HUMA1001-1002: Literature Humanities I & II(Masterpieces of Western Literature and Philosophy I & II) – Fall 2024 $ Spring 2025 (Columbia University)
You may access the most up-to-date version of the “Living Syllabus” for Literature Humanities I (Fall) and II (Spring). This syllabus reflects some changes to the reading list that resulted from the course-wide triennial syllabus review, as well as examples of low-stakes formative assessments and visits to cultural institutions. Field trips focus on histories of textual transmissions, the cross-pollination between literature and art, and questions of invasion and settlement in Lenapehoking/NYC, which we relate to our readings of Homer’s Odyssey and Vergil’s Aeneid. The “Instructor’s Choice” for this section, The Song of Achilles (M. Miller, 2011) and Call Me By Your Name (A. Aciman, 2007) are meant to help students think further about ways in which authors and we, as readers, engage with the literary tradition examined in the course.
Hispanic Cultures I: Spanish and Ibero-American Arts from Prehistory through the Colonial Period – Spring 2022 (Columbia University)
The SPAN3349-3350 sequence bridges the language program with more advanced courses offered in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures. It is the first exposure to content learning in Spanish rather than language instruction. It offers an overview of Hispanic cultural and artistic production, from cave art in the Iberian Peninsula to casta paintings in colonial Mexico. In end-of-term evaluations from previous semesters, I implemented a textbook in response to the desire for more chronological order and historical context. I complemented it with primary sources and scholarly studies to contextualize the artistic developments and objects studied. Students walked away from the course with a broad idea of the artworks produced in the Hispanic world before the Enlightenment. They developed skills to understand how a Canon is formed, how to engage it, and how to critique it. They also developed skills in visual analysis and a vocabulary to use when talking about art and architecture in Spanish. For many, this was an exciting and eye-opening complement to Art Humanities, the college’s mandatory introduction to art history. Assignments were designed to assess their critical thinking and their ability to support arguments through visual and textual evidence. The course is capped at 15 students and implements a flipped classroom model with introductory lectures for each unit. Class met on Monday and Wednesday for 75 minutes at Columbia University.
Special Topics in Art and Society: Colonial Latin America – Summer 2021 (Concordia University)
This syllabus was designed for an intensive six-week summer lecture course for 40 students with little background in early modern art history and likely no knowledge of Latin American art. While centering artistic production in former Iberian colonies, the course maintained a transatlantic lens to provide a thematic overview of some of the main themes and questions in early modern Latin American and European art history. It also introduced students to ongoing debates about global art history. Assignments were scaffolded, moving from short-form lexicon entries, which allowed students to think about the contributions of Latin American artistic production to broader art-historical scholarship, towards an ekphrastic exercise and a final take-home exam requiring a synthesis of the topics studied, while allowing students to draw from the readings and objects that most appealed to them. Taught remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I implemented a flipped classroom model with both asynchronous and synchronous components: students would watch a pre-recorded lecture before class, and we would come together in smaller groups for discussions and debates guided by the teaching assistant and me. The class met on Tuesday and Thursday for 165 minutes.