The Body in Space: Art, Architecture, and Performance

An interdisciplinary investigation of the status of the human body in the modern reinvention of space within the overlapping frames of art, architecture, and the performing arts from the 1890s to the present. Works by artists, architects, theater designers, and filmmakers will be supplemented by readings on architectural theory, intellectual and cultural history, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and aesthetics. This semester, the class will analyze discourses of empathy and animation through practices of distancing and the use of masking in art, architecture, as well as social and theatrical performance.