Topic for Spring 2018: The Art of Stuff
This seminar will explore the "thingness" of art by emphasizing its physicality and exploring the meanings of matter, modes of exchange and circulation, and the question of function. Art historical topics will range across multiple periods, and theoretical discussions will include Actor Network Theory, Ecocriticism, and the “New Materialisms.”

Topic for Spring 2018: Dracula and His After Images in Art and Cinema
This seminar focuses on visual and textual representations of Vlad III Dracula (1431-c. 1476), prince of Wallachia, from the mid-fifteenth century to the present. The objectives are to examine the ways in which these representations have fashioned Vlad’s likeness and reputation over the course of three centuries, and to evaluate the degree to which multiple reinterpretations of this complex historical figure have inflected twentieth- and twenty-first-century renditions of Dracula and his vampire subculture in films, TV shows, plays, novels, and comic books.