History of Art
56 High, 432.2668
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Chair
Edward Cooke, Jr. (102A AG, 432.2670, edward.cooke@yale.edu)
Director of Graduate Studies
Alexander Nemerov (203 OAG, 432.8442, alexander.nemerov@yale.edu)
Professors
Brian Allen (Adjunct), Judith Colton, Edward Cooke, Jr., David
Joselit, Diana Kleiner, Amy Meyers (Adjunct), Mary Miller,
Alexander Nemerov, Jock Reynolds (Adjunct),
Vincent Scully (Emeritus), Robert Thompson, John Walsh (Adjunct),
Christopher Wood, Mimi Yiengpruksawan
Associate Professors
Christy Anderson, Timothy Barringer, Jonathan D. Katz (Adjunct)
Assistant Professors
Judith Barringer, Anne Dunlop, Björn Ewald, Sandy Isenstadt,
Kellie Jones, Christine Mehring, Noa Steimatsky, Lillian Tseng
Lecturers
Mark Aronson, Karen Foster, Patricia Garland, Lynn Jones (Visiting),
John Marciari (Visiting), Kishwar Rizvi (Visiting), John Walsh
(Adjunct)
Fields of Study
Fields include Greek and Roman; Medieval and Byzantine;
Renaissance; Baroque; eighteenth-, nineteenth, and twentieth-century
European; Modern Architecture; African; African American;
American; British; Pre-Columbian; Chinese; Japanese; and film.
Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
Students in the history of art must pass examinations
in German or French, and one other language pertinent to their
field of study (which may be French or German). One examination
must be passed at the beginning of the first term, the other
not later than the beginning of the third term. German is
required for students in Western art. Students of Chinese
art must qualify in Chinese, Japanese, and either German or
French, and they have an extra year in which to do so. During
the first two and a half years of study, students normally
take thirteen term courses. Normally by January 20 of the
second year, students submit a qualifying paper that should
demonstrate the candidate’s ability successfully to
complete a Ph.D. dissertation in art history. By the end of
the first term of the third year, the student is expected
to have established a dissertation topic. A prospectus outlining
the topic must be approved by a committee at a colloquium.
During the spring term of the third year the student is expected
to take the qualifying examination. The candidate must demonstrate
knowledge of his or her field and related areas, as well as
a good grounding in method and bibliography. Students are
admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. upon completion of all
predissertation requirements, including the prospectus and
qualifying examination. Admission to candidacy must take place
by the end of the third year.
The faculty considers teaching to be an important part of
the professional preparation of graduate students. Students
in the History of Art will teach in their second and third
years. They receive a total of one course credit as teaching
fellows when they lead a discussion section.
Combined Ph.D. Programs
History of Art and African American Studies
The History of Art department offers, in conjunction with
the Program in African American Studies, a combined Ph.D.
in History of Art and African American Studies. Students in
the combined-degree program will take three core courses in
African American Studies as part of the required twelve courses
and are subject to the language requirement for the Ph.D.
in History of Art. The dissertation prospectus and the dissertation
itself must be approved by both History of Art and African
American Studies. For further details, see
African American Studies.
History of Art and Renaissance Studies
The Department of History of Art also offers, in conjunction
with the Renaissance Studies Program, a combined Ph.D. in
the History of Art and Renaissance Studies. For further details,
see Renaissance Studies.
The Center for the Study of American Art and Material Culture
The Center for the Study of American Art and Material
Culture provides a programmatic link among the Yale faculty,
museum professionals, and graduate students who maintain a
scholarly interest in the study, analysis, and interpretation
of American art and material culture. It brings together colleagues
from a variety of disciplines—from History of Art and
American Studies to Anthropology, Archaeological Studies,
and Geology and Geophysics—and from some of Yale’s
remarkable museum collections from the Art Gallery and Peabody
Museum to Beinecke Library. Center activities will focus upon
one particular theme each year and will include hosting one
or more visiting American Art and Material Culture Fellows
to teach a course each term and interact with Yale colleagues;
weekly lunch meetings in which a member makes a short presentation
centered on an artifact or group of artifacts followed by
lively discussion about methodology, interpretation, and context,
and an annual three-day Yale–Smithsonian Seminar on
Material Culture.
Master's Degrees
M.Phil. See Graduate
School requirements. Alternatively, the Department of
the History of Art offers, in conjunction with the Medieval
Studies program, a joint M.Phil. degree. For further details,
see Medieval Studies.
M.A. (en route to the Ph.D.). This degree is awarded
after the satisfactory completion of one year of course work
(six term courses) and after evidence of proficiency in one
required foreign language. The student normally petitions
for the degree at the time of registration in the fall of
the second year.
Program materials are available upon request to the Director of Graduate Studies, Department of the History of Art, Yale University, 56 High Street, PO Box 208272, New Haven CT 06520-8272.
Courses
HSAR 500a, Introduction to the Study of Art History. Christopher
Wood. W 3.30–5.20
This class introduces students to the methods of the
discipline of art history, such as, for example, connoisseurship,
iconography, feminism, and social art history. The class is
reserved for incoming graduate students in the History of
Art department.
HSAR 506a or b, The Teaching of the History of Art.
History of Art graduate students only.
By arrangement with faculty.
HSAR 512a or b, Directed Research.
By arrangement with faculty.
HSAR 514a or b, Curatorial Training.
By arrangement with faculty.
HSAR 525b, The City of Rome. Björn Ewald,
Christopher Wood. T 1.30–3.20
This seminar is structured around a trip to Rome during
spring break. Class meetings address the history, topography,
urban politics, architecture, and art of Rome from antiquity
to the eighteenth century, with some attention to late-nineteenth-
and early-twentieth-century urbanism and restoration policy
as well. Topics include the myth of Rome’s origins;
urban planning; Roman sculpture and architecture; the city
as spectacle; imperial spaces and monuments; temple and church
construction; the relic cult and pilgrimages; civic icons;
the survival of pagan artifacts in the Middle Ages; tombs
and cemeteries; early travel guides; palaces and villas; the
use of spolia and the construction of a monumental memory.
We explore how changes in the architectural organization of
public space reflect Rome’s political, social, and economic
changes over the centuries. The questions of continuity and
change, transformation and adaptation, are leitmotifs of the
course. The course is designed for all students of Western
art and culture, not only for those focusing on Roman archaeology
and art history. Also CLSS 878b.
HSAR 593a, The Bayeux Tapestry. Howard Bloch.
M 3.30–5.20
A study of the Bayteux Tapestry in the context of the
Conquest and the Anglo-Norman world. Topics include: origin;
formal description; fabrication; Nordic and continental homologies;
relation of inscription to image, of borders to central panels,
of decoration to narration; representations of the protagonists,
of the event, of the everyday, of military, nautical, architectural,
social, political, religious, and natural worlds; mixing of
Viking, Celtic, Saxon, and Gallic cultures; literary and chronicle
accounts. Basic text, the Bayeux Tapestry Digital Edition
CD, 2003. Also FREN 741a.
HSAR 598a, The Imperial Image: Issues in Sixteenth-Century
Art and Architecture of the Islamic World. Kishwar
Rizvi . Th 1.30–3.20
The sixteenth century witnessed the rise of three great
empires of the early modern Islamic world, namely the Ottoman,
Safavid, and Mughal. These kingdoms together stretched from
North Africa to the Caspian Sea, and from the Balkans to the
Bay of Bengal. Whereas all three shared the Islamic and Turkman
roots of post-Mongol Asia, they distinguished themselves through
their political and religious disposition. Their differences
were accentuated through external rivalry, as between the
Sunni Ottomans in Turkey and the Shi’I Safavids in Iran,
or manifest in terms of internal communal challenges, as presented
in multi-ethnic Mughal India. This course examines the competitive
discourse between, and within, the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal
courts, by examining the imperial art and architecture commissioned
by the ruling elite. An interdisciplinary approach, which
makes use of contemporary historical narrative painting, urbanism,
and architecture, raises issues on the making of art and history
in the early modern Islamic world.
HSAR 634b, Architecture of the English Renaissance. Christy
Anderson. T 2.30–4.20
A close study of the major monuments in Tudor and early
Stuart England including Elizabethan, prodigy houses, religious
and devotional architecture, garden design, building in London,
and the changes in court architecture. Special attention is
given to the relationship of architecture to the other arts
(including literature and book design, theater, painting,
textiles) as well as to the current political and cultural
debates.
HSAR 655a, Garden and Garden Design 1550–1800. Judith
Colton. T 1.30–3.20
In the light of recent reassessments of the study of
gardens in Italy, France, and Britain, this seminar considers
some of the current debates in the field. Emphasis is placed
on topics, such as politics and gardening, the Gothic and
classical revivals, the garden as a setting for display and
performance, for which there is primary material in the Yale
collections (notably, the BAC, Beinecke, and the Lewis Walpole
Library) and which are of special interest to the instructor
and to the participants in the course. Gardening practices
in countries other than those mentioned above can be included
as well.
HSAR 681a, Anglo-French Romanticism. Timothy
Barringer, Susan Greenberg. W 1.30–3.20
A close investigation of the impact of national identity
on the development and subsequent historiography of Romanticism
in British and French art, ca. 1800–1840, based on Yale
collections and the exhibition Constable to Delacroix
at the Metropolitian Museum.
HSAR 689a, Glass in Modern Architecture. Sandy
Isenstadt. W 3.30–5.20
The course reviews the changing uses of glass in a range
of building types from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.
Several introductory sessions review the historical development
of glassmaking technology and survey the use of glass in architectural
theory and building practice. These sessions cover also the
development of the glass manufacturing industry, changes in
the practice of window making, and key new uses of glass in
the nineteenth century, including the Crystal Palace Exhibition
of 1851 and the use of large sheets of glass for shop front
displays. Twentieth-century changes in the use and understanding
of glass are discussed in the context of the invention of
the curtain wall in Chicago and in regard to the utopian visions
of the German avant-garde and efforts on the part of figures
like Bruno Taut and Mies van der Rohe to articulate the formal
implications of an architecture of glass. With the rise of
a modern architecture characterized by increased use of glass,
more theoretical issues are discussed, such as transparency.
A session on resistance to a glass architecture is also included,
with reference especially to the work of Louis Kahn, many
of whose designs were difficult to glaze. Concluding sessions
consider the uses of architectural glass in light of new technological
developments as well as in terms of recent stylistic conventions.
HSAR 699a, The Architecture of Art Museums: Functions
and Forms. John Walsh. T 1.30–3.20
This seminar examines museum buildings with particular
attention to how they fulfill their functions. The main focus
is museums built after World War II, especially for students’
reports; but the background in architecture and ideas during
the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries is covered
in introductory lectures, extensive readings, and discussions.
HSAR 703b, Art, Sex, and the Sixties. Jonathan
D. Katz. M 3.30–5.20
Using the work of Andy Warhol as our ur-text, this graduate
seminar maps the development of increasingly cool and ironic
modes of art making against the heated and ideologically loaded
social and political developments of the 1960s. Its central
query concerns why a set of aesthetic practices that seemingly
celebrated normative values (i.e., Pop art) were nonetheless
elevated to dominance ahead of a range of more confrontational
and oppositional strategies in line with the tenor of the
times. Sexuality, its liberation, and its suppression figure
prominently in this inquiry into the paradoxical engendering
of opposition through the citation of normative forms. In
asking this question, this course hopes to make sense of such
wildly divergent artistic genres of the period as Pop, minimalism,
photo-realism, op art, Fluxus, protest art, performance, hard-edge
abstraction, happenings, assemblage, new media, conceptual
art, text-based art, etc. Painters became dancers, filmmakers,
authors, and designers in record numbers. And at a moment
when Formalist theory grew both increasingly rigid and prominent,
an unheard-of range of distinctly un-Formalist artistic practices
flourished amidst new audiences, new galleries, and art spaces
and, perhaps most notable of all, new prestige. As American
cultural influence finally matched, and perhaps even exceeded,
American military and economic influence, the once esoteric
art world became genuinely popular and certain artists, most
notably Warhol, came to be seen as defining of their social-historical
moment despite—and indeed in some sense through—their
sexuality. Among the readings for this class are Herbert Marcuse’s
One Dimensional Man and Eros and Civilization,
Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium Is the Massage
and other works, as well as period art criticism and social
critique like Daniel Bell’s The End of Ideology—in
addition to a range of primary and secondary art historical/critical
texts. Also AMST 733b, WGST 730b.
HSAR 705a, Medium and Media. David Joselit. M 2.30–4.20
This graduate seminar considers the history of modern
art alongside the history of broadcast media in an effort
to understand how the term “medium” functions
in both the contexts of art history and media studies. In
order to periodize this question the seminar is divided into
three sections: “Radio and the Avant-Garde,” “Television
and Midcentury Modernism,” and “The Internet and
Globalization.” By reading media theorists such as Marshall
McLuhan alongside influential art critics like Clement Greenberg,
this seminar attempts to establish a blueprint for visual
studies in the twentieth century. Other assigned authors include
T. J. Clark, Fredric Jameson, Lev Manovich, and Rosalind Krauss.
HSAR 706b, Empire/Globe. David Joselit. Th 3.30–5.20
Despite the widespread talk of globalization as a generative
cultural condition and despite Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s
much discussed book, Empire, little effort has been made either
to define how globalization has specifically affected art
practice or to evaluate contemporary claims regarding globalization
in light of historical precedent. This seminar attempts to
do both through three types of reading: theoretical texts
on globalization including Hardt and Negri’s book as
well as readings by Arjun Appadurai, Manuel Castellis, and
others; accounts of empire in early modern and pre-modern
eras; and twentieth-century readings concerning cosmopolitanism
or globalization in art practices ranging from the historical
avant-gardes to the present.
HSAR 727b, The Face on Film. Noa Steimatsky. M 1–5 (includes screenings)
The human face is a paradigmatic arena in which the largest
questions on referentiality, the inscription of identity and
subjectivity, and the articulation of interiority in art intersect.
This seminar explores cinema’s intervention vis-à-vis
portraiture’s traditional concerns, the narrative, discursive,
ideological uses of facial representation, and its modern
transfigurations. In extending its photographic basis to consider
the parameters of movement, the incorporation of speech, and
the shifting trajectory of the look, our discussion juxtaposes
narrative fiction film in relation to documentary and experimental
“cinematic portraits.” We explore the close-up,
the regime of the shot-reaction shot, the debates surrounding
identification, expressivity, and notions of animism in cinema,
in light of theoretical writings and of classical and experimental
films by such makers as Epstein, Kuleshov, Dreyer, Bresson,
Pasolini, Hitchcock, Warhol, Cronenberg. Also FILM 827b.
HSAR 729b, American Furniture 1600 to the Present. Edward
Cooke. W 3.30–5.20
In-depth analysis of American furniture made over the
past four centuries. Methodologies for the analysis of furniture
are reviewed and developed through reading and close examination
of objects in the Art Gallery collection. Such topics as materials,
techniques, style, use, and market are stressed. Also
AMST 729b.
HSAR 735b, American Romanticism, 1799–1826. Alexander
Nemerov. Th 1.30–3.20
This course focuses on American visual and literary production
in the Early Republic. Artists, writers, and other figures
to be discussed include the Pearle family, John Vanderlyn,
Charles Brockden Brown, Benjamin Rush, William Rush, and Benjamin
West. Attention throughout the course is on close analysis
of paintings, sculpture, and literature. A term paper and
a major in-class presentation are required. Also AMST
864b, ENGL 864b.
HSAR 747a, Maya Art and Archaeology of Copan and Quirigua. Mary
Miller, Marcello Canuto. M 1.30–3.20
This seminar addresses the art, archaeology, and history
of the southeastern Maya region, particularly the cultural
production and developments at the Classic Maya centers of
Copan, Honduras, and Quirigua, Guatemala. Among the particular
topics for discussion and research are areas where the study
of art, archaeology, and anthropology converge to develop
interdisciplinary interpretations of this region’s importance
and role in Classic Maya civilization. Open to advanced undergraduates
with appropriate course preparation. Also ANTH 710au,
ARCG 710au.
HSAR 770b, Black British Art and Theory. Kellie
Jones. W 2.30–4.20
This course considers the development of visual culture
in this European outpost of the African Diaspora. Of interest
is the way the discipline of cultural studies, which evolved
in postwar Birmingham, intersected with the rise of black
consciousness throughout Britain in the 1980s. How did the
interactions of intellectuals and artists at this moment in
the late twentieth century lead to the creation of strong
postcolonial theory and practice? Readings include works by
Bhabha, Carby, Gilroy, Hall, Maharaj, and Mercer. We look
at visual production by Bhimji, D-Max, Fani-Kayode, Gupta,
Julien, Kempadoo, Kureshi, Piper, Pollard, and Sulter among
others. We also discuss selected exhibitions and publications
that supported this movement. Also AFAM 841b.
HSAR 778bu, From West Africa to the Black Americas. Robert
Thompson. TTh 11.30–12.45
Art, music, and dance in the history of key classical
civilizations south of the Sahara—Mali, Asante, Dahomey,
Yoruba, Ejagham, Kongon—and their impact on the rise
of New World art and music. Also AFAM 728bu, AFST 778bu.
HSAR 779au, New York Mambo: Microcosm of Black Creativity. Robert
Thompson. TTh 11.30–12.45
Rise, development, and philosophic achievement of the
world of New York mambo and salsa. Emphasis on Palmieri, Cortijo,
Roena, Harlow, and Colon. Examination of parallel traditions,
e.g., New York Haitian art, Dominican merengue, reggae and
rastas of Jamaican Brooklyn, and the New York school of Brazilian
capoeira. Also AFAM 729au.
HSAR 781a, Problem and Theory in Afro-Atlantic Architecture
I: Africa. Robert Thompson. Th 3.30–5.20
The seminar addresses a new frontier—rebuilding
the inner cities. This refers to Latino and mainland black
cities within the cities of America. Accordingly, the course
focuses on major roots of Latino and black traditional architecture—Ituri
Forest and Namibian spatial solutions, Berber casbah architecture
and its interactions with the Jews on Djerba isle and in Morocco,
the concept of the Muslim assatayah creolized into the Iberia
azotea and the spread of this terrace-roof style throughout
Latin America. Topics include the architecture of Djenne,
Berber art and architecture, Mauritanian sites, the monumental
stone architecture of Zimbabwe, the sacred architecture of
Ethiopia, and Muslim-influenced architecture from Rabat to
Zanzibar. Then comes a case-by-case examination of some of
the sites of African influence on the architecture of the
Americas—the Puerto Rican casita; the southern verandah;
the round-houses of New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Mexico,
Panama, and Colombia; Ganvie, the Venice of West Africa, and
its mirror image among the tidal stilt architectures of blacks
of the Choco area in Pacific Colombia. The seminar ends with
the shrine architecture of New World adherents of the classical
religions of Dahomey. Also AFAM 739a, AFST 781a.
HSAR 781b, Problem and Theory in Afro-Atlantic Architecture
II: The Black Americas. Robert Thompson. Th 3.30–5.20
A continuation of HSAR 781a. Also AFAM 739b, AFST
781b.
HSAR 800a, Readings in the Intersection of Japanese
and Euro-American Art Practices 1850–1950. Mimi
Yiengpruksawan. Th 3.30–5.20
Preliminary study and theorization, by way of readings
in English, French, and Japanese, of the Japanese presence
in modern Euro-American visual practice from Paris to New
York, and its ramifications for understanding the modernist
project in world terms.
Next: History of Medicine and Science
|
