It is strongly recommended, however, that you space them out so as to benefit from feedback on your first essay. III. Grant Writing: 10% Ten percent of your final mark will be based on your own grant proposal statement as well as your participation and constructive comments during the grant writing peer review session, which is scheduled for Wednesday, September 22 nd at 5:30pm. For this session you are expected to prepare a draft of your research statement according to the SSHRC application guidelines. We will discuss initial drafts as a group and then, with this feedback in mind, you will revise your proposal for the departmental deadline. More detailed instructions will follow. Those students who will not be applying for SSHRC funding will write a research proposal according to the format of another major granting institution to be determined in consultation with me. Please note that a SSHRC information session will be held on September 15 ( , Leacock 232). 2

3 IV. Final Research Project: 60% (5% proposal, 20% presentation, 35% paper) The final research project will constitute 60% of the final course grade. This includes a one-page preliminary proposal due in week 9 (October 28), an in-class presentation in week thirteen (November 25), and the final page paper due Monday (due December 6). This primary research component of the seminar is modeled on the interventions format of the Art Bulletin in which a key thematic or work of art is re-examined from multiple critical perspectives with an eye to future research directions. The first step is to select a debate within your own particular area of study and identify its key voices. This debate my be centered around a key work of art but it could also be sparked by a particular moment, a figure, a term, or a concept. You will then historicize the different positions and suggest a future intervention of your own. The goal of this project is to situate your own research interests within larger art historical debates and to identify and articulate key intellectual patterns and trajectories in your own area of study. Ideally, this final research project will complement your grant proposal by deepening the historiographical and theoretical frame of your research. SEMINAR MATERIALS There is no course pack for this seminar. Most weekly readings will be available from the course web site (mycourses.mcgill.ca) or via jstor. Copies of Jean Wyrick and Sarika P. Bose, Steps to Writing Well (Nelson Education, 2010) have been ordered for purchase in the McGill Library bookstore. This is not a required text but is a good resource for writing. UNIVERSITY NOTICES In the event of extraordinary circumstances beyond the University s control, the content and/or evaluation scheme in this course is subject to change. In accord with McGill University s Charter of Students Rights, students in this course have the right to submit in English or in French any written work that is to be graded. McGill University values academic integrity. Therefore all students must understand the meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures (see for more information). L'université McGill attache une haute importance à l honnêteté académique. Il incombe par conséquent à tous les étudiants de comprendre ce que l'on entend par tricherie, plagiat et autres infractions académiques, ainsi que les conséquences que peuvent avoir de telles actions, selon le Code de conduite de l'étudiant et des procédures disciplinaires (pour de plus amples renseignements, veuillez consulter le site 3

4 Pro-Seminar Schedule *NB: for eight of the nine class sessions marked by an asterisk, please post a brief response on the course web site in advance of the seminar (by midnight on the Wednesday at the latest). Week I. Thursday, September 2, 2010 Introduction and Course Overview (Cecily Hilsdale) Plus a visit to the Blackader-Lauterman Library for an orientation conversation with Jennifer Garland, Librarian for Art History and Communication Studies. Michael Ann Holly, Past Looking: Historical Imagination and the Rhetoric of the Image (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), Week II. Thursday, September 9, 2010 *The Politics of Style History: Alois Riegl (Angela Vanhaelen) Alois Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1999), , , , Week III. Thursday, September 16, *Iconography and Iconology: The Detectives, Erwin Panofsky and Aby Warburg (Tania Woloshyn) Panofsky, Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art, Studies in Iconology (1939) [1972] [repr. Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955), 51-81]. Panofsky, The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline, in Eric Fernie, ed., Art History and its Methods: A Critical Anthology (New York: Phaidon Press, 1995), Panofsky, Melancholia I, from The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), [also 2005 reprint]. Warburg, Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America, in Preziosi, The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology (Oxford University Press, 1998), Supplementary reading: Holly, Panofsky and the Foundation of Art History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1982). Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (New York/London: Harper and Row, 1972). Week IV. Professionalization I: Grant Proposal Writing (Cecily Hilsdale and Mary Hunter) This week, instead of regularly scheduled seminar on Thursday, we will meet on Wednesday, September 22, at 5.30pm to peer review grant proposals. The departmental deadline for SSHRC applications has yet to be announced but is likely to be early October (last year it was October 1). Departmental lecture on Thursday, September 23, at 5:00pm: Performing Visibility: Street Photography, Black Youth and the Art of Being Seen, by Professor Krista A. Thompson of Northwestern University. 4

5 Week V. Thursday, September 30, 2010 *The Social History of Art: Meyer Schapiro and T.J. Clark (Cecily Hilsdale) Meyer Schapiro, From Mozarabic to Romanesque in Silos, Art Bulletin, vol. 21, no. 4 (December 1939), Michael Camille, How New York Stole the Idea of Romanesque Art : Medieval, Modern and Postmodern in Meyer Schapiro, Oxford Art Journal, vol. 17, no. 1 (1994), Otto Karl Werckmeister, Jugglers in a Monastery, Oxford Art Journal, vol. 17, no. 1 (1994) T. J. Clark, On the Social History of Art, in Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973), 9-20 (chapter 1). Departmental lecture at 5.30: Rhetoric, Ambition and Function of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, by Professor Beat Brenk of the University of Basel and Rome. Week VI. Thursday, October 7, 2010 *Originality, Imitation, Reproduction, Simulation (Ryan Whyte) Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in Illuminations. Translated by Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), Jean Baudrillard, The Precession of Simulacra, in Simulacra and Simulation. trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), Maria H. Loh, New and Improved: Repetition as Originality in Italian Baroque Practice and Theory, Art Bulletin 86/3 (2004), Michael Camille, The Très Riches Heures : An Illuminated Manuscript in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Critical Inquiry 17/1 (1990), Week VII. Thursday, October 14, 2010 *Interventions: Las Meninas (Cecily Hilsdale) Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York, Vintage Books, 1994 [1968]), Svetlana Alpers, Interrelation without Representation, or, the Viewing of Las Meninas, Representations 1 (1983), Editor s Note, Art Bulletin 87 (September 2005), 402. Byron Ellsworth Hamann, The Mirrors of Las Meninas: Cochineal, Silver, and Clay, Art Bulletin 92 (March-June, 2010), Responses, Art Bulletin 92 (March-June, 2010), 37-60, by Adam Herring, Walter Mignolo, Filipe Pereda, Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt, Emily Umberger and Francesca Bavuso, and the author s response. 5

6 Week VIII. Thursday, October 21, 2010 *Vision and Objectivity (Christine Ross) Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007), chapter 1 ( Epistemologies of the Eye ), 1-53, and chapter 7 ( Representation to Presentation ), Departmental lecture at 5.30: Photography, Body function and Rationalized Fracture Care (WWI and 1920s Vienna), by Professor Thomas Schlich of McGill s Social Studies of Medicine Program. Week IX. Thursday, October 28, 2010 Preliminary Research Proposals Due *Feminism Then and Now (Mary Hunter) Linda Nochlin, Why have there been no great women artists? (1970). Griselda Pollock, Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity, in Norma Broude and Mary D. Gerrard, eds., Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History (1988), Carol Duncan, The Modern Art Museum: It s a man s world, in Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (Routledge, London, 1995), Karen-Edis Barzman, Beyond the Canon: Feminists, Postmodernism, and the History of Art, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52/3 (Summer 1994), Hal Foster, et al in Art Since 1900 (Thames and Hudson, 2004), Jennifer Doyle and Amelia Jones Introduction: New Feminist Theories of Visual Culture, Signs 31/3, 2006, Week X. Thursday, November 4, 2010 *Aesthetics and Identity (Amelia Jones) Kant Art and Genius from Critique of Judgment (1790), sections 43, 44, 46, 47,48, 49, 50; excerpt in Susan Feagin and Patrick Maynard, eds. Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), ; reading guides: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Jacques Derrida, Economimesis, Diacritics 11/2 (Summer 1981), Stuart Hall, Who Needs Identity?, in Stuart Hall and Paul du Gray, eds. Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage Press, 1996). Amelia Jones, Every man knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure : Beauty Discourse and the Logic of Aesthetics, in Emory Elliott, ed., Aesthetics in a Multicultural Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Recommended Reading: D.N. Rodowick, Impure Mimesis, or the Ends of the Aesthetic, in Peter Brunette and David Wills, eds., Deconstruction and the Visual Arts: Art, Media, Architecture (Cambridge, 1994),

7 Luc Ferry, Homo Aestheticus: The Invention of Taste in the Democratic Age (1990), tr. Robert de Loaiza (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Monroe Beardsley, The Artist s Intention, in Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1958), 17-21, 24-6; here from Feagin and Maynard, ed. Aesthetics, Departmental lecture at 5.30: Diversity: Difference, Identity and the Botanical Encounter, by Professor Kristina Huneault of Concordia University. Week XI. Thursday, November 11, 2010 *Mining Material Narratives: Dialogism, Allegory, and the Third Space of Meaning (Rebecca Duclos) Before class, students should familiarize themselves with the exhibition Mining the Museum by Fred Wilson, which was installed at the Baltimore Historical Society in Maryland in There is a great deal of information about this installation on the web, but I recommend looking at Maurice Berger s book, Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations (Baltimore: University of Maryland, 2001) for images and essays by Berger and Gonzalez, as well as an interview with Wilson himself. This book will be on reserve under Prof. Duclos name for the course ARTH 339. Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin. Edited by Michael Holquist; Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), and Craig Owens, The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism Part 2, October 13 (Summer, 1980): Roland Barthes, The Third Meaning: Research Notes on Several Eisenstein Stills, in The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation. Translated by Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), Week XII. Thursday, November 18, Canadian Center for Architecture Class will meet at the CCA, 1920 Baile Street ( Alexis Sornin, Head of the Study Centre, will speak about the resources. Gwendolyn Owens will speak about the Gordon Matta-Clark archive. TBA Week XIII-XIV Thursday, November 25: Student Intervention Presentations Wednesday, December 1: Professionalization II: Futures of Art History (Hilsdale and Hunter) Monday, December 6: Final Papers due 7