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Catalogue 2019-2020 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Course Descriptions
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American Studies: Core Courses |
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AMST 207 - Commercialized Childhoods Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 207 ) This course examines features of childhoods in the U.S. at different times and across different social contexts. The primary aims of the course are 1) to examine how we’ve come to the contemporary understanding of American childhood as a distinctive life phase and cultural construct, by reference to historical and cross-cultural examples, and 2) to recognize the diversity of childhoods that exist and the economic, geographical, political, and cultural factors that shape those experiences. Specific themes in the course examine the challenges of studying children; the social construction of childhood (how childhoods are constructed by a number of social forces, economic interests, technological determinants, cultural phenomena, discourses, etc.); processes of contemporary globalization and commodification of childhoods (children’s roles as consumers, as producers, and debates about children’s rights); as well as the intersecting dynamics of age, social class, race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in particular experiences of childhood. Eréndira Rueda.
Two 75-minute periods.
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AMST 231 - Native American Literature
1 unit(s)
This course examines Indigenous North American literatures from a Native American Studies perspective. Native American literature is particularly vast and diverse, representing over 500 Indigenous nations in the northern hemisphere and written/spoken in both Indigenous languages and languages of conquest (English, Spanish, French). Because of this range of writing and spoken stories, our goals for the class are to complicate our understanding of “texts,” to examine the origins of and evolution of tribal literatures (fiction, poetry, non fiction, graphic novel, etc.), and to comprehend the varied theoretical debates and frameworks that have created and nurtured a robust field of Native American literary criticism. A Native American Studies framework positions the literature as the creative work of Native peoples on behalf of their respective Nations or communities and complicated by the on-going legacy of colonialism. Authors include William Apess, Luther Standing Bear, Pauline Johnson, Mourning Dove, Gerald Vizenor, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko, Louise Erdrich, Wendy Rose, Thomas King, Beth Brant, Kimberly Blaeser, and Richard Van Camp, among other Native theorists, spoken word artists, filmmakers, and artists. Molly McGlennen.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 252 - The American Military at Home and Abroad
1 unit(s)
After 1945 the U.S. created the world’s largest and most far-reaching network of military bases. Today, more than 700 military bases in over 150 countries are hosts to American troops, civilian employees of the Department of Defense, and private military contractors. Readings explore the development of this unprecedented global network of military bases, the differing Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) that govern the relationship between the U.S. military and the local populations, as well as the impact of the U.S. troops on these communities. By taking a transnational perspective, we explore the possibilities and limits for democratic change due to the U.S. presence, but also the way in which America’s military deployments abroad brought about change at home. Assigned readings draw on the writing of scholars of the U.S. military, texts produced by opponents of the U.S. military, as well as artistic responses (films, plays, novels, poems) to the U.S. global base structure. Maria Höhn.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 258 - Studies in Sound
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 258 ) This course familiarizes students with the emerging field of sound studies. We spend the first eight weeks exploring the different facets of sound culture: histories and ethnographies of listening; theories of sound capture and reproduction; the political economy of recording media (particularly the MP3); the experience of the modern American soundscape. We conclude with case studies of contemporary sonic experiences: “glitch”-based digital music and the aesthetics of failure; new developments in sonic weaponry; art and activism that “listens” to drones and the US-Mexico border. Hua Hsu.
Prerequisite(s): 100-level course work within the multidisciplinary programs, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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AMST 262 - Native American Women Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as WMST 262 ) In an effort to subjugate indigenous nations, colonizing and Christianizing enterprises in the Americas included the implicit understanding that subduing Native American women through rape and murder maintained imperial hierarchies of gender and power; this was necessary to eradicate Native people’s traditional egalitarian societies and uphold the colonial agenda. Needless to say, Native women’s stories and histories have been inaccurately portrayed, often tainted with nostalgia and delivered through a lens of western patriarchy and discourses of domination. Through class readings and writing assignments, discussions and films, this course examines Native women’s lives by considering the intersections of gender and race through indigenous frameworks. We expose Native women’s various cultural worldviews in order to reveal and assess the importance of indigenous women’s voices to national and global issues such as sexual violence, environmentalism, and health. The class also takes into consideration the shortcomings of western feminisms in relation to the realities of Native women and Native people’s sovereignty in general. Areas of particular importance to this course are indigenous women’s urban experience, Haudenosaunee influence on early U.S. suffragists, indigenous women in the creative arts, third-gender/two-spiritedness, and Native women’s traditional and contemporary roles as cultural carriers. Molly McGlennen.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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AMST 266 - Art, Urgency, and Everyday Life in the United States Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 266 and ART 266 ) An interdisciplinary exploration of how a range of U.S. based creators–through their artistic practices, aesthetic choices, and expressive interventions–are grappling with urgent issues of our time. Lisa Collins.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or coursework in Africana Studies, American Studies, Women’s Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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AMST 290 - Community-Engaged Learning Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission of the director required.
Course Format: INT
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AMST 297 - Readings in American Studies Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: OTH
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AMST 298 - Independent Study Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission of the director required.
Course Format: OTH
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AMST 329 - American Literary Realism Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 329 ) Exploration of the literary concepts of realism and naturalism focusing on the theory and practice of fiction between 1870 and 1910, the first period in American literary history to be called modern. The course may examine past critical debates as well as the current controversy over realism in fiction. Attention is given to such questions as what constitutes reality in fiction, as well as the relationship of realism to other literary traditions. Authors may include Henry James, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Charles Chestnutt, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, and Willa Cather.
Topic for 2019/20a: American Literary Realism and Naturalism: A Reading of Major American Novels Written Primarily Between 1870 and 1910. After the Civil War, the U.S. experienced increasing rates of democracy and literacy, the rapid growth of industrialism and urbanization, an expanding population due to immigration, and a rise in middle-class affluence, which provided a fertile literary environment for writers interested in explaining these rapid shifts in culture. A grand explanatory narrative directs the plot and action of these novels. Authorial intentions give way to a set of laws or principles derived from the dominant ideologies that supported America’s maturation into a super-power: Social Darwinism, the Gospel of Efficiency (new Protestant work ethic), or Imperialism (new Manifest Destiny). Surprisingly, the myth of American ‘progress’ is tested and found wanting in almost every book on the syllabus. In seeking scientific objectivity, writers plied a representational strategy focused on ‘hard facts’ and minute detail, which as often as not found the protagonist at odds with his or her environment. Though post-war, the terrain we cover is embattled: race riots, strikes, downward economic mobility, criminality, and homelessness. Shut out of the canon by reason of changing fashions in literary tastes, the less familiar authors on the syllabus belong to the emerging protest novel. Authors include: Henry James, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Charles Chesnutt, Frank Norris, William Dean Howells, Edith Wharton, Thorstein Veblen, Theodore Dreiser, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison. Wendy Graham.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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AMST 338 - German-American Encounters since WW I
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 338 ) This seminar explores the many ways in which Germans envisioned, feared, and embraced America in the course of the twentieth century. We start our readings with WWI and its aftermath, when German society was confronted and, as some feared, overwhelmed, by an influx of American soldiers, expatriates, industry, and popular culture. The Nazi Regime promised to overcome Weimar modernity and the alleged Americanization of German society, but embraced nonetheless aspects of American modernity in its quest to dominate Europe militarily and economically. For the period after WWII, we study in depth the U.S. military occupation (1945-1955), the almost seventy-year lasting military presence in West Germany, and the political, social and cultural implications of this transatlantic relationship. Maria Höhn.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 352 - Indigenous Literatures of the Americas Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 352 and LALS 352 ) This course addresses a selection of creation narratives, historical accounts, poems, and other genres produced by indigenous authors from Pre-Columbian times to the present, using historical, linguistic and ethnographic approaches. We examine the use of non-alphabetic and alphabetic writing systems, study poetic and rhetorical devices, and examine indigenous historical consciousness and sociopolitical and gender dynamics through the vantage point of these works. Other topics include language revitalization, translation issues, and the rapport between linguistic structure and literary form. The languages and specific works to be examined are selected in consultation with course participants. They may include English or Spanish translations of works in Nahuatl, Zapotec, Yucatec and K’iche’ Maya, Quechua, Tupi, Aymara, and other indigenous languages of Latin America. David Tavárez.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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AMST 365 - Racial Borderlands
1 unit(s)
Borders have been made to demarcate geographic and social spaces. As such, they often divide and separate national states, populations, and their political and cultural practices. However, borders also serve as spaces of convergence and transgression. Employing a comparative and relational approach to the study of American cultures, this seminar examines concepts, theories and methodologies about race and ethnicity that emerged along the U.S. racial borderlands between the 18th and 20th centuries. We also consider the historical and contemporary ways in which discourses about race have been used to define, organize, and separate different social groups within the U.S. racial empire state. Throughout the semester we ask the following questions: How does race emerge as an idea in the U.S. political and social landscape? What is the relationship between race, gender and empire? What are the relational and historical ways in which ideas about race have been used to arrange and rank distinct social groups in the U.S. imperial body? How have these hierarchies shifted across space and time and how have different groups responded to these racial formations? Lastly, this seminar considers the future potential and limits of solidarity as a practice organized around ideas about race and exclusion for different marginalized populations within the U.S. empire state. Carlos Alamo.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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AMST 366 - Art and Activism in the United States
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 366 , ART 366 , and WMST)366 Exquisite Intimacy. An interdisciplinary exploration of the work and role of quilts within the US. Closely considering quilts–as well as their creators, users, keepers, and interpreters–we study these integral coverings and the practices of their making and use with keen attention to their recurrence as core symbols in American history, literature, and life. Lisa Collins.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 374 - Ideas, Sound, and Story: Podcast Production Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 374 ) This is a course on narrative audio production that focuses on the study and production of various nonfictional genres in the American podcasting landscape, including audio documentaries, investigative reporting, confessionals, art pieces, storytelling for academic purposes, and others. Students learn the craft of audio production from getting tape, tape-logging, writing for audio, story and tape-editing, and sound-tracking. Students complete various technical assignments, and submit a final 10-minute piece, with regular progress graded throughout. In order to model the highly competitive nature of the podcasting production space today, students must be highly-motivated, highly-organized, and grading is very rigorous, with the highest of standards and strict deadlines. Barry Lam.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 1-hour period.
Course Format: INT
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AMST 382 - Documenting America
1 unit(s)
The demand for documentation, the hunger for authenticity, the urge to share in the experiences of others were widespread in the first half of the twentieth century. A huge world of documentary expression included movies, novels, photographs, art and non-fiction accounts. This course explores the various ways in which some of these artists, photographers, writers and government agencies attempted to create documents of American life between 1900 and 1945. The course examines how such documents fluctuate between utility and aesthetics, between the social document and the artistic image. Among the questions we consider are: in what ways do these works document issues of race and gender that complicate our understanding of American life? How are our understandings of industrialization and consumerism, the Great Depression and World War II, shaped and altered by such works as the photographs of Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange,the paintings of Jacob Lawrence, the films of Charlie Chaplin, the novels and stories of Chester Himes, William Carlos Williams and Zora Neale Hurston, the non-fictional collaboration of James Agee and Walker Evans.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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AMST 383 - Indigenous New York
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 383 ) Over half of all Native American people living in the United States now live in an urban area. The United States federal policies of the 1950’s brought thousands of Indigenous peoples to cities with the promise of jobs and a better life. Like so many compacts made between the United States and Native tribes, these agreements were rarely realized. Despite the cultural, political, and spiritual losses due to Termination and Relocation policies, Native American people have continued to survive and thrive in complex ways. This seminar examines the experiences of Indigenous peoples living in urban areas since the 1950’s, but also takes into consideration the elaborate urban centers that existed in the Americas before European contact. Using the New York region as our geographical center, we examine the pan-tribal movement, AIM, Red Power, education, powwowing, social and cultural centers, two-spiritedness, religious movements, and the arts. We study the manner in which different Native urban communities have both adopted western ways and recuperated specific cultural and spiritual traditions in order to build and nurture Indigenous continuance. Finally, in this course, we understand and define “urban” in very broad contexts, using the term to examine social, spiritual, geographical, material, and imagined spaces in which Indigenous people of North America locate themselves and their communities at different times and in different ways. Molly McGlennen.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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AMST 384 - Native Religions/Americas
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 384 and LALS 384 ) The conquest of the Americas was accompanied by various intellectual and sociopolitical projects devised to translate, implant, or impose Christian beliefs in Amerindian societies. This course examines modes of resistance and accommodation, among other indigenous responses, to the introduction of Christianity as part of larger colonial projects. Through a succession of case studies from North America, Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, the Andes, and Paraguay, we analyze the impact of Christian colonial and postcolonial evangelization projects on indigenous languages, religious practices, literary genres, social organization and gender roles, and examine contemporary indigenous religious practices. David Tavárez.
Prerequisite(s): Prior coursework in Anthropology, American Studies or Latin American Latino/a Studies or permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 388 - True Crime and the American Novel Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 388 ) This intensive would be offered to eight students of ENGL 329 American Literary Realism , where the relationship between journalism and literature is a constant feature. Most of the writers on the syllabus were either journalists, before they became novelists, or wrote for or edited magazines throughout their lives. Literary naturalism, a sub-genre of realism, eschews literary devices and stylistic preciosity, instead describing characters and events in the direct, unembellished prose of the newspaper account. From Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (inspired by the Wilmington, NC race riot of 1898) to Frank Norris’s Mcteague (inspired by the murder of a charwoman) to Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier (inspired by Charles Yerkes financial chicanery) to Richard Wright’s Native Son (inspired by newspaper accounts of a murder) the American novel has relied on ‘real events’ to generate ideas for character and plots. Students may conduct research into the events inspiring these and other novels for the course and present their findings to the group (signed up for the intensive). In addition, students may choose a crime from any period or region (be it Lizzy Borden’s alleged murder of her parents, Jack the Ripper’s murders, serial killers, political assassinations, the murder of Emmett Till) and locate and compare multiple representations of the event (whether in novels, plays, movies, comics, newspapers, trials, forensic science). In most instances, representations highlight historical, class, and racial tensions (or obliviousness) over the subject and even who has a right to speak for the victim. (The recent controversy over the Whitney museum’s exhibition of Dana Schutz’s depiction of the open casket funeral of Emmett Till is a good example. Schutz is a white artist and her detractors objected to her appropriation of an iconic black figure and potentially profiting from her work.) Students are not limited to 19th century crimes or media for their final projects. The recent Kavanaugh hearings raise questions about the extrapolation of the principle that one is innocent until proven guilty beyond the courtroom. What should be the status of hearsay or personal testimony in determining ‘the truth’ of allegations? I see this as fertile ground for projects with a women’s studies slant. Wendy Graham.
Prerequisite(s): For juniors and seniors and with permission of the instructor.
Second six-week course.
Course Format: INT
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AMST 399 - Senior Independent Work
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Course Format: OTH
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American Studies: Electives |
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AMST 110 - Gender, Social Problems and Social Change Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 110 and WMST 110 ) This course introduces students to a variety of social problems using insights from political science, sociology, and gender studies. We begin with an exploration of the sociological perspective, and how social problems are defined as such. We then examine the general issues of inequalities based on economic and employment status, racial and ethnic identity, and gender and sexual orientation. We apply these categories of analysis to problems facing the educational system and the criminal justice system. As we examine specific issues, we discuss political processes, social movements, and individual actions that people have used to address these problems. Eve Dunbar and Eileen Leonard.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
This class is taught at the Taconic Correctional Facility for Women to a combined class of Vassar and Taconic students.
One 3-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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AMST 214 - History of American Jazz
1 unit(s)
(Same as MUSI 214 ) An investigation of the whole range of jazz history, from its beginning around the turn of the century to the present day. Among the figures to be examined are: Scott Joplin, “Jelly Roll” Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie, Thomas “Fats” Waller, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Miles Davis. Justin Patch.
Prerequisite(s): One unit in one of the following: music, studies in American history, art, or literature; or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 217 - Studies in Popular Music Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 217 and MUSI 217 ) Justin Patch.
Recommended: one unit in either Music, Sociology, or Anthropology.
Two 75-minute periods.
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AMST 218 - Spiritual Seekers in American History & Culture 1880-2008
1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 218 ) This course examines the last 120 years of spiritual seeking in America. It looks in particular at the rise of unchurched believers, how these believers have relocated “the religious” in different parts of culture, what it means to be “spiritual but not religious” today, and the different ways that Americans borrow from or embrace religions such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. We focus in particular on unexpected places of religious enchantment or “wonder” in our culture, including how science and technology are providing new metaphors for God and spirit. Christopher White.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 235 - The Civil Rights Movement in the United States
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 235 ) In this interdisciplinary course, we examine the origins, dynamics, and consequences of the modern Civil Rights movement. We explore how the southern based struggles for racial equality and full citizenship in the U.S. worked both to dismantle entrenched systems of discrimination—segregation, disfranchisement, and economic exploitation—and to challenge American society to live up to its professed democratic ideals. Lisa Collins.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 240 - Italy and its Migrations: Stories of Italian Emigration and Immigration Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ITAL 240 ) This course will follow the waves that shape and change Italian culture from the time of Unification, in 1861, up through today. We will learn about the experiences, dreams, memories and politics of Italian emigration and immigration through a careful study of novels, poetry, cinema, and theater, as well as letters and media coverage. We will consider the ways different narrative styles reflect the historical realities of the times, and will take a critical analysis approach to the question of how public attitudes towards immigrants have shaped Italian national and diasporic sentiment. Beginning with the first major waves of emigration to the United States in the 1880s, this course provides a unique look at a moment of significant transition in Italian history and the makings of Italian-American Culture; we will read literary texts, personal letters detailing the immigrant experience of cross the Atlantic at the turn of the century and of crossing the Mediterranean today, news coverage of significant events like the trial and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, and cinematic renditions of past and current migrant experiences. We will look at this cultural material in relation to the specific historical context in which it was produced, reflecting on the impact and legacy of things like the U.S. Emergency Quota Act of 1921, and the Italian Race Laws of 1938. As we read and discuss narratives of migration, we will also examine the ways gender, sexuality and social roles determine and are determined by movement through space and time, reflecting critically on the exclusion of women’s voices from early accounts of migration. Sole Anatrone.
This course will be offered in English, Italian majors please see ITAL 340 .
Two 75 minute periods
Course Format: CLS
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AMST 249 - Encounter and Exchange: American Art from 1565 to 1865
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 249 ) This course provides a survey of the visual arts made in the United States (or by American artists living abroad) until 1865, beginning with the first European representations of Native Americans in the 16th century and ending with Alexander Gardner’s images of death and destruction on the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War. It emphasizes the significance of cross-cultural encounter and international exchange to the creation and reception of artworks produced in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and prints. Our approach will be both chronological and thematic, considering topics such as the role of art in the construction of national identity; the origins of the U.S. art market; and the tensions of class, gender, race, and ethnicity in early American art.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 251 - Modern America: Visual Culture from the Civil War to WWII Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 251 ) This course examines American visual culture as it developed in the years between the Civil War and World War II. Special attention is paid to the intersections among diverse media and to such issues as the emergence of new forms of mass imagery, consumerism, cosmopolitanism, regionalism, abstraction, gender, primitivism, mechanized reproduction, and the rise of modern art institutions. Artists studied include Winslow Homer, Timothy O’Sullivan, James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Eakins, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Aaron Douglas, and Edward Hopper, among others.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or a 100-level American Studies course, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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AMST 257 - Reorienting America: Asians in American History and Society
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 257 and SOCI 257 ) Based on sociological theory of class, gender, race/ethnicity, this course examines complexities of historical, economic, political, and cultural positions of Asian Americans beyond the popular image of “model minorities.” Topics include the global economy and Asian immigration, politics of ethnicity and pan-ethnicity, educational achievement and social mobility, affirmative action, and representation in mass media. Seungsook Moon.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 275 - Race and Ethnicity in America
1 unit(s)
This course examines “white” American identity as a cultural location and a discourse with a history—in Mark Twain’s terms, “a fiction of law and custom.” What are the origins of “Anglo-Saxon” American identity? What are the borders, visible and invisible, against which this identity has leveraged position and power? How have these borders shifted over time, and in social and cultural space? How has whiteness located itself at the center of political, historical, social, and literary discourse, and how has it been displaced? How does whiteness mark itself, or mask itself? What does whiteness look like, sound like, and feel like from the perspective of the racial “other”? What happens when we consider whiteness as a racial or ethnic category? And in what ways do considerations of gender and class complicate these other questions? We read works by artists, journalists, and critics, among them Bill Finnegan, Benjamin DeMott, Lisa Lowe, David Roediger, George Lipsitz, Roland Barthes, Chela Sandoval, Eric Lott, bell hooks, Cherríe Moraga, Ruth Frankenberg, James Baldwin, Homi Bhabha, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, James Weldon Johnson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Faulkner, Nathanael West, Alice Walker, and Don DeLillo. We also explore the way whiteness is deployed, consolidated and critiqued in popular media like film (Birth of a Nation, Pulp Fiction, Pleasantville) television (“reality” shows, The West Wing) and the American popular press.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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AMST 281 - Museums, Collections, and Ethics Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 281 ) Collecting Native American objects and human remains was once justified as a way to preserve vanishing cultures. Instead of vanishing, Native Americans organized and asked that their ancestors be returned, along with their sacred objects. Initially, museums fought against the loss of collections and scientists fought against the loss of data. Governments stepped in and wrote regulations to manage claims, dictating the rights of all parties. Twenty-five years after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) repatriation remains a controversial issue with few who are truly satisfied with the adopted process. This course examines the development of American museums and the ethics of collecting cultures to anchor our study of repatriation. Perspectives of anthropology, art, history, law, museum studies, Native American studies, philosophy, and religion are considered. Recent U.S. cases are contrasted with repatriation cases in other parts of the world, for repatriation is not just a Native American issue. April Beisaw.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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AMST 285 - Resistance Literature: Protest, Activism, and American Literature Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 285 ) In 1926 the African-American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois declared, “all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists.” These were and continue to be fighting words for many writers who value “craft” over ideology. But does the distinction matter? Should it? Can a text be well-crafted and move us to (want to) change the world? At some level, these are rhetorical questions. American literature is rife with stories, novels, poems, and essays that have incited or speak to the necessity of our fighting for significant shifts in American culture. Thus, this course examines how US-based writers have used their art to right/write the world otherwise. Topics covered may range from abolition, the climate crisis, food justice, Civil Rights, #BlackLivesMatter, gender equity, #MeToo, and prison reform/abolition. We will work between the genres of realism and the speculative (utopic/dystopic) in the hopes of thinking about how literature has and continues to allow us to see and be the change we need. Eve Dunbar
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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AMST 326 - Challenging Ethnicity Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
An exploration of literary and artistic engagements with ethnicity. Contents and approaches vary from year to year.
Topic for 2019/20b: Racial Melodrama. (Same as AFRS 326 and ENGL 326 ) Often dismissed as escapist, predictable, lowbrow or exploitative, melodrama has also been recuperated by several contemporary critics as a key site for the rupture and transformation of mainstream values. Film scholar Linda Williams argues that melodrama constitutes “a major force of moral reasoning in American mass culture,” shaping the nation’s racial imaginary. The conventions of melodrama originate from popular theater, but its success has relied largely on its remarkable adaptability across various media, including print, motion pictures, radio, and television. This course investigates the lasting impact of such fictions as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Fannie Hurst’s Imitation of Life, the romanticized legend of John Smith’s encounter with Pocahontas, and John Luther Long’s Madame Butterfly. What precisely is melodrama? If not a genre, is it (as critics diversely argue) a mode, symbolic structure, or a sensibility? What do we make of the international success of melodramatic forms and texts such as the telenovela and Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain? How do we understand melodrama’s special resonance historically among disfranchised classes? How and to what ends do the pleasures of suffering authenticate particular collective identities (women, the working-class, queers, blacks, and group formations yet to be named)? What relationships between identity, affect and consumption does melodrama reveal? Hiram Perez.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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AMST 367 - Artists’ Books from the Women’s Studio Workshop
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 367 and WMST 367 ) In this interdisciplinary seminar, we explore the limited edition artists’ books created through the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York. Founded in 1974, the Women’s Studio Workshop encourages the voice and vision of individual women artists, and women artists associated with the workshop have, since 1979, created over 180 hand-printed books using a variety of media, including hand-made paper, letterpress, silkscreen, photography, intaglio, and ceramics. Vassar College recently became an official repository for this vibrant collection which, in the words of the workshop’s co-founder, documents “the artistic activities of the longest continually operating women’s workspace in the country.” Working directly with the artists’ books, this seminar will meet in Vassar Library’s Special Collections and closely investigate the range of media, subject matter, and aesthetic sensibilities of the rare books, as well as their contexts and meanings. We will also travel to the Women’s Studio Workshop to experience firsthand the artistic process in an alternative space. Lisa Collins.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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Anthropology: I. Introductory |
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ANTH 100 - Archaeology Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Archaeologists use the material remains of past peoples and places to tell new stories of the past, present, and future. This course covers the basic methods and theories of American archaeology to show how that work is done. Then we survey the contributions that archaeologists are making to the social issues of our time such as sustainable cities, poverty and homelessness, and warfare and identity. Every social issue of today has historical roots, and earlier cases that can be examined through material remains. April Beisaw.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 120 - Human Origins Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course introduces current and historical debates in the study of human evolution. Primate studies, genetics, the fossil record and paleoecology are drawn upon to address such issues as the origins and nature of human cognition, sexuality, and population variation. Zachary Cofran.
Satisfies the college requirement for quantitative reasoning.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 140 - Cultural Anthropology Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
An introduction to central concepts, methods, and findings in cultural anthropology, including culture, cultural difference, the interpretation of culture, and participant-observation. The course uses cross-cultural comparison to question scholarly and commonsense understandings of human nature. Topics may include sexuality, kinship, political and economic systems, myth, ritual and cosmology, and culturally varied ways of constructing race, gender, and ethnicity. Students undertake small research projects and explore different styles of ethnographic writing. Candice Lowe Swift.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 150 - Linguistics and Anthropology Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
This class introduces students to the multiple senses in which languages constitute “formal systems.” There is a focus on both theoretical discussions about, and practical exercises in, the phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of human languages. We also consider the origins of natural languages in various ways: their ontogenesis, their relationship to non-human primate signaling systems, and their relationship to other, non-linguistic, human semiotic systems. Moreover, we examine the broader social and cultural contexts of natural languages, such as their consequences for socially patterned forms of thinking, and their relationship to ethnic, racial and regional variation. The course is intended both as the College’s general introduction to formal linguistics and as a foundation for advanced courses in related areas. Louis Römer, David Tavárez.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 170 - Topics in Anthropology Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Introduction to anthropology through a focus on a particular issue or aspect of human experience. Topics vary, but may include Anthropology through Film, American Popular Culture, Extinctions, Peoples of the World.
Topic for 2019/20a: Written in Bone: Using Human Skeletons to Understand the Ancient Past. Since the earliest days of archaeology, scholars and the general public have been fascinated by skeletons recovered from ancient sites. However, human remains are more than a physical bridge between the present and a romanticized past—they also encode valuable information about the identities and daily lives of past peoples. Bioarchaeology is the study of human skeletal remains from archaeological sites. This course draws upon bioarchaeological case studies from multiple regions and time periods to explore the ways in which researchers use skeletal data to deepen our understanding of ancient lives, while also critically evaluating how such discoveries are portrayed in the popular media. In class discussions and written assignments, students engage with debates about how past peoples treated their dead, conceived of personhood, experienced violence and disease, and organized their communities. Over the course of the seminar, students learn how to formulate clear arguments, draw upon scientific evidence, and develop strategies for writing and revising research papers. Class time also is devoted to developing key writing and research skills, such as structuring academic papers, identifying appropriate sources, interpreting and responding to feedback. Overall, this course introduces students to the ways in which bioarchaeologists collect evidence from human skeletons to better understand the lived experiences of past individuals and communities. Jess Beck.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Topic for 2019/20a: Anthropology in the Anthropocene. The ‘Anthropocene’ is a widely used term to denote the present geological epoch when the Earth has been profoundly altered by human activity. Such human activity has intensified significantly since the onset of industrialization and has become a geological force by itself. This course explores the nature of this human activity through readings a from an anthropological angle. Anthropology is the discipline that has explored human “relatedness” in the greatest empirical and theoretical detail. How does that archive help us to grasp the depth of the “human” problem in relating to the world? What kind of alternate “futures” and “reconnections” can we imagine with the help of this knowledge? Students read a range of authors, genres and sources, including ethnographies, scientific reports, environmental/ activist scholarship, indigenous narratives, poetry, critical essays and philosophy. Topics and questions include: What are the modes in which industrial society brings about the devastating changes to the Earth System? How is that different from non-modern ways of being a human in the world? What does the history of race, colonialism, and conquest of other “humans” and that of “Nature” tell us about the phenomenon of the Anthropocene? How do we wrench ecology away from the domain of “experts” and start moving towards a democratic form of ecological life? Since this is a writing course, it focuses on nurturing the writer in each of us. Students ”use” the crisis of the “Anthropocene” to develop a portfolio of “ecological” writings. The aim is to help each other develop one’s own style as a writer and intellectually prepare to explore contemporary lives under the sign of environmental devastation or “climate change.” Kaushik Ghosh.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Topic for 2019/20a and b: Language Facts, Language Fictions. True or false: women talk too much and men refuse to listen; Italian sounds beautiful, while German sounds harsh; double negatives are illogical; television and texting are ruining the English language; there are primitive languages that have no grammar; southerners speak more slowly than northerners; everybody has an accent except where I grew up; language is used primarily to communicate factual information about the world; Eskimos have 17 words for ‘snow’; men interrupt more than women; girls imitate how their mothers talk, while boys imitate how their fathers talk; everyone in Boston says, ‘cah’ instead of ‘car’; if you grow up speaking two languages, you’ll never speak either one perfectly. These statements represent the kinds of judgments many people make about languages and everyday speech. Even as the course provides a solid grounding in linguistic analysis, it explores and explodes such judgments by asking students to assess critically their own ideas and ideologies about language. Thomas Porcello.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Topic for 2019/20b: From Artifacts to Arguments: Introduction to the Archaeology of Prehistoric Europe. How did humans survive during the last Ice Age? Who is responsible for the cave paintings of Lascaux? What exactly is a henge? In this course, we explore the answers to these questions and more, covering topics ranging from ancient subsistence systems to exchange networks, mortuary practices, and technology. The class is divided into four units: (1) Introduction to Archaeological Principles and Theory; (2) The Paleolithic; (3) The Neolithic; (4) The Copper Age–Bronze Age. Students learn to evaluate archaeological evidence, assess the importance of theory in reconstructing prehistoric lifeways, and identify key sites, archaeologists and artifacts in European prehistory. In addition to painting a portrait of the economies, exchange networks, social organization and ritual practices of early European communities, this course also emphasizes the utility of different archaeological lines of evidence, describing the complementary information that can be recovered from lithics, ceramics, animal bones, human bones and ancient plant remains. Over the course of the seminar, students learn how to formulate clear arguments, draw upon scientific evidence, and develop strategies for writing and revising research papers. Class time is devoted to developing key writing and research skills, such as structuring academic papers, identifying appropriate sources, interpreting and responding to feedback. Jess Beck.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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Anthropology: II. Intermediate |
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ANTH 201 - Anthropological Theory Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
In this course we explore the history of intellectual innovations that make anthropology distinctive among the social sciences. We seek to achieve an analytic perspective on the history of the discipline and also to consider the social and political contexts, and consequences, of anthropology’s theory. While the course is historical and chronological in organization, we read major theoretical and ethnographic works that form the background to debates and issues in contemporary anthropology. Martha Kaplan.
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 140 .
Corequisite(s): ANTH 140 .
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 210 - The Dead Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
Directed studies of dead populations and the anthropological information contained within their passing and/or memorialization. The Dead may be those who died from natural or unnatural causes, including genocide, homicide, infanticide, suicide, disease, or accident. Exploration of local cemetery populations are encouraged, as those buried nearby include individuals who died from a variety of causes but whose deaths were memorialized in relatively similar ways. Alternatively, patterns of those who are most susceptible to a specific cause of death can be explored. Weekly meetings bring together students who are pursuing independent research projects. Course readings provide some commonality to the group’s analyses and ground this intensive in anthropological questions and approaches. April Beisaw.
Prerequisite(s): Previous coursework in Anthropology or permission of the instructor.
Course Format: INT
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ANTH 211 - Virtual Anthropology Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
0.5 unit(s)
The Digital Age opened exciting new possibilities for the study of human evolutionary anatomy. Imaging technologies such as laser scanning and computed tomography (CT) put high resolution physical data in a computer-based environment, allowing powerful visualizations and unprecedented analyses. This Intensive gives students experience with the types of questions, data and methods used in Virtual Anthropology. These methods help shed new light on long-extinct species – what did the brain of 10 million year old monkeys look like? How did the 300,000 year old species Homo naledi grow its teeth? What do the joint surfaces of fossil Australopithecus tell us about how these earliest humans walked? Working from questions like these, students experience directly the pros and cons of computer-based study of recent and fossil human anatomy. Intensive may be taken for up to two semesters. Zachary Cofran.
Course Format: INT
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ANTH 212 - Ethnographic Understanding Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
In this intensive, students recently returned from study abroad engage in closely mentored, collaborative work, reviewing and framing their experiences abroad through related ethnographic studies. The ethnographic studies may be regionally or topically focused, and students may use the intensive to develop thinking for a thesis and to gain increased familiarity with the area in which they studied, for example. Engaging with each other, students in this intensive also consider what their cross-cultural experiences suggest regarding policy, global citizenship, ethical and epistemological issues surrounding how we know what we know. This intensive is open to all majors. Students intending to use their study abroad experience as the basis for a senior thesis or for senior independent work are especially encouraged to participate. Anthropology majors must take this intensive in order to count their study abroad experience as one of the two required regional familiarity courses. Colleen Cohen.
Prerequisite(s): Students have to have studied abroad, or done some other form of study abroad, e.g., a summer study abroad program.
Course Format: INT
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ANTH 213 - Indigenous Environmental Activism Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
This intensive experience challenges us to consider who generates knowledge about the environment and how cultural perspectives define what “climate change” and “sustainability” look like. Students research and interact with indigenous environmental activists, review tribal climate action plans, and follow ongoing efforts to change policies and educate publics. Grand Challenges grant funding facilitates one or more field trips and guest lectures that students arrange. Therefore, enrollment is by special permission with preference going to those who are already involved in the Grand Challenges program. Insights gained are shared with the greater Vassar community through a weekly blog and podcast. April Beisaw.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor – open to students who are enrolled in or have taken other courses in the Grand Challenges learning community on climate change.
Course Format: INT
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ANTH 232 - Topics in Biological Anthropology Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course covers topics within the broad field of biological (or physical) anthropology ranging from evolutionary theory to the human fossil record to the identification of human skeletal remains from crime scenes and accidents. Bioanthropology conceptualizes cultural behavior as an integral part of our behavior as a species. Topics covered in this course may include human evolution, primate behavior, population genetics, human demography and variation, or forensic anthropology.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Topic for 2019/20a: Primate Behavior & Ecology. This class examines the social systems and behavior of our closest living relatives, the primates. This diverse group provides evolutionary background for understanding human society and behaviors. The course begins by outlining questions about primate behavior. In this section, the Order Primates is introduced by examining the biology and behavior of each of the major groups (Strepsirrhines, New and Old World monkeys, and apes). Next, several aspects of primate social systems including spacing, mating and grouping patterns will be discussed. The course concludes by reviewing selected topics of primate behavior, such as vocal communication, cognition and conservation. In addition to the broad overview of Primates, a term paper intimately acquaints each student with a single species. Zachary Cofran.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 235 - Area Studies in Archaeology Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course is a detailed, intensive investigation of archaeological remains from a particular geographic region of the world. The area investigated varies from year to year and includes such areas as Eurasia, North America, and the native civilizations of Central and South America.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Topic for 2019/20b: Historical Archaeology of American Identity. History tells us a version of the past that is knowable through written records. Historical archaeology provides alternative histories based on the things people left behind. This course begins with the archaeological record of colonial America and ends with the archaeology of today. Throughout, we focus on sites and artifacts of those who are often left out of American history books: the young, the poor, the working class, and a variety of marginalized groups. The remains of their lives help us to see how the past continues to function in the present. April Beisaw.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 240 - Cultural Localities Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
Detailed study of the cultures of people living in a particular area of the world, including their politics, economy, worldview, religion, expressive practices, and historical transformations. Included is a critical assessment of different approaches to the study of culture. Areas covered vary from year to year and may include Europe, Africa, North America, India and the Pacific.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Topic for 2019/20a: Atlantic Worlds. (Same as AFRS 240 ) To speak of the Atlantic World is to speak of the peoples who inhabit the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and its marginal seas, and who are interconnected by histories of imperial expansion, enslavement, commerce, and migration. Imperial conquest led to the displacement and decimation of indigenous peoples, while slavery, indenture, and trade led and the creation of African, European, and Asian Diasporas in the Americas. These processes gave rise to the very idea of globalization, as well as the ideals of freedom, decolonization, and universal rights. This course introduces the diasporas, networks, and economic flows that integrate the Caribbean, Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Using ethnographies, histories, narratives, music, and film, we explore the processes of migration, imperial expansion, and economic integration that continue to shape the peoples, languages, and cultures of the Atlantic World. We also critically examine the strengths and limitations of concepts and theoretical frameworks used to produce knowledge about the peoples and histories of the Atlantic world. Topics include imperialism and its legacies, (de)colonization, capitalism, slavery, indenture, marronage, piracy, revolution, abolition, creolization, race, class, and gender. Louis Römer.
Topic for 2019/20b: The Making of Postcolonial India. (Same as ASIA 240 ) The processes which went into the formation of distinct modernities in the Indian subcontinent continue to inform and instigate present societies in that region. The first half of this course is a historical and anthropological introduction to some of the events and imaginations which were crucial to the formation of modern India (approximately the period of 1818-1947). Central to these were debates about religious reform, nationalism, caste hierarchies and the question of women in modernity. This part of the course uses primary texts (autobiographies, speeches, dialogues) as well as use literary, ethnographic and historical writings and films. The second half of the course brings the understanding of this earlier crucial period to bear on some of the key processes of contemporary India, including the rise of Hindu nationalism, caste and indigenous social movements, environmental challenges and the question of the Indian diaspora. Kaushik Ghosh.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 241 - The Caribbean
1 unit(s)
An overview of the cultures of the Caribbean, tracing the impact of slavery and colonialism on contemporary experiences and expressions of Caribbean identity. Using ethnographies, historical accounts, literature, music, and film, the course explores the multiple meanings of ‘Caribbean,’ as described in historical travel accounts and contemporary tourist brochures, as experienced in daily social, political, and economic life, and as expressed through cultural events such as calypso contests and Festival, and cultural-political movements such as Rastafarianism. Although the course deals primarily with the English-speaking Caribbean, it also includes materials on the French and Spanish speaking Caribbean and on diasporic Caribbean communities in the U.S. and U.K. Colleen Cohen.
Prerequisite(s): Previous coursework in Anthropology or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 243 - Mesoamerican Worlds
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 243 ) A survey of the ethnography, history, and politics of indigenous societies with deep historical roots in regions now located in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. This course explores the emergence of Mesoamerican states with a vivid cosmology tied to warfare and human sacrifice, the reconfiguration of these societies under the twin burdens of Christianity and colonial rule, and the strategies that some of these communities adopted in order to preserve local notions of identity and to cope with (or resist) incorporation into nation-states. After a consideration of urbanization, socio-religious hierarchies, and writing and calendrical systems in pre-contact Mesoamerica, we will focus on the adaptations within Mesoamerican communities resulting from their interaction with an evolving colonial order. The course also investigates the relations between native communities and the Mexican and Guatemalan nation-states, and examines current issues—such as indigenous identities in the national and global spheres, the rapport among environmental policies, globalization, and local agricultural practices, and indigenous autonomy in the wake of the EZLN rebellion. Work on Vassar’s Mesoamerican collection, and a final research paper and presentation is required; the use of primary sources (in Spanish or in translation) is encouraged. David Tavárez.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 244 - Indian Ocean Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 244 ) This course re/introduces alternative modalities of belonging through a focus on multiple cultures and peoples interacting across the Indian Ocean. Using historical works, ethnographies, travel accounts, manuscript fragments, and film, we explore the complex networks and historical processes that have shaped the contemporary economies, cultures, and social problems of the region. We also critically examine how knowledge about the peoples and pasts of this region has been produced. Although the course concentrates on northern Africa, eastern Africa, southwest India, the Arabian Peninsula, and islands are included in our consideration of the region as a cultural, economic, and political sphere whose coastal societies were especially interconnected. Topics include: imperialism, globalization, temporality, cosmopolitanism, labor and trade migrations, religious identification, and gender. Candice Lowe Swift.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 245 - The Ethnographer’s Craft Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 245 ) This course introduces students to the methods employed in constructing and analyzing ethnographic materials through readings, classroom lectures, and discussions with regular field exercises. Students gain experience in participant-observation, fieldnote-taking, interviewing, survey sampling, symbolic analysis, the use of archival documents, and the use of contemporary media. Attention is also given to current concerns with interpretation and modes of representation. Throughout the semester, students practice skills they learn in the course as they design, carry out, and write up original ethnographic projects. Louis Römer.
Two 75-minute periods plus two 75-minute workshops outside of regular class hours.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 247 - Modern Social Theory: Classical Traditions Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 247 ) This course examines underlying assumptions and central concepts and arguments of European and American thinkers who contributed to the making of distinctly sociological perspectives. Readings include selections from Karl Marx, Emile Durheim, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, W.E.B. Du Bois and Erving Goffman. Thematic topics will vary from year to year. Diane Harriford, Seungsook Moon.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 250 - Language, Culture, and Society Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives in exploring a particular problem, emphasizing the contribution of linguistics and linguistic anthropology to issues that bear on research in a number of disciplines. At issue in each selected course topic are the complex ways in which cultures, societies, and individuals are interrelated in the act of using language within and across particular speech communities.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Topic for 2019/20a: The Poetics and Politics of Everyday Conversation. Language is an ever-present part of everyday life, but attention to language tends to be restricted to occasions that feel evidently eventful, important, and consequential. Weddings, funerals, graduations are accompanied by artfully crafted speeches. Meanwhile, the uses of language during the routine activities of everyday life—conversations over a weekday dinner with family, or casual banter with friends while walking from one classroom to the next—are often overlooked. This course focuses on conversations in everyday life in order to reveal the powerful social dynamics that unfold during seemingly uneventful interactions. In fact, these social interactions are all the more consequential because they are taken for granted. Focusing on the forms of talk that accompany caretaking, socializing, and play, this course provides insights into how cultural and social practices are acquired, and into the everyday practices wherein social status, power, group boundaries, and identities are challenged and established. Topics include: the stylistic features of everyday conversations; cultural differences in conversational style; manifestations of racism, sexism, queerphobia, and classism in everyday talk; the performance of politeness and informality; code-switching and bilingual conversation; stance, framing, narrative, and affect in conversation. Students learn how to analyze everyday conversations using theoretical frameworks and methods from conversation analysis, narrative analysis, and ethnomethodology. Louis Römer.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 255 - Language, Gender, and Media Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course offers a systematic survey of anthropological and linguistic approaches to the ways in which gender identities are implicated in language use, ideas about language, and the dynamic relationship between language and various forms of power and dominance. It is organized as a cross-cultural and cross-ethnic exploration of approaches that range from ground-breaking feminist linguistic anthropology and the study of gender, hegemony, and class, to contemporary debates on gender as performance and on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual/transgender identities. An important topic is the representation of gender identities in various forms of media. However, we also investigate the multiple rapports among gender identities, socialization, language use in private and public spheres, forms of authority, and class and ethnic identities. Students learn about transcription and analysis methods used in linguistic anthropology, and complete two conversation analysis projects. Thomas Porcello.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 259 - Soundscapes: Anthropology of Music
1 unit(s)
(Same as MUSI 259 ) This course investigates a series of questions about the relationship between music and the individuals and societies that perform and listen to it. In other words, music is examined and appreciated as a form of human expression existing within and across specific cultural contexts. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the social life of music, addressing historical themes and debates within multiple academic fields via readings, recordings, and films. Justin Patch.
Recommended: but not required that students have one unit of the following: Music, Anthropology, Sociology, or Media Studies.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 262 - Anthropological Approaches to Myth, Ritual and Symbol Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
What is the place of myth, ritual and symbol in human social life? Do symbols reflect reality, or create it? This course considers answers to these questions in social theory (Marx, Freud and Durkheim) and in major anthropological approaches (functionalism, structuralism, and symbolic anthropology). It then reviews current debates in interpretive anthropology about order and change, power and resistance, the enchantments of capitalism, and the role of ritual in the making of history. Ethnographic and historical studies may include Fiji, Italy, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Seneca, and the U.S. Martha Kaplan.
Prerequisite(s): Previous coursework in Anthropology or permission of the instructor.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 263 - Anthropology Goes to the Movies: Film, Video, and Ethnography
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 263 ) This course examines how film and video are used in ethnography as tools for study and as means of ethnographic documentary and representation. Topics covered include history and theory of visual anthropology, issues of representation and audience, indigenous film, and contemporary ethnographic approaches to popular media. Colleen Cohen.
Prerequisite(s): Previous coursework in Anthropology or Film or Media Studies or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods, plus 3-hour preview laboratory.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 266 - Indigenous and Oppositional Media
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 266 ) As audiovisual and digital media technologies proliferate and become more accessible globally, they become important tools for indigenous peoples and activist groups in struggles for recognition and self-determination, for articulating community concerns and for furthering social and political transformations. This course explores the media practices of indigenous peoples and activist groups, and through this exploration achieves a more nuanced and intricate understanding of the relation of the local to the global. In addition to looking at the films, videos, radio and television productions, and Internet interventions of indigenous media makers and activists around the world, the course looks at oppositional practices employed in the consumption and distribution of media. Course readings are augmented by weekly screenings and demonstrations of media studied, and students explore key theoretical concepts through their own interventions, making use of audiovisual and digital technologies. Colleen Cohen.
Two 75-minute periods, plus one 3-hour preview lab.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 268 - Religion, Repression, and Resistance in Latin America Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 268 and HIST 268 ) What was it like to live in a society where crimes of thought and religious transgressions were prosecuted and punished? How did various populations confront and resist inquisitorial activities? What is the legacy of the Inquisition in the Americas? This course addresses these and other questions through a focus on the Latin American Inquisition and Extirpation (ecclesiastic attempts to reform or destroy Precolumbian indigenous religions). The course tracks the emergence of Inquisition tribunals in Mexico City, Lima, and Cartagena after 1571, and the Catholic Church’s prosecution of indigenous idolatry and sorcery. It focuses both on trends in prosecution, torture, and punishment, and on the dynamic responses of those who were either targets or collaborators: indigenous peoples, Jews, Africans, female healers, people of mixed descent, and Protestants. Towards the end of the course, based on students’ interests, we also review other select case studies of religious control and resistance in Latin America. Students proficient in Spanish or Portuguese are encouraged to work with primary sources. David Tavárez.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 281 - Museums, Collections, and Ethics Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 281 ) Collecting Native American objects and human remains was once justified as a way to preserve vanishing cultures. Instead of vanishing, Native Americans organized and asked that their ancestors be returned, along with their sacred objects. Initially, museums fought against the loss of collections and scientists fought against the loss of data. Governments stepped in and wrote regulations to manage claims, dictating the rights of all parties. Twenty-five years after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) repatriation remains a controversial issue with few who are truly satisfied with the adopted process. This course examines the development of American museums and the ethics of collecting cultures to anchor our study of repatriation. Perspectives of anthropology, art, history, law, museum studies, Native American studies, philosophy, and religion are considered. Recent U.S. cases are contrasted with repatriation cases in other parts of the world, for repatriation is not just a Native American issue. April Beisaw.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 290 - Community-Engaged Learning Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1.0 unit(s)
Individual or group field projects or internships. May be elected during the college year or during the summer. Open to all students. The department.
Course Format: INT
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ANTH 298 - Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Individual or group project of reading or research. May be elected during the college year or during the summer. The department.
Course Format: INT
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Anthropology: III. Advanced |
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ANTH 300 - Senior Thesis Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
1 unit(s)
The department.
Course Format: INT
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ANTH 301 - Senior Seminar Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
A close examination of current theory in anthropology, oriented around a topic of general interest, such as history and anthropology, the writing of ethnography, or the theory of practice. Students write a substantial paper applying one or more of the theories discussed in class. Readings change from year to year. Martha Kaplan.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 305 - Topics in Advanced Biological Anthropology Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
An examination of such topics as primate structure and behavior, the Plio-Pleistocene hominids, the final evolution of Homo sapiens sapiens, forensic anthropology, and human biological diversity.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Topic for 2019/20a: Forensic Anthropology. Forensic anthropology is the application of physical anthropology to medical or legal issues, such as crimes. This course introduces students to the basic methods of forensic anthropology, including how age, sex, race, and height of an individual can be determined from their bones. Recognition of skeletal anomalies can also reveal past health conditions and the cause and manner of death. Students gain experience in applying these methods by working with real and synthetic human bones. Special attention is given to the accuracy of each method and how to develop a biological profile that would stand up in a court of law. April Beisaw.
Topic for 2019/20b: Human Evolutionary Developmental Biology. What literally makes us human? This class examines how growth and development were modified over the course of human evolution, to create the animals that we are today. Human anatomy is placed in an evolutionary context by comparison with living primates and the human fossil record. The first half of the course focuses on theory, namely evolution, genetics and life history. The second half examines evidence for the development and evolution of specific parts of the body, from head to toe. Through lab activities and a term project, students draw on different types of data to test hypotheses about evolution and development. Zachary Cofran.
One 3-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 310 - Scholarly Advancement Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
For students considering a scholarly or research future, this Intensive opens a window onto activities of scholarship including proposal writing, work shopping, scholarly communication and sharing research findings, peer review, and critique. This will be a supportive group for juniors and seniors in Anthropology and related departments and programs to write grant, fellowship applications (for example, Cornelison, Fulbright, Luce, Marshall, Watson) and graduate school applications (for MA and PhD programs) and/or to submit proposals and craft posters and papers for participation in scholarly conferences (for example American Anthropological Association or New York Conference on Asian Studies). Participants become familiar with a range of summer and post-graduate fellowships, conference opportunities and graduate programs and read examples of successful proposals. Faculty and administrators with experience as grant & fellowship reviewers provide group and individualized consultation. Martha Kaplan.
Prerequisite(s): Recommended for Juniors and Seniors.
Course Format: INT
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ANTH 351 - Language and Expressive Culture Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This seminar provides the advanced student with an intensive investigation of theoretical and practical problems in specific areas of research that relate language and linguistics to expressive activity. Although emphasizing linguistic modes of analysis and argumentation, the course is situated at the intersection of important intellectual crosscurrents in the arts, humanities, and social sciences that focus on how culture is produced and projected through not only verbal, but also musical, material, kinaesthetic, and dramatic arts. Each topic culminates in independent research projects.
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed. Thomas Porcello
Topic for 2019/20b: Sound. (Same as MEDS 351 ) This seminar centers on the examination of acoustic, perceptual, and cultural dimensions of aural phenomena. Linguistics is one focal area of the course, in which we pursue both qualitative and quantitative analyses of paralinguistic and prosodic features (pitch, intonation, rhythm, timbre, formants), acoustic phonetics, and especially issues of sound symbolism (onomatopoeia, iconicity, metaphor, and synaesthesia). Additional topics of discussion include relationships between sound structure and social structure as investigated by anthropologists and ethnomusicologists, the cultural history of sound (as encoded in regulatory practices such as public noise ordinances, as well as in architectural and technological designs), and the emergent field of “sound studies.”
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 150 or ANTH 250 or permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 352 - Indigenous Literatures of the Americas Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 352 and LALS 352 ) This course addresses a selection of creation narratives, historical accounts, poems, and other genres produced by indigenous authors from Pre-Columbian times to the present, using historical, linguistic and ethnographic approaches. We examine the use of non-alphabetic and alphabetic writing systems, study poetic and rhetorical devices, and examine indigenous historical consciousness and sociopolitical and gender dynamics through the vantage point of these works. Other topics include language revitalization, translation issues, and the rapport between linguistic structure and literary form. The languages and specific works to be examined are selected in consultation with course participants. They may include English or Spanish translations of works in Nahuatl, Zapotec, Yucatec and K’iche’ Maya, Quechua, Tupi, Aymara, and other indigenous languages of Latin America. David Tavárez.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 360 - Problems in Cultural Analysis
1 unit(s)
Covers a variety of current issues in modern anthropology in terms of ongoing discussion among scholars of diverse opinions rather than a rigid body of fact and theory.
May be repeated for credit if topic has changed. Kaushik Ghosh
Topic for 19/20b: Postcolonialism, Posthumanism, Nature. Mushrooms and canine companions, thinking forests and technobodies, earth beings and affective states. Such is the cast of characters who populate the stage of Posthumanism, the contemporary body of critical scholarship that aims at a fierce contestation of Humanism, perhaps the most central organizing ideology of the Enlightenment. Coming from Science and Technology Studies, Feminism and Queer Theory and Ecocriticism, Posthumanism relentlessly invites one to think towards a future beyond the category of the Human (and the Non-Human). The questioning of Humanism, however, has an important genealogy in an earlier body of critical scholarship, namely Postcolonialism. How do these two critiques of humanism compare? Given the contemporary relevance of the question of global warming and mass extinctions, Nature emerges as a very important terrain for these two bodies of scholarship to engage each other. In this seminar, the students read a range of representative works of these two “Posthumanisms,” including those by Frantz Fanon, Donna Haraway, Gayatri Spivak, Bruno Latour and Lauren Berlant.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 363 - Nations, Globalization, and Post-Coloniality
1 unit(s)
(Same as INTL 363 ) How do conditions of globalization and dilemmas of post-coloniality challenge the nation-state? Do they also reinforce and reinvent it? This course engages three related topics and literatures; recent anthropology of the nation-state; the anthropology of colonial and post-colonial societies; and the anthropology of global institutions and global flows. Martha Kaplan.
Prerequisite(s): Previous coursework in Anthropology or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 364 - Travelers and Tourists Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
The seminar explores tourism in the context of a Western tradition of travel and as a complex cultural, economic and political phenomenon with profound impacts locally and globally. Using contemporary tourism theory, ethnographic studies of tourist locales, contemporary and historical travel narratives, travelogues, works of fiction, post cards and travel brochures, we consider tourism as a historically specific cultural practice whose meaning and relation to structures of power varies over time and context; as a performance; as one of many global mobilities; as embodied activity; as it is informed by mythic and iconic representations and embedded in Western notions of self and other. We also address issues pertaining to the culture of contemporary tourism, the commoditization of culture, the relation between tourism development and national identity and the prospects for an environmentally and culturally sustainable tourism. Colleen Cohen.
Prerequisite(s): Previous coursework in Anthropology or permission of the instructor.
One 3-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 365 - Imagining Asia and the Island Pacific
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 365 ) Does “the Orient” exist? Is the Pacific really a Paradise? On the other hand, does the “West” exist? If it does, is it the opposite of Paradise? Asia is often imagined as an ancient, complex challenger and the Pacific is often imagined as a simple, idyllic paradise. This course explores Western scholarly images of Asia (East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia) and of the island Pacific. It also traces the impact of Asian and Pacific ideas and institutions on the West. Each time offered, the seminar has at least three foci, on topics such as: Asia, the Pacific and capitalism; Asia, the Pacific and the concept of culture; Asia, the Pacific and the nation-state; Asia, the Pacific and feminism; Asia, the Pacific and knowledge. Martha Kaplan.
Prerequisite(s): Previous coursework in Asian Studies/Anthropology or permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 367 - Indigenous Cultures and Languages of Latin America Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 367 ) This intensive offering focuses on closely mentored, collaborative work on Mesoamerican, Andean, or Amazonian languages and cultures. Students develop and execute a concise research project based on their own interests, qualifications, and previous coursework. Possibilities include intensive study, work with material culture in Vassar’s museum and rare book collections or elsewhere, and digital humanities projects, including those under development by the instructor. One previous course in Latin American and Latino/a Studies, Anthropology, History or the social sciences is recommended, but not required. David Tavárez.
NRO allowed for Juniors and Seniors only.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: INT
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ANTH 376 - Asian Diasporas: from empires to pluralism
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 376 and GEOG 376 ) Focusing on Asian Diasporas, this course engages discourses in diaspora studies and pluralism from the Vassar campus to the wider world. Our goal is both to introduce theories of migration, diaspora, cultural transformation, world system, transnationalism, and globalization, and examine some of the complex history of movements of people from Asia to other parts of the world and their integration in diverse communities. Organized chronologically, the course begins by considering the deep history of movement and interconnection in Asia and beyond with particular focus on the Asia-centered world system of the 13th and 14th centuries. We then study the movements and experiences of indentured laborers and of merchants during the era of European colonial domination. Here we engage a range of topics including the role of religion in plantation life, the role of diasporic communities and racial politics in creating post-colonial nations, the emergence, conflicts and coalitions of ethnic identities in the United States and elsewhere, and key political and cultural moments in the history of Asian-America. We then examine recent forms of nationalism and transnationalism of Asian diasporas in the context of post WWII decolonization, late capitalism, disjunctive modernity, and identity politics in the contemporary era. The principal cases are drawn from East Asian and South Asian communities in Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands and the United States.
As a seminar, the course material is multi-disciplinary, ranging from political-economic to cultural studies and engages material at a high level of sophistication. We have also tried to include diverse geographical regions. Asia and Diaspora are vast topics and not every topic can be covered in the course. You have further opportunity in your research paper to discuss topics and areas of your interest. Martha Kaplan and Yu Zhou.
Prerequisite(s): 200-level work in Asian Studies, Anthropology or Geography, or permission of the instructor.
One 3-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 383 - Creolizing the World: Language, Empire, Globalization Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 383 ) This course focuses on creole languages and the communities who speak them as a window to understand how historical processes—imperial expansion, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, racist domination, the plantation system, anti-colonial resistance, and post-colonial nation-building—impact language genesis, change, and shift. This course also traces how colonial legacies continue to inform dominant attitudes about language in the current global political economy. Themes include multilingualism, language revitalization, the relationship between language and ethnonationalism, the role of language in anti-imperialist social movements, the aesthetics and politics of creolization, the role of language in the upholding and challenging racism, as well as the role of language in creating cosmopolitan and diasporic communities and identities. Louis Römer.
One 3-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 384 - Native Religions of the Americas
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 384 and LALS 384 ) The conquest of the Americas was accompanied by various intellectual and sociopolitical projects devised to translate, implant, or impose Christian beliefs in Amerindian societies. This course examines modes of resistance and accommodation, among other indigenous responses, to the introduction of Christianity as part of larger colonial projects. Through a succession of case studies from North America, Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, the Andes, and Paraguay, we analyze the impact of Christian colonial and postcolonial evangelization projects on indigenous languages, religious practices, literary genres, social organization and gender roles, and examine contemporary indigenous religious practices. David Tavárez.
Prerequisite(s): Prior coursework in Anthropology, American Studies or Latin American Latino/a Studies or permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ANTH 399 - Senior Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Individual or group project of reading or research. May be elected during the college year or during the summer. The department
Course Format: INT
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Art: I. Introductory |
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ART 120 - The Vassar Campus Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as CLCS 120 ) A multidisciplinary exploration of the Vassar College campus. This intensive course is conducted as a succession of local field trips to sites across the college, and walks around campus. With this direct experience of landscape, buildings, and collections, from works of art to natural history specimens, we consider the history of Vassar’s campus, as well as our lived experience of campus spaces. We also approach our own campus in broader contexts, exploring the notion of campus in American culture, the campus as physical space and as idea, and the role of place in higher education. Individual projects allow participants to explore a campus space of their choice in various modes. Students from all majors are encouraged to apply. Yvonne Elet.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
First six-week course.
Course Format: INT
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ART 130 - Art and Science in the Age of Leonardo and Galileo Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Art and science were closely intertwined in early modern Europe (1400-1700). Famous figures such as Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo Galilei simultaneously created breathtaking artworks and life-altering inventions. In this first-year writing seminar, we explore relationships between art, science, and invention during the Renaissance. Focusing on Leonardo and Galileo, we study the sometimes-seamless, sometimes-complex connections between visual expression and scientific experimentation. We also examine the “science of art,” or the materials and techniques of art-making, in order to track developments that inspired painters like Leonardo to produce innovative objects for visual consumption.
To enhance our experience in this class, we visit the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center and the Archives & Special Collections Library to examine Renaissance paintings and illuminated manuscripts at first hand. In addition, a trip to the Warthin Museum of Geology & Natural History provides the opportunity to consider the minerals and other ingredients artists used to make colors and that scientists manipulated to make lenses. Christopher Platts.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 144 - Living in the Ancient City
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 144 and URBS 144 ) The great Mediterranean cities of Classical Antiquity, Athens in the 5th c. BC and Rome in the 1st-2nd c. CE (along with some of their satellite cities), are synonymous with the rise of western civilization. The city plans and monumental architecture dominate our view, but this course also focuses on the civic institutions housed in the spectacular buildings and the social worlds shaped by the grand public spaces, as well as the cramped working quarters. Neighborhoods of the rich and the poor, their leisure haunts, and places of congregation and entertainment are explored to reveal the rituals of everyday life and their political consequences. Eve D’Ambra.
Second six-week course.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 160 - Art and Social Change in the United States
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 160 ) In this first-year writing seminar, we explore relationships between art, visual culture, and social change in the United States. Focusing on twentieth and twenty-first century social movements, we study artists and communities who have sought to inspire social change–to cultivate awareness, nurture new ideas, offer fresh visions, promote dialogue, encourage understanding, build and strengthen community, and inspire civic engagement and direct action–through creative visual expression. Lisa Collins
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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Art: II. Intermediate |
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ART 210 - Art, Myth, and Society in the Ancient Aegean
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 210 ) Eve D’Ambra.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or coursework in Greek & Roman Studies, or permission of the instructor.
NRO available to non-majors.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 211 - Rome: The Art of Empire
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 211 ) From humble beginnings to its conquest of most of the known world, Rome dominated the Mediterranean with the power of its empire. Art and architecture gave monumental expression to its political ideology, especially in the building of cities that spread Roman civilization across most of Europe and parts of the Middle East and Africa. Roman art also featured adornment, luxury, and collecting in both public and private spheres. Given the diversity of the people included in the Roman empire and its artistic forms, what is particularly Roman about Roman art? Eve D’Ambra.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or one unit in Greek and Roman Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 215 - The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Egypt
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 215 ) Ancient Egypt has long fascinated the public with its pyramids, mummies, and golden divine rulers. This course provides a survey of the archaeology, art, and architecture of ancient Egypt from the prehistoric cultures of the Nile Valley through the period of Cleopatra’s rule and Roman domination. Topics to be studied include the art of the funerary cult and the afterlife, technology and social organization, and court rituals of the pharaohs, along with aspects of everyday life. Eve D’Ambra.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or one unit of Greek and Roman Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 218 - The Museum in History, Theory, and Practice Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This seminar surveys the history and evolution of the art museum, beginning with private ”wonder rooms” and “cabinets of curiosity” in the Renaissance and concluding with the abundance of contemporary museums dedicated to broad public outreach. As we explore philosophies of both private and institutional collecting (including that of the college art museum), we use Vassar’s own Loeb Art Center as our first point of reference for considering a range of topics including the role of the museum in promoting art-historical scholarship and public education; its acquisition procedures; and challenges to the security or integrity of its collections posed by theft, traffic in forgeries, and the movement to repatriate antiquities to their country of origin. During the semester members of the class will curate an exhibition at the Loeb that will be on display in the spring of 2020. In addition, we will visit the Loeb several times to hear from different museum professionals about their careers, and we will visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Collection in Manhattan in order to examine different approaches to museum architecture and installation. Travel expenses will be funded by the Department. Christopher Platts
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 219 - The First Cities: The Art and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 219 and URBS 219 ) The art, architecture, and artifacts of the region comprising ancient Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine, and Turkey from 3200 BCE to the conquest of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE. Beginning with the rise of cities and cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia, course topics include the role of the arts in the formation of states and complex societies, cult practices, trade and military action, as well as in everyday life. How do we make sense of the past through its ruins and artifacts, especially when they are under attack (the destruction wrought by ISIS)? Eve D’Ambra.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or 106 or one unit in Greek and Roman Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 220 - Medieval Architecture Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
A survey of magnificent works of architecture constructed in the Mediterranean and Europe from the fourth to the fifteenth century, and an overview of the structural and symbolic language developed by their builders, patrons, and users. Particular attention is paid to the matter of representation: the challenge of bringing a medieval building into the classroom, that of translating our impressions of these structures into words and images, and the ways in which other beholders and scholars have done so. Lindsay Cook.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , coursework in Medieval Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 221 - Medieval Art Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
A survey of the sumptuous arts created in the Mediterranean and Europe from the third to the fifteenth century. We engage with magnificent objects from that millennium including monumental sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, metalwork, stained glass, mural painting, and mosaic that continue to stir viewers in the present. The first part of the course is arranged chronologically, beginning with late antiquity. Thematic units addressing key topics and the newest scholarship in medieval art history will punctuate the second part of the course. Lindsay Cook.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , coursework in Medieval Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 230 - Art in the Age of Van Eyck, Dürer and Bruegel
1 unit(s)
The Northern Renaissance. Early Netherlandish and German art from Campin, van Eyck and van der Weyden to Bosch, Bruegel, Dürer and Holbein. This transformative period, which saw the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century and the explosive turmoil of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, generated a profound reassessment of the role of images in the form of new responses toward human representation in devotional and narrative painting and printmaking as well as developments in secular subjects such as portraiture and landscape. TBA.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 231 - The Golden Age of Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer
1 unit(s)
An exploration of painting and printmaking during the Golden Age of the Netherlands. Lectures focus on Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer and their contemporary colleagues who specialized in landscape, still life, architectural and marine painting. While examining the effect of differing religions systems in Flanders and the Dutch Republic, we consider how economic triumph, scientific research and global trade stimulated the formation and flowering of Netherlandish art in the Age of Observation. TBA.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 235 - The Rise of the Artist, from Giotto to Leonardo da Vinci Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
A survey of Italian art c. 1300 - c.1500, when major cultural shifts led to a redefinition of art, and the artist emerged as a new creative and intellectual power. The course considers painting, sculpture and decorative arts by artists including Giotto, Donatello, Botticelli, and Leonardo. Our study of artworks and primary texts reveals how a predominantly Christian society embraced the revival of ancient pagan culture, elements of atheist philosophy, and Islamic science. We also discuss art in the context of nascent multiculturalism and consumerism in the new city-states; the importance of new communications systems, such as print; and artistic exchange with northern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean centers of Baghdad and Constantinople. Other topics include art theory and criticism; techniques and materials of painting and sculpture; experiments with multimedia and mass production; developments in perspective and illusionism; ritual and ceremonial; and art that called into question notions of sexuality and gender roles. Yvonne Elet.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 236 - Art in the Age of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
An exploration of the works of these three masters and their contemporaries in Renaissance Italy, c. 1485 - c. 1565. The primary focus is on painting and sculpture, but the course also considers drawings, prints, landscape, gardens, and decorative arts, emphasizing artists’ increasing tendency to work in multiple media. We trace changing ideas about the role of the artist and the nature of artistic creativity; and consider how these Renaissance masters laid foundations for art, and its history, theory and criticism for centuries to come. Other topics include artists’ workshops; interactions between artists and patrons; the role of the spectator; ritual and ceremonial; and Renaissance ideas about beauty, sexuality and gender. Yvonne Elet.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 240 - Activating the Architectural Uncanny in the City Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 240 ) Cities all over the world and in different eras have become participants and arenas in creating urban spectacles. Often such activities consist of processions involving masquerades, mobile floats, musicians decked in elaborate attire and playing instruments – commemorating the dead, the living, royalties and politicians; to name a few examples. This course will study how certain case-studies - ranging from Mexico City to Notting Hill in London – demonstrate how architectural facades, urban spaces as well as certain ceremonies activate an uncanny experience, which may even echo Trahndorff’s theory of the Gesamtkuntswerk. Adedoyin Teriba.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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ART 249 - Encounter and Exchange: American Art from 1565 to 1865
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 249 ) This course provides a survey of the visual arts made in the United States (or by American artists living abroad) until 1865, beginning with the first European representations of Native Americans in the 16th century and ending with Alexander Gardner’s images of death and destruction on the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War. It emphasizes the significance of cross-cultural encounter and international exchange to the creation and reception of artworks produced in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and prints. Our approach will be both chronological and thematic, considering topics such as the role of art in the construction of national identity; the origins of the U.S. art market; and the tensions of class, gender, race, and ethnicity in early American art.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS
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