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JOHN CABOT UNIVERSITY

COURSE CODE: "AH 399 H"
COURSE NAME: "Special Topics in Art History: Art as Nation-Building - HONORS (This course carries 4 semester hours of credits. A minimum CUM GPA of 3.5 is required)"
SEMESTER & YEAR: Fall 2022
SYLLABUS

INSTRUCTOR: Sarah Linford
EMAIL: [email protected]
HOURS: MW 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM
TOTAL NO. OF CONTACT HOURS: 45
CREDITS: 3
PREREQUISITES: Prerequisite: One previous course in Art History or permission of the instructor
OFFICE HOURS:

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Specialized courses offered periodically on specific aspects of concern in the field of Art History. Courses are normally research-led topics on an area of current academic concern.
May be taken more than once for credit with different topics.
SUMMARY OF COURSE CONTENT:

SUMMARY OF COURSE CONTENT

The visual arts have served to foster, construct and promote national identity from the very inception of the modern “nation.” This course aims to broach methodological and historical issues at the intersection of art of politics. Understanding how the visual arts have been instrumentalized, brandished, weaponized and subverted, or have actively chosen to promote a national(ist) agenda is the focus of this course. Each class takes a specific work as a case study to examine the political role(s) it was made to play, to what ends, and how this informs our understanding of the much larger historical debates around nationhood, citizenship, ethnicity, class, etc from the late 18th to the late 20th centuries. Official manifestations, such as World’s Fairs, biennales and public commissions equally contribute to the comparative history of art and nation-building.


LEARNING OUTCOMES:

LEARNING OUTCOMES

  • Develop an understanding of the relation between art and politics in the modern and contemporary periods
  • Develop an understanding of the critical and methodological issues in “social” or “contextual” art history
  • Develop familiarity with the academic debates surrounding “nation” and “nationalism”
  • Reason about the contributions of artists, critics and art historians of this period, in the political, cultural and social realms.
  • Exercise critical thinking while looking, reading, writing and speaking about art’s ideological functions.
  • Identify, analyze and interpret significant aspects and issues in the history of art within different social, cultural and political contexts.
  • Evaluate the ways in which art is shaped by dynamic social and cultural interactions.
  • Evaluate the ways in which art shapes dynamic social and cultural interactions.
  • Develop technical vocabulary appropriate to the specific fields of art history, of visual culture, of communication and of the variety of approaches and methods of social history, political history, cultural history and intellectual history.
  • Learn to analyze works in relation to other genres and other bodies of knowledge — scientific, literary, political, philosophical, economic…
  • Formulate and develop critical reasoning and rigorous arguments, especially in essays and presentations; find and evaluate pertinent, high-quality sources and information.
  • Structure and effectively communicate ideas and information orally and in writing; understand how ideas and information have been, and are, conveyed visually.
  • Develop an aptitude at visual analysis that includes the contextualization of works within different historical and theoretical paradigms.
  • Formulate an interpretative argument and draw out observations on the cultural norms and histories that influence the production, creation and reception of the practices under discussion.

TEXTBOOK:
NONE
REQUIRED RESERVED READING:
NONE

RECOMMENDED RESERVED READING:
NONE
GRADING POLICY
-ASSESSMENT METHODS:
AssignmentGuidelinesWeight
ParticipationParticipation is not just attendance. Be sure to have completed the assigned readings before each class so that you can participate in class discussions. The readings following the scheduled topic are to be read before coming to that class. This will also help you do well on the exams and assignments, and to enjoy the class even more! Three unexcused absences will result in the drop of a letter grade. Three unexcused late arrivals (10mn or more) will be counted as an absence.5
MIDTERM EXAMINATIONExamination consisting of brief definitions of terms, slide comparisons and short essays on material covered in the first half of the course. 20
LITERATURE REVIEWA literature review of approximately 2,000 words on a topic suggested by the professor, or of your own choosing if and only if approved by the Professor. The literature review should be carefully organized, edited and well-written. Research is required. See the detailed guidelines posted on our Moodle course page.15
RESEARCH PRESENTATIONA 15-minute presentation of your research topic, object and question. Research topics and their bibliographies must be approved by the Professor by week 10. Submit these as a Word document using the dedicated Turnitin portal on Moodle course site. PDF of your presentation must be emailed to Professor at least 24 hours before presenting. In-class oral research presentations are given week 13. 20
FINAL PAPERA research paper of approximately 2,000 words (excluding footnotes, bibliography and captions) on a topic suggested by the professor, or of your own choosing if and only if approved by the Professor. The paper should be carefully organized, edited and well-written. Some research is required. Your own visual and contextual analysis and finding of secondary sources for this topic is essential to the successful completion of this assignment. See the detailed guidelines posted on our Moodle course page.  
FINAL EXAMINATIONThe Final examination is of the same format as the Midterm examination. It is cumulative but more heavily weighted towards the second half of the course. 20

-ASSESSMENT CRITERIA:
AWork of this quality directly addresses the question or problem raised and provides a coherent argument displaying an extensive knowledge of relevant information or content. This type of work demonstrates the ability to critically evaluate concepts and theory and has an element of novelty and originality. There is clear evidence of a significant amount of reading beyond that required for the course.
BThis is highly competent level of performance and directly addresses the question or problem raised.There is a demonstration of some ability to critically evaluatetheory and concepts and relate them to practice. Discussions reflect the student’s own arguments and are not simply a repetition of standard lecture andreference material. The work does not suffer from any major errors or omissions and provides evidence of reading beyond the required assignments.
CThis is an acceptable level of performance and provides answers that are clear but limited, reflecting the information offered in the lectures and reference readings.
DThis level of performances demonstrates that the student lacks a coherent grasp of the material.Important information is omitted and irrelevant points included.In effect, the student has barely done enough to persuade the instructor that s/he should not fail.
FThis work fails to show any knowledge or understanding of the issues raised in the question. Most of the material in the answer is irrelevant.

-ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS:

Attendance and active engagement are mandatory. 

Three unexcused absences will result in the drop of a letter grade. Three unexcused late arrivals (10mn or more) will be counted as an absence.


ACADEMIC HONESTY
As stated in the university catalog, any student who commits an act of academic dishonesty will receive a failing grade on the work in which the dishonesty occurred. In addition, acts of academic dishonesty, irrespective of the weight of the assignment, may result in the student receiving a failing grade in the course. Instances of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Dean of Academic Affairs. A student who is reported twice for academic dishonesty is subject to summary dismissal from the University. In such a case, the Academic Council will then make a recommendation to the President, who will make the final decision.
STUDENTS WITH LEARNING OR OTHER DISABILITIES
John Cabot University does not discriminate on the basis of disability or handicap. Students with approved accommodations must inform their professors at the beginning of the term. Please see the website for the complete policy.

SCHEDULE

SCHEDULE

 

Week 1

Class 1 Course introduction. Issues, objectives, requirements.

 

Class 2 Problems in method: art and politics, “social art history,” cultural history and the risk of “reflection” or “determinism.”

 

Week 2

Class 1 What are “nations”?

 

Class 2 Class, region, “nation”? Counter case-study: Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Andrews.

 

Week 3

Class 1 Revolution. Case-study: David’s Oath of the Horatii.

 

Class 2 Empire. Case-study: Canova’s Mars the Peacemaker.

 

Week 4

Class 1 “Authentically Spanish.” Case-study: Goya’s Nude and Clothed Maja.

 

Class 2 Albion Rising. Case-study: Blake’s Albion Rose.

 

Week 5

Class 1 Empathy and the Sublime. Case-study: Friedrich’s Abby in the Oakwood.

 

Class 2 Palingenesis and the Great Outdoors. Case study: Cole’s Course of Empire.

 

Week 6

Class 1 Midterm review

 

Class 2 Midterm examination

 

Week 7 

Class 1 Revolutions and nationalisms at mid-century. Case-studies: Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People; Veit’s Germania.

 

Class 2 “Intransigence” spectacle and utopia. Case-studies: Degas’ Place de la Concorde; Signac’s commission for the Montreuil town Hall, In the Time of Harmony.

 

Week 8

Class 1 The Kaiser’s Chemists and his Artists: Klimt’s University of Vienna decorative cycle.

 

Class 2 Weaponizing the Decorative: The Applied arts as industrial international competition and, from Arts and Crafts to Art Nouveau. Case-study: The World Fairs of 1889 and 1900.

 

Week 9

Class 1 Risorgimento Problems in Style. Case-studies: Volpedo’s Fourth Estate; Sartorio’s frieze for the Chamber of Deputies.

 

Class 2 An Italian Avant-garde, Futurism.

 

Week 10

Class 1 The Soviet Revolution, from Constructivism to Socialist Realism. Case-studies: Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International; the Moscow metro.

 

Class 2 Monumental nationalisms. Case-studies: Degenerate and Great German art exhibitions; Pavilions at the World Fair of 1937.

 

Week 11

Class 1 “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” Case study: The Second School of Paris and the larger postwar figuration/abstraction debate.

 

Class 2 “Is Jackson Pollock the greatest living (US) painter?” Case-study: Pollock’s Number 1, 1950 Lavender Mist.

 

Week 12

Class 1 Party Art: Case-study: Guttuso’s Funeral of Togliatti

 

Class 2 Culture wars. Case-study: The 1963 Venice Biennale

 

Week 13

Class 1 The Undeath of Ideology. Case-study: Kiefer’s Ways of World Wisdom.

 

Class 2 Cultural diplomacy today. Case-studies: embassy exhibitions. 

 

Week 14

Class 1 Global nationalisms? The Changing Faces of Documenta.

 

Class 2 Course review.

 

 

COURSE BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

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Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 2006 (eBook)

Anderson, Malcolm. States and Nationalism in Europe Since 1945. The Making of the Contemporary World. London: Routledge, 2000. (eBook)

Altshuler, Bruce. Biennials and Beyond. Exhibitions that Made Art History, Volume II: 1962-2002. Phaidon Press, 2013. (ILL)

Altshuler, Bruce. Salon to Biennial. Exhibitions That Made Art History, Volume I: 1863-1959. Phaidon, 2008 (ILL)

Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. University of Minnesota Press, 1996. (HM101.A644 and eBook)

Baetens, Jan Dirk, and Dries Lyna, eds. Art Crossing Borders: The Internationalisation of the Art Market in the Age of Nation States, 1750-1914. Brill, 2019. (eBook)

Baum, Gregory. Nationalism, Religion, and Ethics. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001. (eBook)

Beiner, Ronald. Theorizing Nationalism. Suny Series in Political Theory. Contemporary Issues. NY: State University of New York Press, 1999. (eBook)

Bell, David A. The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800 Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003.(eBook)

Belting, Hans et al., eds. The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds. ZKM/Center for Art and Media, 2013. (ILL)

Bennett, Tony. The birth of the museum: history, theory, politics. Routledge, 1995. (Moodle)

Bennett, Tony. Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution, Museums, Colonialism (Museum Meanings). 2004. (Moodle)

Berland, Jody, and Shelley Hornstein. Capital Culture: A Reader on Modernist Legacies, State Institutions, and the Value(s) of Art. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000. (eBook)

Binkley, Robert Cedric. Realism and Nationalism, 1852-1871. Rise of Modern Europe, Harper & Row, 1963. (D389.B56)

Buskirk, Martha. Creative Enterprise: Contemporary Art between Museum and Marketplace. Continuum International Publishing, 2012. (Moodle)

Day, Graham, and Andrew Thompson. Theorizing Nationalism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. (JC311 .D34)

Delanty, Gerard, and Patrick J O'Mahony. Nationalism and Social Theory: Modernity and the Recalcitrance of the Nation. SAGE, 2002 (eBook)

Doss, Erika. Twentieth-Century American Art. Oxford University Press, 2002. (N6512 .D598 and eBook)

Dubin, Steven. Displays of Power: Memory and Amnesia in the American Museum. New York University Press, 1999 (ILL)

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological PerspectivesLondon: Pluto Press, 2010. (eBook)

Erjavec Aleš, and Groĭs Boris. Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition: Politicized Art Under Late Socialism.University of California Press, 2003. (eBook)

Facos, Michelle. Nationalism and the Nordic Imagination: Swedish Art of the 1890s. University of California Press, 1998. (eBook)

Fisher, Philip. Making and Effacing Art: Modern American Art in a Culture of Museums. Oxford University Press, 1991 (ILL)

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Gat, Azar, and Alexander Yakobson. Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism. Cambridge University Press, 2013. (eBook)

Geddes Poole, Andrea. Stewards of the Nation's Art: Contested Cultural Authority, 1890-1939. University of Toronto Press, 2010. (eBook)

Gellner, Ernest. Encounters with Nationalism. Blackwell, 1994. (JC311 .G47)

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Goldmann, Kjell, Ulf Hannerz, and Charles Westin. Nationalism and Internationalism in the Post-Cold War Era. London: Routledge, 2000. (eBook)

Green, Charles; Anthony Gardner. Biennials, Triennials, and Documenta: The Exhibitions That Created Contemporary Art. John Wiley & Sons, 2016. (eBook)

Greenfeld, Liah. Nationalism. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2019. (eBook)

Grosby, Steven Elliott. Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions, 134. Oxford University Press, 2005. (eBook)

Grosby, Steven Elliott, and Athena S Leoussi. Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism : History, Culture and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations. Edinburgh University Press, 2007. (eBook)

Groseclose, Barbara S. Nineteenth-Century American Art. Oxford University Press, 2000. (N6507 .G76)

Guenther, Peter W, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Art Institute of Chicago. "Degenerate Art": The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany. Edited by Stephanie Barron. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991. (N6868.D3388)

Guibernau i Berdún M. Montserrat, and John Rex. The Ethnicity Reader: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Migration. Polity Press, 1997. (GN495.6 .E8935 1997)

Guss, David M. The Festive State: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism As Cultural Performance. University of California Press, 2000. (eBook)

Harris, Erika. Nationalism: Theories and Cases. Edinburgh University Press, 2009. (eBook)

Hastings, Adrian. The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 (eBook)

Hechter, Michael. Containing Nationalism. Oxford England: Oxford University Press, 2000. (eBook)

Herb, Guntram Henrik. Under the Map of Germany: Nationalism and Propaganda, 1918-1945. London: Routledge, 1997 (eBook)

Hobsbawm, E. J. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Canto Classics; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. (eBook)

Jensen, Lotte, et al. Free Access to the Past: Romanticism, Cultural Heritage and the Nation. Brill, 2010. (eBook)

Kaiser, David Aram. Romanticism, Aesthetics, and Nationalism. Cambridge University Press, 1999. (eBook)

Karlsgodt, Elizabeth Campbell. Defending National Treasures: French Art and Heritage Under Vichy. IStanford University Press, 2011. (eBook)

Kedourie, Elie. Nationalism. 4Th, expandeded. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1993 (JC311 .K37)

Keitner, Chimène Ilona Robbins. The Paradoxes of Nationalism: The French Revolution and Its Meaning for Contemporary Nation Building. State University of New York Press, 2007 (eBook)

Kim, Alice, Zhivka Valiavicharska, and James Elkins, eds. Art and GlobalizationPennsylvania State University Press, 2010. (eBook)

Kohn, Hans. “Romanticism and the Rise of German Nationalism.” The Review of Politics 12, no. 4 (1950): 443–72. (J-Stor)

Kramer, Lloyd S. Nationalism in Europe & America: Politics, Cultures, and Identities Since 1775. University of North Carolina Press, 2011. (eBook)

Lawrence, Paul. Nationalism: History and Theory (version 1st ed.). 1st ed. Making History. Harlow, Pearson Education, 2005 (eBook)

Levinger, Matthew Bernard. Enlightened Nationalism: The Transformation of Prussian Political Culture, 1806-1848. Oxford University Press, 2000. (eBook)

Lewis, Pericles. Modernism, Nationalism, and the Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. (eBook)

Lubin, David M. Picturing a Nation: Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America. Y Yale University Press, 1994. (ND210 .L83)

Luke, Timothy. Museum Politics: Power Plays at the Exhibition. University of Minnesota Press, 2002. (Moodle)

Lentis, Marinella. Colonized through Art: American Indian Schools and Art Education, 1889-1915. University of Nebraska Press, 2017. (eBook)

Mayer, Tamar. Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation. London: Routledge, 2002.  (eBook)

McCrone, David. The Sociology of Nationalism: Tomorrow's Ancestors. London: Routledge, 1998. (eBook)

Miller, Toby. Greenwashing Culture. Routledge, 2018. (eBook)

Motyl, Alexander J. Encyclopedia of Nationalism. San Diego, Academic Press, 2001 (REF JC311.E4996)

Levine, Alison J. Murray. Framing the Nation: Documentary Film in Interwar France. Continuum, 2010. (eBook)

Naifeh, Steven; White Smith, Gregory; Jackson Pollock: An American Saga. C.N. Potter, 1989 (ILL)

Petropoulos, Jonathan. The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press, 2000.(eBook)

Pipes, Richard. The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917-1923. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997 (eBook)

Plumb, Steve. Neue Sachlichkeit 1918-33: Unity and Diversity of an Art Movement. Rodopi, 2006 (eBook)

Rampley, Matthew. Art History and Visual Studies in Europe: Transnational Discourses and National Frameworks. Brill, 2012. (eBook)

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Rose-Greenland, Fiona. “The Parthenon Marbles As Icons of Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” Nations and Nationalism, vol. 19, no. 4, 2013, pp. 654–673., doi:10.1111/nana.12039. (J-Stor)

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