The purpose of this course is to provide students with an overview of approaches to modernity in East Asian art with a special focus in Korea. The social, historical and political situation of Korea makes Korean art a particularly rich node through which to consider the relationship between visual experience and modernity. Departing from the iconographic and semiotic concerns that have long underwritten the study of Asian art generally, this discussion-intensive seminar aims to mine other ways of thinking about the visual experiences such artworks offer. Thus rather than a traditional survey, this course is driven by a small number of case studies chosen to prompt other ways of thinking about the nature and impact of visual experience. Central is the attempt to reconsider as a group the oft-cited idea of reflexivity concerning the precarity of social life as a foundational premise for modernity: how might such reflexivity be defined through visual experience and was it necessarily incompatible with desires for perpetuity? The course will be supplemented by a workshop on modern Korean art held on campus in February 2016. Open to undergraduates and graduates.

HISTART category for concentration distributions: C. Asia, 4. Modern & Contemporary.