AH 600
Practicum in Art-Historical Research and Problem Solving
(Course Type: Methods)
Required of all MA students, this course provides a full immersion in research from the primary record: paintings, buildings, maps, prints, documents, ground plans, photographs, historical guide books, archaeological excavations, and more. The course also offers instruction and practice in archive and library navigation, documentation and record-keeping, object handling, and bibliographic, digital, and technical resources for the professional art historian. The Fall 2017 Practicum will focus on reconstructing the material and human history of John Cabot University’s Guarini Campus and its immediate environs through time, culminating in an exhibition of the findings.
AH 601
Case Studies in Art-Historical Practice
(Course Type: Methods)
In this team-taught course students read and analyze exemplary works of art-historical scholarship. Readings are selected to illustrate the diverse methods developed for studying the arts of different eras, with their distinct problems and bodies of evidence, and to bring out possibilities for useful methodological borrowings across traditional chronological boundaries.
AH 611
Ancient Roman and Mediterranean Mural Painting
(Course Type: Topics-Ancient)
This course examines mural painting in the Greek and Roman world, from the Aegean Bronze Age to Late Antiquity. The range of subjects depicted within these paintings is vast and includes mythological themes, portraits, scenes of ritual, historical moments, religious scenes, landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes, garden views, the still life, and scenes of everyday life. Together we will study the cultures that created and enjoyed these works, in an effort to understand the paintings' social and cultural contexts, as well as their roles in society, the ideals and values that they represented, and the manner in which they were received. The course also investigates the relationship between the cultures represented, in order to recognize and comprehend practices of continuity and emulation. We will apply formal analysis to aspects such as iconography, technique, and representation of space and style for each painting studied, and, in each case, we will also consider architectural context and the intended experience of the viewer. To augment our understanding of this ancient artistic medium, we will study, as well, the pertinent ancient sources, whose written passages offer information about everything from technical processes to criteria for choosing certain colors or images. The course will also provide a history of the rediscovery of the important examples studied, as well as a review of scholarly research, to date. The course is taught with a combination of class lectures and visits to the relevant museums and archaeological sites.
AH 612
Roman Portraiture
(Course Type: Topics - Ancient)
The course will discuss Roman portraiture as a medium enriched by its possibilities of contextual significance. Rather than focus solely on individualized faces or singular identities, the course will consider all the aspects that contributed to the articulation of a portrait depiction and, hence, to its participation in discourses between honorees, patrons, viewers, locations and traditions – across the Roman world. Aspects that will be addressed include honorific portrait traditions in the Greek world; the approaches to portrait individualization and choices of statue forms for male and female dedications; the form and ‘materiality’ of portraits; as well as the impact of changed or deliberately damaged portraits.
AH 631
Illuminated Manuscripts: Codicology for Art Historians
(Course Type: Topics-Late Antique/Medieval)
Books written and decorated by hand are, one could credibly argue, the densest self-contained repositories of cultural information of any objects created by humans during the pre- and early modern eras. As subjects of art-historical study, however, illustrated and decorated manuscripts conceal an untold peril for the image-loving researcher: the danger of treating painted elements in isolation from the immensely rich stories embedded in any manuscript’s non-pictorial elements—materials, physical construction, scripts, scribal hands, textual contents, and even DNA (literally!). This course introduces graduate students to the study of manuscripts as whole objects, with first-hand analysis of medieval and early Renaissance books in historic Roman libraries.
AH 651
The Erotic Renaissance
(Course Type: Topics-Early Modern)
An overview of all human artistic production could be explored through two essential themes, eros and thanatos, love and death. A study of the former must historically include a moment when love and its representation – in literature, music, and art – is unabashedly a focus of cultural interest: the Cinquecento. The songs of the troubadours, easily blurred in hymns to the Virgin, are sung in a clear, intimate and formal language in the Trecento by Petrarch, but rise to a full chorus of visual imagery in the 16C, when artists in the Italian peninsula give them full figural form.
This course will investigate amorous imagery, given both spiritual and secular/sexual form, by artists such as Raphael, Giulio Romano, Bronzino, Correggio, Parmigianino, Titian, Veronese and many others. Contrasts and complexities abound, as artists, in the period from about 1490-1540, explore new topics and genres. Within the church, the erotic language of the Song of Songs continues from its roots in the Middle Ages to find more innovative and sensual expression. From a new savvy intellectual audience, erotic subject matter is encouraged, in imitation of the freer aspects of antique literature, and in the service of a society of sophisticated diversion. With the invention of print-making, the discourse concerning human sexuality finds media that can be disseminated.
AH 652
The Architectural Culture of Baroque Rome
(Course Type: Topics - Early Modern )
From 1580 to the 1740s, Rome was a massive, continuous construction site, with the building of new piazze, fountains, churches and palaces in every part of the city. The opportunities offered to architects by these ambitious building programs changed the course of the profession. This course examines the development of the architectural profession in the Baroque period, starting with the family dynasties of stonecutters who came to Rome in the late sixteenth century, passing through the rise of individual architects such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Francesco Borromini, and Pietro da Cortona, and concluding with an exploration of the increasing power of the Academy of St. Luke as a means of organizing architects and disseminating architectural knowledge. The course meets often on site to examine specific projects, including St. Peter’s Basilica, the Church of S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Palazzo Barberini, and the Spanish Steps.
AH 671
Visual Culture: Concept to Valorization
(Course Type: Topics-Modern/Contemporary)
This course studies valorization in and through visual culture. The example of Rome is the fulcrum for discussions of the larger evolving visual culture field. The structuring of visual dimensions will be analyzed according to historical, philosophical, economic, and communication principles, concluding with critical reception. The course is tailored to each student’s individual professional interests. All fields are welcome. Case studies will be drawn from museum, publishing/editorial, advertising, urban requalification, artisanal/maker culture, art market, gallery, the auction house, as well as interaction with living visual artists. We will establish partnership with other universities, both in Italy and beyond. Rome will be used as a case study and model for global practices. In the final four weeks, each student will prepare a presentation of his/her unique practicum or research project.
AH 703a
Constructing the Baroque, 17th-21st c: Objects, Systems and Uses of a Historical "Style"
This research seminar probes the ways in which the varied conceptions and uses of the term Baroque, from the 18th to the 20th centuries, relate alternately to corpus, methods and aims. On-site lectures will provide us with case studies of the variegated interpretations that selected paintings, sculptures and structures have generated, from neoclassicism to the historical avant-gardes. In-class lectures will focus on transhistorical uses of the term, frequently shorthand for formal qualities or aesthetic and cultural values. The ways in which “the Baroque” is alternately perceived as antithetical to or interchangeable with other historiographical categories will be of particular use to us in exploring the emergence and diffusion of the term, and its critical fortune in different chronological and geographical contexts. These discussions will problematize not only our ability to work on art and architecture from the late 16th century onwards but, more generally, the problems involved in distinguishing a historical category from its contexts of emergence and use.
AH 710a
The Syntax of Public and Private Space in Ancient Rome
(Course Type: Research Seminar-Ancient)
The course draws on two aspects with a keen impact on the current debate in Ancient Art/Classical Archaeology: space and viewing. That is, the configuration and engagement with the diverse types of space that constituted the ancient world, as well as the role of the viewers that formed the audience and users of these spaces. The focus on public and private will provide a prism through which to examine urban and domestic topographies, as well as the associated activities, patronage, and adornments, which may have shaped the experience of these spaces.
AH 710c
Ancient Portraiture: Persuasive Presence and Reflexive Agency
The seminar will discuss the contexts for honorific portraiture in the ancient world – as visually striking objects, as gifts in honorific exchange networks, and as participants in social viewing processes. The field of portrait studies is vibrant and has regained a centrality in the studies of the ancient world: Long gone is the focus on identification of singular persons and the propaganda message of public works. Instead, portraiture is recognized as an essential element in an international ‘currency of honors’ and as participant in ‘performative’ social engagement. Focusing on late Republican and Imperial portraiture, the seminar will consider all aspects of portrait depictions. It will discuss the making and visual impact of portraits; it will discuss dedicatory and viewing practices; and it will discuss the reflexive relationship between the object, the patrons, the display, and the viewer.
AH 730a
Constructing Identities: Christian Funerary Art in Late-Antique Rome
(Course Type: Research Seminar-Late Antique/Medieval Art)
The seminar examines self-representation during a seminal period in the history of Christianity through a first-hand examination of the rich corpus of catacomb paintings and sarcophagi in third- and fourth-century Rome and still extant in the city. The most significant corpus of biblical imagery to have survived is first attested in these monuments and formed a basis for Christian pictorial narrative for centuries. Its original function, however, was arguably, at least in part, to signal a Christian identity in a predominantly non-Christian society. At the same time, patrons of funerary art in Rome who had converted to Christianity also undoubtedly sought to visualize and so commemorate their Roman identity. Although the latter was not necessarily at odds with their religious allegiance, through a careful examination of the imagery and contemporary written sources, the seminar will explore the complex and often challenging visual, religious, cultural and social negotiation that was involved in constructing a composite self-image that was at once revolutionary and entirely traditional, a pattern of mediation that has affected Christian self-representation to this day.
AH 750a
Vice and Virtue in Post-Tridentine Rome
(Course Type: Research Seminar-Early Modern)
Recent studies have connected artistic practice in Baroque Rome to issues of decorum, social deviance and even criminality (in the works of Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Guido Reni, for example). There has also been increasing scholarly attention to the influential architecture of the city’s social institutions, such as hospitals, hospices and prisons, as well as the charitable organizations that oversaw them. When these avenues of research are united, an alternative image of Rome emerges, one that challenges prevailing ideas of the Baroque city and the function of its spectacular illusionism. This seminar explores the relationship between social control and Rome’s visual and spatial environment in the post-Tridentine era, particularly the ways in which the papacy, secular governing bodies and religious organizations sought to impose discipline and order. The objects of study will include canonical works, such as paintings by the best-known practitioners of the time, as well as prints, ephemeral liturgical instruments and displays, and often neglected buildings in the city.
AH 770a
Modernity and Loss: Nineteenth Century Art and Rome
(Course Type: Research Seminar-Modern/Contemporary)
Seemingly left behind by modernity, art in Rome in the nineteenth century is distant from conventional art-historical narratives of Modernist development. Rome was relatively untouched by modern industrialism, urbanization, and the consequent upheavals to social organization. Instead the city retained—until the Unification of Italy that made Rome the new Capitol¬—much of its traditional life, not to mention its vivid signs of the past in the still-present remains of Ancient, Renaissance, and Baroque splendour. Similarly, fundamental changes to art patronage and audiences, new roles for artists, and altered habits of vision and aesthetic discourses were comparatively absent from the Roman scene (at least until late-century). This ‘sleepy’, ‘backward’ environment held a strong attraction for many artists, often coming from other 19th century capitals.
This course proposes that many of these artists and movements might be considered an alternative modernism. Groups such as the Nazarenes and the artists of il Purismo, for example, not only formed avant-gardes of a certain type, they too, reflected critically on modernity. Similarly, the work of expatriate Americans Elihu Vedder and William Wetmore Story, the watercolors of German-Italian Ettore Roesler Franz, or the Roman commission of Edward Burne-Jones suggest complex and modern conceptions of history, time, and change—not just simple romanticism. Thus, while these artists and many others in Nineteenth-century Rome are frequently relegated to categories that imply entrenchment in tradition or simple rejection of the modern, their practice has much to teach us about about modernity's relationship to loss, trauma, and nostalgia¬—thus also broadening conventional modernist discourse. The course will study their conscious strategies for critical art making, imaginative conceptions of the past, and formal experimentation.
AH 792
Professional Experience
(Successful completion of all Foundation-Year courses, requirements, and components, including AH790 (MA Exam); Co-requisites: AH793, AH793FA, or AH793SP)
The Professional Experience component of the MA may take the form of a teaching or research internship at John Cabot University or of an internship at a museum, research institute, historic library, school, gallery, or foundation. MA Students are responsible for identifying their own potential addresses for this component in consultation with JCU Career Services and the MA Professional Experience professors. Students meet with the advising professor for at least ten hours of instruction during the semester, in addition to completing the minimum 120 hours of work for the internship. This course may be repeated for credit.
PL 610
Foundation I: International Relations
This course will introduce students to a range of theoretical approaches in International Relations and familiarize students with critiques of the dominant ways of conceptualizing global politics. Students will be encouraged to reflect on the way in which different theoretical approaches are linked to different kinds of policy outcomes and how theoretical approaches and associated research strategies have shaped key concepts within international politics.
PL 620
Foundation II: Comparative Politics
This course introduces key concepts and theoretical approaches in comparative politics. Students will study major areas of scholarship within the field of Comparative Politics, including on the state, democracy and democratization, political parties, political protests, conflict and violence, economic development, political institutions, political cultures and civil society. The course examines and critically evaluates different theoretical approaches to politics including modernization, Marxist, cultural, rational-choice and historical-institutionalist approaches and compares cases from Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East and Latin America to provide students with grounding in the basic tools of comparative analysis.
PL 630
International Political Economy
This course is designed as an advanced-level overview of the field of International and Comparative Political Economy, with emphasis on an examination of the theoretical approaches and conceptual frameworks on which it rests. The course combines the study of the "micro," including incentives and individual choice, with the "macro," representing the conflict of social interests and aggregate consequences of individual choices. Among the issues analyzed are the aggregate impact of trade, policies of redistribution, labor markets, inequality, varieties of capitalism and globalization.
PL 640
Political Science Research Methodology
This course provides a systematic understanding and critical appreciation of alternative approaches, methodologies and paradigms of political science research. Students will learn techniques to interpret and analyze data. The training will enable students to think through how they can use their knowledge and skills of advanced research methods in different contexts and apply them to their own research project.
PL 652
Populism in Europe
This course will examine the forms, causes and implications of populism drawing from theoretical debates and case studies in Europe. The focus will be primarily on Radical Right Populist Parties (RRPPs) and will concentrate on themes such as historical and cultural legacies, charismatic leadership, the role of gender and the impact of Euroscepticism to unpack the complexities of populism in a contemporary context. The course will also discuss Left-Wing Populism, the impact of the contemporary media in shaping populist discourse and the wider consequences in terms of its influence on the democratic process in Europe.
PL 653
Revolutions
Political revolutions have been practically synonymous with the rise and making of the modern world, so much so that their importance is paradoxically often lost sight of, their formation naturalized and their meaning difficult to establish. Ranging from politics and economics, to technology, society and science, revolutionary transformations have created and shaped particular ways of living and have even pushed the creation of new kinds of human beings and societies. This advanced course will examine revolutions specifically as a political phenomenon or as a particular range of the human experience of politics. It will provide a highly conceptual, pluri-disciplinary and non-normative approach to the study of revolutionary politics and its impact on the modern world, albeit in the full recognition that an entirely value-free science is neither possible nor desirable.
PL 680
Human Rights and International Law
This course sharpens substantive theoretical and practical human rights knowledge and the capacity to critically analyze key human rights issues. The course first recalls influential theoretical perspectives and the elevation of human rights to a matter of international legal concern. Second, the course critically examines international, regional and national human rights norms and institutions to uncover strengths and weaknesses as well as the role of non-governmental organizations. The relationship between international frameworks to national human rights protection and key jurisprudence from the European, Inter-American and African regional human rights systems are then noted. Finally, the course considers some of the more urgent human rights issues of our time relating to democracy and the rule of law, economic, social and cultural rights, women and girls, gender identity, children, criminal justice, national security and terrorism, the environment, people on the move, and transitional justice in post-conflict situations.
