COURSE OFFERINGS  (Please see timetable for availability) FALL 2008 DIMENSIONS OF MATERIAL CULTURE Art History/Design Studies 464 Instructors: Anna Andrzejewski and Beverly Gordon AMERICAN DECORATIVE ARTS AND INTERIORS, 1620-1850 Art History/Design Studies 363 Instructor: Ann Smart Martin HISTORY OF EUROPEAN INTERIORS FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE 18TH CENTURY Desing Studies 421 Instructor: Terry Boyd THE ART OF LIGHT IN EARLY MODERN ANGLO-AMERICAN Art History 565 Instructor: Ann Smart Martin CULTURAL PRESERVATION AND LANDSCAPE HISTORY Landscape Architecture 677 Instructor: Janet Gilmore LITERATURE OF DESIGN THEORY Design Studies 720 Instructor: Terry Boyd FURNITURE AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT: 1660-1800 Art History 800 Instructor: Ethan Lasser ASPECTS OF ETHNICITY AND REPRESENTATION IN AMERICA Art History 865 Instructor: Anna Andrzejewski Back to top Other Recent Course Offerings AMERICAN GENRE: TOPICS IN AMERICAN ART Art History 440 Instructor: Anna Andrzejewski Focuses on the American interest in representations of "everyday life" during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, including everything from painting, sculpture, and popular images, to soap operas, television sitcoms, daytime soap operas, and reality shows, to historic house museums. Explores the reasons for such interest as well as examines what particular kinds of representations suggest about American culture. Considers issues such as the history of "genre painting" in the history of art; political agendas behind an interest in everyday life; didactic content in representations of everyday life; how "difference" (i.e., race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference) is negotiated through such representations; and what ultimately motivates the American fascination with everyday life. MATERIAL CULTURE ANALYSIS: THE ARTS AND THE CONSUMER SOCIETY Environment, Textiles & Design 512 (Crosslisted with Folklore) Instructor: Beverly Gordon Examines the meanings of objects, including both art objects and consumer goods. Focuses on the interactions between people and the objects that they are surrounded by and use. Attempts to "decode" objects as primary sources of information about the people and cultures that make and use them. HISTORY OF TEXTILES Environment, Textiles & Design 430 Instructor: Beverly Gordon Designs and meanings and interrelationships of textiles in selected cultures and time periods. COMPARATIVE WORLD COSTUME Environments, Textiles & Design 655 Instructor: Beverly Gordon Explores the multiple meanings of costume (dress and body adornment) in cultures throughout the world. Takes a comparative approach to form, function and meanings; examines dress as a reflection of society, culture, and the environment, and as a form of aesthetic and spiritual expression. While non-Western dress is the primary concern, fashionable Western forms are included for comparative purposes, and folk dress and ethnic traditions within Western culture are examined in detail. The impact of cultural exchange is central to all discussion. HISTORY OF FASHION, 1400-PRESENT Environment, Textiles & Design 355 Instructor: Beverly Gordon Changing form and meaning of costume in the West from Renaissance to present. Dress considered in relation to social/cultural milieu and as an art form. Includes treatment of the body; ethnic/class variations; couture; "antifashion". HISTORY OF AMERICAN VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPES Art History 457 Instructor: Anna Andrzejewski Examines an array of American vernacular buildings and landscapes from the colonial period to the present and considers what they can tell us about the past and present. Vernacular refers to ordinary or "everyday" spaces and places encountered daily (houses, workspaces, institutional buildings) but rarely thought about critically. Looks at recent scholarship in the fields of anthropology, history, American studies, cultural geography, landscape architecture, folklore, and material culture to construct frameworks to describe America's common buildings and landscapes and understand the historical significance they have had for their makers and users. An all-day field trip studying historic buildings in southwestern Wisconsin, during which ideas learned in class are applied to a "real world" landscape, highlights the course.  HISTORY OF EUROPEAN INTERIORS: ANCIENT THROUGH 18TH CENTURY Environments, Textiles & Design 421 Instructor: Terry Boyd Survey of major historical periods and styles of European interior design. Furniture and interior treatment as they affect the architectural space. HISTORY OF AMERICAN INTERIORS: 1620-1950 Environments, Textiles & Design 422 Instructor: Terry Boyd Survey of major periods and styles of American interior design. Furniture, wall, window, and floor treatments. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON DESIGN AND CULTURE: SPECIAL TOPICS Environments, Textiles & Design 501 Instructor: Beverly Gordon Intended to deepen cross- or inter-cultural understanding both of design, and of diverse cultural realities. Explored ways in which design reflects or encodes culture, and looks at the impacts of cultural interface on people's daily lives. Addressed globalization issues through a design perspective by exploring living environments (including conception and organization of interior, exterior and ritual space; and clothing as an extension of the environment), and considered items ranging from nomadic tent structures to seating devices to house wares. Also considers the global realities of the ways designed items are produced and distributed in the world today. A special feature of the class was its accompanying virtual visual database, consisting of about 1000 on-line images and searchable data. DESIGN & THEORY: SPECIAL TOPICS IN ART HISTORY Art History 600 Instructor: Glenn Adamson Introduced students to advanced readings in design from the 18th century through the present. Aimed to establish an understanding of the issues that should be considered when designing or analyzing an object. Readings divided into units on four topics: workmanship, utility, signification, and ornament. Object types studied include ceramics, furniture, paintings, sculpture, architecture, and industrial design. INTRODUCTION TO MUSEUM STUDIES: 18TH CENTURY SILVER, FURNITURE AND PAINTINGS Art History 601 & 602 Instructor: Ann Smart Martin Explored both the theories and the practices of representation in a museum setting. Began with broad discussions about different museum approaches and methods before focusing on putting such theoretical concerns into practice in researching, writing, and planning for an exhibition of eighteenth-century British silver at the Elvehjem museum in the summer of 2003. Ended with the work of researching, writing, and editing a catalogue, preparing wall texts, labels, and other exhibit materials, participating in the concept and design of the installation, planning and implementing the opening, publicity, and programming for the exhibition, etc.  OBJECTS SINCE 1945: SPECIAL TOPICS IN ART HISTORY Art History 600 Instructor: Glenn Adamson Covers fifty years and three distinct realms of object-making: sculpture created in the "fine art" context; handmade objects produced in the context of the studio craft movement; and mass-produced objects produced by industrial designers. Focuses on theoretical models that have been constructed around the concept of the object since 1945. Chiefly these involve the construction and subsequent destruction of modernist ideals of autonomy, quality, truth to materials, expressionism, transparency of process, and ideation. Yields insights into these conceptual staples of modern art history by considering three fields that are not normally discussed together. ART, DESIGN & SOCIETY: SEMINAR IN 20TH CENTURY ART HISTORY Art History 856 Instructor: Barbara Buenger Examines developments in design and the decorative arts that had a major impact on European avant-garde movements throughout the 20th-century. Considers individuals, movements, and manifestations of the decorative arts in several different centers, and follows groups that joined in art, architectural, or crafts leagues; in international art and trade exhibitions; in professional design work; in theater productions; and in performance and installation art up to the present day.  LIFE AND THE ARTS IN RENAISSANCE AND BAROQUE ITALY (1300-1700): GRADUATE SEMINAR Art History 825 Instructor: Gail Geiger Focuses on the decorative arts and material culture beginning with theoretical constructs, then examining usage and media in a variety of contexts; religious liturgies required an array of objects at the altar; military campaigns and parades necessitated paraphernalia for soldier and horse; domestic interiors housed elaborate items for eating, sleeping, conversation, entertainment; exterior displays entailed elaborate ephemeral décor; and body adornment included hair styles, costume design, jewelry and show trim.  SLIPWARE TRADITIONS: SEMINAR Art History 800 Instructor: Glenn Adamson For centuries, potters all across the world have used liquid slip to decorate their wares. Though it is a simple medium, clay mixed with water‹slip can be used to create dramatic and diverse visual effects. It can be dripped, trailed, inlaid, marbled, scraped, and combed; potters have used it to create images of arresting immediacy, and also to fashion complex abstract patterns. This graduate level course was based on the preparation of an exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum on the topic of ceramics from different historical contexts, including China, Korea, Germany, and Italy. Students were asked to educate themselves about the material, participate in the exhibition curating process (selecting pieces, writing texts, and designing the installation), and attend programming surrounding the exhibition opening in March. Then, students concentrated on producing their own exhibition proposals using objects from the ceramics collection of the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee.  Back to top
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