First-Year Studies:Place and Space: Two Histories of Art, 1850-Present (ARTH 1017 F)
Term: 2025-26 Academic Year Fall
Schedule
Tue-Fri, 11:00 AM - 12:25 PM (9/1/2025 - 12/12/2025) Location: SLC HEIM 211
Fri, 10:00 AM - 10:55 AM (9/1/2025 - 12/12/2025) Location: SLC HEIM 211
Description
This yearlong seminar offers an introduction to histories of modern and contemporary art through two distinct themes: place and space. In fall, we will explore the place of the Hudson Valley through the category of Hudson River School landscape painting, asking how Euro-American artists portrayed ideologies of imperialism, settler colonialism, and Western expansionism through the genre of landscape. We will also explore how Indigenous and Black artists have defined place, land, and embodiment as counter-histories to the dominant white, Western norm. Along the way, we will ask broader questions, such as: What can art tell us about humans’ relationships to land and environment? How does art shape our understanding of climate crisis and the Anthropocene or how humans have indelibly altered the earth? In spring, we will explore the category of sculpture in relationship to the body, light, and touch; the pedestal, the space of the museum, the monument, and the public sphere; commodities and