ARH 503: History of 20th-Century Art Criticism and Theory

The literature of art has expanded enormously in the 20th century-far beyond attempts to organize it developmentally or conceptually. An attempt is made to define types of criticism both in relation to the critics and their relation to the support system for the arts of which they are part.

Spring, 3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

ARH 520: Media Aesthetics

In this seminar we will focus on a comparative approach to theories of visual media aesthetics across photography, cinema, and new media, from the nineteenth century to the present, and across disciplinary methods of art history, film studies, philosophy/critical theory, and media theory. Mixing canons and objects will allow a cross-fertilization of ideas and strategies for analyzing visual culture, and it should be useful for students working in a number of fields. This course will not offer a comprehensive survey as much as a close analysis of a body of related texts, ideas, and visual works. Students from any disciplinary background are welcome, and may adapt the final assignment to advance individual research goals. The selection of readings and examples we discuss will be adapted as the course unfolds. But, it is shaped by an interest in how/what media aesthetics can do or mean through the production of specific temporal and spatial forms of experience. This question has conditioned disciplinary formations, shaping canonical ideas about media in modernity as well as current interpretations of digital media. But it remains urgent to re-ask: how do, and how could, aesthetics and technics correlate with actual embodied and sociopolitical realities? How do specific material formats, specific practices of perception, and specific historical and cultural contexts interweave with and impact more abstract ontological, phenomenological, epistemological, and ethical potentials?

3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 521: Global Postwar Art

This course has a two-fold goal: to explore the recent scholarship on postwar art across a spectrum of situated geopolitics; and to explore the year 1989 in global exhibition contexts. In the semester¿s first half, the primary texts¿Sonal Khullar, Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930-1990 (2015), Christine Ho, Drawing from Life: Sketching and Socialist Realism in the People¿s Republic of China (2020), and Joshua Cohen, The Black Art Renaissance: African Sculpture and Modernism across Continents (2020)¿are paired with a range of articles and book chapters written by more established scholars in the relevant subfields. As we will learn, the temporal demarcation of the year 1945 is not strictly observed in this representation of recent scholarship. In the semester¿s second half, the students will explore a case study of their choice¿the 3rd Havana Bienal (Havana, 1989), Les Magiciens de la Terre (Paris, 1989), The Other Story (London, 1989), and The Decades Show (New York, 1990)¿by conducting research of both primary and secondary literatures. Each of these exhibitions manifests a particular picturing of the global, allowing us to trace multiple swan songs of the global postwar period.

3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 540: Methodologies of Art History

This graduate seminar is designed to engage students with the history and methods of the discipline of art history. Through close readings and focused discussions, the course examines issues raised by aesthetics, the problems of biography and 'periodization', and the role of canon formation. Particular focus is directed towards the interpretive tools that have developed from within the discipline of art. In addition, also stressed is the interdisciplinary nature of art history through readings that discuss how lines of thought and critical inquiry emerging within other disciplines have had enormous influence on art history and criticism in the last two decades: semiotics, feminist theory, psychoanalysis, anthropology and post colonial theory, cultural studies, theories of mass culture and the post-modern, and the current debates about visual culture.

3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

ARH 543: Topics in Renaissance Art

This course, usually a seminar, deals with one or several of the following aspects of Renaissance art: iconographic problems, style and connoisseurship (including the study of individual works at the Metropolitan Museum or the Frick), patronage and its effect on the form and content of a work, the exchange of artistic ideas between northern and southern Europe, and Renaissance sources in antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Fall or Spring, alternate years, 3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 544: Topics in Early Modern Art

This seminar examines methodological developments and historical issues related to the art and visual culture of the early modern period. Though we are concerned with objects, discourses, and practices emerging in the seventeenth century, we also approach these through the perspective of contemporary critical tools (for example, theories of urban space, spectacle, and representation; psychoanalysis, sexuality and subjectivity; coloniality and the encounter with New world otherness; semiotics and the construction of absolutist power). Students are encouraged to engage with these issues through the study of traditional high art objects as well as through other forms of representation emerging in the early modern period-for example, scientific illustration, more ephemeral forms of print culture, and even urban and courtly spectacle.

Fall or Spring, alternate years, 3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 545: Topics in 19th-Century Art

Selected topics in 19th-century art with an emphasis on

3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 546: Topics in 20th-Century Art

Twentieth-century art considered as an international movement, European and American, although national groups may be studied. Emphasis varies with topics ranging over stylistic analysis, iconographical interpretations, and theoretical studies. Students are expected to undertake original research and interpretation.

Fall or Spring, alternate years, 3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 547: Topics in Global, Colonial, and Diasporic Art

This course examines various issues in the appreciation, interpretation and appropriation of non-Western art. Emphasis is on developing a critical approach to these arts and the manner in which they have been represented and misrepresented in the Western imagination. Topics vary, but may include exploration of themes in the so-called traditional arts of Africa, Oceania, Native and Latin America, the transformations of these arts during the colonial period, issues of identity and the consequences of dislocation versus sense of place in the diaspora, and contemporary expressions of non-Western artists on the global scene.

Fall or Spring, alternate years, 3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 548: Museum Studies

Through a combination of field trips, visiting lecturers, group discussion, and student projects, the course surveys the diverse aspects of the museum field, including management, curatorship, exhibitions, public relations, conservation, and other areas of administration and professional practice.

3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

ARH 549: Topics in American Visual Culture

This course examines selected issues in the history of American art and material culture. The course focuses upon, but is not necessarily limited to, the United States. Topics include public art and public culture; approaches to the study of material culture; art and commercial and/or popular culture; art and regional locations; realism; imaging the West; cross-cultural exchanges in art of the United States. (May be used to fulfill 20th-century requirement when material deals with 20th-century art.)

Fall or Spring, alternate years, 3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 550: Inquiries into Art Criticism and Theory

This course deals with the theoretical approaches to the study of art that cross historical boundaries. Topics vary from semester to semester. They may be an expansion of one of the areas generally covered in ARH 540, such as psychology of art or the iconography of architecture. Other investigations may focus on subjects requiring a special methodological approach, such as the theory and history of ornament and design or the role of public art.

Fall or Spring, 3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 551: Theories of Performance

This course examines different theories of performance as they relate to theatre and everyday life. Students explore ways of thinking about the performing body and different modes of cultural expression. There is a performing component to the course in addition to a final paper.

3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated 2 times FOR credit.

ARH 551: Topics in Performance

The histories and theories of performance are explored. Topics may be the performing body, performance and political action, avant-garde performance, performing and artifact, virtual performance, performance and identity. Depending on the topic, there may be a performance and/or computer based projects.

3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

ARH 552: Topics in Contemporary Art

The course will examine the latest developments in visual art and architecture, beginning with the Neo-Expressionism and Neo-Conceptualism of the 1980s and extending to installation and video art. Postmodernist and activist art will be examined in particular detail, and contextualized in terms of the broader patterns of 20th century art.

3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 553: Contemporary Art in New York

A systematic survey of contemporary art on view in museums and galleries in New York. The class would alternate between gallery/museum visits and interpretative analyses of the work in the classroom. A variety of theoretical approaches will be used and the full range of contemporary pluralism will be examined. Contemporary art will be understood as both a manifestation of contemporary society and in terms of its larger art historical context and significance. The New York art scene is the richest in the world. The class offers the student the opportunity for direct, informed contact with it.

3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

ARH 554: Topics in Visual Culture

This class examines issues in the interdisciplinary field of visual culture. Visual culture studies look at the dynamic state of visual media in contemporary life and their historical origins, seeking to relate art and film to the mass media and digital culture.

Fall or Spring, 3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 570: Issues in Architectural History and Criticism

This course examines a series of topics that link architecture with other critical disciplines. Among the topics that may be addressed are architectural theory and the theories of language; the history of proportion and the construction of gender; and Orientalism.

Fall or Spring, alternate years, 3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 580: Art Criticism or Gallery Internship

An internship offering practical experience in some aspect of the field of art history and criticism, such as gallery and curatorial work in an on-campus or off-campus gallery or museum, or journalistic experience with an art or criticism publication such as the Art department journal Art Criticism.

Prerequisite: Good standing in the graduate art history and criticism program

Fall and Spring, 1-3 credits, S/U grading

May be repeated 2 times FOR credit.

ARH 591: Practicum in the Writing of Art Criticism

This course is designed as a practicum in the writing of art criticism under the supervision of the faculty.

Fall and Spring, 3 credits, S/U grading

May be repeated 2 times FOR credit.

ARH 592: Practicum in Teaching

Instruction in the department under the supervision of the faculty. (This course may not be included more than once in the courses taken in fulfillment of the 36 credit hour requirement.)

Fall and Spring, 3 credits, S/U grading

ARH 595: Directed Readings in Art History, Criticism, and Theory

An independent reading course to be arranged with a particular faculty member. Normally, this course is reserved for second year Masters Students who have fulfilled most of their course requirements and for whom the proposed program of study cannot be completed within other existing course structures.

Fall and Spring, 1-3 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 598: Thesis

Prerequisite: Completion of all degree requirements Fall, Spring and

Summer, 1-6 credits, S/U grading

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 602: Teaching Practicum, Advanced

Instruction in the department by advanced graduate students under the supervision of faculty.

3 credits, S/U grading

May be repeated 2 times FOR credit.

ARH 690: Directed Readings for Doctoral Candidates

An independent reading course to be arranged with a particular faculty member. Normally, this course is reserved for advanced PhD. students who have fulfilled most of their course requirements and for whom the proposed program of study cannot be completed within other existing course structures.

Fall and Spring, 1-9 credits, Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 699: Dissertation Research on Campus

Prerequisite: Must be advanced to candidacy (G5). Major portion of research must take place on SBU campus, at Cold Spring Harbor, or at the Brookhaven National Lab.

Fall, Spring, and Summer, 1-9 credits, S/U grading

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 700: Dissertation Research off Campus - Domestic

Prerequisite: Must be advanced to candidacy (G5). Major portion of research will take place off-campus, but in the United States and/or U.S. provinces. Please note, Brookhaven National Labs and the Cold Spring Harbor Lab are considered on-campus. All international students must enroll in one of the graduate student insurance plans and should be advised by an International Advisor.

Fall, Spring, 1-9 credits, S/U grading

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 701: Dissertation Research off Campus - International

Prerequisite: Must be advanced to candidacy (G5). Major portion of research will take place outside of the United States and/or U.S. provinces. Domestic students have the option of the health plan and may also enroll in MEDEX. International students who are in their home country are not covered by mandatory health plan and must contact the Insurance Office for the insurance charge to be removed. International students who are not in their home country are charged for the mandatory health insurance. If they are to be covered by another insurance plan they must file a waiver be second week of classes. The charge will only be removed if other plan is deemed comparable.

All international students must received clearance from an International Advisor.

Fall, Spring, 1-9 credits, S/U grading

May be repeated for credit.

ARH 800: Summer Research

May be repeated for credit.