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CONSTRUCTING HISTORYCOCO COURSE 3 | Winter 2014

Prof. Jane CarrollProf. Marlene Elizabeth HeckOffice: Carpenter 305Carpenter 304Office Hours: by appointmentTues., 4-5:30; also by appointment

What is visual literacy and what does it mean to be visually literate? In the last few decades art historians, philosophers, literary critics, historians, medical researchers, anthropologists and film studies scholars have pondered these questions. Their answers quite naturally are informed by the specific concerns of their academic fields. But all agree it is essential that we learn to intelligently navigate our constant encounters with visual information.

In this course we consider visual literacy and what it is to be visually literate from the perspectives of architectural history and world history. Our working definition of visual literacy is this: visual literacy is the ability to analyze and interpret images and the meaning and arguments they communicate. We are visually literate when we are able to read, that is, comprehend, the messages contained within a work of architecture, a digitally altered image, a Rolling Stone cover or the results of an MRI. You already are a savvy consumer (reader) of images from your experiences with YouTube, Google Maps, Facebook, advertisements, selfies, magazine covers and scores of other means of visual communication. But typically images are culturally specific. They were crafted to communicate specific meaning and arguments to a specific audience. There is much more images can convey when we slow down, look hard and study them within the cultural context that created them.

Weve chosen to use architecture the one inescapable art as our medium of study because we live in a world of buildings that never cease to communicate. Buildings and their associated landscapes have been constantly reshaped, remade, and reimagined by centuries of architectural patrons who chose to communicate their values, beliefs and practices and often to impose them via elaborate building campaigns. In Constructing History, we wish to cultivate your ability to analyze these global built and cultural landscapes. By analyzing architectural case studies from around the world, we will become more sophisticated readers of architectural images and more alert to the power of the visual in all its forms.

Requirements: Your grade will be determined by your contribution in the following assignments: 1) class engagement in discussions, both in and out of the classroom, which focus on the weekly readings and close examination of art and buildings (20 points)2) reading responses for assigned articles that will state the thesis and respond briefly (no more than 150-word answers) to specific question/s for each reading (20 points)3) 1 arch. exercise & 2 essays (exercises, 10 pts; 2nd paper, 25 pts; 3rd paper, 25 pts)

Details of each assignment are posted on the Blackboard site. Late work will not be accepted without prior arrangement. Discussions occur in every class. You are expected to have done the assigned reading before class to allow you to participate fully in the dialogue. There is no textbook. The readings for each class are posted on Blackboard.

Classroom Citizenship: While we work to create an informal class where you feel comfortable asking questions or offering alternative interpretations, this seminar is in fact, a formal setting with rules of civility that govern how we behave toward one another. To maintain a civil setting and to show our respect for each other, we have a few things to ask of you:1.Do come to class on time and ready to go at 2 pm. At the beginning of class we often make announcements and answer questions regarding readings, assignments or exams. It's disruptive when you come in late. This said, if you run late, please don't skip class but come in quietly. 2.We have had the experience that some students repeatedly leave for a few minutes in the middle of discussions. While were sure its not intended as such, this behavior is disruptive and discourteous. Short of an emergency, please remain in your seats until we take a break midway through class. If you know that you need to leave early, please sit near the door so you can slip out quietly.3.Kindly make certain your cell phones and similar devices that ring or chime are OFF.

We ask that you not to use your laptop in our course.

Honor Principle: As in all courses at Dartmouth, the Honor Principle will be enforced in Coco 3. Familiarize yourself with its principles if you are unsure of its scope, and bring any questions to class or to me. Plagiarism will not be condoned. If you are in doubt of what to cite or how to cite it, refer to the Sources guide published and distributed by Dartmouth College (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sources/) or discuss your quandary with us or with a librarian.Disabilities: We encourage students with learning, physical, or psychiatric disabilities who enrolled in this course and may need disability-related classroom accommodations to make an office appointment to see us before the end of the second week of the term. All discussions will remain confidential, although the Student Disability Services office may be consulted to discuss appropriate implementation of any accommodation requested.

COCO 3 MANIFESTO

All works of art and every building that has been constructed are carriers of meaningnot passive, silent objects. We encounter most art in isolation and without context in a museum; we experience buildings on a superficial level: do we like them? are they 'pretty'? But if we are to properly understand art, particularly celebrated examples, and comprehend the complexity of buildings, especially those history has deemed worthy of preservation and study, then we are called to engage with art and architecture in a much more sophisticated manner. Although we usually assign an artist or architect to a work of art or building, actually it's culture that creates these works. That is, the subject and mode of expression of a painting or the design and organization of a building are determined by what the culture that produced that work needed it to say about that time or place, the institution or client that commissioned it.

Our task in this course is to learn to read those stories that buildings tell about a culture's history, its values, its social organization, its political and economic life. And we always begin with history. When a culture has multiple options in terms of artistic and architectural expressions when in fact they can do anything we best explain their decisions by placing that expression into its historical context: what was happening in this time and this place that prompted the creation of a particular work of art? In this way we understand that Trajans Column or a Palladian villa is best understood not as an act of solitary artistic genius but as a carefully crafted response to a complex mixture of social, religious, political, cultural and economic concerns. In addition, we need to determine the make-up of the primary audience for any work of art.

THIS TERM we use case studies of specific building types or monuments or constructions of some type that were meant to spend a powerful message; usually this message was directed at contemporaries, but these important places have come down to us, still imparting messages, although now often read through the lens of our culture.

SYLLABUS

Themes: The built world, especially venues connected to areas of power of any sort, consciously communicate messages to the public. Those messages can touch upon several interrelated issues that we will address repeatedly in this class: 1) patronage and how it is made manifest; 2) how allusions to past history or people are made to work for the present; 3) how political, social and intellectual agendas can dictate style; 4) how the built world mediates the relationships of those who build and those who experience the building; and 5) the arrival and imposition of new political, social, economic and cultural practices. Keep these themes in mind as we explore buildings around the world in this course.

Introductionweek 1

Jan 7An introduction to reading buildings and their landscapes First Architectural Exercise Assignment

Jan 8 X HOUR meet w/grad students

Case Study 1weeks 1-3 The Forum of Trajan and the Imperial Ideal

Readings Jan 9: Cassius Dio, Roman History, vol. 8 (Cambridge, Loeb Classical Library, 1925). The Sections on Nerva and Trajan, Epitome of Book LXVIII, 1-33. David Watkin, The Roman Forum (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009). Chapter 1: Life in the Forum in Antiquity, 11-30

Readings Jan 14: First Assignment Due Today: DISCUSS 1st half of class James Packer, Trajans Forum: A Study of the Monuments in Brief (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) William L. MacDonald, The Architecture of the Roman Empire, vol. 1, 1982. Chapter IV: Trajans Markets, 75-94

Readings Jan 16: discuss selecting city for essays Gunnar Seelentag, Imperial Representation and Reciprocation: The Case of Trajan, The Classical Journal 107/1 (Oct-Nov 2011) 73-97. Penelope Davies, The Politics of Perpetuation: Trajans Column and the Art of Commemoration, American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 101/2 (Jan 1997) 41-65. Natalie Kampen, Family Fictions in Roman Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Chapter 2: Trajan as Father; Depicting the Pater Patrae, 38-64

Readings Jan 21: submit choice of city Julian Bennett, Trajan: optimus princeps. 2nd ed. 2001. Chapters on Trajan as political healer and as patron of the arts Plinys Panegyrick upon the Emperor Trajan (electronic--primary source)

Case Study 2weeks 3-5 The Planned/Unplanned City as the Site of Imperial and National Power: Istanbul/Ankara, Washington, DC; Mecca

Jan 22 X HOUR meet w/grad students; assign grad student projects

Readings Jan 23: First Paper Assigned; mandatory meeting w/professor end of week 3/beginning week 4 Zeynep Celik, The remaking of Istanbul: portrait of an Ottoman city in the nineteenth century (1986), 3-30; 31-37; 49-52; 77-81; 124-125; 126; 155-163. Zeynep Kezer, Contesting Urban Space in Early Republican Ankara, Journal of Architectural Education (1998).

Readings Jan 28: Howard Gillette, Introduction, and David Goldfield, Antebellum Washington in Context: The Pursuit of Prosperity & Identity, in Southern City, National Ambition: The Growth of Early Washington, DC, 1800-1860 (1995). Pamela Scott, Temple of Liberty: The Capitol in Overview Temple of Liberty: Building the Capitol for a New Nation (1995). maps of early Am. planned cities: Wash, DC, Williamsburg, Annapolis, Savannah, Philadelphia

Readings Jan 30: Kirk Savage, Introduction, Inventing Public Space (excerpt), and The Conscience of the Nation, in Monument Wars: Washington, DC, the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape (2009). Tom Wolfe, Art Disputes War The Washington Post (Oct. 13, 1982). History of a memorial: Frank Gehrys controversial design for the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, DC (Philip Kennicott, Architect Frank Gehrys Eisenhower Memorial Design: The Plan & What Went Wrong, Washington Post (May 11, 2012); Jay Newton-Small, Nobody Likes Ikes: Why Congress Just Defunded the Eisenhower Memorial Commision, Time Magazine (Oct. 24, 2013)

Readings Feb 4: Basharat Peer, Modern Mecca, New Yorker (April 6, 2012)Zvika Krieger, McMecca: The Strange Allliance of Clerics and Businessmen in Saudi Arabia, The Atlantic (March 19, 2013)Oliver Wainwright, As the Hajj Begins, the Destruction of Meccas Heritage Continues, The Guardian (October 14, 2013)

Feb 5 X HOUR meet w/grad students

Case Study 3weeks 5-7 The Cathedral at Reims and the Abbey Church of St. Denis as Expressions of French Royalist PowerReadings Feb 6: First Paper Due Today Eric Bournazel, Suger and the Capetians, in Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium, ed. by Paula Gerson (1986). Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures (1979). Translation of primary sources. Lindy Grant, Abbot Suger of St.-Denis: Church and State in early twelfth-century France, 1998.

Readings Feb 11: Second Paper Assigned Today Conrad Rudolph, Artistic Change at St.-Denis: Abbot Sugers Program and the early twelfth century Controversy over Art (1990). Andrew Lewis, Sugers views on kingship, in Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium, ed. by Paula Gerson (1986).

Feb 13: Class not held

Readings Feb 18: Barbara Abou El-Haj, "The urban setting for late medieval church building: Reims and its cathedral between 1210 and 1240, Art History 11 (1988). Meredith Parsons Lillich, King Solomon in Bed, Archbishop Hincmar, the Ordo of 1250 and the Stained-Glass Program of the Nave of Reims Cathedral, Speculum 80/3 (Jul 2005).

Readings Feb 19 (X-hour: 4:15-5:05): Donna Sadler, Lessons fit for a king: the sculptural program of the verso of the west faade of Reims Cathedral in Arte Medievale, ser. II, 9 (1995). Richard Jackson, Vive le Roi! A History of the French Coronation from Charles V to Charles X, 1984. Short chapters on coronation, oaths, relationship to the people, and marriage of king and kingdom

Case Study 4weeks 7-8 Power Houses

Readings Feb 20: Defining the Villa & Country HouseWitold Rybczynski, Getting Away from it All, New York Review of Books (December 20, 1990). William L. MacDonald, Introduction and The Villa in Use, in Hadrians Villa and its Legacy (1995).

Readings Feb 25: The Italian Renaissance Villa & the English 18th-c. Country HousePaul Holberton, Introduction, The Public Worth of Private Houses, and Daniele and Marcantonio Barbaro, in Palladios Villas: Life in the Renaissance Countryside (1990)English country houses, TBA.

Readings Feb 27: The Power House in 18th-c. AmericaBarbara B. Mooney Defining the Prodigy House in Prodigy Houses of Virginia: architecture and the native elite (2008). Susan R. Stein, The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, in The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello (1993).

Readings March 4: McMansions, Hummer Houses & Starter Castles Mark Hewitt, Rich Men and Their Houses, in The Architect and the American Country House, 1890-1940 (1990). Mark Byrnes, Sneaking Inside the Worlds Multiplying McMansions, Atlantic On-line, July 26, 2013http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2013/07/sneaking-inside-worlds-multiplying-mcmansions/6329/ Lisa Larson-Walker, Intriguing Photos of Suburban McMansions Around the World, Slate online, December 13, 2013http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2013/12/13/martin_adolfsson_suburbia_gone_wild_examines_the_worldwide_phenomenon_of.html

March 5 X HOUR meet w/grad students

Concluding Case Studyweek 9 Ground Zero Analysis

Readings for March 6: Martin Filler, Michael Arad, in Makers of Modern Architecture II. Scott Raab, The Truth About the World Trade Center, Esquire (September 2012) Aaron Betsky, Spireless Wonder, Architect (August 2012).

Third paper due no later than 5 pm on March 12th please leave one copy in the box outside Professor Hecks office and send an electronic copy to Professor Carroll