History of Art and Design
Pratt Institute is an exceptional place to study the history of art and design. Our landmarked campus attracts leading artists, designers, historians, and theorists and is only minutes from the studios, galleries, private collections, libraries, and museums that make New York a premier center of art and design.
Our faculty is composed of distinguished scholars and mentors who focus on the intellectual growth of our students. They bring a broad range of expertise and different methodologies to the classroom. Their expertise, dedication, and original thinking are evident in our curriculum and in the academic opportunities faculty members create for their students, and most importantly, are reflected in the quality of our students’ work.
Students come from a wide range of backgrounds, and leave with knowledge and experience, that will inform and support their careers for many years.
Every art and design history student’s program includes “behind-the-scenes” experiences, not only at exhibitions and museums but also in the Institute itself. Connections with other departments in all areas of fine arts and design—interior, industrial, communications, and fashion—offer a unique platform for an interaction between practitioners and theoreticians. We strongly encourage students to be active artists and makers in addition to their historical studies.
The History of Art and Design Department offers exciting lectures and seminars with a wide range of approaches, from geographically and chronologically oriented studies to the most recent theoretical approaches. Frequent excursions result from our extensive working relationships with the city’s museums, galleries, and cultural organizations and are a crucial part of the curriculum.
History of Art and Design Degree Program’s Philosophy
Degrees in the History of Art and Design have been developed with a keen sense of Pratt’s history as a technical school. In the context of a school long devoted to the practicing artist, designer, architect, and librarian, the historical perspective is attached to the concrete example. Its theory is developed from the specific to the general. At Pratt, the definition of art history is broad. It includes design history of clothing, interiors, communication, industrial products, photography, film, and animation, as well as urban design and the history of painting, sculpture, architecture, and graphic arts. These courses have been developed to respond equally to the needs of the art/design student and to aspiring historians.
The Program’s Structure
The History of Art and Design Department provides courses and a foundation of studies for all Pratt students. All undergraduates in the School of Art and the School of Design are required to take 12 credits of art and design history, including introductory survey courses that cover prehistory to the 20th century. The surveys are complemented by elective courses in a wide range of fields, which are designed to enhance specific interests of the varied majors within the Schools of Art and Design. The department offers undergraduates a unique program that includes studio courses.
Students entering with an Advanced Placement score of four or five in art history may apply for exemption from the first semester survey and are allowed to substitute an elective in the survey area for the second semester of survey.
Chair
Sarah Lictman
Assistant Chair
Evan Neely, PhD
Assistant to the Chair
Jill Song
Office
Tel: 718.636.3598
ha@pratt.edu
https://www.pratt.edu/liberal-arts-and-sciences/history-of-art-and-design/
Faculty Bios
www.pratt.edu/history-of-art-and-design/faculty
HAD-106 Art and Design History in New York City First Year Seminar - (3 Credits)
This course is the first in a series of yearly seminars that scaffold and guide HAD majors. It will introduce first year students in the History of Art and Design BA program to historical research and analysis of art and design using the art, design, and architecture of New York City as a case study. Students will use the city's resources and cultural institutions to learn about New York City's art and design history. A focus on major monuments and institutions as well as the design of the physical and social infrastructure including the city's contemporary art and design landscape will introduce students to the tools of primary research, central works of art and design history, and NYC sites that will become key resources for the rest of their education.
HAD-111 Themes in Art and Culture I - (3 Credits)
This course is the first in a required two-semester sequence. It covers the history of art and architecture in Non-Western cultures and in the West from Paleolithic to the Early Renaissance. Works of art are studied in their social, political and economic contexts along with considerations about patronage and stylistic influences. The three-hour sessions will be organized into two hours of lecture and an hour of group discussion on assigned readings or special topics.
HAD-112 Themes in Art and Culture II - (3 Credits)
This course is the second in the two-semester sequence of required courses for students in the School of Art and the School of Design. It covers the history of art and design in Western and non-Western cultures from the fifteenth century to the present. Works of art are studied in their social, political and economic contexts along with considerations about patronage and stylistic influences. Students are introduced to major themes of Humanism from the Renaissance through the Modern period and into the Postmodern world. Non-Western cultures, their art forms, and traditions, are studied during a similar time-frame for students to become aware of similarities and contrasts for a balanced and wide-ranging view of world cultures and to expand their definition of what constitutes art.
HAD-206 Practices of Art and Design History- Sophomore Seminar - (3 Credits)
This course is the second in a series of required seminars for HAD majors. It provides an opportunity for students to explore a number of the theories and methods used in art and design history. Mandatory for all BA and BFA History of Art and Design sophomores, it provides a foundation for majors as they move forward in developing their practice as art and design historians.
HAD-303 History of Ancient Egyptian Art and Design - (3 Credits)
Ancient Egyptian art and design includes painting, sculpture, architecture, ceramics, furniture, textiles and other material objects produced by the civilization living in the Nile Valley from roughly 5000 BCE to 300 CE. For many people, ancient Egypt art seems static and unchanging, due to the strict artistic conventions that ensured some level of consistency throughout its history. However, a closer look allows us to see the many changes that took place over time. Illustrated lectures will explore ancient Egypt from the predynastic to the Greco-Roman era, as well as later \"Egyptomania\" and influence on modern film, fashion, and design.
HAD-304 Greek and Roman Art & Design - (3 Credits)
Students consider Greek art of archaic, classical, and Hellenistic times; Roman adaptations of this heritage during the Republic and the Empire; and the contributions of the Romans to the vitality of classical art.
HAD-305 Arts and Humanities Computing - (3 Credits)
This course introduces students to the fundamentals of computer programming through the lenses of the arts and humanities. It is designed to provide students with an array of computational tools and methods that can be used to help frame research questions, carry out research projects, and provide data for deeper analysis. The tools and methods taught in this class are powerful complements to the modes of analysis students learn throughout their arts and humanities training such as close looking, analytical reading, critical visuality, persuasive writing, etc. Unlike a standard computer science course, this course focuses on the idea that we don't learn to program, we program to learn. In other words, the course is primarily about learning by doing and by applying concepts and techniques by putting them into action. Prior programming experience is not required. The course will be a mixture of class discussions, skill demonstrations, skill building, hands-on exercises, peer-based code review, coding challenges, and a cumulative project. Students will begin by building basic coding skills and knowledge. A series of coding challenges will help reinforce necessary technique and understanding and will provide the foundations needed for a final project. This course is designed to be part of the Digital Humanities minor in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences. As such, it will not only cover the fundamentals of computer programming but will situate them in a larger humanities context.
HAD-306 Social Justice in Art and Design History Junior Seminar - (3 Credits)
The relationship between the history of art and design and social justice entails questions about the formation of personal and group identity, the nature of representation, the distribution of social goods including material objects, and the entitlement of different groups to the use of various social spaces. This course, the third in a series of seminars required for HAD majors, will address these questions through the rigorous investigation of social justice issues in selected cultures and time periods.
HAD-320 Art & Design of the United States, 1770-1960 - (3 Credits)
This course examines United States American art and its major themes from the prerevolutionary period to World War II. Students study painting, sculpture, photography, and the built world. The course will focus on five major themes that have cut across the entire period: the relationship between artistic and political representation: The intertwined concepts of self, personhood, and the other in U.S American cultural life: the representability of capitalism and slavery; the visualization of nature and the city; and the problematic relationship Americans had to modern art.
HAD-321 Medieval Visual Culture - (3 Credits)
This course addresses the history of medieval art and architecture in Europe from approximately 300-1300. It will examine art made by Early Christians. Byzantines, and Early Medieval migratory groups including the Vikings, as well as the development of the Carolingian, Ottonian, Romanesque, and Gothic styles. The course will integrate non-Christian art, notably Islamic art from Spain, Andalusia, Sicily, and northern Africa and emphasis will be given to artwork that demonstrated interaction between Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions. A wide range of media including metalwork, manuscripts, mural and panel paintings will be considered, alongside monasteries, cathedrals, and castles. The material will be examined through major social and political themes, such as the development of feudalism and the emergence of monarchies, but issues of gender, race, and cross-cultural contact, especially with Islamic regions, will be given prominence.
HAD-323 Baroque Visual Culture - (3 Credits)
The political, religious, economic and scientific developments of the Early Modern period (ca. 1585-1700) will engage us in this course on the International Baroque. We will study issues of gender and class as well as style, in the paintings of Caravaggio, Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer. The building programs of St. Peters by Bernini, of Versailles under Louis XIV, and of London by Wren after The Great Fire will be examined.
HAD-331 Renaissance Arts in Italy & the North - (3 Credits)
This course explores painting, sculpture, architecture, and decorative arts made primarily in Italy, Flanders, and Germany between 1300 and 1600, emphasizing cultural and artistic communication between these regions. Themes include the changing roles of the artist in society, innovative material and artistic techniques, the dynamics of civic, individual, and courtly patronage, and the representations of regional and religious identities.
HAD-340 Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture - (3 Credits)
This course presents an introduction to nineteenth-century art and the ideas that fostered its creation. The purpose of the class is to provide an in-depth overview of the major themes, artists, and stylistic movements (Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Symbolism) during this period as they developed within a historical, political and social context.
HAD-341 Modernism in the 20th Century - (3 Credits)
This course will examine the interconnections between modern art, modernity, and visuality. We will explore the major currents in European and American art and architecture from approximately 1900 to 1960.
HAD-346 Art Since the Sixties - (3 Credits)
This three-unit course seeks to examine the social and cultural history of modern and contemporary art from the 1960s to the present.
HAD-350 Arts of the Other in a Changing World - (3 Credits)
This course deals with three concepts: Non-Western (regions of Africa, the Americas and Oceania), Art (human expression) and History (through time). These objects, acts and events will be viewed in terms of how they have developed over time and how they have been observed, described and collected by ourselves and other outsiders. This course addresses the ways in which art is produced, used and considered/ valued by the people whose lives it touches and molds, as well as theways that meaning has been treated by others.
HAD-351 Asian Art and Culture in Global Perspective - (3 Credits)
This course surveys Asian art and culture from the Neolithic period to the late pre-modern era with a global perspective. Architectural monuments, sculpture, calligraphy and painting, ceramic and other decorative works of South and Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, China, Korea, and Japan are introduced and analyzed in relation to their historical, philosophical, religious, and socio-political contexts. Lectures are based on selected themes within the chronological and geographical framework. Identification, analysis, and interpretation of the monuments and artifacts are focused on the diversity and interconnection of each different period and region. In addition to the lectures, each thematic topic is juxtaposed or contrasted to its counterpart in the global history of art and culture through class discussion, oral presentation, and the written assignments.
HAD-360 History of Photography - (3 Credits)
This course is conceived as an introductory survey of photography from its beginning in 1839 through 2014. The material is organized around the motivations of individual photographers and the development of various movements. It includes the study of criticism and emphasizes photographer's books. The format is interactive and allows for student participation in addition to written work and exams.
HAD-361 History of Documentary Film - (3 Credits)
This course is an exploration of the history of documentary film form the Lumiere Brothers in 1895 to Michael Moore and Ken Burns today, examining landmark works and presenting various movements and styles and notions of \"truth\". It offers a chronological, analytical study of the emergence of documentary film as art, entertainment, information and persuasion.
HAD-362 History of Film - (3 Credits)
An historical survey of film form the advent of commercial motion pictures in the 1890s, the proliferation of national cinema movements throughout the 20th century, and the influence of each in the formation of a global film culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
HAD-363 History Of Industrial Design - (3 Credits)
This lecture course traces the history of industrial design from the industrial Revolution to the current design movements based on hi-tech as well as on sustainable thinking. This class will study the major movements of industrial production within the context of technical advancement as well as social developments. Lectures are combined with field trips to relevant exhibitions, events, and retail venues. Student research projects are required as part of the class work.
HAD-364 History of Interior Design - (3 Credits)
A historical overview of the styles and social movements which preceded and laid the foundation for the contemporary practice of interior design, i.e. Regency, Federal, Pennsylvania Dutch, Shaker, Victorian, Art Deco, etc. It includes an examination of the trends in related design areas - architecture, landscape, design, city and town planning. Major emphasis is placed on more modern developments, between 1860 to the present. In addition, a correlated review of the design of furniture, fabrics, accessories, and illumination are examined. Required for majors in Interior Design.
HAD-365 History of Graphic Design & Illustration - (3 Credits)
This course presents an overview of visual communications from the late-19th century into the 21st century. Key movements, designers, their visual language and changing technologies will be considered within the broader social, political, and economic contexts. Interweaving questions of a contemporary practitioner into this historical narrative will help us consider the role of design in defining-not simply reflecting-the zeitgeist. Rather than emphasizing an evolutionary development of visual communications, the lectures and discussions will revolve around a variety of thematic focuses.
HAD-366 History of Animation - (3 Credits)
This course takes a comprehensive look at the artists and studios that shaped the history of the dynamic art form of Animation, from its beginning in the silent film era and American entertainment cartoons to contemporary work. From short films to features, commercial to computer animation, the course will examine how animation evolved along with role it plays in society today.
HAD-368 History of Modern Fashion - (3 Credits)
Students undertake a chronological and regional study of costume through illustrated lectures and satellite classes at the extensive costume collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
HAD-369 History of Jewelry Design - (3 Credits)
This course will explore the history of jewelry and small object/accessory design in relation to the material processes of various global cultures. Why did certain cultures utilize specific materials and how did these practices affect their design work? How have various socio/political and economic factors influenced design movements? What historical visual motifs are evident in contemporary jewelry design? This course will follow a timeline through history that will examine the development of jewelry and small object design in worldwide contemporaneous cultures.
HAD-405 Senior Thesis - (3 Credits)
In this final art history course, majors write a thesis that demonstrates original research capability. After the topic has been proposed in writing and approved by a small faculty committee, students work with their faculty advisor on an individual basis with regular meetings throughout the semester. Faculty assignments are in accordance with the subject matter of the thesis. This is a requirement for all art history majors.
HAD-406 Senior Seminar - (3 Credits)
This course will offer a \"Capstone\" experience to departmental seniors (those with a 3.7 GPA may still opt for a senior thesis). The focus, theme and methodology will vary according to the faculty member assigned, but in each case, the students will take responsibility to carry out research and to work with the professor and with each other to carry it through.
HAD-408 Telling Stories With Pictures,how Visual Artists Interpret Literature - (3 Credits)
This seminar examines the history and function of pictorial narrative. Relying on a historically and geographically diverse body of texts, both Western and non-Western, from antiquity to the twenty-first century, students will analyze how artists use image to tell stories, whether from myth, scripture, historical texts, autobiography or other sources.
HAD-414 History of Sculpture - (3 Credits)
This course will cover the history of sculpture form the ancient world until today. We will discuss the artists, artworks, and events that have contributed to the evolution of the medium and understandings of it. We will particularly focus on key developments made in sculpture in the past one hundred and fifty years.
HAD-416 Northern Renaissance Arts - (3 Credits)
This course examines painting in Flanders, France, The Netherlands, and Germany from 1400 to 1600. Focus will be on the development of new styles of representation and their implications for the iconography of painting, the effects of religious revolution on the practice of art and the outburst of I iconoclasm, and the changes in the practice and marketing of art brought on by the early stages of the transition to a capitalist society.
HAD-420 Viewing and Constructing the Classical Body - (3 Credits)
Ancient societies were profoundly visual. Fewer images were available, so those that existed were more important. Representations of the human body played a central role within visual arts, as the starting point for recognizing the self. This course looks at ancient Greek and Roman representations of the human body: how they were constructed and functioned, how forms developed and changed, what they expressed when new, how we have received them and see them today. The Classical focus on the nude figure that forms the foundation of the western artistic tradition is atypical of the global experience, requires special explanation.
HAD-421 Jerusalem 1000-1400, Connection and Conquest - (3 Credits)
This course examines how Jerusalem, Holy City to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, shaped medieval art from 1000-1400. It will emphasize cultural connection through trade, exploring the city as one center in an early global trade network, and through travel, looking at art made by and for religious pilgrims and tourists. It will also address the transformation of the urban landscape through conquest, by European Christians form 1095 (the Crusades) and by Saladin, founder of the Muslim Ayyubid dynasty in 1187. Rather than bringing one city-important to one tradition in one moment-into focus, this course emphasizes the diffusion of medieval Jerusalem-s, across cultures and over time.
HAD-423 Rembrandt to Vermeer, from Darkness to Light - (3 Credits)
This course will focus on the rise of the two great masters of the Dutch Baroque: Rembrandt and Vermeer as it explores works produced in the Netherlands, c. 1585-1680. We will concentrate on the centers of Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Delft, and to a lesser extent on the works of Baroque Flanders,France and Germany of the 17th century.
HAD-425 Contemporary International Cinema - (3 Credits)
This course is a critical examination of recent ground-breaking cinema in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Films from specific countries in these areas will be selected each semester. The class will evaluate the social, economic, and artistic forces that have shaped these films (and filmmakers) and their reception at home and abroad.
HAD-426 Native American Arts, Architecture & Design - (3 Credits)
This course focuses on the architecture, art and artifacts of the indigenous peoples of North America residing in the Wood-Lands, Plains, Southwest, Northwest Coast, Arctic and Sub-arctic regions in terms of function, iconography material, technique, cultural context, design and history. Collections of Native North American art and artifacts in local museums are visited and studied.
HAD-427 Color in Ancient Greece & Rome - (3 Credits)
Color was a critical aspect of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, counter to post-Renaissance chromophobia that sees ancient marble sculpture as plain white. We will look closely at polychromy of ancient sculptures, mineral pigments, their application and effects, and issues surrounding modern reconstructions. We will also examine other types of added color, such as fabric dyes and wall and panel paintings, as well as the vast world of inherent color, especially precious metals, marbles, gemstones, fibers, woods, and clays. In addition, we will consider color in other ancient cultures. This seminar includes an independent research project and museum visits.
HAD-432 Renaissance Materials - (3 Credits)
This course addresses materials and techniques of Renaissance visual arts in Western Europe, especially Italy and Flanders, with an attention to global trade and material sourcing. Through engagement with treatises by Renaissance practitioners, recipes, and art historical writings of the period, along with recent conservation data, students will study pigments, media and surfaces used for painting, sculptural and building materials, drawing materials, as well as printmaking and various luxury items and their embellishments. Attention to the current condition of works forcefully introduces matters of sustainability and the effects of pollution, particularly since the industrial Revolution.
HAD-433 German Art & Culture: Romanticism to Expressionism - (3 Credits)
This course examines the development of art in Germany from the spiritualism of Romanticism (Caspar David Friedrich and the Nazarenes) to explorations of sexuality, Darwinian theory, and the unconscious (Arnold Bocklin and Max Klinger) during the emergence of a modern urban society in the Wilhelmine Empire. Topics to be considered include shifting definitions of national identity, responses to industrialization and socialism, and the interchange of art with music, literature, mythology and fairy tales, and philosophy. Popular visual culture as well as the fine arts will be emphasized.
HAD-441 Ecology, Activism, and the Image of Nature - (3 Credits)
This course treats the interrelations among images of nature, theories of the environment, and political activism. Beginning with a broad survey of the traditions of landscape painting in Europe and the United States, the class will shift to the development of these subject areas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Students will examine topics like the uses of verbal and visual arts to express conceptions of nature, the tension between \"rugged individualism\" and ecological theory, the complex relationship between \"rugged individualism\" and ecological theory, the complex relationship between the state and environmental activism, and the influence of modern and postmodern abstraction on artists' concern for the environment.
HAD-442 French Enlightenment, Rovolutions to Romaticism - (3 Credits)
This course will address the history of French art from Neoclassicism through Romanticism, or from approximately 1770-1860 and the social, philosophical and political ideas that informed the art's development. While the course focuses on the period's paining sculpture, architecture and design, it will also address these arts' relationship to philosophy, literature, music, drama and other disciplines.
HAD-443 Visual Culture of the Bauhaus Cultural Exchange and Display At World's Expositions, 1851-2015 - (3 Credits)
This course seeks to reevaluate the Bauhaus and its legacy. Looking closely at the artistic, architectural, and pedagogical practices undertaken during the fourteen years the Bauhaus was operational, the course will then chart the school's lasting influence on individuals and institutions around the world.
HAD-444 Design in the Age of Impressionism Expositions, 1851-2015 - (3 Credits)
This course examines European decorative arts and design during the second half of the nineteenth century, period that coincided with the rise to fame of the impressionist art movement. It reevaluates the artistic achievement and material culture of this oft-studied period in light of new modes of productions associated with a rapidly industrializing world.
HAD-445 Painting Modern Life in Nineteenth- Century Paris and the Provinces - (3 Credits)
This course will examine the development of the realist orientation of French impressionism and the reactions against it by the Post-Impressionists. An emphasis will be placed on the social, cultural, and political context as well as the construction of modernity in art and gender identity. The philosophical underpinnings of the movements are studied, as well as central tensions in late nineteenth-century France between urban secular society and rural traditions grounded in folk cultures and religious beliefs.
HAD-446 Painting in the Mid-Twentieth Century, 1930-1980 - (3 Credits)
This course will examine the fortunes of the art of painting as it was practiced in the industrial world from 1930 to 1980. As prominent critics encouraged artists to demonstrate by practical example what it was that their mediums did in contradistinction to other mediums, others who had kept alive the spirit of the traditional avant-garde employed painting as one among a host of artistic strategies to achieve radical ends. Painters during this period found themselves in a very strange position. On the one hand, their medium was far and away the most popular with cultural institutions like museums and galleries as well as with art patrons and critics, and on the other it found a welter of contestations of its hegemony. This course will discuss the ways the art of painting was shaped by these factors, and focus on five central issues: The changing meaning of realism and the choice to paint abstractly, the aesthetic responses to industrial capitalism, the influence of new media on painting's traditional practices, the influence that the collapse of traditional historical narratives had on critics, and the way marginalized voices found expression in the medium.
HAD-447 Dada & Surrealism - (3 Credits)
The class explores the histories of Dada and Surrealism, two avant-garde movements that crossed borders between continents and media, from a transnational, global perspective and looks at their enduring legacy in contemporary art and visual culture. It examines the artistic practices and theories, and the socio-political and cultural contexts of the two movements from the 1910s to the 1950s, and investigates a broad range of artworks, events, and texts, including photography and film, by artists such as Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, André Breton, Dora Maar, Matta, Joan Miró, Wilfredo Lam, and many others.
HAD-448 Consuming Design, From Pleasure to Politics - (3 Credits)
This course examines design from the point of view of its dissemination and reception in various historical contexts and geographical locations. It acknowledges that there is not just one audience for design; rather, the consumption, advertising and selling of designed objects has always differed in time and place based on socio-economic, political, cultural, or religious factors. We will examine design and its circulation in relation to medium and materiality, identity politics, including gender, sexuality, race, and class, the rise of the nation state, and the move towards cross-cultural networks of consumption. While the focus of the course will mostly be on Western and modern design consumption, we will juxtapose the conditions of its emergence in industrialized, capitalist societies against the circulation, reception and display of material culture objects in the early modern world and across a variety of geographical locations. Students are encouraged to purse research projects of their own choice and related to any period or geographical location, upon prior consultation with the instructor.
HAD-453 Topics in the Arts of Oceania - (3 Credits)
A Survey of Oceanic Arts deals with three primary ideas: Pacific Islands, Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia (the place), Art (human expression, its creation, use and interpretation) and History (over time). The course will look at the forms, materials, functions and contexts in which arts have been created and used in Pacific Island societies, as well as how that body of material has been observed, described and collected buy people foreign to the region.
HAD-454 Contemporary Arts of Africa - (3 Credits)
This course deals with the arts and artists in African societies since Independence (roughly 1955) to the present time. The course treats the arts in the context of both their geography and social forms and the times in which they are created. The course describes and analyzes the impact of artistic practice in and across the media of cinema, literature and visual art in a post-colonial and post-modem world.
HAD-455 Topics in Islamic Art and Design - (3 Credits)
This course addresses the history and methodology of Islamic art and architecture from approximately 600 to 1800. The chronology will be examined through the themes that distinguish this culture-such as aniconism and ornament as well as Islamic Spain and Mughal India. Integral to these themes will be consideration of the social, political, technological, geographical and religious issues that contributed to the development of each period, style and/or art form.
HAD-456 Topics in African Art & Design - (3 Credits)
A Survey of African Arts deals with three primary ideas: Africa (the place), Art (human expression, its creation, use and interpretation) and History (over time). The course will look at the forms, function and contexts in which arts have been created and used in African societies, and how that body of material has been observed, described and collected by people foreign tot the Continent. The intention is to describe and assess the style catalogue, to inspect the constraints and opportunities that informed the creative processes of the Continent, and then to use the most useful varieties of information to describe and analyze the forms, social engagement and agency of arts in Africa. Materials or bodies of art will be viewed in a geographic pattern that moves across the Continent. Those materials will be selected to illustrate themes and issues that inform the study and understanding go the general body of African arts. The course will reflect a growing shift in the literature and in the professional discourse of the field of non-western and post-colonial studies toward a focus on the performative and holistic interpretation of artistic expression, and the impact of a global post-colonial experience that engenders a world-art perspective. This sort of transcendence of place and race as defining elements in the organization of art studies gains sharper focus in the consideration of contemporary arts, certainly in Africa, and in a global art market. The reinterpretation of the colonial experience and impact on human expression is of increasing importance in the survey as well as in more specialized areas of inquiry in art history.
HAD-457 Buddhist Art and Architecture - (3 Credits)
This course is a comprehensive survey of Buddhist art and architecture from their emergence in the subcontinent in the 3rd century BCE to their evolution in Central, Southeast, and East Asia between the 5th and the 15th centuries CE. Art Is examined according to chronological developments, geographic expansions, and the traditional Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana divisions of Buddhism. Architectural monuments and artifacts inspired by Buddhist beliefs, including sculptures, paintings, calligraphy, murals, textiles, and ritual objects, are analyzed according to religious, philosophical, and art historical issues. We discuss them in their regional and pan-Asian socio-cultural contexts. Interdisciplinary issues are also considered, including Buddhist order and law, Buddhist world view and quantum physics, and current developments such as repatriation, physical analysis of objects with synchrotron radiation, and digital technologies used in conservation.
HAD-458 Afro-Fantastic: Visualizing Contemporary Black Imaginaries - (3 Credits)
This course explores the Afro-Fantastic as an aesthetic and theoretical framework for examining the liberatory possibilities of blackness in this contemporary moment. 'Afro-Fantastic' is a term that loosely assembles creative modalities of blackness including Afro-Futurism, Afro Surrealism, Afro-Punk, and Afro-Gothic. With a focus on the transnational African Diaspora, this class offers a generous understanding of how the Middle Passage, chattel slavery, and its afterlives have brutalized black populations, especially in the New World. As such, the fantastic is often a recalibration of a denied humanity that reconfigures as a parahumanity manifesting through self-fashioning and burgeoning epistemologies.
HAD-460 Crafting Modern Craft-History, Theory, Politics - (3 Credits)
This course thematically investigates issues in modern craft in the 19th and 20th centuries across different geographic regions and cultures. Weekly topics address questions such as: changing definitions and understandings of what constitutes craft; labor, production and economies of craft; the accumulation and display of craft objects in private collections and museum displays; and the politics and purposes of craft as they operate on individual and collective levels.
HAD-462 Modern Graphics - (3 Credits)
This course will familiarize the student with the rich tradition of the comics medium as it developed in Europe and blossomed in America. It will present a concise overview of the comics; primarily those of the 20th century-discussing the medium's influential creators and established contemporary practitioners, as well as the unique demands of the numerous forms to which it has adapted (the daily and Sunday press, comic books, underground comics, graphic novels, etc.) Special attention will be paid to the influence of technological, social;, and economic forces (as well as rival contemporary visual media) on narrative approaches, genres and content. Open to all Pratt students.
HAD-467 Gender and Sexuality in Interior and Fashion Design History - (3 Credits)
This course provides a historical understanding of the interplay between fashion and interiors as they have interacted with and influenced each other throughout time. Furniture makers around the world produced wide chairs mindful of ladies' spatially-expanding attires, while lower-back seats were designed to accommodate the towering hairdos often sported at the court of Marie Antoinette. Colorful robes were preferred to better set off their wearers against one particular background or another, while late nineteenth-century Gesamtkunstwerk theories dictated that female inhabitants - through their clothes and posture - become one with their interiors. Twentieth-century fashion designers are known for their interior decoration schemes, and many couture houses are now incorporating interior design offices. The course attempts to understand the central role that style and glamor have played in every-day life from the Renaissance to today and to question long-held beliefs that have held decoration and physical adornment as 'minor arts,' subservient to architecture.
HAD-468 Leisure in the Empire City: Modernity And the Interior Architecture of Entertainment - (3 Credits)
This course introduces students to the new decorative themes and modern interior design practices developed in the public spaces of entertainment that were born in large cities such as Paris, London, Berlin, and New York beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century. From cafes and cabarets to restaurants, movie palaces, dance halls, and amusement parts, the residents of large metropolitan areas liked to party. We will explore the architecture and interior design of nightlife spaces in parallel with the glamorous architecture and interior displays of museums, hotels, railroad cars, vacation homes, and large shopping centers. Using New York as our laboratory, we will meet on campus for half of our classes while spending the other half in the city.
HAD-469 Modern Latin American Design - (3 Credits)
This course explores major issues in modern Latin American design history through a number of thematic units. Covering graphic design, interior design, industrial design, fashion and architecture, classes will be primarily student-led through discussion, presentations, and group work.
HAD-470 A History of New York Architecture - (3 Credits)
This course studies the history of architecture in the City of New York. Students are introduced to style, iconography, technical innovation, geography, and the cultural, social, economic, and political forces that have shaped the city's buildings from the early seventeenth century to the present.
HAD-471 Art, Design, and Cultural Exchange at World's Fairs Expositions, 1851-2015 - (3 Credits)
Spectacular and celebrator, world' fairs and international expositions have been staged globally since the 1851s. This course explores these ambitious events as hubs of artistic and design activity and as grand narratives of prestige and progress. The course addresses theories of exhibitions, such as the \"exhibitionary complex, \"which shed light on reciprocal roles that fair visitors play. Emphasis is places on selected fairs such as Britain's Great Exhibition of 1851, the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris for which the Eiffel Tower was built, the 1939 and 1964 New York World's Fairs, the design, all of which were originally inspired by ideals of progress and demonstrations of power. The class also examines the enormous role these fairs played in promoting nationhood, art, and goods: publicizing technological and design innovation and novelty: and conveying values.
HAD-472 The Current Season - (3 Credits)
This course offers undergraduate students a direct engagement with con-temporary art on view in New York City during the semester. It will expose students to a broad range of artworks, in diverse styles and media, and will involve various approaches to writing art criticism.
HAD-473 Curating Culture: A History of Museums Collecting, and Display - (3 Credits)
This course will address the history and theory of museums, collecting, and exhibitions. In addition to a consideration of the development of the institution of the museum, the course will address the ways and \"whys\" societies have organized, structured, classified and displayed knowledge and material culture throughout time. The course will begin with a study of the Renaissance cabinet of curiosities and continue through the opening of the British Museum and the Louvre to the new museums of today. Subjects to be considered include the role of Enlightenment, nationalism, colonialism, anthropology, appropriation, and architecture in the collection and display of artifacts. These subjects, in turn, will raise questions about our notions of history, art, public institutions, as well as visual and material culture.
HAD-474 Museology Expositions, 1851-2015 - (3 Credits)
This course introduces students to the various aspects and endeavors that encompass the development and operation of the Museum. Through readings, lectures, discussions and, most of all, meetings with museum professionals, students will gain knowledge and understanding of the nature of Museums, the work that they do, and the issues they face, both within the institution and within their larger communities. Area addressed include curatorial work, conservation, exhibition design, development, education, public relations, financial management, and the functions of the registrar.
HAD-475 Museums Seen: Curating Culture in NYC - (3 Credits)
This course addresses current practices of collection, exhibition and display through firsthand experience of local New York City museums. These frequent visits (both as a class and independently) offer students an intimate view of the various ways culture-and NYC in particular-defines the museum institution. As a cultural capital, NYC offers a diversity of museum experiences. This course will use that diversity to address not only the nature of context, interpretation and aesthetics for collection but also the context of a city for this particular collection of institutions.
HAD-482 Introduction to Digital Humanities - (3 Credits)
What happens when the digital and humanities meet? What kinds of materials, methods, insights, conflicts, and possibilities emerge? How does data transform the way we create, manage and interpret knowledge? This course introduces students to the field of the digital humanities; it addresses digital approaches to the humanities as well as the history, theory, and ethics of the field. Students gain basic facilities with a variety of digital tools, platforms and approaches that serve the humanities-including data manipulation and visualization, mapping, archiving and text analysis-and have the opportunity to apply what they learn to their own project.
HAD-483 Digital History of Art and Design - (3 Credits)
Historians of art and design use data all the time, whether analyzing images, collections or events. This course introduces students to digital tools that expand and complement other methodologies while also familiarizing them with the emerging field of digital history of art and design. Through study of concepts, case studies, basic software and digital tools, as well as recent developments, students will gain a foundation in the field and have the opportunity to apply what they learn to their own project in the history of art and design.
HAD-491 Pratt in Paris: Art on site Visual Rhetoric of French Art - (3 Credits)
Paris' role in the transformation of visual culture across the long nineteenth century continues to maintain a hold on the discipline of the history of art and design and contemporary culture. Why? This course immerses students in French art from the 18th-20th centuries through seminar sessions, on-site visits, and walking tours in order to critically investigate this question. Through discussions, readings, writing, and most importantly close looking of objects in Paris, students will engage in an in-depth study of the century's major themes andinterpretations.
HAD-495 Pratt in Paris: Design on Site Visual Rhetoric of French Design - (3 Credits)
This is a three-credit course that offers a unique, full-scale immersion in 17th-early 20th centuries histories of French design in an expanded content-field beyond the classroom. The course will examine the intertwined development of French decorative arts and design, from fashion and architecture to furniture, interior, and graphic design through in-person lectures, seminars, and guided visits at renowned Paris institutions. A hands on, experiential learning opportunity, students will immerse themselves fully in French culture while part of this Pratt in Paris program.
HAD-499 Independent Study - (2 Credits)
Students pursuing advanced projects not available in regular course offerings may apply for independent study if they have a minimum GPA of 3.0 and have at least sophomore status. Students must submit a written description of the project and its relationship to the curriculum. The application must be approved by the faculty member directing the work, chairperson and dean. Students may take this course only once.
HAD-590I Art History of Venice - (3 Credits)
On-site study of painting, architecture, sculpture, and drawing of Venice is the prime purpose of this course. Classes held on-site will alternate with lectures and discussions that place the material in its art historical context. Study of ancient Byzantine and Gothic art in Venice will precede discussion of Renaissance art with its rich crosscurrents of influence from Byzantium, Northern Europe and Central Italy. Technical innovations of Venetian Renaissance artists and later developments in the Baroque will be considered. Students will carry out visually-based assignments, including papers that analyze and compare art works in Venice. The Marciana Library will serve as a resource.
HAD-9400 History of Art and Design Internship - (0 Credits)
The internship is a learning experience at a discipline-related professional site. It provides students with an opportunity to apply academic knowledge and skills in a practical setting, while obtaining new knowledge and skills in preparation for professional work or graduate school. Students experience the application of coursework lessons into a real-life context, thus enriching their education. They deepen their knowledge about important applied aspects of their discipline, enhance their professional skills in a real-world context, build their professional network, and inform their career choices. Additional faculty-supervised activities provide the opportunity for an in-depth reflection on the internship experience.
HAD-9402 History of Art and Design Internship - (2 Credits)
The internship is a learning experience at a discipline-related professional site. It provides students with an opportunity to apply academic knowledge and skills in a practical setting, while obtaining new knowledge and skills in preparation for professional work or graduate school. Students experience the application of coursework lessons into a real-life context, thus enriching their education. They deepen their knowledge about important applied aspects of their discipline, enhance their professional skills in a real-world context, build their professional network, and inform their career choices. Additional faculty-supervised activities provide the opportunity for an in-depth reflection on the internship experience.
HAD-9403 History of Art and Design Internship - (3 Credits)
The internship is a learning experience at a discipline-related professional site. It provides students with an opportunity to apply academic knowledge and skills in a practical setting, while obtaining new knowledge and skills in preparation for professional work or graduate school. Students experience the application of coursework lessons into a real-life context, thus enriching their education. They deepen their knowledge about important applied aspects of their discipline, enhance their professional skills in a real-world context, build their professional network, and inform their career choices. Additional faculty-supervised activities provide the opportunity for an in-depth reflection on the internship experience.