SOC 504
Conference Course in Sociology for Graduate Students
Winter 2025 · Sociology of Art
Topics
- Philosophical & theoretical content
Readings
- ISBN 7804824357
- Adorno, Theodor & Horkheimer, Max. (2002 [1947]) Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press)
- Adorno, Theodor. (1997 [1970]) Aesthetic Theory. Trans. Robert Hullot Kentor, (London, New York: Continuum)
- Bakhtin, Mikhail. (1981 [1941]) ‘Epic and Novel,’ in Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination. Trans Caryl Emerson & Michael Holoquist, (Austin, London: University of Texas Press.)
- Bataille, Georges. (1991 [1949]) The Accursed Share. Trans. Robert Hurley, (New York: Zone Books.)
- Battersby, Christine. (1989) Gender & Genius (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press)
- Baudelaire, Charles (1964 [1863]) ‘The Painter of Modern Life,’ in Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and other essays, trans. Jonathan Mayne, (Boston: Da Capo.)
- Becker, Howard (2008) Art Worlds 2nd edn, (Berkeley, LA, London: University of California Press.)
- Benjamin, Walter (1990 [1955]) ‘On some motifs in Baudelaire,’ in Benjamin, Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zorn. (London: Pimlico.) 152-96
- Benjamin, Walter (1990 [1955]) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ in
- Benjamin, Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zorn. (London: Pimlico.) 211-44
- Bourdieu, Pierre (2002 [1983]) ‘The Forms of Capital,’ trans. Richard Nice in Nicole Woolsey Biggart (ed.) Readings in Economic Sociology (Oxford: Blackwell) 280-91
- Bourdieu, Pierre (2010 [1979]) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (London & New York: Routledge)
- Bourdieu, Pierre (1983) ‘The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed.’ Trans. Richard Nice, in Poetics 12 (1983) 311-56
- Bloch, Ernst. (2007 [1937]). ‘Discussing Expressionism,’ Trans. Rodney Livingstone, in Adorno, Theodor et al, Aesthetics & Politics (London, New York: Verso), 16-27
- Brecht, Bertolt (2007). ‘On the Formalistic Character of the Theory of Realism,’ in Adorno, Theodor et al, Aesthetics & Politics (London, New York: Verso), 70-76
- Brecht, Bertolt (1964 [1948]) ‘A Short Organum for the Theatre,’ in Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Trans. John Willett (London: Methuen)
- Bürger, Peter (1984 [1974) Theory of the Avant-Garde trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.)
- Danto, Arthur (1964) ‘The Artworld’ in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 61, No. 19, 571-584
- Danto, Arthur (2006) ‘Defective Affinities: “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art’ in The Anthropology of Art: A Reader, ed. Howard Morphy & Morgan Perkins (Oxford: Blackwell.), 147-9. Soc 461: Sociology of Art – 7. Bibliography Richard Westerman, rwesterm@ualberta.ca 14
- Dickie, George (2020 [1974]) ‘What is Art? An Institutional Analysis’ in Steven M. Cahn, Stephanie Ross, & Sandra Shapshay eds. Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology, 2nd edn. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell)
- Fyfe, Gordon (2001) Art, Power, and Modernity: English Art Institutions, 1750-1950 (London: Bloomsbury.)
- Geertz, Clifford (1993) ‘Art as a Cultural System’ in Geertz, Local knowledge: further essays in interpretive anthropology pp.94-120, (London: Fontana.)
- Greenberg, Clement (1939), ‘Avant-garde and Kitsch’ in Partisan Review. 6:5
- Hegel, G.W.F. (1988 [1837]), Introduction to ‘The Philosophy of History.’ Trans. Leo Rauch (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.)
- Hegel, G.W.F. (1975 [1835]), Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press.)
- Heidegger, Martin (1993 [1950]), ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ in Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York, San Francisco, Evanston, London: Harper & Row)
- Jameson, Frederic (1991 [1984]), Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. (Durham NC: Duke University Press)
- Kant, Immanuel (2000 [1790]) Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)
- Lewis, Wyndham (1914), Manifesto of Vorticism (London: Bodley Head.)
- Lukács, Georg (1971 [1920]) Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna Bostock (London: Merlin.)
- Lukács, Georg (1937 [2007]), ‘Realism in the Balance,’ in Adorno, Theodor et al, Aesthetics & Politics (London, New York: Verso) 28-59
- Lukács, Georg, (1962 [1957]), The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, trans. John & Necke Mander (London: Merlin Press)
- Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso (1909) The Manifesto of Futurism, trans. Eugen Weber
- Nochlin, Linda, (1988 [1971]) ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ in Women, Art, & Power (New York, London: Harper & Row), 145-78
- Panofsky, Erwin. (2008 [1925]) ‘On the relationship of art history and art theory: towards the possibility of a fundamental system of concepts for a science of art.’ Trans. Katharina Lorenz & Jas’ Elsner. Critical Inquiry 35 (Autumn 2008) 43-56
- Poggioli, Renato (1971 [1962]) Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Gerald Fitzgerald (Cambridge MA: Belknap.)
- Schiller, Friedrich. (1910 [1794]). ‘Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,’ in Essays Aesthetic and Philosophical, (London: George Bell & Sons) 25-118
- Tolstoy, Leo (2016 [1897]) What is Art? trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Bloomsbury)
- Weber, Max (1992 [1905]) The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism. Trans. Talcott Parsons (London & New York: Routledge)
- Weber, Max (1958), The Rational and Social Foundations of Music. Trans. Don Martindale, Johannes Riedel, & Gertrude Neuwirth, (Carbondale IL: Southern Illinois University Press.)
- Wölfflin, Heinrich (1950 [1915]) Principles of Art History. Trans. M.D. Hottinger. (New York: Dover)
- Witkin, Robert (2003) ‘Van Eyck through the Looking Glass,’ in Jeremy Tanner (ed.) The Sociology of Art: A Reader (London: Routledge)
- Witkin, Robert. (2005) ‘A “New” Paradigm for the Sociology of Aesthetics,’ in David Inglis & John Hughson (eds.) The Sociology of Art: Ways of Seeing (London: Palgrave Macmillan) 57-72
Winter 2024
Topics
- Anthropogenic climate change, or, capitalogenic climate injustice? Why do names matter in critical
Readings
- Ajl, M. (2021). A People’s Green New Deal. Pluto Press. (
- Alook, A. (2023). The End of This World : Climate Justice in so-Called Canada. Edited by Emily Eaton, David Gray-Donald, Joël Laforest, Crystal Lameman, and Bronwen Tucker. Between the Lines. (
- Kallis, G. et al. (2020) The Case for Degrowth. Polity Press. (
- Kothari, A. et al. (2019) Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. Tulika Books. (available via UAL)
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- SOC 402 TOPICS IN SOCIOLOGY / SOC 504 CONFERENCE COURSE IN SOCIOLOGY · Reading-list link; contents not retrieved ↗
- 2025-Winter-SOC-461-LECTURE-B01 ↗2025
- 2025-Winter-SOC-504-LECTURE-B02 ↗2025
- SOC 504 CONFERENCE COURSE IN SOCIOLOGY · Reading-list link; contents not retrieved ↗
- 2020-Winter-SOC-504-LECTURE-B1 ↗2020
- 2020-Winter-SOC-504-LECTURE-B2 ↗2020
- 2020-Winter-SOC-504-LECTURE-B6 ↗2020
- 2021-Winter-SOC-504-LECTURE-B1 ↗2021
- 2021-Winter-SOC-504-LECTURE-B2 ↗2021
- 2022-Winter-SOC-504-LECTURE-B1 ↗2022
- 2022-Winter-SOC-504-LECTURE-B3 ↗2022
- 2024-Winter-SOC-504-LECTURE-B02 ↗2024
- 2024-Winter-SOC-504-LECTURE-B01 ↗2024
- No textbook required according to this source. Additional readings are supplied through the course LMS. Partial automated extraction.
- Additional readings are supplied through the course LMS. Partial automated extraction.