This course provides students with an in-depth understanding of major developments in architectural, urban, and landscape history, from 1750 to 1890. Charting a period of significant change that animated architectural discourse and practice, students will explore the highly innovative and experimental ways in which key architects and planners responded to the challenges of a rapidly changing and globalizing world and to the possibilities introduced by new technologies and materials. While this course focuses on developments that took place within the European and North American frame, they are situated in relation to global processes including trade, imperialism, nationalism, migration, and industrialization. Each lecture is organized around defining transformations in architectural culture during this period: We will explore how the era of revolutions in the late 18th and early 19th centuries expanded the role of architecture in the creation of new types of public and political space; how industrial production and prefabrication gave rise to radically new architectural vocabularies and catalyzed debates about national styles and aesthetic and environmental “character”; and how new housing, labor, and urban reform movements, such as utopian socialism, offered visionary spatial strategies in pursuit of an elusive social equality. This course prioritizes discussion and critical reflection and emphasizes the study of primary sources.
This intensive writing workshop is designed for and limited to third-year PhD students in the Department of Art History who are writing the dissertation prospectus. The dual purpose of this seminar is to present students with a clear understanding of what constitutes a successful dissertation prospectus for their field of study and to provide them with ample time, space, resources, and feedback (in consultation with their advisor) to produce a workable prospectus draft by the end of the quarter. We will address the different functions that a prospectus serves, namely as a guide to help structure the research and writing phases of the dissertation; we will learn from advanced graduate students and faculty how to think about the prospectus as the foundation for later fellowship and grant applications, studying examples of successful prospectuses and subsequent applications; and we will explore resources designed to help students develop a structured but adaptable writing practice. In addition to workshopping their own proposals, students will learn the art of peer review in providing critiques of fellow students’ work in progress.
