In 1921 the Russian structuralist Roman Jakobson lamented that the history of art was remarkably imprecise in its vocabulary. One word received particular disapprobation: "the term 'realism'…fares especially badly. The uncritical use of this word, so very elusive in meaning, has had fateful consequences." In this seminar, we will address the consequences that have attended the invocation and variability of "realism" by examining a series of episodes in Western art from the late medieval and early modern periods to the 20th century. We will explore — and attempt to disentangle — the most influential historical and theoretical accounts of realism and its relatives, including mimesis; naturalism, the comic, pictorial realism; social realism; photo-realism and photography. We will examine the invocation of these terms with respect to such phenomena as medieval sculpture, Van Eyck, Caravaggio, Dutch genre painting, Courbet, nineteenth-century photography, and cubism. The fundamental aim of this exercise is to become familiar with the various discourses around notions of realism, to assess how disparate artists have sought to link visual representation with the world. Meetings will be organized around readings from Boccaccio, Rabelais, Johan Huizinga, Lorraine Daston, Roman Jakobson, Erich Auerbach, Ernst Gombrich, Roland Barthes, John Tagg, and other relevant writers. Students will be evaluated on their participation in weekly discussions, oral presentations, and final paper.