Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Investigates a selected thematic topic in art and culture studies, for example, postcolonial theory and the arts; perception and embodiment; art activism and resistance; or urban art and culture. May repeat for credit.

COURSE DETAILS:

“We are in the world and the world is in us.” Alfred North Whitehead Scholarship on landscape art has been heavily influenced by what is called the “spatial turn.”

These interpretations tend to move quickly from the art object to the political situations that they stand for: nationhood, imperialism and colonialism. In contrast, a consideration of time, usually understood by art historians as narrative, or memory, depends on more capacious readings. The humanities are currently undergoing a “sensory turn,”—perhaps in response to the numbing of the senses by technological interfaces—which encourages an empathic, embodied engagement with art that is more than visual. Accounting for the formal and material characteristics of art works and projects allows us to understand their appeals to our senses of extension, time, touch, hearing, smell and taste. The goal of this course is to explore critically a vast range of images and media—from 16th century landscape painting to contemporary literature, film and art—and in so doing, develop new theoretical frameworks to grasp how the concept of landscape operated in different historical contexts. In light of the deepening environmental crisis of our current era, now known as the Anthropocene, we will also study a series of works that address human changes made to the surface of the earth and its atmosphere, and will consider their relationship to the rise of global environmental activism.