Professional Documents
Culture Documents
James Elkins
(email jelkins@artic.edu)
Syllabus
Revised Sunday, January 8, 2006
This syllabus will be available at:
http://www.jameselkins.com/syllabi.html
Ideally, Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts would be an “advanced” historiography
course, after the course that introduces psychoanalysis, semiotics, etc. In this course, the
student presentations serve to introduce the methodologies, and the textbooks serve to
question how those theories are usually taught and applied.
HA 3009 - 2 - SYLLABUS
The class will be conducted at a high level; most of the time we will critiquing texts rather
than expositing them. A basic understanding of the texts will be assumed at the beginning
of each class. You should read the assignments in advance of class, and take notes on them;
in class we’ll read through them and stop at problem points.
Continuous assessments:
(a) Participation
(b) A 2500 word paper on an individual historian. The paper consists of three parts:
i. A bibliography of the historian, as thorough as you can manage.
ii. An introduction to the historian’s work, including a very brief biography, a brief
overview of the books you’ve looked at, and an attempt to smmarize other
peoples’ opinions of the scholar
iii. A description of a single chapter or essay
iv. A critical analysis of the historian’s work. Can you use the historian’s methods
and approach? What are the historian’s strengths and limitations? What has been
written about the historian?
These papers will be assessed on (a) the amount of effort you’ve put in trying to get a sense
of the historian’s work as a whole, reading other books, etc.; (b) the amount of secondary
literature you have found (eg., critical reviews of the historian’s work); (c) the clarity of
your exposition of the historian’s arguments; and (d) the cogency of the criticisms you’ve
developed.
(c) Examination
This will be short answers only; 30 questions. We will discuss the format in class.
Textbook:
My book, Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts: Art History as Writing (University Park,
PA: Penn State Press, 1997), which is available online. Chapters of this book are identified
by name in the readings (for instance “Elkins, ‘On Half-Consciousness’”)
If you buy this online, please buy through my webpage: www.jameselkins.com (so I get a
20 cent commission).
Other texts will be posted online, or else available in triplicate on a table in the Visual
Resources lab in 3 Perrott Avenue. (Code: 3941.) This is an honour system: take one copy,
make a copy for yourself, and return the original.
webpage. I will be looking for sources accessible through the Boole Library that you
haven’t listed.
Plan on spending several days searching for bibliographic information. Texts in languages
you don’t read should still be listed.
Schedule of classes:
In addition there will be faculty study groups, to which you are also invited.
Schedule:
Be sure to do the reading before the class (except the first week).
1: Introduction
1: Reading: Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts, pp. 1-6, 11-13, 163-178
1: Readings TBA
1: Readings TBA
2: Readings TBA
There will be sign-up sheets to visit during my office hours (Thurs/Friday most weeks) to
work out your choice of paper topics.
Choices for papers:
If you read French, Italian, Japanese, or German, I may assign books in those languages.
Scholars who are coming to “Is Art History Global?” and “Photography Theory”:
Margaret Iversen
Jonathan Friday
Margaret Olin
Steve Edwards
Joel Snyder
Graham Smith
Jan Baetens
Diarmuid Costello
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David Summers
Andrea Giunta
Shigemi Inaga
Cao Yiqiang
Friedrich Teja Bach
Barbara Stafford
W.J.T. (Tom) Mitchell
Jonathan Crary
Stephen Bann
Stephen Eisenman
Kristine Stiles
David Freedberg (?)
Joseph Koerner
Whitney Davis
Hans Belting, Art History After Modernism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2002).
-- or --
Hans Belting, The Invisible Masterpiece, translated by Helen Atkins (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2001).
Reviewed unfavorably by Charles Harrison in Bookforum 8 no. 4 (2002): 38.
-- or --
* Hans Belting, The Germans and Their Art: A Troublesome Relationship,
translated by Scott Kleager (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
Michael Ann Holly, Past Looking (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1999[?]).
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Svetlana Alpers and Michael Baxandall, Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994).
Hubert Damisch, Traité du trait: Tractatus Tractus (Paris: Reunion des Musées
Nationaux, 1995)
Julia Kristeva, Visions capitales (Paris: Reunion des musées nationaux, 1998)
* Thomas Crow, The Intelligence of Art (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press, 1999).
Jacques Derrida and Paule Thévenin, The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998). ISBN 0-262-04165-0
Texts relevant to art historical problems, but not quite in art history:
l’Image, textes choisis et presentés par Laurent Lavaud (Paris: Gallimard, 1995).
Sites of Vision: The Discursive Construction of Sight in the History of Philosophy,
edited by David Levin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997). ISBN 0-262-
62129-0
Anthologies
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These are recent anthologies from which you may pick essays for your paper. I recommend
these as a last resort, because it takes an extra week to find the book and choose the essay:
The Subjects of Art History, edited by Michael Ann Holly, Keith Moxey, and Mark
Cheetham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Critical Terms for Art History, edited by Robert Nelson and Richard Shiff
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)
Kunstgeschichte: Aber Wie? Zehn Themen und Beispiele (Berlin: Dietrich Riemer)
ISBN 3-496-00971-3
The Changing Status of the Artist:, edited by Emma Barker, Nick Webb, and Kim
Woods (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)
Gender and Art, edited by Gill Perry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)