Professor Facos teaches a variety of topics in the Department of the History of Art, including modern sculpture, women artists, and 19th century European art. She has just published Symbolist Art in Context, a study of late 19th century artists such as van Gogh, Gauguin, and Munch, and is now investigating the role played by Jews in the promotion of Swedish national identity. A true eclectic, Professor Facos has curated art exhibitions, performed at Carnegie Hall, catered banquets, and worked on Wall Street.
Courses
Art and Power: Expediency and Extravagance in City Planning and Architecture
From Beijing's Forbidden City to Washington, D.C. and from Louis XIV's Versailles to a Fiji chief's residence, this seminar will explore the ways in which rulers have expressed their status in city planning, art, and architecture. This will be a broad and comparative survey of some of the most impressive built environments on earth (St. Petersburg, Munich, Bucharest, the Medici Palace in Florence, and Topkapi Palace in Istanbul) with the goal of understanding the ways in which historical conditions and personal temperament guided their design and what impact they have had on contemporaries and posterity. Short daily readings from a wide variety of sources-diaries, newspapers, official documents, and novels-will set the stage for an energetic discussion about motivating factors, hidden agendas, and the social impact of these spaces.
Students will practice many of the skills required for a successful college careerwriting, reading, researching, working in groups, oral presentations, and critical analysiswith the guidance of specialists from across the IU campus. Students will write a short (5 page) research paper on a relevant topic of their own choosing and collaborate with fellow students on the design of a new president's house for IU. We will explore the resources of the Lilly Library (rare books) and the outstanding collection of the IU Art Museum.
This course fulfills the TOPICS requirement of the College of Arts and Sciences (COLL), and is of particular relevance to students interested in art and architecture, city planning, cultural studies, history, international studies, political science, psychology, and sociology.
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