Academics
Courses
UPCES Architecture Courses
Here you'll find the full list of UPCES courses related to Architecture. Please note that all course offerings are subject to change or cancelation based on faculty availability and student enrollment. All course subjects must be approved by your home institution for departmental credit.
Each course includes a detailed description, any cross-listed subjects, and a downloadable syllabus.
Art, Architecture and Propaganda Under Socialism
[ARCHITECTURE, ART HISTORY, CULTURAL STUDIES, 3 credits]
The course explores how and what ideologies have informed visual aspects of art and architecture produced before and after the Velvet Revolution (1989) in what is now the Czech Republic. We look at individual pieces of art, architecture and material culture, propaganda posters and excerpts from movies, and search for ways in which they are in/formed by different ideologies. To achieve this, you are first introduced to a set of epistemological building blocks, i.e., themes and modes of thinking that have influenced the form of arts and visual culture, such as modernity, modernism, and the concept of ideology as such. This will provide you with a strong theoretical base. We will then proceed with methods available for researching the visual material that we explore throughout the course. You can add to this material as you travel around the CEE region because art and architecture created under the various socialist regimes between the late 1940s and 1980s has repercussions for what the CEE region looks like today. Moreover, as the Cold War rhetoric and politics currently undergoes a revival, the study material and its historical context also prove relevant for your understanding of the present geopolitical situation as it is reflected in different forms of art and visual culture.
Gothic, Baroque, Modern: Arts in Bohemia Culture
[HISTORY, ART HISTORY, ARCHITECTURE, 3 credits]
Syllabus
This course will survey the visual arts—including some photography and film—and architecture in the Czech Lands since the Middle Ages through the 20th century, with an emphasis on the last 150 years or so. That is still a lot of material, so we shall concentrate, as far as possible on the artifacts available in Prague that we can go and see for ourselves. Throughout, we shall not cover only the Czech artists, but also other nationals who either worked in the Czech Lands, or were highly influential here. Thus we shall cover the work of the French, Bavarian and Italian artists and architects during the Gothic and Baroque times, such as the Dientzenhofers or Arcimboldo; the influence of the Norwegian painter Edward Munch on the Czech art around the 1900; the relations between the Czech and the French surrealists; etc. etc. We shall also situate art within a larger context of social and intellectual history, seeing, in particular, how nationalism, religion and ideology shaped the development of Czech art and architecture. Last but not least, we shall notice the specificities of stylistic developments in Czech art, such as the recurrences of the elements of Gothic and Baroque in the Czech versions of Art Nouveau and Cubism.
Prague as a Living History: Anatomy of a European Capital
[HISTORY, CULTURAL STUDIES, ART HISTORY, ARCHITECTURE, 3 credits]
Syllabus
This course and accompanying excursions will introduce students to the history of the Czech Republic and its capital city, Prague, while also showing the development of its urban structures and main social functions. By using the city of Prague as a classroom, students will gain a deeper understanding of the particularities and intricacies of urban life as it evolved through centuries. Excursions to other urban sites in the Czech Republic will allow students to compare various types of cities and their development, typical of continental European culture.
