This course overviews Western painting, sculpture, architecture, film, performance and installation and its dialogues with the wider world. We will examine various practices in historical contexts, while paying particular attention to the narratives, sociabilities, and materials that bear upon them, such as the influence of the past, religion, gender, colonialism, race, ideology, technology, ecology, and politics. The course will attempt to familiarize students with the way some principal monuments of world art from about 400 BCE onward were made and understood, and to develop visual literacy, that is, the ability not only to identify, but also to discuss art works as central elements of culture. Museum, gallery, and archive field trips are key components of the course.

Location

Morey Room 504 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

This course will introduce you to the archaeology, art, and architecture of ancient Egypt, from the Predynastic Period (ca. 5000 BCE) until the country’s inclusion into the Roman Empire (1st–2nd centuries CE). After a brief presentation of the field of Egyptology and Egyptian historiography, we will first discuss how the ancient Egyptian civilization was shaped by its environment, as it emerged, developed, saw the rise and fall of dynasties, and fell under the sway of foreign rulers. This course will also highlight the wide range of materials encountered in Egyptian archaeology—architectural remains in secular, sacred, and funerary contexts; material culture (pottery, stone and wooden artifacts, artistic creations); human and faunal remains; written documents; iconographic material—and will evaluate how they reflect the cultural, social, and political organization of each major period of Egyptian history. Special attention will be given to both Egypt’s interconnections with its neighbors—Nubians, Libyans, and inhabitants of Syria-Palestine—and the impact of religion on the artistic production. This course will also discuss modern representations of ancient Egypt and the enduring symbols of the culture.

Location

Meliora Room 218 (MW 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

As an introduction to the art of film, this course will present the concepts of film form, film aesthetics, and film style, while remaining attentive to the various ways in which cinema also involves an interaction with audiences and larger social structures.

Location

Morey Room 321 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

This course provides an introduction to modern architecture starting with its nineteenth-century roots and continuing to the present day. We will explore the impact of technological, economic, political, and social change on architecture, as well as study major figures of modern architecture such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Location

Morey Room 525 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

This course introduces the visual arts of China, Japan, and Korea from ancient to modern periods through a selection of objects and scholarship to develop the skills of close looking and critical thinking. We will study the major genres, themes, artists, mediums, formats, materials, and technologies of East Asian arts in ten units. Each unit contains one to three class sessions that 1) review the methodologies of the existing art historical scholarship of the themes at issue, and 2) understand the artwork particularly from the perspectives of cultural exchange and transmedia production. Discussions will be both reading-based and object-oriented, exploring the depths of visual analyses on a par with methodological reflection.

Location

Meliora Room 209 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

This course is a survey of courtly art and monumental architecture in South Asia from 2500 BCE to the present. It spends some time exploring where, when, why, and for whom these examples of art and architecture were made to understand what they mean in their historical and geographical contexts. This course is also designed to help improve students’ “visual literacy” by looking at the art and architecture of South Asia. Students will develop their analytical skills by comparing and contrasting formal, spatial, and material aspects of artifacts and structures in discussions during the lectures and assignments at home. They will also develop their critical thinking and research skills through weekly readings and semester research projects. By the end of the course, students will not only have a clear sense of South Asian art and architecture in Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic contexts but will also be able to “see” and perceive objects and buildings of their multicultural world in a different light.

Location

Hylan Building Room 105 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Examining art from across the globe over the last few decades, this course follows living and recent artists into their studios, exhibits, and performances. From Ren Hang and Wolfgang Tillmans’ poignant yet fashion-forward photography to Banksy and Christo’s interventions in public dialogues, we will examine how art changes both how we think of the world and our own situations within it. No previous art history required; studio art practitioners welcome.

Location

Hylan Building Room 202 (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

The first of a sequence of two, the course approaches 'The Divine Comedy' both as a poetic masterpiece and as an encyclopedia of medieval culture. Through a close textual analysis of 'Inferno,' and the first half of 'Purgatorio,' students learn how to approach Dantes poetry as a vehicle for thought, an instrument of self-discovery, and a way to understand and affect the historical reality. They also gain a perspective on the Biblical, Christian, and Classical traditions as they intersect with the multiple levels of Dantes concern, ranging from literature to history, from politics to government, from philosophy to theology. A visual component, including illustrations of the 'Comedy' and multiple artworks pertinent to the narrative, complements the course. Class format includes lectures, discussion, and a weekly recitation session. Intensive class participation is encouraged. Dante I can be taken independently from Dante II. No prerequisites. Freshmen are welcome. Part of the Dante Humanities Cluster.

Location

Gavett Hall Room 310 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

How can early photography differentiate between reality and illusion and tell us about how photographers imagined what they were doing, whether they were creating fictions or theater, documenting reality, or “seeing” the apparently invisible—including ghosts, the passage of time, and atmospheres themselves? In this course we will examine case studies ranging from a “lady amateur” staging scenes with her children and servants, to scientists’ exploration of the camera in wonderment and imperial families’ innovative patronage of the mediums old and new. Readings will include essays by Benjamin, Barthes, Sontag, Bazin, and Krauss as well as the recent scholarship of Geoffrey Batchen, Christopher Pinney, Roberta Wue, and Zahid R. Chaudhary about pioneering practitioners in Asia, Europe, Africa, and America. Class visits to the Eastman Museum will emphasize close observations of photographs done by alternative processes throughout the 19th century. 

Location

Morey Room 525 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course seeks to improve students' writing and analytical skills through analysis and experimentation with different styles of writing about contemporary and historical arts. Students analyze prose by artists, historians, cultural critics, poets, and others who have written on the visual arts, with an eye towards how writing on art can be a tool for improving expression in many areas. Slide lectures, discussions, and writing projects on objects of diverse media and historical eras will be augmented by visiting speakers and field trips to museums and galleries. This course fulfills one-half of the upper level writing requirement for both studio and art history majors. Permission of instructor required.

Location

Morey Room 504 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

This discussion-based course interrogates the construction and evolution of Japan’s cultural traditions and idioms from ancient times to the eve of modernity. Drawing from oral records and mythology, performing and visual arts,  literary, religious and historical texts, among other mediums, this course asks students to understand and appreciate the dynamic contexts of Japanese “tradition.” At the same time, innovative evocations of the past will help us understand the processes through which literary, cultural and religious traditions are challenged, (re)invented, and (re)made. This course is therefore invested in both the historical legacy of traditional Japan and the ways in which tradition itself remains central to contemporary evocations of Japanese culture. No prior knowledge of Japan is required or expected.

Location

Frederick Douglass Room 420 (MW 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

What is enlightenment? Is enlightenment a place or time? A state of body or a state of mind? Is it an unembellished moment from ordinary life or an unbounded vision of an endlessly unfolding cosmos? Does it happen in this life or after we die? Is it beyond language or is it language itself? This course explores how diverse Japanese Buddhists conceive of enlightenment in all of these different ways and, in addition to the literary, visual, cultural, and philosophical study of enlightenment, this course also invites students to engage in the practice of a wide variety of Buddhist ritual activities and “speech acts” including sutra copying, reciting mantra, chanting sutras, and sitting zazen. Students will also study the visual cultures of enlightenment through mandala, painting, and sculptural icons. All readings are done in English. However, students will be asked to recite some short ritual texts and ritual formulations in their original language for educational purposes. No prior knowledge of Japanese or meditation required.

Location

Frederick Douglass Room 420 (MW 6:15PM - 7:30PM)

This class will consider the relationship of art exhibition and production in contemporary art practices as part of a gallery practicum. This course is an introduction to art exhibition practices including research, curation, planning, art handling, installation, and hands-on experience in galleries. Students will install exhibitions in the teaching galleries and spaces on campus, including (but not limited to) Hartnett Gallery and Frontispace Gallery. Students will visit galleries and museums and attend exhibition openings, studio visits, and artist lectures.

Location

Sage Arts Center Room 102 (R 9:40AM - 12:20PM)

This course surveys the history of cinema from its emergence in the mid-1890s to the transition to sound in the late 1920s. We will examine the cinema as a set of aesthetic, social, technological, national, cultural and industrial practices as they were exercised and developed during this 30-year span. We will explore the diverse forms cinema took and functions it performed during this period by looking closely at a range of films and writings about films and film culture. We will also examine contexts within which these films were produced and experienced as well as theorizations of cinema that emerged concurrently with them. The course thus introduces students to the study of film history as well as a key national and international trends in making and thinking about cinema as it rose to prominence as a vital component of the art and culture of the twentieth century. Previous coursework in film is recommended, though not required; please contact the professor if this will be your first experience studying film in an academic setting.

Location

Hylan Building Room 102 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course will explore developments in world cinemaindustrial, social, and politicalfrom 1959 to 1989. It will explore film aesthetics, technologies, and circulation questions, considering questions like the following: Whats new about the French New Wave? What do we mean by Third Cinema? How do different national cinemas influence each other? In what ways have various national cinemas responded critically to Hollywoods commercial dominance and to its conventions? How do popular and art? cinemas speak to each other. How does cinema respond to the pressures and provocations of other media at the inception of the digital age? Weekly screenings and film journals required.

Location

Morey Room 504 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This course explores textiles as vital objects in human lives for millennia. It explores a selection of these luxurious textiles and their intersection with social, economic, and political lives in the Islamic world between the ninth to the eighteenth centuries. At the end of the semester, students will have an overall picture of Islamic dynastic history, its broad geographical expansion from Spain to India, and its cultural themes such as political system, social structure, economic sectors, religious rituals, cross-cultural exchanges, diplomatic gifting, royal leisure, and funerary practices. This course invites students to see artifacts as not merely passive objects but active agents in history as well as their everyday lives. It also discusses a few technical aspects of weaving textiles and looks at textiles as three-dimensional objects. Finally, this course will assist students with developing their critical thinking, research, and writing as crucial skills to succeed in their future careers through weekly readings, visual analysis, in-class discussions, and research projects.

Location

Hylan Building Room 105 (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This course explores the remarkably elastic—and durable—genre of the road movie.  Across a range of periods in film history, and through a framework of transnational exchange and circulation, we will examine the ways this adaptable genre focuses questions of national and regional identity, racial, ethnic, gender class differences.  We will pay special attention to the road movie’s existential and phenomenological preoccupations.

Location

Morey Room 504 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

At present, parts of the world seem to be transitioning from liberal democracy to another (or other) regime(s). The duration and nature of that transition are unknown; however, historical transitions and the art describing them are available to study. We will examine possible valences offered by theories of transition that range from gender transitions to psychoanalytic of “transitional object theory,” as well as art from the last few decades attesting to the transition out of state socialism and dictatorships. Work on and discussion of aspects of visual culture outside art are more than welcome, as are topics from the present.

Location

Morey Room 524 ( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

See 'Requirements for Honors in Art History.'

Internships in London and the United States.

The early modern tends to be understood as a moment of the horizontal: a period of
exploration, mapmaking, trade, conquest, and territorial expansion, the “bird’s-eye” view of
a world’s surface. But downward-looking experiences were features of the epoch as well, as
of our tenchnolized modernity. The realms beneath material and figurative: the grotto. the
cavern, the shipwreck, the tomb. These had existed for millennia, of course, but in early
modern Europe the subterranean bespoke, on the one hand, a renewed physical realm for
humanist archaeology (a shopworn theme in itself), and, on the other, strategies of picturing
and knowing rooted in an aesthetic of inversion, occlusion, and the darkly, incompletely
seen, what Leonard Barkan has called “a chthonic hermeneutics.” Science fictions of more
recent centuries – from Verne to Lovecraft - all traffic in the subterranean, and critical
theory – from Warburg to Benjamin to Adorno to Fanon – has pivoted upon a questioning of
what lies “underneath” some dominant culture. This seminar explores these discourses,
between the figurative and the concrete. *This course is required for senior Art History majors.*

Location

Morey Room 524 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)