Current Graduate Courses

Yi Gu | Tuesday 2pm-5pm

Time period: Unspecified | Research area: Unspecified

A close reading of texts related to the theory and practice of art history and its related disciplines. Required for all PhD students, unless granted an exemption by the Director of Graduate Studies based on an alternate methods course.

Giancarla Periti | Wednesday 2pm-5pm

Time period: Early Modern | Research area: European/US/Canadian

The development of Renaissance art has often been traced on the basis of large-scale works, including grandiose palaces, monumental chapels, colossal sculptures, imposing frescoes and massive tapestries. Small-format works, however, constitute an area of artistic performance that deserves further scrutiny and critical attention. This seminar explores miniaturization in several media works produced ca.1400–1600. We will be looking at a corpus of small-size works that provide some of the most compelling responses to questions of scale, crafting, performativity and portability. Readings include chapters by Mack, Payne, Lévi-Strauss, and Bredekamp, among others. There may be visits to local museums if the situation allows.

Matt Kavaler | Wednesday 10am-1pm

Time period: Early Modern | Research area: European/US/Canadian

This course examines varieties of sculpture in Northern Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth century with particular emphasis on the Netherlands and Germany. The course questions the near-exclusive focus on painting as the quintessential artistic medium of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Sculpture was an essential medium for the expression of power relations. Tombs of the high nobility framed and controlled the communal space of churches and chapels. Towering sacrament houses offered magnificent stages for the Eucharist—the material focus of the central drama of the church. Mantelpieces in town halls asserted the complex relationship between competing groups within the city. Carved altarpieces found visual formulas for metaphysical notions of sacred space and time. And smaller works like bronze statuettes became treasured objects in Renaissance collections.

Jenny Purtle | Friday 10am-1pm

Time period: Medieval or Early Modern | Research area: East Asian

This course will explore a clearly defined topic and/or a problem related to Chinese painting history: either in local, China-wide, or global context; and, in a period from the medieval to the contemporary, but not necessarily including the entire breadth of these temporal periods. By the design of the instructor, the course may address select developments in the history of Chinese painting. Some modules might involve the study of: specific painters, movements, or dynasties; painting theory; a text or texts of Chinese art writing in the original; or, historiographic problems. All modules will emphasize: key primary sources (paintings and texts) in their original format; the development of the Sinological, philological, and bibliographical skills for working with these primary sources; and exploration of the secondary literature. This course emphasizes the development of art-historical skills grounded in Sinological practice in order to prepare students for further research either in entry-level art world jobs or in graduate school (including MA or PhD theses in Chinese painting history). Reading knowledge of Chinese or another East Asian language is recommended.

Louis Kaplan | Tuesday 10am-1pm

Time period: Modern/Contemporary | Research area: European/US/Canadian

What is the relationship between photography and the occult? Is it possible for the camera to see the invisible beyond the powers of the naked eye? Beginning with the spirit photographs of William Mumler in the 1860’s to contemporary manifestations of digital ghost hunting, we will investigate the search for elusive ghosts via the camera lens as an ongoing preoccupation in the history of photography. We will review this rich and fascinating history with key case studies of “haunted media” starting with the emergence of phantasmagoric visual entertainments and other psychic, occult, and borderland phenomena whether UFOs, auras, fairies, or “thoughtography”. Exploring these “ghosts in the machines” through the lenses of science, religion, and art, the course will consider various reasons why some have wanted to believe in the veracity of these phenomena while others have wanted to debunk occult photography as a hoax, trick, or fraud.

Carl Knappett | Monday 10am-1pm

Time period: Ancient | Research area: Global

Across the humanities and social sciences there has been a surge of interest in connections and relations of various kinds. Network analysis has shown itself to be an effective and adaptable means of exploring such phenomena, particularly given the increasing accessibility of computational methods. This course will focus on the potential for using network analysis in reconstructing ancient connectivities and mobilities, with application particularly in studies of the ancient world across disciplines. There are various ways in which these fields can benefit. On the one hand, the social relations among artisans and artists responsible for bringing artworks into being can be scrutinised, as can the connections between consumers that help shape value, or indeed the networks of distribution or circulation that link producers to consumers. These factors all concern the social structures sustaining artistic output. On the other, it is also possible to conceive of the relations between artworks in network terms, within the oeuvre of a given artist, or more broadly between media or across periods or regions. The class will cover the history of approaches to connectivities, relations, and networks; present case studies that demonstrate the utility of network approaches; and offer students the chance to develop their own projects in network analysis applied to ancient materials (with all the attendant problems of data incompleteness). This is a course in digital humanities, in its concern for the exploration and visualisation of data with the aid of computational methods.

Adam Welch | Thursday 2pm-5pm

Time period: Modern/Contemporary | Research area: Global

In connection with the forthcoming reinstallation of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s collection of art since 1900, this seminar explores the history, theory and practice of museums, critically examining recent collection installations globally. Taking a colloquium format, readings and discussion will be supplemented by presentations from curators working on post-1900 art at the AGO. Spanning the museum’s collecting areas—including photographs, arts of global Africa and the diaspora, prints and drawings, European and Canadian art—students will meet at the museum and engage closely with the work of curators. How do we translate histories and theories of art since 1900 for a public broadly conceived? What forces shape how we meet artworks in the present?.

John Ricco | Thursday 10am-12pm

Time period: Modern/Contemporary | Research area: European/US/Canadian

This seminar examines some of the principal themes in the work of Roland Barthes over what were to be the last three years of his life. Enabled by the recent publication and translation of his lecture courses at the College de France (The Neutral; The Preparation of the Novel), and the mourning diary that he kept in the wake of his mother's death, the course seeks to understand the central importance of the notion of the neutral, the experience of mourning, the evidence of photography, and the notations of homosexual erotics in Barthes' writing and teaching from his Inaugural Lecture at the College on January 7, 1977, to his seminal book on photography, Camera Lucida. Other texts that we will discuss include: Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes; Incidents; as well critical works by Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, D.A. Miller, Diana Knight, Eduardo Cadava, Geoffrey Batchen, and others.

Philip Sapirstein | Tuesday 10am-1pm (this course runs from September to April)

Time period: Ancient | Research area: European/US/Canadian

A year-long core course with the aim of providing students with a critical understanding of what constitutes method within the different domains of Classical archaeology, ancient history, and prehistory, and the challenges and opportunities in working across these methods to produce new frameworks for researching the ancient Mediterranean. Students will examine ways in which historical and archaeological methods might be applied comparatively or diachronically across traditional chronological or geographical boundaries. Readings will be drawn from several core ‘classic' texts on the ancient Mediterranean and specific case studies.