Global Arc

Examines the global exchange in art and architecture between and among the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas in the period 1492-1800. The course focuses on the geographical, historical, religious, anthropological, and aesthetic aspects of issues such as cultural encounters, diffusion, transculturation, regionalism, and related topics. For department majors, this course satisfies the 1400-1800 historical period distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

Topics will focus on major figures, such as Palladio, Wren, and Piranesi; centers, such as Rome and Venice; or themes, such as architectural theory, the legacy of classical antiquity, and the villa. For department majors, this course satisfies the 1400-1800 historical period and the Europe cultural area distribution requirements. One three-hour seminar.

Siegecraft was an art more complex than painting, more powerful than sculpture, and more monumental than any building in the early modern world. This seminar confronts the discomfiting reality that the period long known as the Renaissance was defined as much, if not more, by brutal and collective warfare than it was by the rise of the individual. The class has no prerequisites and is open to all, including students of architecture, engineering, art, history, media, and literature. Seminar sessions will include hands-on study of original artworks in campus collections.

Topics in 17th- and 18th-century art and architecture. For department majors, this course satisfies the 1400-1800 historical period distribution requirement. Prerequisite: a course in the art of this period or instructor's permission. One three-hour seminar.

This seminar will focus in depth on a specific aspect of art, history, theory, and criticism in Europe between 1789 and 1914. Possible topics include French painting and its critics, portraiture and sociability, shifting conceptions of realism and naturalism, the onset of modernism, and representations of interior space. Prerequisites: a course in the art of this period or permission of the instructor. Visits to area museums. For department majors, this course satisfies the 1800-present historical distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

The Artist as Idea, from Leonardo to Warhol. Seminar will explore the myth of the artist in Europe and the U.S. from the Renaissance to the present. Topics will include ideas of the artist as a privileged social being, notions of artistic temperament and "genius," the gendering of the artist, modernist myths of bohemianism and madness, and the postmodern artist's engagement with mass media. Analysis of self-portraiture, artists' writings, representations of the studio, and artists in film. Case studies will include Leonardo, Michelangelo, Artemisia Gentileschi, Rembrandt, Delacroix, van Gogh, Picasso, Pollock, O'Keeffe, and Warhol.

Topics on the aesthetic and stylistic development of photography, including the study of movements and related critical theory, and on the artistic achievement of particular photographers. For department majors, this course satisfies the 1800-present historical period distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

Although "alienation" might seem passé as a concept, modern art and literature were long steeped in this condition. This seminar will explore its principal expressions by its primary voices--artists, writers, and philosophers--from Baudelaire, Marx, and Manet through Rimbaud, Nietzsche, and Gauguin, to Existentialist philosophy and outsider art, and on to "Black Dada" today. Among our themes will be the underground, spleen, dandyism, detachment, primitivism, art brut, absurdity, and objectification.

Topics in contemporary painting, sculpture, or criticism in Europe and America since World War II. Prerequisite: a course in the art of this period or instructor's permission. For department majors, this course satisfies the 1800-present historical period distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

This seminar explores how the complex and contested concept of "race" intersects with the categories of "art" and "visual culture" in the history of the United States (colonial era to the present). By examining the work of a range of artists and image-makers, we will explore how the concept of "race" is imagined, constructed, used, and/or challenged by artists and audiences as well as the manner in which the discipline of art history approaches considerations of race and racial/ethnic identity. Our approach will be thematic rather than chronological; material studied will include painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and film.