ARTH 151 - New Topics in Art History

Spring 2023 Topics:

ARTH 151.1 How Houses Build People: Ancient and Modern Domestic Life

Home, abode, dwelling, hovel, mansion, apartment, cabin, cottage, house. We use many terms to refer to the places we live. At a basic level, all human societies build dwellings for shelter, but these structures have taken an astonishing variety of forms. In this course, we will examine this fundamental structure-the house-not just as a simple shelter, but also as a carrier of social meaning. Archaeologists have spent a considerable effort to determine how early people built houses, but this course aims to invert the emphasis and ask how houses build people. That is, how did the form and organization of houses influence social behavior in the past, and, similarly, how do houses influence our own society today? As houses are a basic unit of social and economic organization, we will explore how the house acts as a medium through which culture is passed down and transformed, in both the present and in the past.  Be it ever so humble, the house can shed light on social relationships within families and other social groups, as well as larger cultural priorities. We will focus on dwellings in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the modern United States, including taking some field trips to visit historic houses right here in Worcester.

ARTH 151.2 The Floating World: Design and Material Culture of Ukiyo-e
This class will introduce students to major developments in Japanese art during the Edo period (1600-1868), with special focus on how the culture of mass consumption and media production informed popular design. It will use a single exhibition, The Floating World: Japanese Prints of the John Chandler Bancroft Collectionat the Worcester Art Museum as a point of reference, allowing students the opportunity to see the art they are studying up close and make more informed observations about its material qualities. There will be a particular focus on the material culture of premodern Japan, and students will learn what the physical attributes of prints, including its material composition, tell us about their history. Students will be asked to give presentations on assigned topics, as well as complete a research project for the course. The course content will also engage with the practice of collecting and curating Japanese prints in the West, and how that informs scholarship on the topic.

Students will be charged a lab fee when enrolling in ARTH 151.2.

FALL 2022 TOPIC TROY ETERNAL: MYTHOLOGY, ART AND HISTROY - A half-divine warrior. An unusually crafty general. A beautiful woman far from home. A giant wooden horse? Many ancient Greek and Roman sources, including Homer’s poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, tell the story of the Trojan War and its aftermath. This mythological, ten-year conflict between the united Greek cities and the Trojans was among the most popular themes in both art and literature in the Classical world, featuring memorable figures such as Achilles, Odysseus, and Helen. Artists from the 8th century BCE through the present day have responded to and interpreted these stories through their own cultural lenses in ways that emphasized issues of contemporary importance.

How did one Bronze Age town stay famous enough that it was featured in a movie starring Brad Pitt thousands of years after its founding? This course will examine both the archaeology of the site of Troy and the legacy of the legend of the Trojan War in later art. By the end of the semester, students will have read excerpts from both the Iliad and the Odyssey in translation and will also be knowledgeable about significant works of art from antiquity through the present day which respond to these texts. We will cover topics such as the historicity of the war, the political use of images of the war by the Athenians after the Persian War, Augustus’ promotion of the figure of Aeneas in early Roman Imperial Art, the cultivation of a purported Trojan heritage by Medieval royal families, the popularity of reimagined scenes from the war in Renaissance and Baroque painting, the role of The Odyssey in art about the African diaspora, and depictions of Troy in film.

May be repeated three times for credit.

Anticipated Terms Offered: Bi-Annually