Theory and Method in the Study of Architecture and Art
A graduate seminar from MIT that surveys major methodologies and thinkers used to interpret art and architectural history, drawing on theorists from philosophy, literary criticism, and other fields beyond the discipline itself. The course materials include a full syllabus with weekly readings and writing assignments, structured to move students through different critical apparatuses such as formalism, semiotics, phenomenology, and psychoanalytic theory as applied to buildings and images. Rather than a single methodology, the seminar treats theory as a set of competing discourses that shape how scholars argue about objects and space, and the assignments push students to locate their own critical voice within that field. Offered through MIT OpenCourseWare, the materials are free to access, with no video lectures, only the syllabus, readings list, and assignment prompts for self-directed study.