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. 

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 organic and modern 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 blind spots 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, of plate glass, and plastics reveal about cultural and political imaginaries in Asia, in Europe and beyond? And what does clay have to do with the styling and planned obsolescence for which the twentieth-century American automobile industry was renowned?

4.605 Undergraduate | 4.650 Graduate

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.

Archive Fever: Theory and Method deals with how architects, artists, historians, urbanists, and social scientists have faced the myriad archive fevers and archival turns of the 20th and 21st century.

This period as seen a marked shift between archives being understood as ‘source’ to archives becoming a subject of critical inquiry. Critical scholarship asks which ‘rules of classification, rules of framing and rules of practice’ determine the contents of an archive and enable ‘knowledge’ to be recognized (Tuhiwai Smith, 2021). And these questions are motivated by the argument that political power is inextricably linked with who can create, access, participate in, and interpret the archive and by extension, an institutionalized collective memory (Derrida, 1995). The course thus, interrogates the ways in which “the architect and the archive are inseparable” and how seeing the “city-as-an-archive” can help us attend to contested memories and denied histories embodied within its buildings, infrastructures, and architectures (Wigley, 1995; Borgum, 2020). Through visits and hands-on research in architectural and urban archives, students will develop a critical methodology that can be applied to their research and practice. Students will learn to interpret and triangulate primary sources, such as texts, films, maps, blueprints, correspondence, documents, photographs, illustrations, and master plans. And weekly readings will cover concepts like the archival gaze, archival science, the imperial archive, postcolonial archive, counter-archives, community-based, ethnographic, photographic, film, parafictional archives, and AI datasets.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

A seemingly ordinary substance, water is at once a fount of life and a terrible force of destruction. Across time and space, human societies have sought to manage its paradoxical qualities by harnessing and designing its natural flows, from the scale of the domestic household to that of the larger urban settlement and region. Because of its vital utility, water has also been a carrier of symbolic and ritual meaning in cultures across the globe. This seminar will study 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, health and sanitation, and flood mitigation, among other functions. Throughout, we will remain attentive to the aesthetics, sacred meanings, and political economies of water as they emerge in our case studies.

The foregoing themes will be examined comparatively using 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 CE), the times and places that I know best. On occasion, we will look deeper into the past, at ancient precedents, as well as engage with canonical scholarship on our theme that brings us into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Such a vast chronological and temporal range will help students to appreciate both continuity and change in how water has been managed over the longue durée, and to gain insight, in turn, into the potential effects of present water policy and design decisions on our built environments and political and economic systems into the future. Another goal is to expose students to a broad range of humanistic approaches to water from the perspectives of architectural, art, and environmental histories, as well as anthropology and science and technology studies.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

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.

Required of doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. The Minor Exam focuses on a specific area of specialization through which the student might develop their particular zone of expertise. Work is done in consultation with HTC faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program Guidelines.

Required of doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. The Major Exam covers a historically broad area of interest and includes components of history, historiography, and theory. Preparation for the exam will focus on four or five themes agreed upon in advance by the student and the examiner, and are defined by their area of teaching interest. Work is done in consultation with HTC faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program Guidelines.

Studies theoretical and historiographical works pertaining to the fields of art and architectural history. Members of seminar pursue work designed to examine their own presuppositions and methods.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

Examines the manner in which key theories of technology have influenced architectural and art production in terms of their "humanizing" claims. Students test theories of technology on the grounds of whether technology is good or bad for humans.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus