Presented course follows the development of art criticism and its theory as well as the aesthetic theory in the 20^th Century American Philosophy. Students will read and analyse some of the seminal texts on aesthetics such as Arthur C. Danto's "Transfiguration of the Commonplace", Frank Sibley's and Peter Kivy's "Aesthetic Concepts", George Dickie's "The Institutional Theory of Art" and many others. At the same time the development of American art criticism will be presented with the help of texts from the Postmodern era with a special emphasis being placed on the publications of the Critical Theory group (Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Fredric Jameson, J. Hillis Miller, and David Carroll etc.), presentations of recent exhibitions in visual arts, and examination of short fiction.