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The Stone Summer Theory Institute

Theories of Modernism and Postmodernism

Lectures

The following topics are available for 2008-2009:

1. What is an Image? (report on the state of thinking about what visual objects are, based on the 2008 Stone Summer Theory Institute conference)
   
   
2. Links Between Religion and Contemporary Art (a report following on from the book The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art, including material based on criticisms and new information)
   
   
3. Four Models of First-Year Art Education, Why They Are Incompatible (on the Bauhaus, the academic model, and two others, which together comprise the major possibilities for educating artists)
   
   
4. The Emergence of the New PhD in Studio Art (a report on the emerging "terminal" degree, as it is being implemented around the world)
   
   
5. Visual Practices Across the University (report on the book of that same name, which was an attempt to consider how people in all departments of a university use and interpret images, and how a first-year course might use that material to introduce visuality into a university education)
   
   
6. Representations of pain (on photos of Chinese torture: this is a very hard lecture for some audiences)
   
   
7. Limits of Film Theory (a consideration of temporality, instantaneity, and duration in film theory, and the ways that scientific films challenge those formulations)
   
   
8. Unsolved issues in contemporary art criticism (discussion of the conceptual, institutional, and practical problems in art criticism; based on What Happened to Art Criticism? and The State of Art Criticism)
   
   
9. Is art history global? (report on a book of that name; lots of statistics)
   
   
10. Kunstwissenschaft and Art History, Two Forgotten Subjects (on the history of the discipline, including concepts of Bildwissenschaft and visual studies)
    
    
11. Problems in photography theory (report on the book, "Photography Theory")
    
    
12. Thirteen Unsolved Problems in the Theory of Landscape Painting and Photography
    
    
13. Unrepresented and Unrepresentable in Scientific Imaging and Art (report on the book Six Stories from the End of Representation)
    
    
14. Limits of visual studies (includes material on art history survey courses)
    
    
15. Incoherence and Coherence in the Art World (a discussion of the 7 books in the Art Seminar series, which involved over 300 scholars; each book revealed a different kind of incoherence -- this talk is best for upper-level graduate seminars)
    
    
16. How People, Cameras, and Sea Slugs See the World (the relevance of animal vision for understanding human vision -- good for general cross-university audiences, undergraduates, etc.)
    
    
17. The Concepts of Empathy and Sympathy (a philosophic paper, on absorption, immersion, theatricality, self-awareness, and other related concepts in contemporary art theory)
    
    
18. Sources of Theorizing on the Body in Recent Art (aimed at upper-level undergraduate art history, visual studies, and studio art students, but also suitable for a graduate seminar)
    
    
19. Strategies of Museum Display (lecture first given at MoMA, about the application of theories of modern and postmodern art to the strategies of museum installation; this is a half-hour presentation, not a full lecture, suited for upper-level undergraduate and beginning graduate seminars)

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