4.608 Grad | 4.609 UG

Examination of historical method in art, design, and/or architecture, focusing on periods and problems determined by the research interest of the faculty member leading the seminar. Emphasizes critical reading and viewing and direct tutorial guidance. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. 

Examines the contemporary challenges and history of city planning on three continents - Africa, Asia, and South America. Students study a number of city plans, from the 'informal' settlements of Delhi and Nairobi, the modernist master plans of Brasilia and Baghdad, to climate action plans in various cities. Explores the relationship between dwelling and building in the design of cities, in conjunction with the environmental, social, political, and intellectual environments at the time of their planning. Open to both undergraduate and graduate students. MArch students can register for 9 credits.

4.606 UG | 4.656 Grad

Drawing on case studies from the ancient world to the present day, considers how the creation of architecture has involved the modification of natural environments and climates and the exploitation of resources across the globe. Investigates the metabolic processes of raw material extraction, transportation, and manipulation that make the creation of buildings, infrastructures, and designed landscapes possible. Explores how material and climatic considerations have played into the design and aesthetics of buildings at various points in time and promotes an awareness of the largely invisible, increasingly far-flung networks of environmental management and labor that underpin our built environment. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Required for doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. Prior to candidacy, doctoral students are required to write and orally defend a proposal laying out the scope of their thesis, its significance, a survey of existing research and literature, the methods of research to be adopted, a bibliography and plan of work. Work is done in consultation with HTC Faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program guidelines.

This seminar will focus on the problems associated with what is now called ‘pre-history.’ If that is not a valid term, then how does one approach early human history if one also wants to avoid a civilization-centric bias. The seminar will study the issues from a historiographic point of view and also hope to suggest some alternative to current practices.

Art and Science are pursuits divided by modernity. As Aristophanes once theorized the sexes, the two domains act like divided halves of a once unified soul—in this case, we might call that prior soul philosophy. This course investigates the long history of “the Art/Science thing,” examining its chosen love objects and subject positions. We look at the production of “fine” arts and investigations of natural phenomena as twinned Liberal Arts in the Renaissance, the artist as “natural philosopher” during the Enlightenment, the production of subjectivity/objectivity with the Scientific Method and the “science” of aesthetics, the division of science from “the liberal arts” in the industrial age, the creation of the two culture debate in the 20th century, the attempt to make a science of art (perception) in mid-century. With examples from contemporary art in each week’s discussions, we examine the compelling history of image-making in both regimes, and the raiding of each others’ epistemic toolkits beginning in the late 20th century. We place particular emphasis on the emergence of new hybrid domains (such as “bio-art”) in the 21st century.

“Scientists” was a name chosen in emulation of “artists” — a generalized professional category that could include multiple modes of empirical, proof-based activity just as “artist” included media as diverse as sculpture, painting, drawing, and print-making. Increasingly, art becomes a field in which scientific concepts can be brought into public discourse with more than “illustration” in mind. Biofiction, critical fabulation, loyal opposition, and skeptical love are contemporary characteristics of the art-science thing.

Explores how human-water interactions have given shape to the built environment in the era before industrialization, focusing on architectures, infrastructures, and landscapes of water supply, irrigation, transport, energy, ritual, health, sanitation, and flood mitigation, among other functions. Introduces examples from across the globe, with an emphasis on the Mediterranean world and Europe during the Middle Ages and early modern period (ca. 1000?1750). Considers continuity and change in historical water management over the longue duree and its effects on contemporary cities, landscapes, and political and economic systems.

Undergraduates welcome.

Required for doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. Prior to candidacy, doctoral students are required to write and orally defend a proposal laying out the scope of their thesis, its significance, a survey of existing research and literature, the methods of research to be adopted, a bibliography and plan of work. Work is done in consultation with HTC Faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program guidelines.