MA students may take 1 graduate course in another department as a part of their degree. You need to consult with that professor and department to get permission to take the course and follow the registration procedure for that course/department.   

Courses at the 800 and 900 levels (purely graduate courses) are available to MA and Ph.D. students. The system is new, and so we are not quite sure how it will work, but you should be able to sign up for these courses yourself through the online SOLUS system sometime in August. These generally have plenty of room, and if they should for some reason fill up, most instructors will admit additional students. Therefore you do not have to worry about signing up for these in advance.

The exceptions are 400/800 level courses (see below), ARTH 880, the Practicum at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, and ARTH 890, the internship course. These courses require permission of the instructor and so you must submit a paper copy of the School of Graduate Studies Academic Change Form (http://www.queensu.ca/registrar/aboutus/forms.html) with the instructor’s signature to the Art History Programme Secretary in the Department of Art. If you wish to do an internship at the Agnes, you should consult with the relevant curator as soon as possible, and the deadline for applying for the Winter term is in October.

Courses at the 400/800 level are open only to 4^th-year undergraduate students and MA students (not to Ph.D. students). There are only four spaces for graduate students in each of these courses, and so they require permission of the instructor. Therefore you must submit a paper copy of the School of Graduate Studies Academic Change Form (http://www.queensu.ca/registrar/aboutus/forms.html) with the instructor’s signature to the Art History Programme Secretary in the Department of Art. 

This year for the first time Art Conservation 801 is also open to Art History graduate students (MA and PhD). This is an Art Department course and therefore does not count as a course from another department. It runs for the fall and winter terms, but meets for less hours per week and therefore still counts for the same credit as 1 term-length graduate course.  We will give you information on registering for this as soon as possible. The calendar description is included below.

Queen's art history graduate students talk with conservation scientist Greg Smith in his lab at the Indianapolis Museum of Art

2012/13 Course Listing

ARTH-812: Topics in Visual and Material Culture I,  A. Morehead(winter)
ARTH-813: Topics in Visual and Material Culture II, J. Helland (fall)
ARTH-838: Medieval Art II, M. Reeve (fall)
ARTH-841: Studies in Italian Renaissance Art II,D. McTavish (winter)
ARTH-842:  Studies in Italian Renaissance Art III, U. D'Elia (winter)
ARTH-446/846*: Studies in Norther European Art of the 17'th Century II,  S. Dickey(winter)
ARTH-854: To be announced,  G. Bailey (fall)
ARTH-862: History of Photography,  J. Schwartz (fall)
ARTH-433/864*: Studies in 20th-Century Art I, L. Jessup (fall)
ARTH-420/868*: Studies in Contemporary Art I,  C. Robertson (winter)

*Please note, ARTH-4XX/8XX courses are offered jointly, with a maximum enrollment of 4 MA students per course.

Course Descriptions:

 

Fall term:

ARTH-434/810: Non-Western Art in Western Collections, Prof. Lynda Jessup, Fall 2011

Over the last three decades, art museums and exhibitions have been viewed increasingly as more than aesthetic arenas; they have come to be seen as well as powerful ideological and political tools. ARTH-434/810: Non-Western Art in Western Collections provides a forum for discussion of issues that have both generated this view and resulted from it. It provides an opportunity as well to examine issues affecting the representation of Non-Western art, which has played an important part in ongoing debates about "the poetics and politics of museum display." In this context, we will exploit the opportunity as well to consdier the impact of approaches and methodologies used in the study on non-Western art on our understanding Western art and, through it, on the discipline of art history in general.

ARTH 840: High and Low in Italian Renaissance Art, Prof. Una D’Elia, Fall 2011

This course will examine the relation between canonical, heroic, high-style art and the depictions of “low” subjects, including the poor, the elderly, other marginalized peoples, landscapes, animals, and monsters.  We will also look at the uses of a whole range of media from luxury items, such as solid gold tableware, to the cheapest of images, such as woodcut playing cards. Themes will include satire, play, pilgrimage, pornography, and the role of the image in the age of the rise of both print culture and the academic notion of art. 

ARTH 845 Topics in Northern Renaissance and Baroque Art, Prof. Stephanie S. Dickey, Fall 2011

Students in this course will have the opportunity to conduct research on a variety of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings in preparation for a collection catalogue being compiled for the Indianapolis Museum of Art. (For information on the museum, located in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, see: www.imamuseum.org. Dr. Dickey is a contributing author for the catalogue.) The museum's collection includes works by Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Jan Brueghel, Bloemaert, Ruisdael, Kalf, Cuyp, and other significant artists of the Northern Baroque. This project will be approached within the framework of the critical theory, methodologies, and history of cataloguing and research as an element of museum practice. Class activities will include teleconferencing with colleagues in Indianapolis and a possible visit there (pending funding) to examine objects first-hand. Research already underway includes scientific analyses being undertaken in the IMA's new state-of-the-art conservation lab, which may be of particular interest to students concerned with technical art history.

ARTH 494/847: Problems in Southern Baroque Art: Global Baroque, Prof. Gauvin Bailey, Fall 2011

Global Baroque is devoted to the Baroque and Rococo art and architecture of Colonial Latin America (1492-1820), an arts tradition of greater richness and diversity than many in Europe itself. It encompasses not only Spanish America, including New Spain (Mexico, New Mexico, and California), the Andean region, the Caribbean, Brazil, and the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay), but also the former Portuguese territories in Brazil. The course will consider architecture, including cathedrals and churches, palaces and villas, and fortresses and public spaces. It will also examine painting and sculpture, both religious and secular, as well as ephemeral and the so-called minor arts such as furniture, metalwork, textiles, and ceramics, which have received much attention in recent scholarship. The field of Colonial Latin American art is enjoying a renaissance in recent years. The people and societies who produced and used this art and architecture came from the widest spectrum of backgrounds and walks of life. They included Amerindians, Africans, Asians, andmestizos, as well as Europeans from places as varied as Spain, Italy, and Bohemia. Mirroring the incredible diversity of Latin America’s natural landscapes, colonial art and architecture blended styles and techniques from Aztec, Inca, and Guaraní civilizations with those from Europe, North Africa, and the Far East to produce works of unprecedented creativity and originality. The course will contextualize these arts traditions through comparisons with trends in Europe as well as colonial Asia (Goa, Macau, Philippines) and Quebec.

ARTH 848: Annibale Carracci (1560 – 1609), Prof. David McTavish, Fall 2011

This course will examine the life and work of Annibale Carracci, and the creation of a successful career for himself, in conjunction with that of his brother Agostino Carracci and cousin Ludovico Carracci, in the university city of Bologna.  Then we will investigate his work in Rome from 1595 onwards, when he was employed by the powerful Farnese family, and came into contact with the young Caravaggio.

Important issues will be Annibale’s connections with the family workshop, his so-called reform of painting and his contribution to the creation of the Baroque style – in secular and sacred art. Also significant are his continuing reliance on drawing as an essential part of the creative process, and his crucial contributions to the genres of landscape painting and caricature.

ARTH 420/868: Studies in Contemporary Art: Art and Activism, Prof. Clive Robertson, Fall 2011

An examination of both modern and postmodern contemporary art as activism sampled from Western and non-Western practices. The chronological period of study is from the end of the 1960s to the present. Theoretical frameworks to be used include social movement theory, postcolonial theory, and critical museum studies. The course will include one field trip and guest lectures.

A general survey course dealing with various aspects of conservation and museology. The course deals with professional ethics, control of the factors causing deterioration and with preventive conservation including care in handling, transporting and storing cultural property. Half course; 1 term-hour; fall and winter. This is available to Art History Graduate Students.

Winter term:

ARTH 807: Studies in the History of Renaissance Painting Technique, Prof. Ron Spronk, Winter 2012

Through technical examinations such as infrared reflectography and X-radiography the production processes of paintings can be revealed. Such studies often lead to new insights about the applied creative process and the intent of the artist, and can thus be of great significance to the art historian. This course will focus on teaching graduate students about the main methods of technical examination of Early Netherlandish paintings, and about the limitations of such research. We will learn how to interpret X-radiographs and infrared reflectograms, but also how to critically read the literature in this field. Students will do several presentations on a wide range of subjects, and will write a final essay. An excursion to the National Gallery in Ottawa will be part of the course.

ARTH-811: Museums, Marginality and the Mainstream, Prof. Lynda Jessup, Winter 2012

This is a collaborative course between graduate students in Art History and Cultural Studies at Queen's and graduate students in the Visual Arts at the University of Western Ontario. It is designed to engage students in study of the theoretical and critical debates that have developed around museums and galleries since the 1960s. In the first part of the course, students at the two universities work separately, dealing with material necessary to a deeper understanding and engagement with the museum itself as an object. How are museums constructed by their contexts and, alternately, how do museums produce their own histories? In the second part of the course the two classes will come together in a joint meeting in Toronto for a field trip. The last part of the course is devoted to the preparation of papers and projects across the two classes. At the course's conclusion, a professional conference-style meeting in Toronto is planned.

Field trip: estimated cost $80-$100

ARTH 841: The Fame and Fate of Raphael’s Art, Prof. Cathleen Hoeniger, Winter 2012

We will explore the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael of Urbino (1483-1520), who became the most famous artist in Europe during his lifetime, and, after his premature death, was considered for several centuries the most gifted post-Classical artist in the West. The fame of Raphael can be investigated through study of his life, with emphasis on the patronage and scope of his commissions. In addition, literary accounts of his life and work often yield a wealth of information on his reputation and the aspects of his art that were valued the most. Literature from later centuries, including biographies, accounts of the ownership and display of his paintings, and records of how individual works of art were treated, will be analysed for evidence of the history of taste for Raphael and the fate of his artworks. The methods of “Reception History and Theory” will be explored because of the opportunities they raise to enhance the understanding of the factual material, and to illuminate ways of structuring the analysis.

ARTH 421/864: Topics in Early Twentieth Century Art History: Cézanne and the Historiography of Modernism, Prof. Allison Morehead, Winter 2012

This course explores the historiography of modernism by focusing on what has been written on one artist, Paul Cézanne. Its primary aim is not to provide a survey of the literature on Cézanne, but to ask how art historical interventions centered on the work of Cézanne, some of the most thought-provoking in our discipline, have promoted, complicated or critiqued certain discursive constructions of modernism. Although we will gain in-depth knowledge of the work of Cézanne, our main task will be not so much to ask what it is about Cézanne's practice that has lent itself to complex art historical ruminations, but to investigate those ruminations in their historical context.