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]

Syllabus

Art, Architecture, and Propaganda under Socialism explores how ideologies informed and keep informing visual aspects of art and architecture produced before and after the Velvet Revolution 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. We do this both in class and on our field trips around Prague. The course will enhance your understanding of (not just) the totalitarian period of local history using pieces of visual culture; you will learn to analyze visual material and will understand the importance of concepts such as modernity, modernism and ideology.

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.