British Art and Landscape BRST 177b
Martin Postle, Assistant Director for Academic Activities, Paul Mellon Centre

This course explores the development of landscape art in the period from the Restoration to the mid-nineteenth century. During this period, the face of British landscape changed irrevocably, as cities encroached increasingly upon the countryside, population patterns shifted, attitudes to the occupancy and ownership of land were keenly contested, and political boundaries were redrawn. Increasingly, artists played a key role in the interpretation of attitudes towards landscape; initially as agents of the landed aristocracy, and later as independent observers. In order to explore the relationship between art and landscape over this two-hundred year period, the course will address the subject both thematically and chronologically. Topics will include country house and 'prospect' landscapes, the landscaped garden, Britain and Italy, academic landscapes, town and cityscapes, travel and topography, the Romantic landscape, and the Pre-Raphaelite landscape. Readings for the course will encompass key modern art-historical texts on British landscape art, as well as contemporary accounts of landscape, including essays, journals and poems. As the course will be offered in London it will take full advantage of landscape art available in museums and art galleries, notably the National Gallery, Tate Britain, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The course will also include day field trips which will enable students to compare at first hand a number of important landscape locations with works they have studied in class and in art galleries.

Politics And Society in Great Britain
1688-1832 BRST 322b
Dr Leslie Mitchell, University College, Oxford (retired)

This course will cover what is called the "long eighteenth century" in all its political and cultural aspects. Its core will be an investigation of the period's politics; from the Glorious Revolution, through the oligarchical structures put in place by Walpole and the Pelhams, to the Reform Bill of 1832. The impact of the American and French Revolutions will also be addressed as will the problems presented by Ireland and India. Politics will also be covered at a more theoretical level, by considering the ideas which both justified the rule of property, and also those which called for significant change. In cultural terms, there will be discussions of eighteenth-century marriage and divorce, together with the notions of gender that informed such issues. Attitudes to crime, the major religious movements of the period, and the advance of consumerism and its social consequences will also be considered. There will also be a discussion of what is called the "culture of politeness", namely the cult of the gentleman, honour codes, and the forces that threatened them.

Portraiture in Literature and the Visual Arts BRST 178b
Jill Campbell, Yale University

A broad and selective survey of forms of portraiture in both literary works and the visual arts from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, seeking to raise fundamental questions entailed in the art of portrait-making.  What do the conventions of portraiture at a given time suggest about a culture's views of what it means to be a "person"?  What techniques does the portraitist use to indicate the individuality of a portrait-subject; and how are interests in the individuality of historical persons balanced with elements that suggest typical or generic identity?  How do new forms in the eighteenth century handle an emerging interest in suppositional or fictional persons?  How do different materials and media shape the construction of a portrait-subject? Materials studied include oil paintings, sculptures, and monumental art in London museums, abbeys, and other public spaces; literary works by authors such as Bunyan, Shakespeare, Pope, Aphra Behn, Olaudah Equiano, Mary Shelley, and Wilde; and secondary works on the theory and history of portraiture and on changing notions of the self.

Literature and the Sense of Place
BRST 179b
Jill Campbell, Yale University

A study of the power and limits of literary works' employment of "setting" and of their references to actual features of the natural and man-made world, with particular attention to London. How and why do fictional works of various kinds set the imaginary events and people they portray in actual places that can be remembered, seen, traveled to, or inhabited?  What effect do references to well-known real places within an influential literary tradition exert on readers and would-be writers in that tradition who live in other places (such as colonies or former colonies of England or France)? Primary works include novels and poems that make important use of the setting of parts of London (Pope, Etherege, Defoe, Blake, Dickens, Zadie Smith) and works with a more oblique or removed relation to London and English traditions (Edgeworth, Joyce, Rushdie, Ishiguro, Coetzee).  Secondary works include essays on the role of setting in fictional narrative; recent work by cultural geographers; postcolonial theory; and selections from debates among African novelists about setting and the African novel.