Course description This course offers a cross-cultural and diachronic exploration of non-western visual art and society, focusing mainly on the communicative aspects of visual aesthetics. Loaded with meaning, the human body and items of material culture serve as powerful mediators that integrate myriad behaviors, and are deployed to explore the inner-self, foster social identities, lure into consumption, generate political propaganda, engage in ritual, render sacred propositions tangible, and chart the imagined view of the cosmos. The production and use of sculptures, masks, paintings, textiles, and architecture is seen as an inextricable aspect in the construction and reproduction of human social relations. Learning Goals: This course seeks to engage students in critical thinking about art in society and about materiality and aesthetics (object-subject relations) in diverse cultural and historical settings. Students will develop analytical skills in their assessments and interpretations of seemingly divergent historical and cultural contexts. The course fosters research skills by studying and contextualizing an aesthetically charged object in the ethnographic collection of the Anthropology department, enabling students to refine oral and writing skills by presenting in class the results of their research and by submitting an original research paper; the emphasis will be on combining clear organizational techniques with creative interpretive approaches to the material. The course also exposes students to the process of designing the script for an exhibit and installing a small display. This team effort is intended to foster skills as followers and leaders.

Cross-Cultural Art and Aesthetics Fall 2016 T and Th 3:30 – 4:50 pm Brown 218 Professor Javier Urcid Office: Brown 203 Office hours: W 3:00 – 5:00 pm (or by appointment) Extension: 62223 email: urcid@brandeis.edu Teaching Fellow Sarah Schofield-Mansur Office: Brown 230 Office hours: Th 2:15 – 3:15 pm email: sschofs@brandeis.edu

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Course outline Aug Th 25 Introduction None Session in the MCRC Aug T 30 Art, Aesthetics, and Anthropology Bourdieu 1968; Gell 1992; Svašek 2007 Sept Th 1 Art, Structure, Context Levi-Strauss 1963; Seip 1999 Sept T 6 Art and the human body David et. al 1998; Bray 2000; Elkins 1994; Houston 2001 Sept T 13 Art and Agency Gell 1998: 1-11, Hooper 2000 Sept Th 15 Project session in the MCRC None Sept T 20 Style, stylish, stylistic, stylized Shapiro 1953; Kubler 1970 Rowe 1962; Urton 1996 Sept Th 22 Consecrations and Iconoclasms Freedberg 1989 chapter 14; Cane and Ashley-Smith 2013 Sept T 27 Visuality and symbolic codes Gombrich 1972; Freedberg 1989,

chapter 4; Morgan 1983; Bednarik 2003

Sept Th 29 The ragmala paintings and the Glynn et al. 2011; Farrell 1998 aesthetics of sound: Hindustani table music by Sandeep Das, and Rajib Karmakar, with guest speaker Anne E. Monius CLASS will meet in SLOSBERG 212 Oct Th 6 Art as Language Uspensky 1972; Adorno 1979 Oct T 11 Technologies of art Bejamin 1969; Lechtman 1975; Weiner 1997 Oct Th 13 Art and Memory Küchler 1987; Rowlands 1987 Midterm posted Oct T 18 Masters and apprentices Gerbrands 1978; Wilf 2014 Midterm due Oct Th 20 Art and Identity Pasztory 1989; Winter 1995

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Oct Th 27 Visible and Invisible: TBA Representing Presence and Transcendence Lecture by Rick Parmentier Nov T 1 Art and Illusion Gorman 2003; Edgerton 2009 Film Vision and Illusion: Renaissance Perspective and Tim’s Vermeer Nov Th 3 The “modern” appropriation of Clifford 1988; Myers 1994; “primitive” art Braun 1989 Nov T 8 The Art of the faker Meiland 1983; Jamieson 1999 Nov Th 10 Student presentations (5 presentations) Nov T 15 Student presentations (5 presentations) Nov Th 17 Student presentations (5 presentations) Nov T 22 Student presentations (5 presentations) Nov T 29 Museographic project session Myers 2004 Dec Th 1 Museographic project session TBA Dec T 6 Museographic project session TBA Dec T13 Final paper due, no later than 5pm Class Participation and Reading assignments Students are expected to attend and participate in class discussions. Throughout the semester, you will reflect critically on the readings and generate thoughtful questions about the material. Two or three pre-class typed questions covering the assigned readings are due at the start of each class. Your questions should reflect your comprehension of the readings and highlight salient points that you think will contribute to the discussion of the readings. Please identify your handouts with your name, and make sure to include the date and the bibliographic entry of the readings to which the questions belong. Participation is in large part graded based on your printed submissions. Because participation is integral to the course, students who miss classes need to justify their absence at least 24 hours in advance and if necessary present relevant evidence. No more than two unexcused missed classes will be accepted; otherwise the final grade goes down half a letter for each additional missed class. Midterm exam The midterm will be posted electronically on Thursday October 13 and is due in printed form on Tuesday October 18 during class time. The goal is for the student to read and make a 4 – 5 page review of an article. Research project Each student will select one object from the collection held in the Material Culture Research Center (Anthropology department room 230) and do extensive research on it, producing a final paper 10-15 pages long of text. The paper should be supplemented with

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photographs, drawings, and maps. Both a printed and a digital version, including the visual aids, are due no later than Tuesday December 13 at 5pm. Museographic project Students will present in class a summary of their research. This exercise will allow us to brainstorm on Tuesday Novembe 29 on the script for an exhibition, focusing on a specific theme or themes. Two subsequent class sessions will be devoted for the physical instalation of the exhibition in the Anthropology department. Summary of Grading Participation in class 15% Midterm 20% Research project 35% Museographic project 30% Use of Laptops, tablets, and other devices You are welcomed to use a personal Laptop or tablet for note taking and researching. If a student is found using a device for purposes other than those related to the class, his or her privilege for using it will be immediately suspended for the rest of the semester. The use of mobile phones (calls and text messaging) is not allowed. Students with extra challenges If you are a student with a documented disability at Brandeis University and if you wish to request a reasonable accommodation for this class, please see me immediately. Keep in mind that reasonable accommodations are not provided retroactively. Four-Credit Course (with three hours of class-time per week) Success in this 4 credit hour course is based on the expectation that students will spend a minimum of 9 hours of study time per week in preparation for class (readings, papers, discussion sections, preparation for exams, etc.). Course credit in LALS This course can count towards a major or minor in Latin American and Latino Studies if the student writes a research paper on any topic dealing with the intersection of art and Latin America (past or present) or art and the Latin American diaspora in the USA. Academic integrity Academic integrity is central to the mission of educational excellence at Brandeis University. Each student is expected to be familiar with, and to follow, the University’s policies on academic integrity. Please consult Brandeis University Rights and Responsibilities (http://www.brandeis.edu/studentaffairs/srcs/rr/ )for all policies and procedures. All policies related to academic integrity apply to in-class and take home projects, assignments, exams, and quizzes. Students may only collaborate on assignments with express permission. Allegations of alleged academic dishonesty will be forwarded to the Director of Academic Integrity. Sanctions for academic dishonesty can include failing grades and/or suspension from the university.

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ClassReadingsinalphabeticalorder(postedonLatte) Adorno, Rolena 1979 Icon and Idea: A Symbolic Reading of Pictures in a Peruvian Indian

Chronicle. The Indian Historian 12 (3): 27-50. Bednarik, Robert G. 2003 The Earliest Evidence of Palaeoart. Rock Art Research, vol. 20 (2): 89-

135 Benjamin, Walter 1969 The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In Illuminations,

edited by Hannah Arendt, pp. 217-251. Schocken Books, New York. Bourdieu, Pierre 1968 Outline of a Sociological Theory of Art Perception. International Social

Science Journal 20 (4): 589-612. Braun, Barbara 1989 Henry Moore and Pre-Columbian Art. Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics,

nos. 17/18: 158-197. Bray, Tamara 2000 Inca Iconography: The Art of Empire in the Andes. Res: Anthropology and

Aesthetics, no. 38: 168-178. Cane, Simon, and Jonathan Ashley-Smith 2013 Iconoclasm as Conservation, Concealment and Subversion. In Striking

Images, Iconoclasms Past and Present, edited by Stacy Boldrick, Leslie Brubaker, and Richard Clay. Ashgate, England.

Clifford, James 1988 Histories of the Tribal and the Modern. In The Predicament of Culture:

twentieth-century ethnography, literature, and art. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

David, Nicholas, Judy Sterner, and Kodzo Gavua 1998 Why pots are decorated. Current Anthropology 29 (3): 365-389.

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Edgerton, 2009 The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope. How Renaissance Perspective

Changed Our Vision of the Universe. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.

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Elkins, James 1994 The question of the body in Mesoamerican art. Res: Anthropology and

Aesthetics, no. 26: 113-124. Farrell, Gerry 1998 Images in Early Indian Gramophone Catalogues: Tradition and

Transformation. Music in Art. Vol. 23 (1/2): 19-22. Freedberg, David 1989 The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. The

University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Gell, Alfred 1992 The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology. In

Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics, edited by J. Coote and A. Shelton, pp. 40-67. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

1998 The Problem Defined: The Need for an Anthropology of Art. In Art and

Agency. An Anthropological Theory, pp. 1-11. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Gerbrands, Adrian A. 1978 Talania and Nake, Master Carver and Apprentice: Two Woodcarvers from

the Kilenge (Western New Britain). In Art in society: Studies in Style, Culture, and Aesthetics, edited by Michael Greenhalgh and Vincent Megaw, pp. 193-205. St. Martin’s Press, New York.

Glynn, Catherine, Robert Skelton, and Anna L. Dallapiccola 2011 Ragamala: Paintings from India from the Claudio Moscatelli Collection.

Philip Wilson Publishers, London. Gombrich, H., E. 1972 The Visual Image. Scientific American 227, September, pp. 82-96 Gorman, Michael John 2003 Art, Optics and History: New Light on the Hockney Thesis. Leonardo,

vol. 36 (4): 295-301. Hooper, Steven 2000 An Anthropologist Looks at Art. Art History 23 (2): 300-321. Houston, Stephen 2001 Decorous bodies and disordered passions: representations of emotion among

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Jamieson, Mark 1999 The place of counterfeits in regimes of value: an anthropological approach.

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Kubler, George 1970 Period, Style and Meaning in Ancient American Art. New Literary History,

vol. 1 (2): 127-144. Küchler, Susanne 1987 Malangan: Art and Memory in a Melanesian Society. Man, New Series 22

(2): 238-255. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0025-1496%28198706%292%3A22%3A2%3C238%3AMAAMIA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K

Lechtman, Heather 1975 Style in Technology: Some Early Thoughts. In Material Culture: Style,

Organization and Dynamics of Technology, edited by Heather Lechtman and Robert Merril, pp. 3-19. Proceedings of The American Ethnological Society. West Publishing Company, Minnesota.

Levi-Strauss, Claude 1963 Split Representation in the Art of Asia and America. In Structural

Anthropology, vol. I, pp. 245-268. Basic Books, New York. Meiland, W. Jack 1983 Originals, Copies, and Aesthetic Value. In The Forger’s Art. Forgery and the

Philosophy of Art, edited by Denis Dutton, pp. 115-130. University of California Press, Berkeley.

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(4): 49-54. Myers, Fred 1994 Culture-Making: Performing Aboriginality at the Asia Society Gallery.

American Ethnologist 21 (4): 679-699. 2004 Ontologies of the Image and Economies of Exchange. American

Ethnologist, vol. 31 (1): 5-20. Pasztory, Esther 1989 Identity and Difference: The Uses and Meanings of Ethnic Style. In

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Susan J. Barnes and Walter S. Melion, pp. 15-38. Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Rowe, H. John 1962 Chavin Art: An inquiry into its form and meaning. The Museum of

Primitive Art, New York. Rowlands, Michael 1987 The Role of Memory in the Transmission of Culture. World Archaeology, vol.

25 (2): 141-151. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0043-8243%28199310%2925%3A2%3C141%3ATROMIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3

Seip, P. Lisa 1999 Transformations of meaning: the life history of a Nuxalk mask. In The

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Kroeber, pp. 287-312. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Svašek, Maruška 2007 From Evolutionism to Ethnoaesthetics. In Anthropology, Art and Cultural

Production. Pluto Press, London. Urton, Gary 1996 The Body of Meaning in Chavin Art. Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics,

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