ARTH 610 Selected Issues in North American Art and Architectural History: Between the Local and Global - National Art Histories in an Unfinished World

• Thursdays, 10:15 a.m. – 1:15 p.m.
• Online: Access through Moodle
• Dr. Martha Langford

Art historians write (and curators curate) from somewhere. That somewhere is sometimes understood as a place that can be located on a map – a territory, a region, a network, a city, or thinking transnationally, a diaspora, an imagined community traceable to somewhere.

This seminar is designed to think collectively about the kind of national art history that we want to write now and for the future. Based on an edited collection Narratives Unfolding: National Art Histories in an Unfinished World, the seminar will study the theory and methodology involved in the writing of local, regional, national, and global art history. While individual chapters are fascinating, touching down in Canada, Egypt, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel/Palestine, Romania, Scotland and Turkey, and in art cities, such as Cairo, Dubai, New York, and Vancouver, the goal of the seminar is to examine the various approaches and analytical tools that the fifteen writers have brought to their subjects. Feminist art historians will find examples of discourse analysis that upend the canon. Students of institutional issues will learn more about archives, art galleries, milestone exhibitions, and artist retreats. Contributors to Narratives Unfolding have written against the grain of expectation, with counter-histories embedded in their histories. By the end of this seminar, you will see such intricacies unfolding in your own work.