Expand+In “Dreaming America” we will closely read ten masterpieces of American painting to uncover how Americans have imagined themselves as a distinctive nation over time. This series tracks recurring themes across generations as American artists who used ...

Hide-In “Dreaming America” we will closely read ten masterpieces of American painting to uncover how Americans have imagined themselves as a distinctive nation over time. This series tracks recurring themes across generations as American artists who used their skills to advance the interests of the social groups to which they either belonged or wished to belong. Topics include: throwing off colonial domination; exploring the wilderness; justifying or opposing slavery; embracing or rejecting capitalism; contending against inequality and injustice; fighting or resisting wars of expansion

Expand+Each week we will focus on an American masterpiece; we discuss its historical context and consider how the work has been received. These are the paintings that form the series:

Week 01. Emanuel Leutze, “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (1851, The...

Hide-Each week we will focus on an American masterpiece; we discuss its historical context and consider how the work has been received. These are the paintings that form the series:

Week 01. Emanuel Leutze, “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (1851, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York);

Week 02. John Rose, “The Old Plantation” (1785, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Virginia);

Week 03. Thomas Cole, “View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts (The Oxbow)” (1836, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York);

Week 04. Winslow Homer, “The Veteran in a New Field” (1865, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York);

Week 05. Thomas Eakins, “The Gross Clinic” (1875, Philadelphia Museum of Art);

Week 06. Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks” (1942, Art Institute of Chicago);

Week 07. Jasper Johns, “Three Flags” (1958, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York);

Week 08. Andy Warhol, “Nine Jackies” (1964, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York);

Week 09. Vincent Desiderio, “Pantocrator” (2002, Newington-Cropsey Center, New

Week 10. Shepard Fairey, “Barack Obama/Hope” (2008, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.).

This interdisciplinary course spans eight broad, sometimes overlapping, historical periods in American culture, roughly defined as follows:

1. Early Colonial Period (ca. 1560-1760);
2. Late Colonial Period & Early Republic (ca. 1760-1820);
3. The Hudson River School (ca. 1830-1875);
4. Still-Life and Genre Painting in Antebellum America (ca. 1820-1865);
5. The Civil War, the West (ca. 1865-1900);
6. Empire-Building, Progressivism, and WWI (ca. 1890-1920);
7. Depression to Cold War (1930-1991);
8. Contemporary America.