Massachusets Institute of Technology

Fall 2023

In this class, you’ll learn why European and American artists turned their backs on traditional ways of deciding whether an artwork is good, why they stopped valuing beauty, skillfulness, and looking like things in the world. You’ll learn what makes art “modern” in relation to the outside world – to political, social, and technological upheavals. And, above all, you’ll learn how artists reacted to the rise of mass culture, that is, to a world where images are everywhere.

As we explore these questions, we’ll pay special attention to institutions of production (who funds artists? Where do they get their materials?), exhibition (museums and galleries), and reception (criticism and publicity) as places where art and public culture interface. 

Massachusets Correctional Institution, Concord

Summer 2023

What is art? How does it work? Who makes it and why? What (if any) purpose does it serve? This course offers students a framework for exploring these questions. We will examine and reexamine artworks to consider different levels of meaning, from materials to process to representation and historical context. While this is not a survey course (i.e., not focused on any specific period of art history), students will encounter a diverse array of paintings, drawings, and sculptures, chosen for their capacity to illuminate broader principles.

Emerson College

Spring 2023

This course asks what makes criticism political. Must a critic explain their politics? How does the critic's politics bear on the artwork's? Or is there something about the form of criticism itself that makes it essentially political – whether we like it or not.

We will ask these questions of a specific cultural context: American modernism. Core topics will include the distinctions between fine art and mass culture, the rise of celebrity artists, the institutions of publishing, and the relationship between criticism and scholarship. Readings will consist mainly of primary sources, drawn especially from Life, Artforum, and October.

Emerson College

Spring 2023

This course surveys ways to think about media, with special emphasis on painting, photography, and film. We begin with the basic question: what are mediums? Is film, for example, best understood materially (as celluloid), formally (as twenty four photographic frames per second), or as a set of conventions (actors playing characters, sequences of shots, etc.)? We will examine these possibilities in theory, then test them against a set of case studies, especially feature-length films.

After, we turn to questions about the social function of media. How do media mediate our relations to ourselves and to each other? We will probe the distinction between high and low media (e.g., painting versus television). And we will especially examine how media representations shape social expectations and norms around identities (class, race, gender). 

Harvard College

Spring 2019

While impressionism once inspired some of the most innovative thinking in art history, overexposure has blunted its edge. Posters of Monet’s water lilies decorate doctors’ waiting rooms and a (fake) Renoir decorates the president’s apartment. A movement that once sparked fiery debates now seems dull, safe, and passé. Is it time to leave impressionism behind?

This seminar seeks to sweep away the cobwebs, recover what impressionism meant to its time, and ask what it could mean to ours. After a brief introduction to the major figures (Degas, Monet, Morisot, etc.), the seminar will focus on contested issues in the history and reception of French impressionism.

What does it mean that a movement with such forceful personalities saw itself as a group? Did impressionism extend prior traditions or radically break with the past? Was it realistic or fanciful, objective or subjective? Was it feminist or misogynistic? Was it anarchist, republican, or socialist – was it political at all? 

Rhode Island School of Design

Winter 2019

This lecture course introduces students to the major figures, artworks, and events in the history of French impressionism. We concentrate on four key artists –– Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas –– tracing their origins and evolutions as they came together to form an avant-garde movement. Throughout, we seek to integrate accounts of stylistic innovation (in brushwork, color, composition) with social history (middle-class taste, urbanization, industrial  production), working to understand impressionism as both a pivotal moment in the history of art and a critical reaction to European modernity.

Harvard College

Spring 2017

This course has two-parts. The first part is mostly historiographical (the history of art history). It aims to introduce students to a canon of art-theoretical texts, to build a common lexicon, and to facilitate discussion. The second part examines how the issues already discussed underlie contentious debates in art history through a series of case studies.