ARH 110 Art and Its Histories (4 Credits)

This course explores how art and architecture have profoundly shaped visual experiences and shifting understandings of the past and present. Featuring different case studies, each section includes work with original objects, site visits and writings about art. Unifying themes include: (1) materials, techniques and the patterns deployed to create space; (2) the design, function and symbolism of images and monuments; (3) artistic production and its relation to individual and institutional patronage, religion, politics and aesthetics; (4) issues turning on artists’ fame versus anonymity and uniqueness versus reproducibility; and (5) cross-cultural exchanges. Enrollment limited to 25. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring

ARH 190 Colloquium: Art History: Theories, Methods, Debates (4 Credits)

The meanings ascribed to art and architecture from any culture or period turn upon the interpreter’s preoccupations and methods. This colloquium examines contemporary debates within the discipline, locating them within the field’s own history. The class asks what kinds of knowledge historians of art and architecture produce and legitimize? What kinds of questions do they ask, what means do they use to answer them? Considering art and architectural history as a living field, the focus falls on recent scholarship, with an eye to the dynamic ways in which it builds on and/or departs from the history of the discipline. Enrollment limited to 18. Prerequisites: ARH 110 or a first-year seminar taught by a member of the department. {A}

Fall, Annually

ARH 200 China in Expansion (4 Credits)

During the formative periods when the local and global forces simultaneously took actions in shaping Chinese civilization, the functions of images and objects, the approaches to things and the discourses around art underwent significant shifts, not only responding to but also mapping out the "Chinese-ness" in visual and material culture. This course of early Chinese art investigates diverse media bronze vessels, sculptures, murals, textiles, architecture and other visual and material forms in relation to political and military conquest, cross-cultural exchange, the dissemination of ordinary practices and the formation of identities. Key terms/issues for the course will include expansion, connection and materiality. Counts for ARU. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

ARH 201/ POR 201 Brazilian Art Inside and Out (4 Credits)

Offered as POR 201 and ARH 201. This course serves as an introduction in English to contemporary and modern Brazilian art. Course materials and class discussions address such topics as public vs. private art spaces, national vs. global identities, the role of art as agency for social change and as site of memory, activism, resistance and transformation. {A}

Fall, Variable

ARH 204 Inkas, Aztecs and Their Ancestors (4 Credits)

What is antiquity in the Americas? To explore this question, this class focuses upon visual cultures and urban settings from across the Americas. Emphasis rests upon recent research especially about the Inka, the Aztec, and their ancestors, but we will also study current debates in art history and archaeology. Among the themes we will discuss: sacrifice and rulership, representations of human and deified beings, the symbolic and economic meanings of materials and the ethics of excavation and museum display. Case studies include architectural complexes, textiles, ceramics and sculpted works from Peru, Mexico, the Caribbean and the U.S. Southwest. Counts for ARU. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 207 Translating New Worlds (4 Credits)

In this class we ask how travel to and through the New World was imagined, described and lived by Indigenous residents as well as those who came to the Americas from across the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Our focus rests upon the ways in which geographies, anthropologies, material objects, and pictorial and written records shaped colonial ambitions and experiences. Among the objects we will consider: books and painted images, dyes and metals, feathers, and urban buildings. Case studies will be drawn from across the Americas, including Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, Haiti, and the United States. We will also discuss contemporary cultural practices that seek to explain, interpret, and redress colonial encounters and settlements in the Americas. Group A, Counts for ARU. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 212 Ancient Cities and Sanctuaries (4 Credits)

This course explores many different aspects of life in the cities and sanctuaries of the ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece, Etruria and Rome. Recurrent themes include urbanism, landscapes and patterns of worship, including initiation, sacrifice and pilgrimage. The class probes how modern notions of the secular and the sacred influence interpretation and how sometimes the seemingly most anomalous features of the worship of Isis or of the juxtaposition of commercial and domestic space within a city can potentially prove to be the most revealing about life in another place and time. Counts for ARU. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 216 The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Roman World (4 Credits)

From North Africa to Gaul, from the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar) to Asia Minor, the interrelationships of art and power in the visual culture of the ethnically diverse Roman empire, from the first century B.C.E. through the fourth century C.E., are the subject of study. We also examine works of art from later periods as well as literature and film that structure our perception of the Roman world. Counts for ARU. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 217/ CLS 217 Greek Art and Archaeology (4 Credits)

Offered as CLS 217 and ARH 217. This course is a contextual examination of the art and architecture of Ancient Greece, from the end of the Bronze Age through the domination of Greece by Rome (ca. 1100-168 BCE) and handles an array of settlements, cemeteries and ritual sites. It tracks the development of the Greek city-state and the increasing power of the Greeks in the Mediterranean, culminating in the major diaspora of Greek culture accompanying the campaigns of Alexander the Great and his followers. The course takes a broadly chronological approach, and the question of a unified Greek culture is stressed. Continuing archaeological work is considered. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

ARH 225 Arts of Asia (4 Credits)

This multicultural course introduces students to the visual arts of Asia from the earliest times to the present. In a writing- and speaking-intensive environment, students will develop skills in visual analysis and art historical interpretation. Illustrated class lectures, group discussions, museum visits, and a variety of writing exercises will allow students to explore architecture, sculpture, painting, and other artifacts in relation to the history and culture of such diverse countries as India, China, Cambodia, Korea, and Japan. (E) {A}{H}

Fall, Variable

ARH 228/ MES 228 Islamic Art and Architecture (4 Credits)

Offered as MES 228 and ARH 228. This course surveys Islamic visual art and architecture from the spread of Islam in the seventh-century until the present day, covering the Dome of the Rock and Persian miniatures to French Orientalism and Arab Spring graffiti. Attention is focused upon the relationships between Islamic visual idioms and localized religious, political and socioeconomic circumstances. In particular, lectures and readings examine the vital roles played by theology, royal patronage, gift exchange, trade and workshop practices in the formulation of visual traditions. Direct analysis of Islamic artworks at the Smith museum expand students’ command of critical visual analysis. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 233 Medieval Art on the Move: Pilgrimages and Crusades (4 Credits)

Focusing on buildings and representations created from the 11th through the 13th century, this course explores the intersection between artistic production and the movement, peaceful and bellicose, of people, ideas and objects during the Romanesque and early Gothic periods. Topics include monastic and royal patronage, the pilgrimage church and Crusader castle as specific building types, iconographic programs and their political agendas, and the transnational circulation of artifacts and cross-cultural visual encounters. Counts for ARU. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

ARH 234 The Age of Cathedrals (4 Credits)

Architectural, sculpted and pictorial arts from North of the Alps, c. 1150-1300. Rather than a survey, this course proposes a thematic approach to allow for an in-depth examination of key concerns of the Gothic era, such as the interface between visual creations and new forms of patronage and devotional attitudes, the rise in literacy and secular culture, the development of scientific rationality, or the sustained contact with the Islamic world. Counts for ARU.

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

ARH 242 Italian Art and Architecture, 1300-1575 (4 Credits)

A contextual study of architecture, painting, printmaking and sculpture, from the central Italian communes of the fourteenth century to villas of Andrea Palladio in the sixteenth. Major artists considered include Giotto, Donatello, Bramante, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Veronese and Vasari. Organizing themes include: materials and techniques; individual artists' training and careers; the relationship of the visual arts to religion, politics, Humanism and a renewed engagement with Roman antiquity. The course explores the overlapping and distinct concerns of the papacy (Rome), of republican governments (Florence, Siena, Venice) and of aristocratic rulers (Ferrara, Mantua, Milan, Naples, Rimini), among other patrons. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 247 Colloquium: The Art and History of the Book (4 Credits)

Will books as material objects disappear in the near future? Or will the book, a remarkably long-lived piece of communication technology, continue to flourish and develop alongside its electronic counterparts? This course surveys the artistry and history of books from the ancient world through medieval manuscripts, hand press books and machine press books, to the digital media of today. Students discover how books were made, read, circulated and used in different eras, and explore the role they have played over time in social, political, scientific and cultural change. The course involves extensive hands-on work with books and manuscripts from across the centuries and sustained engagement with current debates about book, print and media culture. Enrollment limited to12. Instructor permission required. {A}{H}

Spring

ARH 250 Building Baroque Europe (4 Credits)

European architectural, urban and landscape design from (precisely) 1537 to about 1750. Specific topics include Tuscany under the first three grand dukes; Rome in the 17th century; France under the first three Bourbon kings; the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire; the significant enlargement or establishment of capital cities (Turin, Amsterdam, Versailles, Stockholm, St. Petersburg, Dresden, Berlin, Vienna); the rise of the English country house; the English landscape garden; and palaces, pilgrimage churches and monastic complexes in Bavaria, Franconia and Austria. Focus throughout on the fundamental interdependence of architecture and society. Counts for ARU. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 253 The Arts in Britain, 1714–1820 (4 Credits)

Artistic production under the first three Hanoverian kings of Great Britain. Topics include royal patronage; urban developments (London, Bath, Edinburgh); the English landscape garden; the English country house and its fittings; collecting and display; the Grand Tour; aesthetic movements (Gothic Revival, the Sublime, the Picturesque, Neoclassicism); artists’ training and careers (among others, the brothers Adam, Gainsborough, Hawskmoor, Hogarth, Reynolds, Roubiliac and Wright of Derby); maps, prints and books; center vs. periphery; and city vs. country. Reading assignments culled from primary and secondary sources; including travel and epistolary literature. Counts for ARU. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 258 The Arts in Eighteenth-Century France (4 Credits)

A study of painting, sculpture, architecture, urban and landscape design, printmaking and the luxury arts in France, from the last years of Louis XIV's reign to the French Revolution. Recurring themes include artists' training and careers; academies, aesthetics and art theory; art criticism and the viewing public; collecting and display; patronage; and the relationship of art to politics, literature and science. France's pacesetting role in contemporary art is explored by looking beyond its borders to other courts--among them Bourbon Naples, some German-speaking principalities, Great Britain, Russia, Spain and Sweden--and to the French Atlantic world. Counts for ARU. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 278 Race and Gender in the History of Photography (4 Credits)

This course introduces the history of photography, emphasizing the ways photographs represent, mediate, construct and communicate histories of race, gender, sex, sexuality, intimacy and desire. The class studies a variety of photographic images, from the daguerreotype to digital media, from fine arts photography to vernacular images. Students consider objects that have forged connections among loved ones, substantiated memories or served as evidence, considering critical questions about photography’s relationship to identity, affect, knowledge production and power. The course focuses on race and gender, and also attends closely to photography’s relationship to identity broadly speaking, including class, ability and religion. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 281 Modern, Postmodern, Contemporary (4 Credits)

This course examines global artistic tendencies since 1945 in their art-historical and socio-historical contexts. The class considers such developments as American abstraction and the rise of New York, neo-dada, pop, minimalism, conceptual art, earthworks, the influence of feminism, postmodernism, the politics of identity, conceptions of the site and the institution, global publics and the global culture of art, and the theoretical issues and debates that help to frame these topics. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

ARH 283 Architecture Since 1945 (4 Credits)

This course presents a global survey of architecture and urbanism since 1945, from post-World War II reconstruction and planning, through critiques of modernism, to postmodernism, deconstruction, critical regionalism and beyond. Major buildings, projects, movements and tendencies are examined in their historical, theoretical and rhetorical contexts. Counts for ARU. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 285pm Topics: Great Cities-Pompeii (4 Credits)

A consideration of the ancient city: architecture, painting, sculpture and objects of everyday life. Women and freed people as patrons of the arts are emphasized. The impact of the rediscovery of Pompeii and its role as a source of inspiration in 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century art is discussed. No prerequisite. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 285rm Topics: Great Cities-Rome (4 Credits)

Urban and architectural history of the Eternal City, comprising seven famous hills whose summits and slopes (and the valleys in between) are a cradle of Western civilization. Extensive readings in primary sources and the analysis of works of art of all types will help us understand why Rome has constituted such an indispensable and inexhaustible point of emulative reference from the traditional date of its founding (21 April 753 BCE) to the fascist era and beyond. Considered as well is the relationship between city and country as expressed in the design of villas and gardens through the ages. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 286 History and Theory of Performance Art: Why Did the Performance Artist Cross the Road? (4 Credits)

This class addresses the history and theory of performance art since the 1960s, introducing artists whose work has shaped the field and the issues which have become important in the reception of performance art. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 288 Colloquium: Techniques in Digital Art History (1 Credit)

This course provides students with a robust set of skills for today’s art historian. With an emphasis on hands-on training using Imaging Center facilities, students complete multiple small projects in digital mapping, digital timelines and other data visualizations, scanning and photography of artworks, documenting artwork with international data standards, creating virtual galleries, 3D scanning and more. Short readings on the application of these methods in current art history scholarship is also assigned. Software includes Google MyMaps, Tableau, Timeline JS, Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, Artstor/JSTOR Forum, Wordpress, Unity and others. S/U only. Enrollment limited to 12. {A}{H}

Interterm

ARH 290ca Colloquium: Topics in Art History-Contemporary Art (4 Credits)

This class examines current issues in contemporary art, suggested by critical debates and significant exhibitions. The class is particularly interested in practices and debates that offer the following: analyses of the global condition of art; demonstrations of the influence of new technologies; reflections on institutional frameworks; excavations of earlier art-historical moments; and accounts of the shifting status of art, artists and audiences in the contemporary public sphere. Prerequisite: One 200-level art history course, or equivalent. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 290cg Colloquium: Cities, Gardens, Utopias: 1400-1900 (C) (4 Credits)

Characteristic forms and the ritual, social, political, economic and cultural significance of the built environment in Europe and the Americas. Capital cities (among them Amsterdam, Berlin, Florence, Karlsruhe, London, Madrid, Mannheim, Paris, Rome, St. Petersburg, Stockholm and Washington, D.C.); colonial cities (among them Boston, Cuzco and Philadelphia) communities founded by the religiously persecuted or the religiously inspired; garrison towns; industrial towns; urban infrastructure (streets, squares, provisioning of water and other utilities, public transportation, and public amenities); garden design in England, France and Italy; Utopian thought and planning; and city vs. country. Counts for ARU. Prerequisite: ARH 110 recommended. Enrollment limited to 20. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 290cv Colloquium: Topics in Art Historical Studies-Visual Culture and Colonization (4 Credits)

How does conquest by foreigners change the ways that images, civic spaces and objects are created and used? What kinds of hybrids does colonization produce? Is it possible to describe what is “colonial” about art or architecture? Focusing on recent scholarship, this course addresses these queries, highlighting the 16th–19th centuries. Among the topics we consider are interpretive work in the field of “colonial studies,” the mapping and construction of colonial spaces, exchanges that brought people and objects into contact (and conflict) with one another, how colonialism can shape the meaning of objects, and the nationalist histories of colonial projects. Enrollment limited to 20. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 290fs Colloquium: Topics in Art History-The Visual Culture of Freed Slaves in the Roman Empire (4 Credits)

Many ancient Roman houses and tombs belonged to freed slaves who had established themselves and their families in the world. Assessed through the lens of elite authors who disparaged freed people, these monuments have often been judged as lesser, imperfectly emulating lost aristocratic models. On the contrary, as a close reading of these houses and tombs themselves demonstrate, freedmen and freedwomen celebrated their transformation from being things to being persons of means by finding visual means to celebrate their industry, their wealth, their ambition and their identification with mythological figures who had once been enslaved. Enrollment limited to 20. {A}{H}

Spring, Alternate Years

ARH 290gi Colloquium: Topics in Art Historical Studies-Gothic in the Modern Imagination (4 Credits)

From College Hall to Hogwarts and Romantic ruins to video games, Gothic visual culture has provided a vast reservoir of materials for post-medieval cultural productions, both historicizing and deliberately anachronistic. Salient moments in the reception of medieval art and architecture are examined to understand how they have served differing cultural and political agendas from the 18th century onward. Topics include: Gothic Revival architecture; Troubadour and Pre-Raphaelite paintings; American Gothic; the Anarchist cathedral; the Middle Ages in film and fashion. Counts for ARU. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 290ib Colloquium: Topics in Art Historical Studies-Playing with Ink and Brush (4 Credits)

For more than a thousand years, ink has been maintained as the principal medium of painting and calligraphy in East Asia. This course surveys the continuities and ruptures of East Asian ink art seen through the formal, cultural and political factors. It also unravels the constant re-appropriation of the “archaic” medium. The course embraces art works in various media—paintings, calligraphy, books, woodblock prints, installation, performance and animation—that were created by premodern and modern artists. Sessions are organized both thematically and according to a rough, chronological sequence. Enrollment limited to 20. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 290ic Colloquium: Topics in Art History-Iconoclasm (4 Credits)

Why have individuals and groups been moved to destroy art? How has art been construed as both essential, bewitching and dangerous? This class considers representational imagery in ancient Greece and Rome, and in Judaic and Islamic traditions; the Byzantine iconoclastic controversy; 16th-century Northern European iconoclasm and the coincident wholesale destruction of indigenous American art; the Counter-Reformation validation of religious imagery; the French Revolution; and attacks on works of art in the modern world. Students consider censorship and philistinism generally, and when (or whether) campaigns of renovation and restoration can legitimately be called iconoclasm. Enrollment limited to 18. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 290lb Collloquium: Topics in Art History-The Presence of the Past: Libraries as a Building Type in the Ancient Mediterranean World (4 Credits)

This course looks at the famed third-century BCE library at Alexandria, Egypt, precedents like the library of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal at Nineveh (with epics and omen texts on clay tablets) and later extant examples like the Library of Celsus at Ephesus to discuss the development of the library as a public building type. The class also compares later innovations like Labrouste’s Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, Snøhetta’s award-winning 2002 Bibliotheca Alexandrina (on the site of the ancient library) and Maya Lin’s renovation of Neilson Library, analyzing how the buildings themselves make knowledge manifest. Counts for ARU. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 290ls Colloquium: Topics in Art Historical Studies-Age of Louis XIV (4 Credits)

An examination of the fundamental role of the visual arts in fashioning an extraordinary and indelible image of rulership during the reign (1643–1715) of Louis XIV. Ensembles and individual objects in many media—painting, sculpture, architecture, landscape design, prints, illustrated books, furniture, tapestries, numismatics, works commissioned or obtained in Rome, and literary production—are related to the centralized bureaucracy that came to define the French state. Time permitting, students may consider the impact of the palace of Versailles on other European courts. Enrollment limited to 20. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 290mc Colloquium: Topics in Art Historical Studies-Meditations in Caves (4 Credits)

The course is an introduction to Buddhist grottoes of East Asia. We will learn the historical trajectories of Buddhist grottoes, including the development of cave architecture, mural painting, and sculpture. It pays special attention to the site specificity of the visual imageries, and their transmissions, commissions, and functions. The case studies in this course range from the Kizil Caves and Mogao Caves in Northwestern China, to the Yungang Caves and Longmen Caves in the central plains, and the Seokguram Caves in the Korean Peninsula. We will also consider the collecting, preserving and displaying of Buddhist grottoes in the contemporary world. Enrollment limited to 20. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 290qt Colloquium: Topics in Art History-Queer and Trans Visual Culture (4 Credits)

As representations of queer and trans subjectivities has left the largely coded citations of the closet, they have come to rely on discursively complex and intersectional forms of representation that at once exceed, and rely on, queer cultures, communities, and even subjects. Queer and trans visual culture has long offered a way for queer subjects to both represent, and come to understand, who they are and how meaning is inscribed onto and through [their] bodies. This class leverages history and theory to explore a range of media from fine art to popular culture, and develop a queer lens with which to interrogate visual culture. This class maps the trajectory from the early twentieth century to our present moment, and ultimately seeks to describe what queer visual representation is—and perhaps is not—today. Prerequisite: ARH 110. Enrollment limited to 25. (E) {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 290ra Colloquium: Topics in Art History-Representing Animals (4 Credits)

This colloquium investigates the space between animal studies and art history. Examining case studies from the early modern period to the present, the class considers questions such as: What constitutes the animal, and how do images shape responses to this question? How and why have artists deployed animals as visual signs? How did the collection of animal specimens in the West both depend on and sustain networks of imperialism? Students' conversations will center around the meaningful role images and objects play in shaping understandings of the human, the animal, nature, identity and both human and animal culture. Prerequisite: ARH 110. Enrollment limited to 20. (E) {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 290ss Colloquium: Topics in Art Historical Studies-Swords and Scandals (4 Credits)

Since the beginning of cinema, the decadence of the ancient Romans has been a subject of fascination. Starting with HBO's Rome (2005-2007) and Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000), we'll explore the multiple sources of the visual tropes used to construct this universe and seek to analyze it in aesthetic, historical, and ideological terms. Their twentieth-century counterparts from films of the silent era to Hollywood epics like Spartacus (1960) and Cleopatra (1963) as well as cult classics like Caligula (1979) will be scrutinized in order to gain an understanding of how Romans function cinematically as cultural signs in varying historical contexts. Enrollment limited to 20. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 320 Art & Money: A Calderwood Seminar on Public Writing (4 Credits)

Art and money are inextricably intertwined. We’ll delve into the ramifications of this relationship in the ways art is valued in the contemporary art market and the consequences for museums, collectors, artists, and for the general public. Topics include artists’ self-fashioning for the market as well as the historical detective work it takes to reveal the practices which have fed this market of limited supply and infinite demand including looting and forgery. These are stories which need to be shared with an ever-wider audience especially in a time when the importance of art to humankind needs reevaluation. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 350 Seminar: The Arts in England, 1485-1714 (4 Credits)

Constitutional limits on monarchical power, the embrace of Protestantism, religious intolerance and fanaticism, revolution and regicide, and a much vaunted (when not exaggerated and misleading) insularity, set the stage in England for patterns of patronage and a relationship to the visual arts both similar to and significantly different from modes established in Continental absolutist courts. While critically examining the perennial notion of "the Englishness of English art," we shall study the careers of the painters, printmakers, sculptors, architects and landscape designers whose collective efforts made English art, at long last, one to be reckoned with. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 352ce Seminar: Topics in Art History-Imperial Matter: The Arts of China's Early Empires (4 Credits)

Why did the First Emperor of China build his grand mausoleum as a microcosm? What foreign motifs and luxury goods were brought to the Chinese proper and by whom? How did trade and war affect the making of the arts 2,000 years ago? These are some of the core questions embedded in this seminar, which investigates the power of things that made a difference in shaping the conditions of the Qin and the Han, Chinese first empires. Throughout the semester, students closely examine art objects and read leading scholars of early imperial Chinese art around the world. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required. Counts for ARU. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 352gr Seminar: Topics in Art History-The Grand Tour (4 Credits)

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European aristocrats and others undertook journeys abroad, sometimes several years in length, to develop and hone their appreciation of history, culture and the visual arts, with Italy as the privileged destination. While sojourning here and there, tourists sought works of art (printed images importantly among them) that recorded the buildings, paintings and sculptures they had encountered, and artists in Rome and elsewhere strove to turn this demand to account. This seminar explores this and numerous other facets of this striking and consequential form of multicultural education and precursor of modern mass tourism. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 352rp Seminar: Topics in Art History- Uncollecting: Repatriations, Reparations and the Ethics of Return (4 Credits)

This course studies the ethics of return, focusing on collections of belongings made under colonial conditions. Across the 2000s, hundreds of artifacts, artworks, ancestral creations and animal (including human) bodies have been repatriated. But what does it mean to “return” belongings taken—indeed, often stolen—in the colonial past? What, really, can repatriation accomplish? Is reparation a better option, and what might it entail? Drawing examples from a wide range of geographies, and highlighting recent—especially decolonial—scholarship, the course debates these issues. Open to students in any discipline. Pre-req: one class in the visual arts, archaeology, anthropology, museum studies or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 352vc Seminar: Topics in Art History-Visual Culture and Colonization (4 Credits)

How does conquest by foreigners change the ways that images, civic spaces and objects are created and used? How do different forms of colonialism shape the meaning of objects? What kinds of loss does colonization produce, what kinds of resilience? Focusing on recent scholarship, this seminar addresses these queries, highlighting the 16th–19th centuries. Among the topics we consider: the mapping and construction of colonial spaces, exchanges that brought people and objects into contact (and conflict), nationalist histories of colonial projects, and current debates about decolonization, repatriation and reparation. Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 374bc Seminar: Topics in 20th and 21st Century Art-Border Crossings in Contemporary Art (4 Credits)

Border crossing, voluntary or involuntary, has become an important theme in contemporary global art, framing the conditions of the exile and the “illegal alien,” the tourist and the refugee, the service worker and the sex slave. This seminar examines the work of a range of contemporary artists examining border crossings of various kinds, focusing especially on the models and experiences of globalization that emerge through their practices. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required. {A}{H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

ARH 390 Seminar: Art History Capstone (4 Credits)

The capstone provides students with an opportunity to reflect on their path through the major, to develop projects that grow out of and synthesize their previous coursework. It enables students to have an overview of things achieved and to showcase their competence in an area of focus in planning for their futures. The class is designed to support the challenge of conceptualizing and developing individual projects: weekly class meetings will provide scaffolding for student progress. In the collaborative workshop space of the class, students share their projects in stages, which are discussed and edited by their peers. Prerequisites: ARH 110, ARH 190 and at least two 200-leve ARH courses. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required. {A}{H}

Spring

ARH 400 Special Studies (2-4 Credits)

Fall, Spring

ARH 430D Honors Project (4 Credits)

Fall, Spring, Annually