Arts in Society Minor Courses

Center for the Arts in Society Courses

Public Spectacles and Summer Festivals in Europe, 1600-Present
Alexander Vari, Ph.D.
Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00 - 1:20 p.m.
Wean Hall 6423
9 Units
History #79-381 or Drama #54-464

Spectacles are often defined as events taking people out of their everyday, to locate them in a festive or a creative context that both educates and entertains. This class aims to verify/challenge the validity of this definition by looking at the history of street spectacles, popular theater, urban entertainment, national commemorations and summer festivals in Europe from 1600 to the present. Covering four centuries of history and geographic and national contexts stretching from France and Scotland to Poland and Russia via Germany, Austria and Italy, in this class we will look at the links between spectacle, carnival and politics, festive events and public space, theater and mass pageants, including a historical contextualization of the reasons that led to the creation of the summer festivals dedicated to the performance of music and theater and related arts in Bayreuth, Salzburg, Edinburgh and Avignon.

Making the American Landscape: Space, Place, Conflict, and Transformation
Bill Anthes, Ph.D.
Wednesday, 6:30 - 9:20 p.m.
Baker Hall 235B
9 units
History #79-380 or Architecture #48-566

Geographer Yi Fu Tuan defines place as a ?concretion of value,? a space which has, through conscious and unconscious human effort, become invested with identity. This interdisciplinary, upper-level class will consider the importance of notions of place in American culture and society, from the 19th century to the present. Drawing on the work of historians, cultural geographers, urbanists, art and architectural critics, and film theorists, this class will investigate how notions of place have been the site of struggle, invested with meaning, and inflected by gender, race, and class. Topics will include the frontier experience; landscapes of industrialization; urban decline; suburbanization, segregation and 'white flight;' tourism; public memorials; and the 'non-places' of globalization.

Aesthetics Out of Bounds/History and Art Outside the Frame
Melissa Ragona (Permission from Instructor requested)
Tuesday 1:30 - 4:20 p.m.
CFA 303
6 units
HSS Interdisciplinary #66-261 or CFA Interdisciplinary #62-260 Art #60-660 (GRADUATE LEVEL requirements TBA)

The course will consist of a series of lectures by prominent specialists in the field reflecting upon the field of historical studies across a series of disciplines in the plastic, visual, and performing arts, and a concurrent weekly seminar. In this interdisciplinary course, students will have the opportunity to participate in a group of seminars on the topic of ?arts histories? - an approach which deliberately situates particular types of art or experience in multiple and perhaps conflicting historical, ideological or disciplinary frames. Seminars will complement a series of lectures by distinguished visiting scholars that will include the lecturer as a participant. Students will be expected to prepare for these seminars through outside reading and to participate in discussion, documenting their experience throughout the course.

CENTER FOR THE ARTS IN SOCIETY-ARTS IN SOCIETY MINOR

The Arts in Society Minor (AIS) offers students the opportunity to engage in interdisciplinary research and practice across traditional institutional boundaries at the University. Combining the resources of the five schools within the College of Fine Arts and the four humanities departments within the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, it aims to train students in combining thinking across disciplines and using both the humanities and the fine arts as a means of creation and interpretation.