New Spring 2013 Courses

ARTHIST 760: Alive: Art, Architecture, Performance
Mondays, 2-4:40 pm, Mitchel 158
Professor Jennifer Johung, johung@uwm.edu

Anthropology 940: Seminar in Cultural Anthropology

"Global Crises, Critical Theory and Engaged Anthropology"

Tuesday, 5:30-8:10 pm, Sabin Hall 281, UWM

Professor Tracey Heatherington

Geography 934:  Seminar in Urban Geography

Topic: Exploring Neoliberalization, Collaborative Governance and Citizen Participation

Thursday, 2.30 pm to 5.10 pm,  Bolton Hall 487, UWM

Professor Rina Ghose, rghose@uwm.edu

History 940: "Mass Media in World History" 

4:00 PM-6:40 PM, MER G47, UWM
Professor Christine Evans

ARCH 531-001: HISTORIC CONCEPTS OF ARCHITECTURE (19th Century Architectureand Urban Design Theory)
Mondays 5:30-8:10PM, AUP 183
Professor Linda Krause, lrkrause@uwm.edu

LA 677: "Cultural Resource Preservation & Landscape History"/Folklore 530 "Cultural Landscape Conservation" (3 cr.)
Mon, Wed. 2:30-3:45, Ag Hall Room 14Professor Janet C. Gilmore, Landscape Architecture, Comparative Literature; Folklore Studies, jgilmore@wisc.edu

METHODS IN AMERICAN MATERIAL CULTURE: MATERIAL CULTURE OF MADISON

Art History 563 (SPRING 2013)

TUESDAYS, 2:00-4:00

Prof. Anna Andrzejewski, avandrzejews@wisc.edu

ARTHIST 760: Alive: Art, Architecture, PerformanceMondays, 2-4:40 pm, Mitchel 158
Professor Jennifer Johung
johung@uwm.edu

Course Description:
What does it now mean to be alive? How and in what form do we live? How and why do we qualify and determine life? These are enduring, open-ended questions, to be sure – but what does contemporary art, architecture, and performance have to say in response.  Since the 1960s, performance theory and practice have both introduced an understanding and experience of liveness into the visual and structural arts, foregrounding durational, kinetic, interactive, and participatory experiences of embodiment and intersubjectivity. Yet we still do not have an unequivocal biological definition of life. Across the centuries and into the new one, the ever-changing meanings of life are revisited particularly when technological developments challenge us to retool our expectations of how, and how long, we might
continue to live.  We can only speak of life comparatively, according to phenomena that distinguish living organisms and systems from non-living, inorganic matter. Yet living entities share common characteristics. They are self-sustaining and homeostatic. They grow, move, metabolize, transform, reproduce, communicate, and have complex organizational infrastructures that evolve over generations, adapting to changing external environments and emerging with new functional abilities.

This course will focus on key issues and transitions from live art to living art, and from generative to biomimetic architecture and bio-architecture. Throughout the semester, we will consider three broad conceptual areas: live (the body and performance), living (relation and participation), and life (biology and technology.  We will look at case studies in art (post-minimalist, post-studio, body, performance, relational, bio/nano) and architecture (performative, generative, neoplasmatic, protocell) in relation to critical reading in performance theory, philosophy, and science and technology studies.


Anthropology 940: "Global Crises, Critical Theory and Engaged Anthropology"

Tuesday, 5:30-8:10 pm, Sabin Hall 281

Professor Tracey Heatherington

Anthropology 940 appears in PAWS as a graduate seminar in cultural anthropology. In 2013 the title of the course is "Global Crises, Critical Theory and Engaged Anthropology". 

Contact Dr.Heatherington in order to secure a permission number.http://www4.uwm.edu/letsci/anthropology/faculty/heatherington.cfm

Global economic, humanitarian and environmental crises are necessary points of engagement in the contemporary social sciences. Intellectual traditions glossed as "critical theory" have been important to scholars attempting to understand structures, processes and practices associated with power, poverty, violence, exploitation, marginality, agency and ongoing political transformations in the world today. What new directions in critical theory are evolving in response to current events, such as financial crises in the US and Europe, new democratic social movements from the "Arab Spring" to "Occupy" to "Anti-Austerity", and the growing chronicle of un/natural disasters and socio-ecological vulnerabilities that portend changing climate patterns? What insights and provocations do ethnographic perspectives contribute? Readings consist of advanced texts in ethnography and social theory. We consider examples of "engaged anthropology" from Madison, New York and Washington D.C. to Rome, Cairo, and Sofia. 

This course will be conducted as a seminar: work will be focused mainly on independent reading and writing, supported by class discussions. Students are encouraged to think on your feet and find your own paths through a set of challenging but significant pieces. Ongoing assessment will emphasize preparation, participation in open debate, and perceptive critical engagement as demonstrated in both oral and written work.

Geography 934:  Exploring Neoliberalization, Collaborative Governance and Citizen Participation

Professor Rina Ghose

Thursday, 2.30 pm to 5.10 pm,  Bolton Hall 487

rghose@uwm.edu

Urban planning is increasingly shaped by ideas based on collaborative governance model, in which the urban space is re-shaped through public-private partnerships.  In such an approach, state agencies, citizen groups, business communities and other private sector actors work together to address the problems affecting our urban space.  The neighborhood scale is particularly emphasized, and planning is oriented at this scale, instead of the traditional city-wide scale of comprehensive planning.  The emphasis on public-private partnership has provided greater opportunities of participation of both private sector institutes and grassroots community organizations.  But citizen participation is complex and affected by the ideology and mechanism of collaborative governance and the subordinate position of grassroots organizations in the local political hierarchy and power structure.   Collaborative governance is thus shaped by the planning agendas of more powerful actors, whether in public or private sector. As well, neoliberalization, with its emphasis on free-market enterprise and reduced state funding, has strongly shaped the process of collaborative governance, restructuring the roles of the state agencies, the private sector institutions, philanthropic foundations, non profit organizations and grassroots community organizations.   This seminar intends to critically examine the processes of neoliberalization, collaborative governance and citizen participation through an examination of literature related to such topics.  The seminar will be based on weekly readings, class discussions and reflective papers, and should be helpful to anyone seeking to understand the complexities of neighborhood planning and policy making activities.  The seminar will also explore case studies in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.  

History 940: Mass Media in World History

Professor Christine Evans. 

4:00 PM-6:40 PM, MER G47, UWM

This course will introduce students to the special theoretical, methodological, and practical problems of writing media history (or history in which media figures centrally). What can we learn from radio broadcasts, television programs, advertisements, and films, as well as more familiar sources like the press?  Readings will include theoretical works in media historiography and current work in the field, exposing students to the wide variety of possible approaches to media history. Since this is a seminar on “global history,” we will read media histories from a variety of geographic settings and consider whether theories developed for U.S. media work in other political, economic, and cultural contexts.  Students will produce a research paper that draws on a media archive approved by the professor.  Other requirements include active participation in class, oral presentations on readings and individual research projects, and submission of regular reading responses and research diary entries.  

ARCH 531-001: HISTORIC CONCEPTS OF ARCHITECTURE (19th Century Architectureand Urban Design Theory)
Professor LINDA KRAUSE
Mondays 5:30-8:10PM, AUP 183
lrkrause@uwm.edu

The 19th century saw the rise of major architectural and urban design trends that distinguish it from earlier periods and set the agenda for much that would occur in the 20th century.  It is an age that experienced the consolidation of nation states that would lead the West toward cultural, military, and industrial dominance. Yet this same consolidation of power was riven with competing ideologies aimed at addressing the economic and social divisions of increasingly urban and industrial societies.  This lecture course charts the concepts that underlie important changes in architectural and urban design theory and practice throughout the 19th century in both Europe and the US. 

LA 677: "Cultural Resource Preservation & Landscape History"/Folklore 530 "Cultural Landscape Conservation" (3 cr.)
Janet C. Gilmore, Associate Professor, Landscape Architecture, Comparative Literature & Folklore Studies
Mon. & Wed. 2:30-3:45, Ag Hall Room 14
jgilmore@wisc.edu

This semester's class will encourage awareness and development of "landscape writing," ethnographic methods related to understanding landscapes, basic archival research related to land records and landscapes, and finally landscape preservation/conservation types, strategies, and case studies. Various types of preservation practitioners will present to the class during the last half of the semester.  This year we may emphasize Old World Wisconsin's development with respect to the Nordic countries' outdoor folk museums, critiquing their character for preservation/interpretation purposes and looking at historical vernacular garden re-enactments and larger landscape-related issues at both OWW and Frilandsmuseet in Copenhagen. The guest lecturers will be asked to address these types of garden representations in preservation efforts.

METHODS IN AMERICAN MATERIAL CULTURE: MATERIAL CULTURE OF MADISON

Art History 563 (SPRING 2013)

TUESDAYS, 2:00-4:00

Prof. Anna Andrzejewski, avandrzejews@wisc.edu

This Proseminar focuses on exploring METHODS used to interpret material culture, especially in modern America.  In this course, “material culture” is defined in its broadest sense; in the words of archaeologist James Deetz, it refers to that sector of the physical world that we modify through culturally-determined behavior.  The scope of artifacts covered under the rubric “material culture” ranges from the smallest nail to landscape assemblages (such as a suburban neighborhood)—but in this course, we will focus largely on texts about two principal forms of material culture: first, everyday objects and artifacts commonly referred to as the decorative arts; and second, the spaces these artifacts were contained within (including buildings and the larger landscapes of which they are part).  Although material culture constitutes the subject-matter of the course, the focus of the course is not so much on the “stuff” of everyday life but rather on examining different approaches that have been brought to bear upon artifacts of all kinds.  We will review and dissect different approaches as a means of interpreting their usefulness for the study of material culture, primarily in terms of what such approaches reveal about how artifacts reflected and shaped the everyday lives of people in the past.  As the subtitle indicates, we will focus on MADISON as a case study – specifically, the Sunset Hills neighborhood on Madison’s west side. This course is intended for those with some background in art history, architecture, American history, decorative arts, or material culture.  It is an upper-level course, and students should anticipate spending AT MINIMUM 6 hours per week outside of class to prepare.