ARTH 278: American Art

Transcription

1 ARTH 278: American Art Martin Johnson Heade, Gremlin in the Studio, c , oil on canvas. ARTH 278: American Art University of Pennsylvania, Summer Session II, 2018 Mondays and Wednesdays: 9:00am 12:50pm Instructor: Juliet Sperling Office hours Mondays 3-5pm, or by appointment (Jaffe B8) Course Description: This course surveys visual arts made in central North America from European colonial conquest through the emergence of the United States as a global political power in the wake of World War II. We will explore a wide range of artworks, including print, painting, sculpture, textiles, architecture, photography, installation, and performance. As we track this history of American art from roughly 1600 to 1950, we will consider objects and images within a spectrum of social, intellectual, religious, and political contexts. Themes examined will include indigenous displacement and sovereignty; the role of art in shaping national identity; the construction of racial difference through visual culture; the importance of transatlantic and global exchange; the rise of the art market, museums, and modern art institutions; and art s relationship to processes of modernization, urbanization, and industrialization. Several in-class lectures and interactive activities will take place in local collections, such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Important Information and Policies

2 Evaluation and Assignments There are no prerequisites for this course. Requirements include assigned readings posted on Canvas, quizzes (a total of 3), 2 writing assignments, and active participation in lecture and discussions. Attendance and participation 20% Assignment 1 25% due 7/10, 7/16, 7/18 Assignment 2 30% due 8/1 by midnight Weekly Quizzes 25% 7/11, 7/18, 8/1 Attendance and Discussion Participation: (20%) Students are required to attend all classes and attendance will be taken every meeting. You can miss one lecture without losing grade points and you will be marked late if you arrive more than fifteen minutes late to class. It is your responsibility to make up absences; in the case of missing lecture material, this means arranging with a classmate to pick up handouts and learn what you have missed. During class we will extensively discuss the reading assignments. Students are required to read the assignments and participate in the discussions. Please be sure to bring copies of that day s Canvas readings to class (either in PDF or hardcopy). Students will be asked to demonstrate knowledge of the weekly readings in the quizzes as well. IMPORTANT: Laptops, ipads, and other e-readers are allowed in class so long as students appropriately use the device(s) e.g. taking notes, referring to the readings during discussion, etc. If the instructor sees students using their electronic devices for non-class use during class (e.g. social media, web browsing), she reserves the right to ban laptops and e-readers from the class for the remainder of the summer term. Assignment 1: Visual Analysis Paper & Presentation (3-part assignment, 25% total) Students will submit a 3-4-page visual analysis paper on a selected object in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts collection. The goal of this assignment is to hone your visual analysis skills in both describing and analyzing an art object. Students will consult with the instructor on selecting an art object from the PAFA collection. Assignment will be distributed in class on 7/3. This assignment is due in three stages: 1) 1-2-page visual description of the selected object (due 7/11 by 9:00am, Canvas submission) (5%) 2) 10-minute presentation on selected object in the PAFA Galleries (in class on 7/16) (5%) 3) 3-4-page visual analysis of the selected object (due on 7/18 by midnight, Canvas submission) (15%) Assignment 2: Comparative Analysis Paper (30%) Students will submit a 5-6-page paper comparing two art objects in local Philadelphia collections (e.g. PMA, PAFA, Library Company of Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, Barnes Collection, ICA, among others). This paper will build upon the previous assignment s focus on description and analysis of a single art object to interpret and compare two objects. Students will consult with the instructor on selecting art object(s); students may not use the same object analyzed in Assignment #1. Assignment distributed in class on 7/18. Object(s) must be approved by instructor by 7/25 or before. (Due on 8/2 by midnight, Canvas submission)

3 Quizzes: (25% total) There are three quizzes given in weeks two through five: 7/11 (5%), 7/18 (10%), and 8/1 (10%). The quizzes will typically cover material from the previous week s readings and lectures, including definitions of terminologies, slide identifications, comparisons, and/or short answer questions. Students will be responsible for identifying the objects and monuments by title, date (within 10 years on either side), artist/architect, and medium as given on the monuments list. *There is no midterm or final exam for this course and the quizzes are non-cumulative. *The instructor will post the PowerPoint slides from lecture and a condensed monuments & terms list on Canvas. These materials will be posted after class to help prepare for the quizzes. Readings All readings for this course are available as PDFs on Canvas. Useful reference books include: Angela Miller, Janet Berlo, Bryan Wolf, and Jennifer Roberts, American Encounters. New York: Prentice Hall, Frances Pohl, Framing America: A Social History of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, Policy I will do my best to respond to your s within 24 hours, Monday through Friday. Feel free to contact me with questions, but keep in mind that more complex questions that require more than a 1-2 sentence response are better suited to an in-person conference at my office hours (Mondays 3-5pm or by appointment). Extra Credit There will be opportunities during the term to receive extra credit toward your grade. Each opportunity is worth 1 percentage point. To receive points, you must attend one of the listed events and write a word response essay that addresses questions listed in the following assignment outlines. Further instructions for receiving extra credit can be found in the Extra Credit section of the Canvas site. Opportunities include (and will be updated throughout the summer session): Modern Times: American Art , Philadelphia Museum of Art Academic Integrity I encourage everyone to meet with me during my office hours to discuss your papers in advance. All students should be familiar with Penn s policies regarding plagiarism and appropriate citation. I encourage you to work collaboratively in this class for purposes of discussion and review. However, at the point of writing assignments and papers, the work that you complete and submit in this class must be your own. If you submit work that has been copied without attribution from some published or unpublished source, or that has been prepared by someone other than you, or that in any way misrepresents someone else s work as your own, you will face severe discipline by the university. A comprehensive guide to Penn s Code of Academic Integrity is available at If you have questions about proper citation methods, please ask me, or use the resources available to you at the Weingarten Learning Resources Center (

4 COURSE SCHEDULE: Week 1 M 7/2: Contact and Conquest/ Colonial Art in the Americas Paul Staiti, Character and Class: The Portraits of John Singleton Copley, in Reading American Art, edited by Marianne Doezema and Elizabeth Milroy, W 7/4: No class 4 th of July Week 2 M 7/9: Art in an Age of Revolution / Building the Early Republic *Meet at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 118 N. Broad Street, 9:50am. Roger B. Stein, Charles Willson Peale s Expressive Design: The Artist in His Museum, in Reading American Art, edited by Marianne Doezema and Elizabeth Milroy, William M. Kelso, Mulberry Row: Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. Archaeology 39, no. 5 (1986). W 7/11: Nature s Nation / Native Americans as Artists and Subjects Assignment 1.1 (visual description) due at 9am on Canvas Quiz #1 Angela Miller, Everywhere and Nowhere: The Making of the National Landscape, American Literary History 4.2 (1992): Vivian Green Fryd, Rereading the Indian in Benjamin West s The Death of General Wolfe. American Art, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Spring, 1995). Week 3 M 7/16: Marble Queens / Everyday Scenes *Meet at PAFA, 9:50am. Assignment 1.2 (in-class presentations at PAFA) Joy S. Kasson, Narratives of the Female Body: The Greek Slave, in Reading American Art, William T. Oedel and Todd S. Gernes, The Painter s Triumph: William Sidney Mount and the Formation of a Middle--Class Art. Reading American Art, pp W 7/18: Slavery and Abolition / Representing the Civil War Quiz #2 Assignment 1.3 (visual analysis) due at midnight on Canvas Kirk Savage, Imagining Emancipation, from Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves (1997):

5 Alan Trachtenberg, Albums of War: On Reading Civil War Photographs, in Critical Issues in American Art: A Book of Readings, edited by Mary Ann Calo, Week 4 M 7/23: Race and Reconstruction / Westward Expansion and the Ends of Landscape Nancy K. Anderson, The Kiss of Enterprise : The Western Landscape as Symbol and Resource, in Reading American Art, edited by Marianne Doezema and Elizabeth Milroy, W 7/25: Realism, Aestheticism, Cosmopolitanism / Mass Media and Entertainment *Meet at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 9:50am. Michael Leja, Eakins s reality effects, from Looking Askance (California 2004). Tom Gunning, An Aesthetic of Astonishment, Art and Text 34 (Spr. 1989). Early Edison films on the Library of Congress web page, American Memory Project section: Week 5 M 7/30: Regionalism and Urbanism / Modernism and the Armory Show Wanda Corn, The Birth of a National Icon in Reading American Art. J.M. Mancini, One term is as fatuous as another : Responses to the Armory Show Reconsidered, American Quarterly, vol. 51, W 8/1: The Harlem Renaissance and the Other American Moderns / WWII and Conclusions Quiz #3 Assignment 2 (Comparison Paper) due at midnight on Canvas ShiPu Wang, Introduction: The Other American Moderns in The Other American Moderns (PSU Press, 2017).