FIDM SURVEY OF WESTERN ART I (ANCIENT ART HISTORY)—Spring 2012Syllabus and Course Schedule

Dates/Times: Wednesdays, 4:15-7:00 pm.

Instructor: Dr. Paul Koudounaris (phone: 310-529-4112; email: pkoudounaris@gmail.com. Note: I do not have an office here, but I am always available to meet with you after class; if that is difficult for you, I am happy to make a special arrangement to meet with you at another time. Also, I check my email frequently and absolutely promise I will respond as quickly as possible to all of your questions (if you email me, please be sure to indicate that you are in this particular class—I teach courses at more than one university, so it helps me to know which class you are specifically in).

Course material: Art of the ancient world, from prehistoric art through gothic. We will take a contextually-oriented approach, and study ancient artifacts in their original social, religious, and historic contexts.

Text: Janson’s Basic History of Western Art (see schedule for reading assignments)

Requirements/Grading: We will have two exams (a midterm and a final, each counting for one third of your final grade) and a short paper (see separate assignment sheet; also one third of your final grade). Details of the exam format will be given in class.

Study guides: Each week I will pass out study guides for our lectures. They will include important names and terms, and possible essay questions. I advise you to take notes according to the study guides, as the multiple choice questions on the exams will be taken from the names and terms, and the essay questions will be taken word for word from those on the study guides. I will also list some images on the study guides—on the exams there will be a few slides, and those will be chosen from the images which I list.

Note sheets for the exams: I will pass allow you to make and use a note sheet for the exam—you can use a full sized piece of paper, and you can write on both sides, whatever you want, and you can use it for both the multiple choice and essay portions of the exam. Please note that you have to write it out by hand—no computer-generated note sheets. To explain, I am not forcing you to write it by hand to be a bother, but because I believe it helps the learning process and reinforces the material when you actually write it down, rather than simply cut-and-pasting on the computer.

Online resources: Copes of everything I pass out in class will be available online. You will also have review presentations, and a series of review questions for the exams. These materials can be accessed both at a Facebook page I have set up for the class, and at this address: http://fidmarthistory.webs.com/assignmentshandouts.htmI will also ask the school to post a link under this class on their portal. If you want to access the materials via the Facebook page (honestly, the links there seem to work better), you can search for it under FIDM ART HISTORY 1 SPRING 2012. You will

need to request to join (I made it a closed group), but I will obviously approve all requests.

Attendance: FIDM desires your presence in class, and asks that I take attendance at each meeting. The essay questions we will have on the exams are based on material discussed in the lectures, so honestly consistent attendance is important in ensuring that you do well on the exams.

NOTE ON READING ASSIGNMENTS FOR THE TEXT: We do not work directly with the textbook in class, it something more like background material. I will not ask you questions about the text in class, nor will I quiz you on it or draw questions directly from it. Because of that, I am not specifying exact pages you need to read for each class—you can read it at your own pace, but I do suggest that you read along to keep up with the class. Below you will find listed the subject chapters relevant to each lecture. Even though I have not required exact page numbers be read for each class, it is important that you eventually do read through the text—as I said, it is background material, and it is important to have read through it in order to truly learn the course material.

Date Topic and Text

4/4 Course introduction and Prehistoric Art. In text: Prehistoric Art

4/11 Neolithic and begin Egypt. Text: Egypt (you are free to break up the Egypt chapter over this week and the next week)

4/18 Egypt. Text: Egypt.

4/25 Ancient Near East and Ancient Aegean. Text: Near East and Aegean.

5/2 Begin Greek Art. Text :Greece (you are free to break this up over the next week as we will continue with this subject area). Second half of the class is a REVIEW FOR THE MIDTERM EXAM

5/9 MIDTERM EXAM in the second half of class. In the first half of class we will continue with Greek Art. Text: Greece.

5/16 Hellenistic Art and Roman Art. Text: End Greece and begin Rome (you can break up the section on Rome between this week and the next)

5/23 Roman Art; Early Christian Art. Text: Rome and Early Christian.

5/30 Byzantine and Christian Art. Second half of class is a REVIEW FOR THE FINAL EXAM

6/6 FINAL EXAM

ART HISTORY IPaper Assignment

Due Date: if you want to get your paper graded and returned, you must give it to me one week before the Final Exam. If you do not care about getting your paper graded and returned by the end of the quarter, I will be glad to accept it up until the day of the Final Exam.

This is intended as a museum assignment. PLEASE NOTE: I am aware that time and transportation issues may make this assignment more difficult for some students, and if you find it would be a burden to complete it, I will be glad to let you complete an alternate assignment (see separate handout).

Go to a local museum which has strong holdings in ancient art—you can find Egyptian, Greek, Roman, etc. pieces at especially the Getty Villa (in Malibu; not the Getty Center) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Select an ancient artwork (one from one of the periods or civilizations we discuss in class) and write a short paper (perhaps three pages) in which addresses the following:

--describe in detail the artwork you have selected; are there any unusual features, or aspects of it which seem particularly interesting or striking to you?

--give some historical background; what, if anything, is known about it?—what civilization made it, when was it made, etc.

--compare it to any similar pieces we have seen in class; for example, if you choose a piece of Roman sculpture, how is it similar or different to examples we have discussed in class or you have seen in the book?

--what did it represent?—discuss any symbolism, etc.; course notes and the book may be useful in this regard, as will comparing it to previously studied examples, as the symbolism might be similar

--what might its purpose have been, or how might it have been used?—this may require speculation on your part, based on what you have learned, or based on similar examples we have discussed

Please write in essay format.

FIDM will reimburse you eight dollars for a museum visit. If you go to a museum and pay for an admission, save your receipt or ticket, and I will turn them in at the end of the quarter.

ART HISTORY IAlternate Paper Assignments

I realize that the standard paper assignment might be difficult for some people to complete—this is especially true for those of you who live in southern Orange County and do not have transportation up to Los Angeles. Frankly, there is not a decent museum in Orange County at which you could find an acceptable collection of Ancient Art on which to base your paper. Thus, I am happy to allow those of you who are unable to complete the standard paper assignment to choose an alternative. There is no set alternate paper assignment, but there any number of alternative papers or projects that you might pursue. If you choose to do an alternate assignment, I encourage you to focus on something that is of interest to you, or that involves your major courses of study. For example, if you are interested in fashion design, perhaps a good alternate assignment would be to study the costume and attire of a historical period, and make drawings and write a short paper in which you detail and explain a historical garment. Or if you are interested in pottery or ceramics, perhaps you want to make a copy of an ancient vase and write a short paper in which you discuss the original and how you made your copy. Again, there are any number of possible papers and projects, and if you are sincerely interested in something, I will most likely find it acceptable. But please, whatever you do, just clear the assignment with me first—either talk to me in person or send me an email and let me know what you want to do.

If you do an alternate assignment in which you make something large or bulky, please give me a photograph of what you have made rather than the actual item.