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This seminar focuses on “the cut”—both as material practice and conceptual trope. Looking specifically at the early modern period, we will attempt to stitch together arts of cutting that have all too often been thought of separately or entirely in isolation—decoupage and inlaid stone, silhouette and turned ivory, repurposed drawing and perfectly hewn precious gem, pared-down panel and paper cut-out. To do so, we will look to expansive modern treatments and theorizations of “the cut” as literal gesture and figurative process, material technique and metaphoric mode. At stake is a reappraisal of creative paradigms that rest upon myths of wholeness, finitude, completion, generation, etc., and that thus undergird the early modern emergence of the very notion of “Art.” This seminar thus asks whether recentering the cut has the potential to position the art object within more expansive fields of material culture and to resituate artistic production within less hegemonic frameworks of creation and creativity. Though focused on the early modern period, students are encouraged to pursue research in their own fields/periods of study.