Though this is a methods course, its real purpose is to think through the peculiar temporality and historicity of works of art: on the one hand, their rootedness in the unique historical moment of their creation; on the other hand, their anachronisms, survivals, and repetitions. We will consider the rise of (art) historicist modes of thought in the nineteenth century and the many subsequent critiques of historicism from then until now. In the process, we will try to come to terms with the old idea of art’s capacity to transcend time; the historicist idea that the work belongs to a fixed moment in a linear history of culture; and, finally, more recent accounts of the work of art’s tendency to fold (rather than transcend) what might otherwise be perceived as a linear, homogeneous time.

All of this will be brought to bear on the methodological question of how we should approach works of art (or visual culture more broadly), when we as scholars write our necessarily belated histories. What form should our intellectual responsibility to works of art take? Must we “return” them to their “original contexts”? Or must we uncover precisely what their original viewers could not see in them?

Readings from Theodor Adorno, Mieke Bal, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Fernand Braudel, Benjamin Buchloh, Peter Bürger, Michel de Certeau, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Georges Didi-Huberman, Michael Fried, Henri Focillon, Hal Foster, Siegfried Kracauer, George Kubler, Pamela Lee, André Malraux, Alexander Nagel, Erwin Panofksy, Edward Said, Aby Warburg, Hayden White, Christopher Wood, and others.

This seminar addresses the historical development of and recent debates concerning art museums in the United States. We will examine the emergence of the museum as a site of national identity, cultural history, and public memory. The systemized visual display of the exhibitionary complex will be discussed through world's fairs, memorials, and exhibitions. Crucial to understanding the seminar material is the analysis of intervention, protest, and activism that have contested and criticized museum practices.

This class will consider how theories of affect, emotion, and feeling have been deployed in cultural theory. To what extent does affect offer a means of social transformation? To what extent does it bind us to existing social structures? Theorists like Eve Sedgwick and Brian Massumi argue for understanding affect to be in excess of what is socially produced, a source of autonomy and community. Others, like Lauren Berlant understand affect as a mechanism of social reproduction. In the course, we will consider these and other questions in relation to the moving image.