Teaching

Image and Environment is an introduction to painting, sculpture, and architecture in Europe and America from the Renaissance to the present. Classes are organized around five focused topics: Renaissance Florence; the artist in the seventeenth century; art and revolution; nineteenth-century realism; and abstraction.

An exploration of American painting and sculpture from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. This course introduces individual painters and at the same time it develops ways of looking at and thinking about art and objects as material expressions of American society, politics, and culture. Copley, Peale, Stuart, Cole, Homer, Eakins, Sargent, Cassatt, and Whistler are some of the key figures to be studied.

The best films of the past century have commanded our attention and imagination in part because of their artistry and the way they tell stories visually. This course closely examines a selection of those films from around the world that can be considered serious art and that can be understood as the products of particular times and cultures.

You may think you know what you’re dealing with, but believe me, you don’t. —Noah Cross (John Huston) to Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) in Chinatown.

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This is a seminar on the interpretation of significant feature-length American films from the silent era to the present. Among the films to be considered are: Sherlock Jr, The Grapes of Wrath, Sunset Boulevard, Vertigo, Touch of Evil, Chinatown, Blade Runner, and Do the Right Thing.

This research seminar looks at the relationship between historical painting and the history it depicts. How much is fact; how much is fiction; and how do we explain the differences? To what ends was it painted? The focus will be on contemporary history painting in the period 1770-1875. The first half of the semester will examine these questions using critical theory and real examples. Students will then develop a major American, British, or French history painting for sustained research and analysis. Possible pictures include Turner's Slave Ship, Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, Copley's Watson and the Shark, David's Marat, and others. Numerous papers and class presentations.