HAA 253G - Stages of Life, in Art

People change. They grow up and grow old, each differently but in ways divisible into stages. Different cultures and different eras understand and number these stages differently, but between birth and death bodies and minds develop and age. This interdisciplinary seminar, conducted together with a course in the English department taught by Professor Stephen Greenblatt, explores how art and literature, with their distinctive capabilities and limits, give visual and verbal shape to “life history” from infancy to “second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” (Shakespeare).  Focused on the European Renaissance with consideration of later (particularly Romantic) developments. Enrollment Limited.”