August Orientation Session

The August Orientation Session is required of all incoming master’s degree students. It is designed to introduce new students to the field, research technique and the range of resources available within the city. Intensive language courses are offered to students to prepare them to complete the BGC language requirement.

The Academic Programs Office offers three intensive, noncredit, two-week classes, in French, Italian, and German,to prepare students for the language proficiency examination. Classes meet four days a week.

Students are initially tested for language proficiency upon arrival. Those who require additional instruction will be tested again at the end of the orientation session. All entering BGC students must fulfill the language requirement by April 15 of their first year.

Courses

The list below gives some sense of the range and depth of courses offered in the last few years, and include courses offered in the Spring 2010 and Fall 2009

IND Independent Study
INT Internship
500 Survey of the Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture
501 Survey of the Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture II
501 Survey Review - Group A
501 Survey Review - Group B
505 Bibliographical Information in the Digital Age
506 European Gold and Silver
509 History of European Textiles
510 Islamic Decorative Arts up to the Mongol Conquest
511 Manners, Morals, and Aesthetic Reform in 19th-Century America
514 The Arts and Crafts Movement in America
518 History of European Jewelry
519 Arts of the Ancient World
520 Medieval Art and Society
521 Decorative Arts of the Renaissance
522 Arts of the Baroque
523 Ornament, Primitivism, and the Idea of Decoration
524 From Morris to the Mackintoshes: Arts and Crafts in Britain and Europe, 1860–1900
526 Arts of China (Decorative Arts of Later Imperial China, 1000–1900)
527 American Decorative Arts and Design to 1820
528 Decorative Arts and Design in America, 1820–1914
530 English and American Ceramics
536 The Aesthetic Movement
539 Modes and Manners in the 18th Century, 1675–1804
541 Northern European Interiors, 1550–1680
542 Ancient Ceramics and Glass
543 Nineteenth-Century European Furniture
544 The Rediscovery of Antiquity and Its Influence on the West in the Postmedieval Period
548 Women Designers in the USA, 1900–2000: Diversity and Difference
552 Gothic Revival
554 Art Nouveau in Europe
559 Domesticity, House, and Home in 19th-Century America
561 The Arts of the Book
562 Politics and Design of World’s Fairs
564 Ritual and Design in Imperial China
565 Twentieth-Century Fashion
566 Rites of Passage: Arts of Childbirth and Marriage in the Italian Renaissance
567 Art and Material Culture of the Tang Period, 618–907
568 American Silver
571 Fragmenting Modernism, Deconstructing Postmodernism: Design, Architecture, and Film
572 Arts of Song Period China
573 Graphic Design in Europe, 1890–1945
574 History of Glass
581 Studies in Culinary History and the Decorative Arts
583 The Northern Renaissance: The Arts in an Age of Uncertainty, ca. 1520–1600
584 Survey of European Ceramics, 1400 to the Present
585 The Museum
586 Inside Today’s Museums
587 Object Exhibition and Display
589 Historic House Museums
591 American Furniture of the 19th Century
592 Origins of Commercial Society in 17th-Century Holland and 18th-Century Britain
593 American Furniture of the 17th and 18th Centuries
594 The Material Culture of Childhood
595 Aspects of Domestic Interiors, 1850–1920
596 Aspects of Domestic Interiors, 1920–1970
598 Master’s Thesis Seminar - Section 1
598 Master’s Thesis Seminar - Section 2
599 Master’s Thesis
602 Attic Red Figure Vases and Their Influence
604 Japanese and Korean Ceramics
605 European Carpets
606 The Colonial Revival
608 Western Europe in the 18th Century
611 Oriental Carpets
612 History of European Clothing
613 Ancient Jewelry and Metalwork
615 Ceramics in the American Marketplace
621 Collecting and Collections in the Early Modern Era
622 From “Wild Things” to “A Sense of Things”: Issues in Design History and Material Culture Studies
624 Classicism in the North, 1500–1620
625 Architecture and Design in the Weimar Republic
627 Western Luxuries and Chinese Taste
632 Topics in Ancient Furniture
634 Supply and Demand: The Decorative Arts Marketplace, 1662–1889
647 Thinking about Things: Walter Benjamin as Historian
648 Art and Ornament in Early China
650 Issues in Modern and Contemporary Architecture
652 City and Country in the Italian Renaissance
654 Objects of Virtue: Material Culture and Moral Order in 16th-Century Northern European Society
655 Markets to Manners: Cooking and Eating in Early Modern Europe
656 Eighteenth-Century European Ceramics: A Social and Cultural History
672 Design and Architecture, 1950–1975
674 Society and the Arts in 18th-Century France
675 Art and Court Culture at Versailles
678 Arts and Crafts in Early Modern Europe: The Case of the Kitchen
679 Neoclassicism and the Arts in Europe and America, 1740–1840
680 Survey of American Glass
682 The Anthropology of Museums
686 Furniture and Furnishings in Early Modern France
691 Nineteenth-Century Fashion
692 American Material Culture Studies: Methods and Models
693 Craft and Design in the USA, 1940 to the Present
694 Landscape and Rusticity in the Chinese Living Environment
695 The Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean: Methods of Material Culture in the 20th Century
699 Doctoral Dissertation
702 A Cultural History of Gardens in China and Japan
704 Reading the American Landscape
706 The Art and Architecture of the Baroque Garden
726 North American Frontiers: The Landscape of Early North America
729 Silk Road Textiles: Producers and Patrons
730 The Social Lives of Things: The Anthropology of Art and Material Culture
731 All That Glitters: Early Medieval Material Culture and the Making of Europe
732 Design Reform in Britain: From Pugin to Mackintosh
733 The Exhibition Experience: Design and Interpretation. BGC/N-YHS Collaboration
734 Field Seminar: Readings in Early Modern Visual and Material Culture
735 The Medieval Reliquary: Shrine, Pilgrimage and Souvenir
736 Christmas Cards in America, 1875-1975: A Focus Gallery Course
737 The Triumph of Mars: Arms, Armor and the Material Culture of War in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1800
749 Arts of the Book in the Islamic World
750 Thesis Workshop - Section 1
750 Thesis Workshop - Section 2
752 Antiquarianism and Archaisms in Chinese Design
753 Tudor and Stuart Textiles
754 Film and Design in Hollywood
755 Thinking with Technology in Medieval and Renaissance Europe
758 European Modernism
761 Design and Material Culture of the Qing Period, 1644–1911
762 The Exhibition Experience
763 The Monument: Designs and Meanings
764 The Material Culture of New York City: The 19th Century
765 New Amsterdam in the Dutch Atlantic (BGC/N-YHS Collaboration)
766 Material Culture in New Netherland (BGC/N-YHS Collaboration)
767 Collecting Islamic Art, from Historical Sources to Modern Times
769 Designing Modernity, 1860–1900
771 The Rococo: 18th Century to Today
772 The Aesthetic Movement: Designing Modernity, 1865–1905
773 Art of Island Southeast Asia
774 The Material Culture of New York City: The 20th Century
778 Survey of Islamic Art and Material Culture from Early Islam to the Ottoman Period, Its Meaning, Ideas, and Development
779 The City in the Middle East from Late Antiquity to the Ottoman Period
794 Psychologies of Things: Emotion, Perception, and the Life of Inanimate Objects
795 Exhibiting Culture(s): Anthropology In and Of the Museum
796 Print and Visual Culture in Europe, ca. 1700–1900
797 Gender Issues in Design
798 Charles Rennie Mackintosh
799 Material Culture of the 19th-Century American Home
800 Print Culture 1700–1914 (from William Hogarth to Peter Behrens)
801 Other Europes: Design and Architecture in Central Europe, 1880–1940
802 The Arts of the Five Dynasties (907–960) and the Khitan Empire (907–1125)
803 Jewish Material Culture in the Modern Period
813 Material Rome, 1200–1700
817 The Archaeology of China’s Decorative Arts
820 Chinese Ceramics
821 Hispanic Arts of Design, 1300–1900
822 Foundations of Material Culture
823 American Consumer Culture
824 Twentieth-Century Interiors
827 Issues in the Study of Ancient Art
828 The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and Jean de France, Duc de Berry
829 Industrial Design in the 20th-Century United States
830 “Orientalism”: Meetings of East and West from the Crusades to Postcolonialism
831 Decorative Arts of 16th-Century Italy
832 English Silver
833 Modern Textiles, 1850–1970
834 American Collectors and Collections
835 Charles and Ray Eames and Mid-Century Modern Design
838 Technical Cultures of 19th- and 20th-Century America
841 Dress and Textiles in World Cultures
843 Research Methods
844 Interpretation of the Artifact in the Age of New Media
845 American Craft, Design, and Folk Art in the 1920s and 1930s
846 Objects of Knowledge: Renaissance Ornament and Society in Northern Europe, 1500-1650
848 Under Western Eyes: Metals, Ivories and Mosaics in the Medieval Italian Peninsula
850 Ancient House and Garden
853 The Art of the Coin in Cross-Cultural Perspective
854 Ceramic, Metal, and Glass: Questions about the Relations between Design, Technology, Industries, and Trade Patterns in Pre-Modern Middle East