Courses of Study 2012-2013 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
Courses of Study 2012-2013 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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ARTH 4761 - Art and Social Histories

(crosslisted)
(also AMST 4306 , VISST 4761 ) (CA-AS)


Fall, spring. 4 credits.

Permission of instructor required. Not open to freshmen. Co-meets with AMST 6761 /ARTH 6761 . Auditing not permitted.

L. L. Meixner.

Topic for fall 2012: Consumer Cultures & Technology

Seminar traces the rise of consumer culture from the1890s through present day with emphasis on mass media and the moving image including film and television. We discuss spaces—arcades, department stores, Ladies’ Mile, World’s Fairs, Magnificent Mile–with a view toward the social construction of women as shoppers, and the original “Mrs. Consumer” (1929). Themes address “miracle” kitchen appliances, the blurring of consumption and feminine leisure, and consumer by-products including pictorial monthlies Life, Ladies’ Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post and print advertisements. We discuss the “new woman” as shopper in the paintings of the Ashcan School and the 14th Street School, 1940s “women’s films” and consumer desire, and the major role of early TV in positioning the “American family” and “housewife” as consumers through sit-coms Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best as well as the game show Queen for a Day. Related topics include women as subject and object in ad campaigns, Depression-era and wartime consumption as patriotism, and the power of nostalgia in marketing Mad Men.

 

Topic for spring 2013: Caricatures, Political Cartoons & Laughter

This seminar explores the place of caricatures, political cartoons, and comics in everyday life. Our focus is modern images and their historical origins in Renaissance traditions of portrait- charge, the grotesque, the fool, carnival and low life genre painting. Our group discussions proceed from Goya’s Los Caprichos, Hogarth’s satires, and Daumier’s caricatures to the political work of German Expressionist and American Socialist printmakers. Also included are Charlie Chaplin and the comic body (Modern Times), Krazy Kat and comic violence, and politicized children’s book illustrations in Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and Maurice Sendak. Students are encouraged to work across media and cultures to explore posters, photomontage, les bandes dessinées. We will work directly with the outstanding print collection at the Johnson Art Museum. Readings include Baudelaire on caricature and Parisian modernity, Bakhtin on carnival and political laughter, and Umberto Eco on ugliness.

Interested students should send a brief description of background course work to Professor Meixner at llm4@cornell.edu.



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