Prof. A. Kuttner, akuttner@sas.upenn.edu M/W/[F] 1-2, Meyerson Basement B-1

Teaching Assistants: Tamara Sears, Amanda Jones, Peri Johnson. WATU Assistants: Sarah Jarmer, Jennifer Hallam, Laura Hogan.

*We use occasionally the 3rd lecture hour, for thematic and orientation lectures, and to circumvent major religious holidays. Keep Track!

This is a double introduction: to looking at and discussing the visual arts; and, to the ancient and medieval cities and empires of three continents – ancient Egypt, the Middle East and Iran, the Minoan and Mycenaean Bronze Age, the Greek and Roman Mediterranean, and the early Islamic, early Byzantine and western Medieval world from Damascus to Ireland. Using images, contemporary texts, and art in our city, we examine: the changing forms of art, architecture and landscape architecture; our subjects’ ways of looking and esteeming their own and other cultures’ arts; and the roles of visual culture for political, social and religious activity.

No prerequisite. Required for ArtH major and minor; major credit in DOE and Classical Civilization. Of interest for design and fine arts, history, anthropology, communications, religious studies, cultural studies, Near Eastern and Classical studies. This course may be taken for WATU credit, to fulfil 1/2 the Writing Requirement. * If you elect WATU enrolment, the credit will be earned by a formal draft and revision process for the final paper, overseen by designated teaching assistants and the WATU assistants.

COURSE BOOKS Pennsylvania Book Center, 34th and Sansom, one block from central campus. Tel. 222 7600. Email ANICK@JUNO.COM. All are required course aids, one (Barnet) is optional purchase. Two are large, two are small and cheap.

- Hugh Honour & John Fleming, The Visual Arts: A History. ed. 5, 2000.

- Spiro Kostof, A History of Architecture. Settings & Rituals. ed. 2, rev. G. Castillo, 1995.

These are our basic art and architecture narrative textbooks. All monuments discussed in class and section will be visually documented here, &/or on the course web page.

- George Kubler, The Shape of Time. Remarks on the History of Things. 1962 - "The shapes of time are the prey we want to capture . . . Every important work of art can be regarded both as a historical event and as a hard-won solution to some problem." Through out the course, we will use Kubler's essay to assist thinking about how to construct historical assessments of making and looking.

- Sylvan Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing about Art. ed. 3, 1989 - Art history majors may own already this useful introduction to finding words for visual qualities and patterns. It is also a general guide about how to do research for, write and document any analytic paper (like the one in this course).
 
 

WEB LINKS Bookmark Our Web Page: http://www.arthistory.upenn.edu/fall99/101/index99.html -

& in the Art History Dept. Page, http://www.arthistory.upenn.edu/arth/, under [scroll down] Courses, Fall 1999
 
 
 

Course images and information:

Readings: Posted to Web and (redistributed) to course calendar.Additional focus readings will be posted by 2 weeks in advance. Page numbers selected down from textbook chapters throughout.

WEB: Information and study materials housed here.

Monument Lists: you will be given regularly with 2 weeks’ notice, lists of the monuments selected from and added to the book chapters’ large discussions. These are the course core. They will be passed out once as hard copy, and pasted on the web and sent to you by email for a permanent unlosable copy.

Handouts: besides monument lists, you will sometimes be given image and text handouts in class, to supplement your books. Save them; we will attempt to keep backup copies on file.

Hard copy extras: in Jaffe in the hall by the stairs, on the table, are the COURSE FOLDERS. Back-up copy goes in here. We will try to keep class handouts current; when a given set runs out, email the TAS or myself, so that we can order more.

Office hours and meeting appointments: All your instructors set aside an official block of time reserved for meetings with students, so that individual visitors won't be interrupted, and so that we come in from the library and other university business. Your TAs will tell you their office hours and where and how they can be found. Professor Kuttner's hours are posted above.

How to make an appointment for Professor Kuttner’s office: sign your name in the black appointment book for in my office hour section , at the reception window of the History of Art office, or call in at 8-8327 to Darlene Jackson and her assistants to enquire about putting yourself down for free space. If you cannot make the scheduled hours or they have filled up, email and I will arrange an alternative meeting time with you.

How to make an appointment with your TAS and where to meet them: they will inform you.

Mailboxes: all the teaching staff have mailboxes in Jaffe; pass your material to the receptionist, who will put it in the mailboxes.

*Email: You will be sent class notices, and given email versions of many assignments. This saves you from losing a single master-copy and can be re-printed at any time. You are responsible for checking your email regularly, for class and section mailings. Your dorm will have some terminals and printers; the Library is making new computer labs, having restricted some of the print-out functions of the current terminals (esp., in Van Pelt.) Image-web is accessible in all libraries on designated terminals.

- The university makes our listservers out of SAS' records of enrolment; students from Wharton, outside of Penn, and auditors should give their email addresses to their TA for inclusion on the list-server.

- When you have questions , would like to discuss something, or pass on something interesting or useful to the rest of the class, email us, rather than leaving paper notes. (Tell us right away, for instance, when reserve material is lost or mutilated!)

- Professor Kuttner and the TAS read their email at least twice a day, up to at least 5 PM. For notifying us about late papers and exams and absences (see below), email or have a friend do it for you - we'll see and honor the date and time on the message.

- Many freshmen have not used "folders" before. Organize your course info. and correspondence by files with names easy to remember, like "101", or separate folders for "101takehome", "101lists", "101reading" "101ask" (for class query correspondence) etc. This makes it easier to download to your hard disk into sorted files.

How to do this: look at the codes at the bottom of the screen. On any message (get cursor on it) you can hit "save" to move the message from the screen to a folder, or "copy" to copy it from the screen, to another folder. The default folder will be the "sender", but if you backspace you can type your own folder name as, "~/Mail/[your folder name]. To get into your folder list, tell the prompt to change folders, when it says "what folder" type in the whole name, or if you’ve forgotten what you have just type "~/Mail", and it will send you to your directory – you can scroll up and down and hit return, to enter any folder. If you are trying to peel off all the address-gobble at the front, then forward the given message to yourself, and you can (control-k) delete lines as you wish, to save on your quota
 
 
 
 

CALENDAR       FOR FULL CALENDAR WITH READINGS AND UPDATES, SEE LINK.

Instructions to Calendar:

"Read: H&F, SK": scan carefully the sections in your textbooks that address the culture in that week's lectures. "Webtexts": primary texts will be often be posted as Webtexts link. Additional secondary, modern readings will be added occasionally, as library reserve in Furness and, when possible, Rosengarten (which caps how much we can reserve). "Images" and "Resources" will send you to image sets for review, preparation, and further research.

"Monument list": we do not cover everything in your textbooks. You will be given lists of what monuments to focus on & memorize, within thse chapters and as additions to them.

"Look": review carefully the web image sets or links suggested.

"Look at:": skim to get an impression of, in images and/or texts.

The first 3 lectures, Weeks I & II, orient you in the aims, subjects and methods of 101; most images preview the substance lectures of weeks III-XIV, but they will not be on the exam "memory list" unless repeated as lecture subjects.

Read: G. Kubler, The Shape of Time. Look hard at pp. 1-5, 123-130, and then riffle the rest (it is about as long as a biology textbook chapter); Look at H&F, SK, Barnet introductions

I Orientation: What are we doing to you here? ***NO Recitation

W 8 "Art" and "Artifact": What is in ArtH 101? And why is it different from 102? Primary evidence: How do we know what we think we know?

II Orientation: Contexts and contents of the arts and their histories

13 M Society, Culture, Religion: Themes: Archaeology and the ancient and medieval Mediterranean: - preservation, recovery, loss; landscape & geography. Introduction to: the physical, economic and social contexts and belief systems which shaped the major categories of ancient and medieval art (ritual, ceremonial, votive, funerary, commemorative, triumphal, symposiastic); the materials (media) and processes of making.

15 W Talking about "Art", Then and Now: The historical status of artists and art-knowledge; allusion and replication as documentary sources. Modern forms of graphic description - tools and traps; original contexts and the culture of the museum.

FIRST Recitation: To do: Pick a statement in Kubler that you like, dislike, or can't understand. Xerox that page, scrawl your opinion at the top, bring to recitation with your book.