Liberal Studies & Art History
The Cornerstone of our
Art & Design Education
To Educate & Inspire
These are the two main goals of Liberal Studies & Art History at Paris College of Art. The courses we share with you ensure that you are confident in your written expression, critical thinking, and can communicate clearly about your work, and we also assure that your creativity and imagination find grand space for interpretation and expansion.
Our courses offer students a strong grasp of the creative world and history of the chosen focus of study. We provide the context needed with interdisciplinary Liberal Studies in general humanities – history, philosophy, languages and literatures as well as sciences, ensuring that navigating the complexities of contemporary culture are second nature. In the Freshman year, students take Critical Thinking & Writing, a fundamental “great books” course and a necessary foundation for higher level courses that provide a general education in the humanities. It is a profound course comprised of literature, poetry, and the histories of philosophy and the arts.
You will develop analytical prowess in comprehension and composition, shaping yourself into an articulate, effective, creative academic and professional.
In addition to a set of core courses in the history of art and design for the specific majors and degrees, a wide selection of Liberal Studies electives enables students to broaden their knowledge and sharpen their capacity for analytical enquiry. Courses cover an extensive range of disciplines, with a changing selection of electives ranging from cognitive psychology or semiotics to the history of technology or Renaissance politics. French classes are offered over four levels. Topics in French Civilization has a high literary component, while the advanced level course is a content-based course whose theme changes each term.
PCA takes special advantage of its campus and location as an ideal environment for observing and exploring the social and cultural variety that is typical of a European and multicultural metropolis in the 21st century. Courses often include visits to a large variety of venues – museums and galleries, cultural events and urban sites. Senior level seminars and guest speakers address timely and provocative issues that help students develop ideas and make the choices that will enhance their own careers.
Faculty
Course Offerings
Liberal Studies
Paris Yesterday and Tomorrow: history, art and urban culture
This course acquaints students with the neighborhoods, cultures, people, customs, institutions and organizations in Paris through a thematic approach based on three main modules: the city and its history; the literary and artistic representations of the city; the city, its citizens, and its future. Students will learn about key moments in French history, from the Romans on, via the Middle Ages, the Revolution, Haussmannization, and May 1968; they will be introduced to such themes as political migrations and colonialism, and will explore the city from a variety of points of views including literary and artistic exchanges, urban history, architecture, and ecology. Active exploration of the environment is strongly encouraged and learning is accomplished through a variety of means: site visits, the examination of texts and images, and first-hand encounters with museums, galleries, and libraries, as well as other art and design-related resources in the city.
Critical Thinking & Writing I
This year-long course is designed to improve critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. Students learn to understand the inherent argument and logic of a text, to think more systematically and critically, and to write more effectively by developing skills in the structure, grammar, and mechanics of writing. Students also work toward the more focused goal of situating design and art practices within larger intellectual, historical and philosophical frameworks by exploring the indissoluble connection between ideas and the products of human culture. This is achieved by introducing students to texts representing and describing various methodologies applicable to art and design, which can then be used to critique and analyze visual and material artifacts.
Critical Thinking & Writing II
This year-long course is designed to improve critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. Students learn to understand the inherent argument and logic of a text, to think more systematically and critically, and to write more effectively by developing skills in the structure, grammar, and mechanics of writing. Students also work toward the more focused goal of situating design and art practices within larger intellectual, historical and philosophical frameworks by exploring the indissoluble connection between ideas and the products of human culture. This is achieved by introducing students to texts representing and describing various methodologies applicable to art and design, which can then be used to critique and analyze visual and material artifacts.
Introduction to Design Studies
As an introduction to design in general, this seminar provides students with a contextual understanding of specific movements in design history. ‘Design’ has come to mean many different things. It has been defined as problem solving, communication of an idea, an aesthetic decision, but it is rarely discussed as a vital business concern, though design communicates to us and makes us desire things in order to sell something. The weekly sessions will incorporate topics ranging from avant-garde movements, technology and media, information theory, business and marketing practices, sociology, and psychology, set within a broad historical narrative.
English For International Students I
This course is designed for students with an intermediate level in English, and will support their studio classes and experience as a student in an English-language environment at PCA. The content and material covered in class will focus on language related to their studies, as well as their areas of interest. Class themes will also include visual analysis of art and design, and cover questions related to the collection and display of art and images. Throughout the course, students will develop and practice their English language skills in order to prepare them for the next semester of their studies.
English For International Students II
The class takes a dual approach to the study of English, giving a fuller vision of this global language. We will examine 1) its internal expression (aspects of its grammar and vocabulary) and 2) its exterior expression (its historical and sociological life). Human language is a system! In taking a more formalized approach to English language learning, students can use theories developed in the language sciences as tools to efficiently master concepts in grammar. We will seek to conceptualize language as a system and describe the specific system that is English.
Language is political! In parallel, we will also study the history of the English language, its socio-political role as a global form of communication and finally the implications of language variation in the Anglosphere. We will be asking questions like: why do English and French have so many words in common? and why are there different ways to pronounce -gh, like in ‘tough’ versus ‘dough’ or why do people have accents?
French for Paris
“French for Paris” is a course open to beginners who would like to expand their knowledge of French culture and develop their listening & speaking skills. The course will cover specific themes relating to everyday life in Paris, its history, its culture, and the arts. Emphasis will be placed on phonetics (rhythm, intonation, liaisons, silent letters & some specific French sounds) as well as everyday vocabulary and exchanges. Different subjects will be developed over the semester: cultural life in Paris, French cinema, French and Francophone cuisine, as well as music. Students will be able to engage in short conversations and will practice describing themselves and their environment along with their studies and artistic practice. Visits in French will be organized. Conscientious completion of homework and class participation is emphasized; a website has been specially designed to accompany students throughout the semester (readings, targeted grammatical exercises, podcasts, phonetics, etc.) The class will be conducted in French.
French Language and Culture
“French Language and Culture” is a course open to anyone who has some knowledge of French and would like to improve their listening & speaking skills. The course will cover specific themes such as Paris and its architecture, French cinema, French artists and artistic movements, as well as professional life in Paris. Students will develop key vocabulary in order to be able to communicate orally in French in everyday life situations, as well as in professional settings. Using a variety of materials, students will learn how to tell a story, make a description of their work and practice, talk about a personal experience or project, and give their opinion. Several museum guided tours in French will be organized during the semester. Conscientiouscompletion of homework and class participation is emphasized. Class will be conducted in French.
Pre-requisite: French for Paris or Placement
Topics in French Civilization
Ce cours a pour objectif de fournir aux étudiants les connaissances nécessaires pour comprendre la culture française mais également d’approfondir leurs connaissances linguistiques. Le cours portera sur différents aspects de la culture française : faits historiques et politiques marquants, courants intellectuels, économie, mouvements artistiques et vie quotidienne. Les étudiants auront l’opportunité grâce à des visites de se familiariser avec l’architecture et les monuments de la ville, mais ils pourront également découvrir les institutions culturelles et artistiques ainsi que la vie professionnelle à Paris. Les discussions seront nourries par la lecture d’articles de journaux, par des analyses littéraires, des documents audio-visuels ainsi que grâce à des rencontres avec des professionnels et historiens de l’art. Une partie du cours sera consacrée à des révisions de grammaire et des exercices de composition. Le cours est dispensé en français.
Pre-requisite: Placement
Paris Inside/Out
Paris Inside/Out is a one-credit course consisting of visits to art & design exhibits, as well as meetings with artists, artisans and designers in Paris. The course will use a wide approach by including a variety of artistic fields, thus allowing students to draw inspiration from any discipline. The course will be held every week in a different location in Paris. Students are free to participate in as many visits as they wish, however a minimum of 5 visits are required to pass the course. For each visit, students will create a personal work within a given set of constraints. At the end of the semester, students will be asked to present to the class a personal work inspired by one of the visits during the semester.
Le Cinéma Français de 1895 à nos jours
A partir d’une sélection de longs métrages, allant du Voyage dans la lune de Méliès, à la fin du 19e siècle, à Ni le ciel, ni la Terre (Clément Cogitore) en 2015, nous tenterons de découvrir et de définir ce qui constitue le cinéma français. Nous étudierons son histoire, ses différents univers et genres (muet, parlant, Nouvelle Vague, film social, aventure et comédie populaire), son économie et ses « acteurs » (réalisateurs, chefs opérateurs, décorateurs, musiciens, comédiens, critiques, …). Pour une approche plus concrète et créative, nous nous rendrons à la Cinémathèque Française, au cinéma indépendant Le Louxor et nous rencontrerons des professionnels du cinéma français. Chaque semaine les étudiants seront en charge d’une présentation sur un sujet donné.
Langue et Littérature Françaises II
Dans la continuité du séminaire d’automne de langue française et littérature 1, ce cours se propose d’initier les étudiants à la lecture d’une grande variété de textes littéraires populaires et à la découverte de la culture du livre à Paris. Chaque semaine sera consacrée à la découverte d’un thème (les contes de fée, la bande-dessinée, les nouvelles fantastiques etc…) et à un texte que les étudiants liront du début à la fin. Le cours de conversation hebdomadaire prendra ainsi la forme d’un club de lecture dans lequel les étudiants pourront échanger librement au sujet de leurs livres et discuter de manière précise de thèmes littéraires. La séance de deux heures nous permettra d’approfondir les connaissances littéraires et livresques, d’améliorer le niveau de lecture et donc d’écriture (révisions de points de grammaire et mise en place d’un lexique). Nous étudierons également le livre en tant qu’objet d’art, son histoire et ses illustrations. Le cours permettra également aux étudiants de découvrir l’actualité littéraire parisienne à travers la visite de bibliothèques, de maisons d’éditions et de librairies spécialisée et des sorties à la Maison de la Poésie et au Salon du Livre de Paris.
Botany
This course introduces students to the study of plants biology insisting on their crucial ecological role. Topics will include: the anatomy, physiology and taxonomy of plants; ecology; the study of applied sciences as horticulture (gardening), forestry, agronomy and food science. Students will be encouraged to establish connections between the study of plants and their artistic interests. Field trips to some of the best Parisian botanical gardens, to the botanical gallery at the Jardin des Plantes, as well as to the Ecole Du Breuil will be essential parts of this class.
Dance History
This course explores the history of dance from the nineteenth century to the contemporary moment. We will trace the work and influence of major American and Western European choreographers/dancers and examine key trends and genres in dance history. We shall broaden this perspective by looking at dance in other cultures and contemplating the significance of dance and dance cultures more broadly. Some of the questions we will tackle include: What is unique about these choreographers’ approaches to movement and the other arts involved in dance making? How do they create their works? What is a “dance culture”? What cultural assumptions determine who “can” and “cannot” dance? Where does dance happen and how does location influence the dance experience? Do visual art and dance connect in any ways? What do artists see in dancers’ movement? How do they depict motion? How can one describe and write about the experience of watching dance? What is “kinesthetic empathy” and could it be used to write about and respond to dance? The course format includes a mixture of lecture, discussion, and viewings of live and recorded performance.
Multilingual Paris
Modern phenomena of mass migration and globalization are contributing to a rapidly changing landscape of language diversity and acceleration of language loss. One of the consequences is an unprecedented redistribution of languages around the world, particularly in major international cities. This course explores the modern-day multilingual city using Paris as a case study. Students will be introduced to concepts from the fields of linguistics, anthropology, and language planning, in general, and more specifically linguistic typology and the role of the science in language maintenance and revitalization; the anthropology of migration and transnational communities; and the history of language planning in the era of nation-states. Paris will be both conceptually and physically explored as a modern example of a multilingual urban center from a critical perspective. Concepts of language loss, transmission, and revitalization will be approached through artistic practice in order to affirm the innately human aspect of language.
Art History
Artists On Art
This course will examine how artists from the mid-19th to the early 21st Centuries conceive of and talk about their own artistic practice. While artists’ works are frequently viewed through the lens of art history or criticism, students will consider how artists present, engage with and develop further levels of inquiry into their work. Topics covered will include artists’ published writings, their notebooks, the artist’s statement versus the manifesto, and their teachings. The course will also offer the opportunity to explore the relationships between artistic identity and art work, ranging from analysis of self-portraits to their performance on screen. Students will discover the extent to which artists’ practice depends upon a critical awareness of the cultural, theoretical, and historical matrix in which they operate. Assignments will include research projects on artists and the preparation of a statement that defines the students’ own self-conception of their studio practice or area of study.
Classicism and its Discontents
There is little doubt that the “classical” and classicism constitutes the principal matrix through which art history prior to the end of the nineteenth century is viewed. The course will examine the birth, meaning, and significance of the classical in ancient Greek and Roman art; study how the retrieval of its motifs made possible the art of the Renaissance; examine its return as “neo-Classicism” in the 18th century (and what this return means sociopolitically); and how it has been “remarked,” often ironically, in postmodernism. Students will acquire a clear sense of what classicism means and how it has, in its many forms, pervaded the history of visual culture and the traditions of the West.
History of Fashion in the 20th and 21st Centuries
This course investigates the visual history of fashion, focusing on France from the Ancien Régime via the Revolution to the present day, and with a particular focus on primary sources available in the museums and archives of Paris. Weekly units explore historical European fashion trends – their details, silhouettes, fabrics and embellishments – in their original social, political, economic, aesthetic and spiritual contexts. Influences and parallel developments in other countries are also covered in this class, as are connections between the fashion industry, theatre, film, and the fine arts. Students are introduced to research practices and encouraged to reflect on design and style choices rooted in fashion history.
Introduction to Art & Design
This course introduces students to themes and topics relevant to the production and reception of the art and design disciplines taught at PCA. Using art and design objects located in Parisian collections as the basis for visual, contextual and cultural analysis, students will develop ways of seeing, contextualizing and describing art and design, while tackling a common set of issues, including but not limited to: chronology, style, authorship, form, function, composition, originality, narrative, and the decorative. Students will be guided as to how to conduct research in local collections and libraries and will produce a short contextually-oriented research paper on an art or design object or an artist or designer based on first-hand access to the object, artist, designer and archives.
History of New Media
History of New Media is an overview of the pioneering artists and scientists who have brought about the dissolution of boundaries that have traditionally existed between the artistic and technological disciplines. The course will survey the work and ideas of artists who have explored new interactive and interdisciplinary forms, as well as engineers and mathematicians who have developed information technologies and influential scientific and philosophical ideologies that have influenced the arts. The course begins with seminal artistic movements and genres as well as the study of the invention of information technologies and new human-machine paradigms that have come to define digital culture. This broad historical analysis will help illuminate an understanding of the emerging digital arts and its aesthetics, strategies, trends, and socio-cultural aspirations. Central to this analysis will be an understanding of key concepts for the interpretation of evolving multimedia forms: including integration, interactivity, hypermedia, immersion, and narrativity. The course will reveal how these primary elements of contemporary media have roots in experimental electronic and performance art prior to the digital era. Students will develop commentary in the form of critical projects through in-depth analysis of historical trends and seminal work in the media arts and information sciences.
Introduction To Visual Culture
This interdisciplinary course explores the rise of visual media, communication and information, within the context of a broad cultural shift away from the verbal and textual toward the visual, which has taken place since the advent of photography and cinema in the late 19th century, through the birth of television, to the present proliferation of digital media worldwide. We will consider the critical practices of looking, historicizing and interpreting that have accompanied this ‘visual turn’. Our readings will primarily address the theoretical foundations of the study of visual culture, which is understood to incorporate a variety of visual media and visual technologies: painting and sculpture, scientific imagery, material culture, the internet. If everything can be visual culture, what remains of traditional notions of medium specificity? What critical tools must be invented to analyze visual events from a visual cultural perspective? The relationship between the visual arts and visual media, especially with respect to the ‘global’ contemporary visual landscape, will be a focus of this course.
Modernity & Modernisms
If modernity can be understood as the distinctive set social, political, economic, and technological conditions that both shape and respond to the needs of a new form of human existence and that begin to emerge in the late 18th century, then modernism can be taken as critical literary, artistic, and architectural responses to those conditions and their consequences. The responses are therefore plural, and as such, we must speak of modernisms, some of which celebrate and make use of the advances offered by modernity, while others call them into question. This course will inquire into the distinctive features that characterize modernity and explore the various aesthetic responses to them in tune with technological advances such as photography and film.
Photography Since 1960
This course will focus on the second half of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st. The work of various international authors representative of that time period will be examined. Arranged thematically, the course will approach each subject through a selection of photographs. The study of their meaning and singularity will help understand the particularities and issues of each theme and put them into perspective.
The notion of “creation” will constitute the common thread of this course. Each theme will interrogate the use of photography as a means of expression whether it be with a personal, political, artistic, commercial or social goal. Examining body of works developed from 1960 to today, we will see how photography has fostered tradition (commitment to a certain vision of the medium and to its history) as well as a stimulated novelty (invention of new ways of using the camera).
Based on the observation and comment of photographic images, this course aims to start a discussion and foster debate on the medium, its specificities and the way they have developed since 1960.
Photography Before 1960
Conceived as an introduction to the history of photography, this course will focus on the first half of the 20th century. The main movements and aesthetics characterizing that period will be examined through the work of various international photographers. Arranged thematically while following a chronological progression, it will approach each theme in connection with a major photographer whose singularity will help understand the particularities and issues of the subject and put them into perspective. As a product of light and chemistry, photography has always been determined by technical parameters. We will address these parameters and see how they shaped the history of the medium and what we can learn from them today.
Since its invention, photography has had an ambivalent status, regarded by some only as a way of recording or copying things, while others considered it as an actual means of artistic creation. This constant dichotomy between document and art will constitute the common thread of this course. We will look at it with a critical eye, examining photographs through all the stages of their life, from the moment they were taken to the moment they were printed, published, exhibited or discovered by others. In doing so, we will be able to examine how the status of these photographs often changed during the various stages of their history, going from mere document to renowned work of art.
Based mostly on the observation and comment of photographic images, this course aims to start a discussion and foster debate on photography, its specificities and the way they were developed and used in the first half of the 20th century.
Pop & Around
The industrial revolution made new forms of technology and mass communication possible, allowing not only for the mechanical reproduction of the image and its circulation on a large scale, but also new materials, new processes, and new media. These developments have had a decisive impact on visual culture, on aesthetic categories, and on the status of the image. The aesthetic revolution began in Montmartre in the 1880s, reached a climax in SoHo in the 1960s, and continues to shape visual culture and aesthetic debates today. What status does the image have? What is the difference between a Brillo box produced by industrial means and one produced by Andy Warhol? Does a distinction between high art and kitsch still matter in the age of Pop? How have the transformations in visual and material culture affected the productive activity of artists, or conversely, how does artists’ activity take up and critically remark upon these transformations? How has the Pop aesthetic translated and transmuted in contemporary global culture? These are the kinds of questions that this course will explore.
Primitivism Revisted
While searching for alternative styles and means of expression, modern artists were attracted to the unusual and exotic. Both pre-historic art, early ancient, and “primitive” art (the traditional indigenous products of Africa, Oceania and North America) penetrated the western artistic world and had a determining impact on the aesthetic of the 20th century. The purpose of the course is to contextualize and analyze art and architecture from these cultures, and to describe their afterlife in modernist production. It will also describe the social changes associated with this attraction to “primitive” art forms. Key aesthetic discourses of the period will be articulated, offering crucial insight into the complex and always changing nexus between culture, politics and representation. The course will include field trips to the antiquities collections at the Louvre, to Musée du Quai Branly, and the Centre Pompidou to examine both primitive and ancient objects and images together. Students will be exposed to art historical and post-colonial critiques of the appropriation of past forms and the complex visual and ideological implications of the wholesale designation of cultures as “other”.
Senior Seminar
The Senior Seminar alternates between combined collective seminar and individual tutroials with senior theis advisors. Students develop and produce research for the written student thesis on a topic relevant to art history, theory and critisism, which may include a practice component if relevant to their art historical thesis topic and a public presentation of their thesis topic during the end of year show.
Food, Health & the Environment
This course explores the relationship between food, health and the environment. What is the impact of what we eat on our health, and how does food production affect the environment we live in? Starting from the study of the digestive system, students will be introduced to topics as food security, malnutrition and diet-related diseases. They will also examine how food production processes and consumption impact human health and the environment, and reflect upon innovative solutions offered by sustainable agriculture. Field trips to Ecole du Breuil (French school of gardening and horticulture), urban farms, La Louve (food coop), and to Rungis market (largest fresh products market in the world) will be part of the course.
Paris Harlem: African American Artists in France 1940-1960
Harlem Renaissance writers such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Countee Cullin flocked to Paris in the 1920’s. Josephine Baker conquered the stage and the culture of cabaret. Later, jazz musicians Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and the artists Lois Mailor Jones and Palmer Hayden, as well as writers such as James Baldwin and Chester Himes, lived in and drew inspiration from the City of Lights. While the African American presence in Paris was clearly noticeable in the 1920s, it was not until after World War Two that Paris emerged as a center of creative and personal freedom to a large community of Black American writers, artists, musicians and political exiles. Through a consideration of literature, history, politics, art, and music, we will probe the impetus, meaning, and legacy of the latter period (1940-1960) in French and Afro-American cultural history. Readings will focus on literary texts, art, music, and the film industry, with careful and considerable attention given to historical and autobiographical contexts. We will attempt to come to our own definition of the character of cosmopolitan Paris, which facilitated the creation of an Afro-American expatriate colony in Western Europe. We will also explore the claim that this was a period when Black artists “allowed” their work to be appropriated and exploited. Works will be discussed artistically in relation to Modernism, politically in relation to radicalism and the decolonization movement and the presence of African-American artists in France, and historically in relation to Blacks in the United States. Coursework will be supplemented by visits to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Studio Museum of Harlem and Chez Joséphine.
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