General study of modern architecture as a response to important technological, cultural, environmental, aesthetic, and theoretical challenges after the European Enlightenment. Focus on the theoretical, historiographic, and design approaches to architectural problems encountered in the age of industrial and post-industrial expansion across the globe, with specific attention to the dominance of European modernism in setting the agenda for the discourse of a global modernity at large. Explores modern architectural history through thematic exposition rather than as simple chronological succession of ideas.

Karl Marx is arguably the most influential writer of the modern era. Over the twentieth century, his texts moved millions, defining the course of history itself as states, governments and popular movements oriented themselves to take measure of—for or against—his thinking. His unfinished magnum opus Das Kapital rivals the Bible and the Quran in terms of its sheer ability to move political movements and fields of knowledge alike. In the liberal universe, Marx’s writing has been (not) read as advocating radically opposed political outlooks, as both prescribing pervasive state controls and radical, anti-political anarchism. Within the ex-socialist world, the ardor for “scientific socialism” left most of its adherents with little appreciation of the considerable imaginativeness, wit and intellectual agility with which Marx addressed the pressing issues of his time: the rise of modern industry and the corresponding labor movements, the nascent complexities of electoral democracies, international affairs and state power, international flows of capital and colonialism. In the process, Marx’s thought would leave an imprint on almost every field that he touched, and then some: postKantian philosophy, political economy, sociology, historiography, and the history of science. Marx’s readings of Shakespeare in itself makes up a subfield of literary criticism. This course will comprise a close reading of the principal Marx texts placed in their nineteenth-century context: from his early critique of postKantian philosophy (the neo-Hegelians), to his turn towards political economy (the Political and Economic Manuscripts), to his collaborative studies, with Engels, of English mill towns (Condition of the Working Classes in England), to the political upheavals of his time (Eighteenth Brumaire, the 1871 Communards and the French Civil War), his critiques of other utopian-socialist movements (The German Ideology), to his involvement with workers’ movements (The Communist Manifesto), to the great unfinished masterwork of his career, Capital/Grundrisse. The course will conclude with a study of Marx’s early confrontation with “underdevelopment” on the “Russian road.”

Supporting texts by the Althusser circle, Lucio Colletti, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jacques Derrida, David Harvey, Ernesto Laclau, Teodor Shanin, Prabhat Patnaik, etc.

Requirements: attendance, presentations, keeping up with readings, final term paper. Term paper has to be drawn out of subject matter covered in class.

This seminar examines episodes in the history of art and design from the perspective of the materials used in their production. Engaging a variety of material substances and examining selected case studies of their manipulation across diverse geographies from the ancient world to the mid twentieth century, the class asks how materials have historically conditioned the conception and meanings of artworks and how a focus on matter can bring into view the environmental impacts and the human costs of design. What meanings, for example, did metals or minerals mined from the earth or imported from distant parts of the world hold for early modern viewers? How can the study of furniture inlaid with ivory from Southeast Asia or made from mahogany sourced in the eighteenth-century Caribbean expose the blindspots attending the global systems of labor and transportation that moved such materials? Conversely, how might the uses of wood veneer reveal historical ideologies and/or period imaginaries of nature, time, and a nascent ecological awareness? What can the material attractions of porcelain or of plate glass and mirror glass reveal about cultural imaginaries in Asia and in Europe? And what does clay have to do with the styling and planned obsolescence for which the twentieth-century American automobile industry was renowned? 

Provides an outline of the history of architecture and urbanism from ancient times to the early modern period. Analyzes buildings as the products of culture and in relation to the special problems of architectural design. Stresses the geopolitical context of buildings and in the process familiarizes students with buildings, sites and cities from around the world.

Additional work required of graduate students.

Introduction to theories of modernism and postmodernism and their related forms (roughly 18th century to present) in art and design. Focuses on how artists use the tension between fine art and mass culture to critique both. Examines visual art in a range of genres, from painting to design objects and "relational aesthetics." Works of art are viewed in their interaction with advertising, caricature, comics, graffiti, television, fashion, "primitive" art, propaganda, and networks on the internet.

Additional work required of students taking graduate version.