Undergraduate Courses in Art History 2015-2016

This course introduces students to a range of issues concerning hacking, openness, and anonymity in science and technology though the angle of controversies. The class takes a broad view of the meanings of hacking, openness, and anonymity and includes, among other topics: the rise of the ethic of openness in science, debates over access and intellectual property law, body modification and disability, the role of new technologies in expanding the scope of state surveillance as well as opening up new possibilities for exposing state secrecy.

This class uses the angle of controversy to introduce students to various academic and popular approaches to the social scientific and humanistic study of science and technology. The class draws on classic academic works in diverse fields, such as the history and philosophy of science, anthropology, and bio­ethics, while also integrating a broad base of engaging and accessible material (editorials, national policies on science, legal regulations, and scientific controversies to name just a number examples) that educate as well as evoke critique and transformation of the complex contemporary practices, methods, and politics of science and technology.

1. Mid­term exam --- 35% (multiple choice and short take­home essay)
2. Eight pop quizzes --- 30% (the lowest of the eight will be dropped)
3. Op­Ed final --- 20% (separate instructions provided)
4. Public Service campaign --- 15% (group project, separate instructions provided)

From the outset, this course approaches the history of modernism and modernity through a variety of theoretical lenses and methodological approaches.  Following a chronological timeline, we will consider some of the key modernist movements and debates through an examination of artworks and visual objects produced from 1850 to the present. We will consider various definitions and approaches to “modernity” and “modernism” by reading texts from both primary and secondary sources, including works by artists, critics, historians and theorists. By focusing on the social and historical contexts in which artworks and art histories were made, we will explore how meaning is produced. In particularly, we will examine the politics of representations by discussing the ways in which sex, class, race and gender are inscribed in artworks, art historical narratives and exhibition practices.  We will also draw connections between contemporary art practices and the themes and debates address in this class.

3 x independent museum assignments      15%
Mid-Term         35%
2 Pop Quizzes         15%
Research paper         35%

The period from 1400 to 1700 saw the emergence of a number of new social functions for art. This course will explore the role of visual culture in the formation of identities across various social spheres in early modern Europe. The functions of selected works will be analysed in relation to civic identity, religious controversies, the rise of absolutism, capitalism and colonialism, and the spread of new visual forms of knowledge about the self and the world.

Midterm Exam: 25% (Tues Oct. 20, in class)
Research Assignment: 35% (2 parts: Nov. 3 and Nov. 17)
Final Exam: 35%  (TBA, during final exam period)
Participation: 5%

This course is dedicated to the visual histories, both real and imagined, of the medieval city of Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul. Founded by Constantine the Great in the fourth century and conquered by the Ottomans in the fifteenth century, Constantinople constituted the heart of the Byzantine Empire. As the seat of imperial and patriarchal power, it embodied sacro-imperial authority like no other city. Weekly lectures will trace the architectural layers of this exceptional medieval city, beginning with its foundation as “New Rome” and its transformation into the capital of a vast late antique empire whose sway stretched from the Levant to the Adriatic. We will then consider the city’s later medieval history as the center of a fragmented political entity, before finally turning to its eventual demise as the Byzantine capital and transformation into the capital city of the Ottoman Empire. Throughout these different historical moments, we will trace the urban manifestations of secular spectacle and imperial memory, sacred celebrations and the sacrosanct performance of Orthodoxy. Readings will include primary sources in translation and secondary readings by leading scholars in the field. We will consider not only the visual and architectural fabric of the city—its surviving and lost edifices and sculptures as well as cartographic textual and visual representations of the city—but also the critical ritual movements through the city, especially its lavish liturgies and imperial processions. Prerequisites: Prior knowledge of Byzantine art history is not required but recommended. Students are expected to have taken at least one previous 200-level art history class.

COURSE EVALUATION AND REQUIREMENTS
Final course grades are assigned on the basis of the following three components:
(1) An in-class test, which will consist primarily of essay questions, is set for November 23 (35%). This date is non-negotiable. A make-up test will only be offered if a student provides written medical documentation is provided within 48 hours of the missed test.
(2) A formal 10-page paper on a topic of your own choosing. A preliminary paper proposal (1-2 pages) with an annotated bibliography (5 sources minimum) is due at the beginning of class on October 26 (15%). The final paper itself is due at the beginning of the final class on December 7 (35%). With advance approval, you may write up to 15 pages if you would like to be considered for the “Undergraduate Essay Contest in Byzantine Studies” offered by the Canadian Committee of Byzantinists. You must indicate your desire to be considered for this prize in writing when you submit your initial paper proposal and annotated bibliography (again, due October 26).
(3) “Objects of the City” presentation OR “The Digital and the Absent” Essay: 15%. Detailed instructions for this course component will be posted on the course website.

In this course we will consider culturally-specific concepts and histories that inform the communication of social and political issues within contemporary art by Indigenous artists throughout Canada. For the purposes of this course, contemporary Indigenous art is understood as beginning with work of Norval Morrisseau and Daphne Odjig through to the present day. The methodology will be lecture-based, though the course integrates a variety of media. The texts selected for the course are primarily authored by Indigenous academics, curators and artists in order to further a decolonizing perspective in the critical understanding of the artwork.

Assignments and Evaluation

OCTOBER 1: Critical Response 25%
Review of Scott Benesiinaabandan’s visiting artist presentation
- 3-4 pages (750-1000 words), typed, double-spaced
- Include minimum two secondary sources
- Consistent style format must be followed, either Chicago or MLA

NOVEMBER 19: Optional Written Assignment
If a student received less than 70% on the Critical Response, they have the option of submitting this second written assignment in order to improve their mark. The best grade of the two will be kept. Details TBA

OCTOBER 19, 20: Test 1 and 2 20%  
In-class closed book exam

NOV 16, 17, 19: Test 3, 4 , 5 25% 
In-class closed book exam

DEC 1: Critical Review 30% 
Review of Zacharias Kunuk’s film, Atanarjuat
- 3-4 pages (750-1000 words), typed, double-spaced
- Include minimum two secondary sources
- Consistent style format must be followed, either Chicago or MLA

This course will critically examine the concept of addiction as it is represented in visual culture, including eighteenth-century graphic satire, nineteenth-century medical photography, paintings, video art, performance art, and twentieth-century film. We will consider a wide range of visual material in order to tease out gendered, classed and raced ideologies related to addiction and addicted individuals. In examining art produced from the eighteenth century to the present against films produced in the late twentieth century, we will establish how beliefs about individuals who consume alcohol and drugs have been constructed through visual culture, while also identifying beliefs that have remained relatively consistent from the mid-eighteenth century, when British artist William Hogarth produced his famous engraving Gin Lane (1751), up to and including the present day. Readings will be drawn from a range of disciplines, including art history, film studies, sociology, policy studies, cultural studies, and addiction studies.

Evaluation
Short essay (max 3 pages double-spaced) – Due Thursday October 1st ------------------20%
Midterm (short answer) – Thursday October 29th -------------------------------------20%
Final Essay (approx. 2,000 words, not including notes) – Due Thursday November 26th -----30%
Take-home exam – Distributed Tuesday Dec. 1st; due Tuesday Dec. 8th by 5 pm ----------30%

This thematic survey of Northern European art explores the development of painting, sculpture, and the graphic arts in the Low Countries, France, Germany, and England from about 1400 to about 1560. The emphasis will be on major Netherlandish and German painters: Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein, Pieter Bruegel. Through interpretation we will consider the social, political, and religious functions of artworks in public and private life, exploring the needs and interests of patrons, artists, and beholders. Topics to be addressed include the multiple roles of art in religious devotion; the significance of artistic materials and techniques including the revolution of the print medium; the changing conception of the artist; the role of gender in art making and viewing; the explosion of secular imagery in art; alterity and otherness; and the dramatic cultural transformation brought about by Renaissance humanism, the Protestant Reformation, and the “discovery” of the New World. The course will include at least one required independent visit to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Midterm Exam: 25% (October 20, in class)
Term Paper: 40% (Papers due at the beginning of class, November 17)
Final Exam: 35% (TBA, during final exam period)

This dual course combines workshops on various topics of relevance to career development and post-graduate activities with a traditional seminar on a selected topic. The seminar topic is Art History and Critical Whiteness Studies.

European imperialism produced the colonial category of race within a hierarchical structure of difference with whiteness, the assumed paradigm. This racialized social structure was strategically reproduced across the Americas where it facilitated the extermination and containment of indigenous population and the enslavement of Africans. Although the idealization of whiteness was used to justify the exploitation of racial “others,” ironically whiteness also became increasingly invisible as a racial category, and instead functioned largely as an unquestioned normative human position. The advent of Critical Whiteness Studies has created a space where whiteness has been reclaimed as a racial category and critically scrutinized as a site of political, social, and cultural privilege. Although taken up in most of the humanities, comparatively little work has been undertaken in Art History since the breakthrough publication of Richard Dyer’s book White (1997). This course will combine art historical and other humanities readings on whiteness, mainly in the British Atlantic context. Topics like degrees of whiteness, mixed race subjects, and distinctions between European and Euro-American whiteness shall be explored. Students will apply their knowledge to a range of assignments designed to impart transferable career skills.

Course Assignments (ARTH 400)
Participation: 15%
Short Essay: 10%
Grant Application: 25%
Career Plan: 25%
Catalogue Entry: 25%

Course Assignments (ARTH 401)
Seminar Presentation: 25%
Final Paper: 75%

What can a portrait, the purported record of a person’s physical appearance, tell us about an individual long lost to history? What can we learn from a visual image about a person’s life, values, character, and motivations? In the Renaissance almost every European artist created vivid portrait likenesses of their contemporaries to mark crucial moments in the life of the portrayed: the moment they were betrothed or married, came of age or entered a profession, rose to power or title, when they died. Essentially, whenever the cycle of life entered a new stage, the artist was called upon. But portraits are also enigmatic: do they represent individuals or ideas, real appearances or aspirational ideals? This seminar explores multiple aspects of late medieval and early modern portraiture with attention to theories of life-likeness and the power of art; poetic tropes of desire, loss, and captured presence; ideals of moral character and physical appearance (as expressed in poetry as well as painting); the social, political, and religious functions of portraiture; and the reception of portraiture by historical audiences. Areas of special focus will include the meanings of the various media of portraiture, the construction and expression of the self (including the artist’s self-portraiture), tensions between fiction and reality, and problems of social, class, ethnic, and gender identity.

Participation/in-class work: (40% of grade)
Written work: (60% of grade)

“Culture doesn’t lie; it survives, slipping beneath the surface of national consciousness, becoming for us the recovered memory of a tangled, vibrant, hybrid world.”
—The Arts of Intimacy (2008)

To understand the arts of medieval Spain, according to the authors of The Arts of Intimacy, one must untangle a web of lived intimate memories and cultural associations among Christians, Jews, and Muslims. This course aims at such an untangling by examining the diverse visual cultures of the Iberian Peninsula from the late antique “barbarian” invasions through the late fifteenth century. Within this broad historical survey, we will trace a series of cultural networks and shared visual cultures. The first half of the course examines the transformation of Late Roman Iberia following the Arab invasions of the eighth century and the ensuing cultural and political ties to extra peninsular Islamic powers in the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. Turning from Al-Andalus to Northern Spain in the second half of the course, we will examine the Christian efforts at Reconquista, which culminate in the fall of the kingdom of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. Central to this shift in power is the construction of cultural ties with royal and ecclesiastical centers north of the Pyrenees, and the promotion of pilgrimage and its role in shaping artistic practice. Throughout the course, particular attention will be paid to the role of the visual in the concept of “convivencia” among Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and the visual and material theorization of frontier zones. Finally, the seminar will also consider the historiography of medieval Spain, which will be situated within larger art historical debates.

This intensive upper-level seminar is intended for students with a strong foundation in art history preferably with a background in medieval art.

Course Requirements 

Participation (50%)
The participation portion of the grade includes weekly attendance and participation (20%) as well as leading discussion on two occasions (30%). Attendance and participation is mandatory: the seminar’s success depends upon an active and engaged group. If you miss a class, you will be expected to write a short response to the readings for the class you missed (the response must be emailed to me within one week of the missed class).

As this is a 400-level seminar, weekly class sessions will be student led primarily. Working together as a group of three to four students (depending on final enrollment numbers), discussion Arts of Medieval Spain, 2 leaders will outline the scope of the reading, select and provide a power point presentation of relevant works of art and architecture to structure the discussion, and, most importantly, to raise questions to prompt lively discussion. After each class session for which you serve as discussion leader, you must email me a self-assessment by the end of the week. Guidelines for leading discussion, which include self-assessment questions, will be distributed separately.

Research Project (50%)
The culmination of this seminar is a research project, which encompasses the following three components (note that late assignments will be graded down 5% per day):
(1) Abstract and annotated bibliography: a preliminary 1-2-page abstract of your research topic along with a bibliography of ten sources, five of which must be annotated, due by email on Friday October 16.
(2) Presentation: a 15-20-minute oral presentation of your research topic in the final two weeks of the term (with power point presentation and a handout)
(3) Paper: a final 8-12 page formal research paper, formatted according to the Chicago Manuel of Style, due by noon on Wednesday, December 9 (hard copy delivered to my office).

Coming soon.

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This course offers a critical survey of art since 1945, following a chronological timeline and primarily – but not exclusively – focused on Europe and North America. Students will be acquainted with major artists and artworks, movements, styles, and tendencies in art production, as well as major periodizing concepts such as modernity and late modernism, postmodernism, and the contemporary. Students will also be introduced to key theoretical frameworks and approaches that have informed the practice of art as well as the methodology of contemporary art history.

In addition to introducing major artistic figures and trends, this course will examine art as part of the wider field of visual culture and in relation to the social, political, cultural, and technological shifts of the postwar period and the early 21st century, paying attention to the ways that art and visual culture both reflect and construct the world in which they are produced and circulated. Finally, students will also be encouraged to critically reflect on the relationship of art practice to the economy of the global art market and the social constitution of the art world, with reference to international biennales, art fairs, auctions, and shifts in museum practice, art education, and the role of curators, critics, and scholars. 

Assessment:
1. Midterm Exam (in class Feb. 19, 20%)
2. Exhibition visit project (due Mar. 11, 10%)
3. Research paper proposal (due Mar. 18, 5%)
4. Final Exam (in Arts W-215 during formal exam period, 30%)
5. Research Paper (due Apr. 15, 30%)
6. Attendance and participation (taken at random throughout term, 5%)  

This course offers an introduction to the major artistic monuments of the ancient world from the Ancient Near East and Egypt through the civilizations of Greece and Rome and beyond. Lectures focus on works of art and architecture from these diverse cultures, providing insight into the specific historic contexts in which they were produced and the particular civic, religious and political functions they served, with an eye to the afterlives of such works (their “discoveries” and mobilizations in diverse, often nationalistic, agendas). In this way, the modern historiography and archaeology of the ancient world will be an essential component of the course. Textbook readings are supplemented by a series of culturally and historically specific case studies and primary sources as a means of providing exposure to a wide variety of material within a critical framework. Students will develop skills in visual literacy and gain a basic understanding of the methods and aims of art historical study. The course includes visits to McGill’s Redpath Museum and the Rare Books and Special Collections in McLennan Library, as well as the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal.

COURSE EVALUATION AND REQUIREMENTS
Final course evaluation will be based the following criteria:
• Test I: 20%
• Test II: 30%
• Formal Analysis: 15%
• Annotated Bibliography: 25%
• Museum visit assignment: 10%

This course is an introductory course to the historical and cultural backgrounds of (1) East Asian visual/performing arts, and (2) the dynamics behind the portrayals of East Asians/East Asian arts in North American movies and music videos. The ultimate purpose of this course is to deepen our understanding of how the images of East Asians/East Asian arts have been used and distorted to create an exotic “other.” The overview of the course is as follows:
Week 2: Pure Art, Popular Art, and Marginal Art: Tsurumi Shunsuke and his views of arts
Week 3-6: Visual/Performing Arts in Japan
Week 7: First Exam (2/17)
Week 8: Screening: “Spirited Away”
Week 9-10: Diversified “Japan”
Week 10: Screening: “Dear Pyongyang”
Week 11-14: How the West sees the East
Final Paper Due (TBA)

Requirements/ Method of Evaluation
30% First in-class Exam
30% Second paper on “Spirited Away”
​40% Final paper
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ARTH 305 (CRN 3190) Methods in Art History (3 credits) Prof. Matthew Hunter, T, Th, 1135-1255, Arts W-215

Why does the art historian need “methods”? What are methods? How do they enable and constrain the kinds of questions art historians have asked when looking at artifacts? This lecture course introduces key issues in art-historical methodology by exploring the following propositions: 1) “method” is not equivalent to “theory”; 2) questions of method are fundamentally questions of evidence; and 3) if they are matters evidence, then questions of method cannot be asked outside of the context of art history’s knowledge-making infrastructure (its media, institutions and publics, among others). Featuring several guest lecturers able to illuminate specific facets of art-historical evidence-building past and present, the course will trace an intellectual genealogy and broad historiographical overview of methods that now inform research practice in art history.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Attendance is mandatory at all class meetings.
If you have to miss a class meeting, be sure to get notes from a classmate and to look at the key images on the course website discussed in that class.
Your grade will be determined by four factors:
25%) mid-term examination (February 25, in class)
40%) term paper (due in class April 14)
25%) final examination (TBA, during final exam period)
10%) participation (includes attendance and any in-class assignments)

This course addresses major monuments of Venetian architecture, sculpture, painting, and the decorative and graphic arts within a visual culture framework that acknowledges the status of Venice itself as an elaborately constructed work of art. Due to the unique position of the city—built upon a series of reclaimed islands in a shallow saline lagoon—Venice has always been understood as a floating mundus alter (other world), uniquely positioned between East and West. Known as La Serenissima (the Most Serene Republic), Venice employed her leading artists and architects—including the Bellini and Lombardo family dynasties, Giorgione, Titian, Sansovino, Tintoretto, Veronese, and Palladio—to lend potent visual form to a complex, multi-faceted, and carefully crafted self-mythology. Together we will recover the rich complexity of this Venetian self-portrait as it changed over time, with special focus on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (1450-1580). We will examine the various strands and figures in the visualized myth, including the dual origins of Venice in ancient Rome and Byzantium; the cultivation of a materially opulent, hybrid architectural style rooted in East and West; the display of communal socio-political values through visual and ritual culture; the theoretical articulation of uniquely Venetian artistic style and subject matter; and the ambivalent projection of Venice as both center of piety and pilgrimage and marketplace, theater, and playground of the early modern world.  

COURSE EVALUATION AND REQUIREMENTS
​Final grades will be based on two in-class tests plus a research paper assignment according to the following percentages:
Midterm Exam: 25% (February 25, in class)
Term Paper: 40% (April 7, 5pm, Mycourses)
Final Exam: 35% (TBA, during final exam period)

This course examines modern art, design and architecture produced in Britain, Canada, France, and Germany. Major European figures, including Edouard Manet and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, will be considered.  Modern art movements including Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Primitivism, and German Expressionism, among others, will be discussed. In order to illuminate transcultural exchanges between different countries, we will discuss Canadian art that was influenced by European modernism. The course will cover the period from approximately 1850, the year the Great Exhibition opened in London, to the late 1920s and the aftermath of the First World War. This was a time of rapid social, economic, and political change, and modern art movements will be considered in light of historical context. Readings and lectures will give particular attention to issues related to gender, race and sexuality.

Evaluation
Reading Responses (approximately half a page, single spaced, per reading): 20%
Midterm (two essays, compare and contrast): 20%
Final paper (8 pages double-spaced): 30%
Final take-home exam (Due Monday April 18th at my office, Arts W-287): 30%

Class Description
This course will focus on moments of dissidence, resistance and insurgency in Japan from 1868 until the present. Political, cultural and other modes of activism will be considered, as well as their interrelation. Not meant as a comprehensive history of all Japanese radicalisms, the course will instead focus thematically on types of radical expression and action, considering both the imperatives for action and nature of radical responses to these imperatives. Doing so, we will also consider reflexively how scholarship plays a role in activism – the potentials of scholarly practice, as well as potential limitations. 

Grading
Because this is a class that puts into question traditional forms of knowledge production and demands consideration of alternative methods of putting intellectual investment into practice, assignments in this class will diverge somewhat from the conventional expository paper. Instead, the class will be divided into groups, and these groups will work on producing, cumulatively throughout the first part of the semester, a project modeled on practices that in Japanese are referred to as mini-komi—that is, “mini communication,” which is defined in opposition to the “mass communication” of traditional publication and broadcast channels. Students will be encouraged to think rigorously and collaboratively on how to present insights and relevant knowledge from class readings and the issues that come up in class discussion in ways that will take physical form and use techniques inspired by those discussed in class. This will culminate in a final form of this mini-komi that combines and elaborates on the two parts already made during the course of the class, responding to peer critiques and also those of the instructor and/or TA. This final mini-komi, handed in after Reading Week, will take the place of a traditional midterm.

​For the final, students will work individually on developing a project on their own, first proposing it formally and then following through with it as a final. This can take any form, and can build on or be inspired by the preceding group project. It can be a traditional research paper, and extension of the mini-komi form, or take on other forms or be built upon practices that then would be archived or recorded in order to present to be graded. In the case of artistic or activist practices/interventions/pieces, a formal statement will be required demonstrating the relevance of the project to the class and how the piece/practice/intervention is meant to respond to, deal with, extend or critique issues discussed in class.

This class is meant to be more discussion-based than lecture-based, so attendance and participation will be factored into the grade. Formal doctors’ notes, etc., will be required to excuse absences. Assignments turned in late will be penalized.

There will be occasional screenings, marked on the syllabus, of films that are also required to be seen by members of the class. Attendance to the screenings themselves, which follow class on some Tuesdays, is not mandatory, but students who are unable to make them are expected to watch the films that week on their own to prepare for class discussion that Thursday. They will be available via the library either on course reserve or via the library’s subscription to Kanopy, a streaming service.

Mini-komi Drafts (2 x 10) = 20%
Mini-komi Final Project = 20%
Final Project Proposal = 15%
Final Project = 30%
Attendance/Participation = 15%

Coming soon.

“Power is like the wind: we cannot see it, but we feel its force. Ceremonial is like the snow: an insubstantial pageant, soon melted into thin air.”
​–David Cannadine, Rituals of Royalty, 1.

This seminar reassesses the “trappings” of empire: the spaces, monuments, ceremonials, and styles of comportment and decorum that have been curated historically in the service of empire. It covers a wide geographic and chronological range so as to bring a cross-cultural perspective to the visual dimension of empire building. This inherently comparative enterprise is rooted in the geographical footprint or, better yet, the afterimage of the Roman Empire, whose sway stretched from modern day Scotland to Syria at its height. Beginning in the wake of the Roman Empire, our case studies radiate out from two key periods of transition and transformation: the Late Antique Mediterranean and the early modern Ottoman “global” agenda. First, we will consider how the Empire of Rome became the Empire of New Rome or Constantinople; and with this shift from the Roman to the Byzantine empire we will trace the recasting of imperium in Christian terms, while remaining acutely aware of Sassanian and other eastern and central Asian cultural dialogues. Our second power transition is from Byzantine Constantinople to Ottoman Konstantinyye (later Istanbul), and the re-inscription of empire from Christian to Muslim, with the Ottoman construction of authority rooted in the Byzantine past but in dialogue with the European, Savafid, and Mughal present.

​Within this a broad arena, our discussion will remain rooted in specific monuments and moments of imperial articulation and negotiation. Rather than providing a comprehensive survey, the seminar will investigate a series of episodes in cross-cultural empire building with the following questions in mind. What is the relationship of imperial ascendency and decline to the visual articulation and projection of power? How do cultural performances of power triangulate diplomatic efforts across cultures? How do different empires script their past for present purposes? What is the relationship between art and architecture and the more ephemeral performances of empire—such as receptions, banquets, diplomatic exchanges? If such aspects of empire are strategic, how and why have they been marginalized in the scholarship? And, finally, how might we re-centre such trappings from an ancillary position to the core of the ideology of empire.

Note that this is an intensive upper-level seminar and is intended for students with a strong background in pre- and early-modern art history.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS
I. Research Project (50%)
II. Participation (50%) 

Reconfigurations of the Public Sphere in Contemporary Art II

Since the late 1990s, spatial art practices—a category that has expanded to include not only performance art and installations, but also new media environments, situational and relational interventions, immersive settings and net localizations, street art, expanded monuments, physical and digital agoras and salons, specially created public spaces—have set about a significant reconsideration of the aesthetics of space. This shift is one in which artistic practices have progressively moved away from the deconstruction of space to the constitution of micro public spheres. In these spheres, humans and nonhumans are invited to assemble in space; they circulate, sit or stand, perceiving others perceiving; they influence one another or coevolve in parallel—temporarily attached by mutual, commensalic, neglectful or antagonistic relations. These are laboratories where questions of inclusiveness, world-forming and relational attachments are raised and enacted.

The general objective of this seminar is to investigate contemporary art’s renewed engagement with the public sphere. It revisits Jürgen Habermas’s notion of the public sphere—as “a realm of our social life” where public opinion (a critical form of publicity) takes shape through critical deliberations between individuals who meet to discuss matters of common interest. It explores that notion as an analytical tool to assess the influence of aisthesis in contemporary reformulations of critical publicity.

In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962/1989), Habermas stated that the ideal type of the public sphere was its 18th-century deployment, where it had the capacity to act as a normative principle of democratic legitimacy, producing public opinion that influenced political action. In subsequent revisions, Habermas emphasized the role of deliberative language and communicative rationality in the consolidation of the public sphere, which he redefined as “a network for communicating information and points of view” where “participants enter into interpersonal relationships by taking positions of mutual speech-act offers and assuming illocutionary obligations” (Between Fact and Norms 1996: 361). The Habermasian formulation of the public sphere has been contested from the start—critics have questioned its alleged universalism and separation from the private sphere, its non-pluralism and non-acknowledgement of identity politics, as well as its rationalistic mode of deliberation. Habermas himself has postulated that the public sphere has been in decline since the 19th century. In light of these critiques, what remains of the public sphere, and what is to be saved from it? Much more multiple, porous, passionate, mediated, privatized and mutable than initially formulated, some key components of the public sphere have resurfaced in artistic practices, including: the richness of deliberations on matters of general and common interest; and a public body’s capacity to reconfigure common sense. These practices have set into play innovative public spheres (e.g., atmospheres, interspecies salons, speculative realist sites) that challenge common sense and rethink human/nonhuman relations and commonalities, following a reinvented dialectic between mutuality and individuality, agreement and dissensus, distraction and will.

The seminar is an occasion to reflect on some of these emerging models of the reconfigured public sphere and on the role of aisthesis (αἴσθησις: the faculty of perception by the senses and the intellect) in this emergence. It asks: how are public spheres rethought aesthetically (in terms of forms, media, materialities and sensibilities) in contemporary art?; and how do artistic public spheres succeed in permeating political public spheres?

​Referring to her museum-wide installation made for The Henry Art Gallery—an installation entitled the common SENSE (2014-2015), which explored “touch” as the sense common to all animals—American artist Ann Hamilton declared that it addressed “the infinitude and threatened extinctions we share across species – a lacrimosa, and elegy for a future being lost.” It resulted from Hamilton’s extended engagement with the University of Washington’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture’s Ornithology collection. This installation, whose “commonality” consisted in vitalizing the sense of touch shared by human and non-human animals, is one of the emblematic artistic materializations of the public sphere. Other notable art practices include: Thomas Hirschhorn’s Monuments—public places built in working class neighborhoods, with the agreement and help of local communities; Pierre Huyghe’s gardens designed to evolve through the interactions between human and nonhuman (animal, botanical and mineral) elements; Tino Sehgal’s live salons; Christoph Büchel’s temporary mosque installation that marked Iceland’s participation in the 2015 Venice Biennale; Marjetica Potrč’s community projects—the building of energy and water infrastructures by participatory design and sustainability practices; and Nadia Myre’s Scar Project—a participatory project recognizing, naming, sharing and listening to wounds. These models—all of which will be examined in this seminar, together with other art practices also engaged in the making of micro public spheres—represent different successful and unsuccessful attempts to act, form, make and think spacious worlds aesthetically. They will be observed in dialogue with new political and philosophical models of public life, including: relational aesthetics (N. Bourriaud); the aesthetic regime (J. Rancière); the inquiring public (J. Dewey); the inoperative community (J.-L. Nancy); unbecoming communities (J.-P. Ricco); the meeting of species (Donna Haraway); plant-thinking (M. Marder); and the (non)relationality of human and nonhuman objects (G. Harman). The seminar will evolve around Media@McGill’s international colloquium, Aisthesis and the Common: Reconfiguring the Public Sphere, to be held at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal on March 18-19, 2016.

Seminar requirements: seminar participation; oral presentation; colloquium attendance [Aisthesis and the Common: Reconfiguring the Public Sphere, March 18-19]; 15-20pp essay on artwork(s) of your choice, dealing with the topic of the seminar.
Readings include sections of: Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (1991); Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy” (1990); Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (1998); Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator (2009); John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (1954 [1927]); Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (2007); Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community (1991); Jean-Paul Ricco, The Decision Between Us: Art and Ethics in the Time of Scenes (2014); Michael Marder, Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (2013); and Bruno Latour, “Factures/Fractures: From the Concept of Network to the Concept of Attachment” (1999).

The sublime has been a recurrent trope in the history of art and literature, the first known treatise on the topic dating back to the first century AD. During the twentieth century, the concept remained mostly a philosophical and literary category. However, in the last fifteen to twenty years, it has become increasingly popular in the art world. Most art critics and historians who attempt to frame or understand this revival rely rather anachronistically on either a postmodern or a modern definition of the term. It has thus become more and more important to understand what we mean when talking about the sublime and how history and ideology have influenced the definitions we are refering to. In this seminar we will investigate the history of the sublime to gain a richer and more critical understanding of the concept, in order to assess the significance of its current renewal. Special attention will be given to 1) the relation between form and perception that underlies each interpretation of the sublime and 2) the social, historical or religious determinants that influence the redefinition of each term—form and perception.

One of the two main objectives of the seminar is to enable you to develop a theoretical and critical way of analysis. To this end, you will write weekly critical responses to the readings. This course is a seminar, therefore most of each session will be devoted to discussions based on your readings of the text. The other important objective is to integrate this critical perspective into the analysis of art works and, conversely, to explore how art can help understand a philosophical concept. In every session, two students will thus be invited to present a short analysis of an artwork of their choice that, according to them, relate to the theme and the definition of the sublime we will be studying that day. This will not only enrich our examination of the texts but also prepare you for your semester project, which consists of an oral presentation and a final essay.

Requirements:
- Attendance and overall participation: 20%
- Weekly critical reading responses: 20%
​- Short presentation (5-8 min) of an artwork of your choice relating to a particular definition of the sublime studied in one of the reading assigned: 10%
- 1-page outline of your final paper including a provisional title, a general overview of the research question, your main argument and a short bibliography of 8-10 titles: 5%
- April 6 and 13: 10 min oral presentation: 15%
- 15 pp. final essay, due by April 18 at noon: 30% 

This seminar will introduce students to seven major terms related to current media technologies: big data, algorithms, data visualization, networks, platforms, infrastructures and formats/codecs. It will enable students to become acquainted with current debates in the field of media and communication studies and to develop critical perspectives toward the social, economic, political and cultural ramifications of current media technologies. Depending on their interests and programs, students develop semester projects from a communication studies or an art history perspective (or both). Next to reading and discussion scholarly literature and other materials, students will also attend two important scholarly events held at McGill University this spring: first, the symposium “Hardwired Temporalities: Media and the Material Patterning of Time” (March 11 & 12) and second, this year’s Media@McGill colloquium “Aisthesis and the Common: Reconfiguring the Public Sphere” (March 18 & 19). This will provide the opportunity to meet internationally renowned scholars in person. The seminar will be held in cooperation with Media@Mcgill, McGill’s hub of research, scholarship and public outreach on issues and controversies in media, technology and culture. A Media@McGill representative, Sophie Toupin, will participate in the seminar as a guest. She will also provide mor information about Media@McGill’s activities (http://media.mcgill.ca/).

Assignments 
I. Seminar participation (10 %)
II. Weekly response papers and session facilitation (25 %)
III. Conference attendance and reflections (10 %)
IV. Semester project: annotated bibliography, presentation and final paper (55 %)

 

https://www.mcgill.ca/ahcs/undergraduate/ugrad/internship