Sample Syllabus: Art Humanities

Art surrounds us throughout our life. What makes something art? What makes art valuable? How should we interpret or criticize art? These are just some of the many questions we will explore in looking at what art means to society. We will read many classical and contemporary authors on what makes art valuable or unique. We will also discuss a variety of case studies in the arts to illustrate our theoretical readings. This course represents an interdisciplinary examination of what art is and what its value to society could be. Students will read a variety of authors writing about art from a range of disciplines—art history, rhetoric, English, philosophy, and communication studies. We will work diligently on charitably understanding the arguments of others while honing our own views and argumentative skills. The course will also allow students to think about the role of art in their own lives and the values it brings to their experience. The course culminates with each student leading a presentation and writing a sustained argumentative paper on a topic of their choice relating to art and society.

Syllabus, 2012

This course was designed -along with Art History and its Methods -as a junior-level seminar intended to give art history majors both a close familiarity with the history of a relevant discipline and a degree of experience in producing original critical writing. It is also open, however, to non-majors, and it has three further aims: to introduce all students to the history of Western art criticism since 1700, to familiarize students with some of the central tasks and goals of art criticism, and to provide students with relevant tools and experiences in crafting their own art criticism. The various assignments, which include a wide range of readings, several reading responses, group presentations, and a series of writing exercises culminating in a 1,000-word review, are designed to fulfill these aims. By the end of the term, then, students in the class should be comfortable discussing art criticism as a field and as a practice, and will have experience in authoring their own criticism.

It was written for the Understanding Art course and includes information about the work with a visit to the museum. Good luck.

2013

I began my college career in the fall of 2008 at Olney Central College in Olney, Illinois. OCC is part of the Illinois Eastern Community Colleges system. I spent two semesters at OCC, until I moved in the summer of 2009. I transferred in the fall of 2009 to Ashford University in Clinton, Iowa. I took advantage of the online education offered by Ashford, which allowed me to study at my home in Clarkston, Michigan. I had two concurrent majors with Ashford: first: social sciences with an education concentration; and second: English. The papers in this book are the collected written assignments of my undergraduate career at Olney Central College and Ashford University. They are presented in chronological order within each course, and the courses, aside from the first semester, are given in consecutive order. The papers in the first two semesters were written using MLA format, with subsequent papers being written in APA format, as required by the individual schools. I completed by undergraduate studies in April of 2013 and graduated from Ashford University in the spring.

What issues would you prioritise in writing a social history of contemporary art?

What is History Today … ?, 1988

Art history is the study of all forms of art, architecture, and visual culture in their social and historical contexts. The History of Art major can serve either as a general program in the humanities or as the groundwork for more specialized training. Unless otherwise indicated, all courses in History of Art are open to all students in Yale College. Course Numbering 100-level courses are broad introductory surveys that address basic art history from a number of regional and thematic perspectives. Prospective majors are encouraged to take the surveys as early in their course of study as possible. Under certain circumstances, students who have taken the Advanced Placement test in art history may earn acceleration credit and, in consultation with the director of undergraduate studies (DUS), may place out of one required 100-level course. Intermediate and advanced courses, numbered above 200, encompass more specialized surveys and themes in art history. Requirements of the Major Twelve term courses are required to complete the major: two introductory courses at the 100 level; four intermediate and advanced courses at the 200 and 300 levels; two seminars at the 400 level; a methods seminar, HSAR 401; two electives; and the senior essay, HSAR 499. The major requires that the six intermediate and advanced courses must satisfy both a geographical and a chronological distribution requirement. These courses must be chosen from four geographical areas and four time periods. The geographical requirement is divided into five areas: Africa and the Pacific; the Americas; Asia and the Near East; Europe; and transregional. The chronological requirement is similarly divided into five segments: earliest times to 800; 800-1500; 1500-1800; 1800 to the present; and transchronological. A single course can fulfill both a geographical and a chronological requirement. Only classes originating in the History of Art department can fulfill the distribution requirements. Junior seminar The methods seminar HSAR 401, Critical Approaches to Art History, is a wide-ranging introduction to the practices of the art historian and the history of the discipline. It is to be taken during the fall or spring term of the junior year. Credit/D/Fail courses Courses taken Credit/D/Fail may not be counted toward the requirements of the major. Roadmap See the visual roadmap of the requirements. Senior Requirement The senior essay is a research paper written usually in one term in HSAR 499. Students choose their own topics, which may derive from research done in an earlier course. The essay is planned during the previous term in consultation with a qualified instructor and/or with the DUS. It is also possible to write a two-term senior essay; students wishing to do so must submit a petition to the DUS and the prospective adviser, normally by the first week aer spring break of the junior year. Advising Electives may include courses from other departments if they have direct relevance to the major program of study. Approval of the DUS is required. History of Art majors are urged to study foreign languages. Students considering graduate work should discuss with their advisers the appropriate language training for their field of interest. Graduate courses Courses in the Graduate School are open to undergraduates with permission of the instructor and of the director of graduate studies. Course descriptions are available in the History of Art office in the Jeffrey H. Loria Center, 190 York St. REQUIREMENTS OF THE MAJOR Prerequisites None Number of courses 12 term courses (incl senior req) Specific courses required HSAR 401 Distribution of courses 2 courses at 100 level; 6 courses numbered above 200, 2 of which must be 400-level seminars, fulfilling distribution requirements in 4 geographical and 4 chronological categories; 2 electives Substitution permitted With DUS permission, 2 electives from related depts Senior requirement Senior essay (HSAR 499) Art history is the study of all forms of art, architecture, and visual culture. The History of Art major can serve either as a general program in the humanities or as the groundwork for more specialized training. Courses in the department are organized into three levels. Courses at the 100 level are broad introductory surveys that cover basic art history from a number of regional and thematic perspectives. Majors are required to take two survey courses and should consider taking

2023

Updated draft version of my syllabus for Aesthetics & the Philosophy of Art

Art Theory and Criticism Syllabus, 2016

This course will introduce students to both the practice and history of art theory and criticism. Students will study the theories and tactics that undergird art criticism as a unique discipline and explore its links to art history. Special attention will be paid to the various types of methodology that have been applied to the analysis of art, including connoisseurship, biography, iconology, psychoanalysis, semiotic, and feminist approaches.

2019

In the fall of 2016, three librarians from the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at the University of Alberta (UofA) took on the challenge of teaching a one-credit scholarly communication course to new graduate students in the department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies (MLCS). Three librarians delivered the five two-hour MLCS795 weekly classes from late October through November. The University of Alberta is a large Canadian University with five campuses and an enrollment of more than 38,000 students. The Faculty of Arts has more than 5,000 undergraduates and 800 graduate students. The University of Alberta Libraries is mandated to be a teaching library. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) movement provides the context and impetus for analyzing the effectiveness of the course through the lens of student learning and evaluation. Student feedback obtained in early spring 2017 through a survey and interviews has provided an understanding of student opinion of scholarly communication and how the course met their expectations. Findings have provided the authors with plans for improving the course for fall 2017. Literature Review Few articles in the literature focus on graduate student information literacy credit courses. Many articles focus on understanding how students find information but very few investigate lowest importance (1) to greatest importance (10) Discovering information using information seeking tools Source types: scholarly/popular, primary/secondary sources, BEAM Citation Research methodoligies/critical approaches Research Metrics Open Access Scholarly Communication in the Humanities Copyright Research data management Evaluate information 3. Please explain why the unit you ranked highest (10) in question 2 above has had the greatest impact on your scholarly activities. 4. Please explain why the unit you ranked lowest (1) in question 2 above has had the lowest impact on your scholarly activities. 5. Is there any content that was missing that you would have liked the course to cover? Please explain.

Art History, 1995

The art-historical texts for the Open University course 'Modern Art: Practices and Debates' offer a decent synthesis for undergraduates of the sorts of questions and methodologies that have emerged in art history since the early 1980s. (For brevity's sake, their titles will be shortened throughout to MAM, PCA, RRS, MID, AIT and AIMC.) They incorporate explicitly the contributions made by Clark, Tucker, Herbert, Brettell, Pollock and others on Impressionism, Orton/Pollock on Gauguin, Gordon on Fauvism, Lloyd on Expressionism, Rosenblum, Leighten and Bois on Cubist collage, Lodder on Russian Constructivism, Krauss on Surrealism and desire, and Guilbaut on postwar American and European art, for example. They also include discussion of the arthistorical canon, gender politics, psychoanalytical theories of film, multicultural notions of the 'Other', semiotics and ideology. The two readers are for the same course. Art in Theory is mainly an enormous compendium of artists' texts designed to replace Herschell Chipp's Theories of Modern Art (1968) by benefiting from the expansion in Russian documents available and from recent debates around Surrealism, realism and modernism. It is divided, perhaps unnecessarily, into rather forced categories. (Only Abstract Expressionism, for example, warrants consideration from the point of view of the relation between 'the individual and the social'.) Perhaps the main oddity of AIT, although it makes it extremely useful, is the considerable inclusion of recent critical theory in the final sections, ranging through