A seminar based on a special topic in the study of Art History. The seminar may be repeated for credit with the permission of the dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

2 credits.

Art of Colonial South Asia
[HTA 313-L1] (Spring 2024)
This seminar aims to teach students how to look at, think about, and engage critically with the visual culture of British India. Together, we will examine the repercussions of the Anglo-Indian colonial encounter on the disciplines of painting, decorative arts, photography, and architecture. We shall not only study the objects themselves, but interrogate the cultural, political, and intellectual circumstances under which they were produced, circulated, collected, and displayed. Finally, we will explore the legacy of the British empire today—its influence on contemporary art, the politics and practices of museum displays, repatriation debates, and beyond. The course will involve visits to museums around the city. For the final project, students will conceptualize their own exhibitions, selecting eight artifacts that present a broad view of the art of colonial South Asia.

Artists' Writing
[HTA 313-M1] (Spring 2024)
This course is an introduction to artists’ writing from the postwar period to today, either as an integral or a complementary part of their practice. In this course, artists’ writings will be discussed in relationship to the visual works. The content is roughly organized chronologically and according to various literary genres: biography, autobiography, homage, interview, poetry, fiction, auto-fiction, as well as opinion or position pieces and theoretical essays. An alphabetic indicative selection of authors discussed in this course includes Vito Acconci, Louise Bourgeois, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Liam Gillick, Philip Guston, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Allan Kaprow, Robert Morris, Yoko Ono, Nan June Paik, Lorraine O’Grady, Faith Ringgold, Martha Rosler, Carolee Schneemann, Hito Steyerl, KimSu Theiler, Lucia Vernarelli, as well as a number of artists’ Manifesti authored collectively. This selection particularly focuses on representing the significant but often underrepresented field of writings by women artists. As the assigned texts are in English, issues of translation as well as writing in English as a second language will be addressed; students are also encouraged to discuss writings in other languages than English for their assignments. In addition to studying artists’ texts, students will produce a significant amount of writing for this course (some of which will happen during class time) as well as be required to work closely with the Center for Writing and Learning. 

Performance and Property
[HTA 313-N1] (Spring 2024)
Examining key texts from critical race theory to contract law, feminist approaches to reproduction to decolonial critiques of the museum, this course develops multiple overlapping challenges to property and situates them within histories of performed and embodied art. We will study the racial, sexual, and colonial politics of performance, considering in particular questions of subjection and objecthood; repetition and deviation; ritual and documentation; and preservation and decay. Together, we will ask: Can we use performance art to explore, contest, and renegotiate property? What is property’s relationship to labor, occupation, law, and natural right, and how might performance rework those fundamental logics? What alternative methodologies and practices for the transmission and maintenance of cultural material does performance introduce in order to resist rendering expression and/or artwork into property? Students will develop a series of writing projects over the course of the semester and acquire a critical vocabulary to approach and write with performance art across culture and time.