Art History Courses

The 200-level courses in the history of art and architecture designed to give an introduction to the subject matter of broad areas and to the history of art and architecture as a humanistic study. There are no prerequisites; each course is independent of the others and may be taken singly or in any order.  Coursework at the 200 level is a recommended prerequisite for 30-level courses.

.Upcoming courses | Asian | Tribal and Native American | Western Art - Ancient | Early Christian, Byzantine & Medieval | Renaissance | Baroque | Modern & Contemporary

 201 - SURVEY OF WESTERN ART - ANCIENT (5 credits) Major achievements in painting. sculpture, architecture, and the decorative arts in Europe, the Near East, and North Africa, from pre-historic times to the beginning of Christianity.

202 - SURVEY OF WESTERN ART - MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE (5 credits) The arts of the Byzantine Empire, Islam and Western Christendom through 1520 A.D.

203 - SURVEY OF WESTERN ART - MODERN (5 credits) Western art from 1520 to the present.

204 - SURVEY OF ASIAN ART (5 credits) Origins and interplay of the major movements of South and East Asian Art.

205 - SURVEY OF TRIBAL ART (5 credits) Arts of Sub-Saharan Africa from prehistoric times to the present, and the pre-Columbian arts of the Americas.

206 - SURVEY OF NATIVE NORTH-AMERICAN ART (5 credits) Introduction to Native American art north of Mexico, prehistory through the twentieth century. Regional examination of types and styles, with emphasis on aesthetics, cultural function, and factors of change.

230 - THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN TRADITION: A TRANSATLANTIC VIEW OF ART AND CULTURE (5 credits) History of African-American art from colonial times until the present, the African background and its extensions into the West Indies, Brazil, and Surinam.

232 - PHOTOGRAPHY: THEORY AND CRITICISM (5 credits) Art traditions of photography from its origins in the 19th century to the present. Emphasis on photographic traditions and photographers of the twentieth century.

250 - ROME (5 credits) Focuses on Rome as an historical, intellectual, and artistic world center.  Literary and historic documents, visual arts, architecture, film, and opera used to explore the changing paradigms of the Eternal City.  In English. 

290 - HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE (5 credits) Introduction to the study of architectural history in a variety of cultural contexts.

306 - INDIAN ART OF SOUTH ASIA (5 credits) Development of Indian art from its origins to the medieval period. Spread of Indian religions and related art forms in Tibet and SE Asian also briefly introduced.

311 - CHINESE PAINTING (5 credits) An introduction to the role of painting in Chinese cultural history, with attention to regional geography, social structure, gender, traditional philosophies, twentieth-century socialism, and the patterns of Chinese history.

312 - CHINESE ART AND VISUAL CULTURE (5 credits) Introduction to Chinese art and visual culture from the ancient period to the present day.  Examines the visual traits of important monuments of architecture, calligraphy, film, furniture, ceramics, bronze, painting, and sculpture.  Emphasizes how different artistic styles are tied to different historical, social, and cultural contexts.

313 - EAST ASIAN ART: ARTS IN CHINA, JAPAN, AND KOREA (5 credits) East Asian art and visual culture introduced through examples of art in China, Japan, and Korea from ancient times to present day.  Emphasizes how artistic styles were tied to different social and cultural contexts, and how arts were transformed and exchanged within the larger cultural geographical circle of East Asia.

315 - BUDDHIST ART AND MATERIAL CULTURE OF EAST ASIA (5 credits) Buddhist painting and sculpture of China, Korea, and Japan.  Explores religious meaning, artistic development, and historical significance.  Examples from the sixth to the seventeenth centuries, along with paintings and contemporary carvings.

317 - CHADO: JAPANESE ESTHETICS (4 credits) History, theory and practice of chado, or the Way of Tea; a Zen-inspired art that has had notable effects on Japanese society. Lectures on aesthetics and cultural history supplemented by participation in chado, with the goal of developing sufficient understanding and skill to continue chado as a discipline.

318 - JAPANESE PRINTS 1600-PRESENT (5 credits) Introduction to Japanese printmaking practices, style, and themes.  Examines concerns related to gender, issues of representation, explicit sexual imagery, cultural and artistic practice, and the function of prints.

321 - ARTS OF JAPAN (5 credits) The spectrum of Japanese art from prehistory to modern times. Examines the interrelationship of the major media for each historical period. Central theme: appreciation of the varied aesthetics active in the development of Japanese painting, architecture, sculpture, and ceramics.

411 - CHINESE PAINTING EXPERIENCES< 900-1800 (3 credits) Examines issues of style, theme, and function in Chinese painting from the tenth to the nineteenth century.  Discusses painting practice, patronage, regional diversity, the relationship of word and image, amateurism vs. professionalism, and the introduction of foreign elements.

414 - SONG CHINA: PAINTING PRODUCTION AND CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS (5 credits) Examines diverse regional development of painitng production and cultural exchange by Song China (960-1279) and its neighbors, Japan, Korea, Khitan/Liao, Jurchen/Jin, Tangut/Xi Xia.  Focuses on well-known masterpieces, newly excavated material from tombs and archaeological sites, and little-studied anonymous works preserved in Japan.

419 - JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE (3 credits) A survey of Japanese architecture from its origins to modern times. Although Shinto architecture, tea houses, gardens and modern developments are discussed, the primary focus is on the development of Japanese Buddhist architecture.

420 - ART OF THE JAPANESE PRINT (3 credits) Foundations of the Ukiyo-e in Japanese genre from the twelfth through the mid-seventeenth centuries; woodblock technique from the Heian period through the early Edo period.  Emphasis on the changing styles and subject matter in the Ukiyo-e Hanga from Moronobu through Kuniyoshi.

430 - CHINESE CINEMA (5 credits) Chinese film, 1930s to the present, studied as a visual art form, set in relation to traditional and modern Chinese arts and literature, modern history, gender, and other social issues.

511 - SEMINAR IN CHINESE ART (5, maximum 15 credits) Critical appraisal of the principal research methods, theories, and types of literature dealing with the art of China.

515 - SEMINAR IN JAPANESE ART (5, maximum 15 credits) Critical appraisal of the principal research methods, theories, and types of literature dealing with the art of Japan.

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340 - PRE-CLASSICAL ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY (3 credits) Art and other material remains of the civilizations in the Aegean from the Neolithic to the end of the Bronze Age, with special emphasis on Minoan Crete and the Mycenaean kingdoms of mainland Greece. The history, techniques and results of significant excavations.

341 - GREEK ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY (3 credits) Material remains and developing styles in sculpture, vase painting, architecture, and the minor arts from the Geometric to the Hellensitic periods. Principal sites and monuments, as well as techniques and methods of excavation, are examined in an attempt to reconstruct the material culture of antiquity.

342 - ROMAN ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY (3 credits) Roman architecture and art, with emphasis on the innovations of the Romans.

343 - HELLENISTIC ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY (3 credits) Art of Greece and the eastern Mediterranean from the time of Alexander the Great to the Roman conquest. Principal sites and their sculpture, painting, mosaics, and minor arts are examined.

397 - ART IN ROME: AUGUSTUS TO MUSSOLINI (10 credits) Survey of art in Rome; studies from original monuments. Offered in Italy as part of the Art History Seminar in Rome.  Focuses on representative works from the most important periods of Italian art: Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Modern.  Site visits, field trips, individual research projects.

442 - GREEK PAINTING (3 credits) Study pf painted decoration on Greek vases, with emphasis on stylistic developments and cultural and historical influences.  Painting on other media also examined as evidence allows.

443 - ROMAN PAINTING (3 credits) Study of surviving painting from the Roman World, with emphasis on wall paintings from Pompeii and Herculaneum.  Principal topics for discussion: the four styles of Pompeian painting, the dependence of Roman painters on Greek prototypes, and the significance of various kinds of painting as domestic decoration.

444 - GREEK AND ROMAN SCULPTURE (3 credits) History and development of Greek sculpture and sculptors, their Roman copyists, and Roman portraits and sacrophagi. Emphasis on Greek sculpture of the 5th century BC.

446 - GREEK ARCHITECTURE (3 credits) Detailed study of Greek architecture from its beginnings, with special emphasis on the Periclean building program in 5th century Athens.

447 - THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF EARLY ITALY (3 credits) Study of the principal archaeological sites of early Italy, including Etruria, Sicily, southern Italy, and archaic Rome up to the Republican period.  Attention given to the material remains and their relationship to the Etruscan, ancient Sicilian, and early Roman civilizations.

448 - ARCHAEOLOGY OF ITALY (3 credits) Study of the principal archaelogical sites in Italy, with special emphasis on ancient Rome. Sites will include the Alban hills, Ostia, Pompeii, Herculaneum. Tarquinia, Paestum, Tivoli, and Praeneste. Attention will be given to the relationship between material remains and their purpose in ancient life.

497 - SPECIAL TOPICS IN ART IN ROME (5, max. 10 credits) Topics in art and architecture in Rome and environs, studied from original works.  Offered in Italy as part of the Art History Seminar in Rome.  Topics vary.  Site visits, field trips, and individual research projects.

541 - SEMINAR IN GREEK AND ROMAN ART (5, maximum 15 credits) In-depth study of selected topics and problems of the art of ancient Greece and Rome.

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350 - THE CITY OF CAIRO (3 credits) Development of Fustat and Cairo, 600-1800, with special emphasis on art and architecture.  Economic, social, and geographic influences on the creation of the distinctive Egyptian styles of Islamic art.

351 - EARLY MEDIEVAL AND BYZANTINE ART (5 credits) Christian art and architecture of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and of Western Europe through the 8th century.

352 - HIGH AND LATE MEDIEVAL ART (5 credits) Art and architecture of Western Chistendom from the time of Charlemagne to the Renaissance.

451 - TOPICS IN EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE ART AND ARCHITECTURE (3, maximum 9 credits) Specific theme or area of Early Christian and Byzantine art and architecture, such as Early Christian and Byzantine mosaics, or the art of Constantinople.

452 - ART, RELIGION AND POLITICS IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN PERIOD, 300-700 AD (3 credits) Evolution of the art of the Early Christian period in the context of contemporary religious, political and cultural developments.

453 - ART, RELIGION AND POLITICS IN BYZANTIUM, 700-1453 AD (3 credits) Evolution of the art of Byzantium in the context of contemporary religious, political and cultural developments.

455 - SPECIAL STUDIES IN GOTHIC ART AND ARCHITECTURE (3 credits) Detailed study of Gothic architecture and its accompanying sculpture and stained glass, with special emphasis on the 12th and 13th centuries in France and England.

551 - SEMINAR IN EARLY CHRISTIAN, BYZANTINE AND/OR MEDIEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE (5, maximum 15 credits) Problems in Early Christian, Byzantine, and Medieval art and architecture.

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361 - ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ART (5 credits) Sculpture, painting, and architecture from 1300 to 1600.

366 - NORTHERN RENAISSANCE ART (5 credits) An overview of Netherlandish, French, and German art in the context of cultural developments circa 1400-1570.

372 - ROCOCO TO ROMANTICISM (5 credits) Mainstream of European art and architecture from about 1710 to about 1830.  Attention is also given to central and eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and the colonial Americas.

374 - NORTHERN BAROQUE ART (3 credits) Art of France, England, and the Low Countries, circa 1590 to circa 1710.

457 - FLEMISH ART 1585-1700 (3 credits) History of art in the southern Netherlands during the so-called Counter-Reformatino period.  Discusses works by Antwerp's major painters (Rubens, van Dyck, Jordaens); new specializations in the variuos genres (portraiture, genre, landscape, and still-life painting); and developments of northern Baroque sculpture, architecture, and the decorative arts.

458 - THE IMAGERY OF HEAVEN, HELL, AND PURGATORY (1300-1800) (3 credits) Interdisciplinary approach to the aspects of devotional and visionary art that links art history with religious studies, literary history, and gender studies.  Focuses on the media and pictorial genres created for different social groups of worshippers and viewers, from humble devotional objects to sophisticated artifacts of aesthetic and intellectual delight.

460 - TOPICS IN NORTHERN EUROPEAN ART (3-5, max. 9 credits) Approaches to the art of northern Europe through particular themes, genres, contexts, or other issues.  Focus varies.

461 - EARLY RENAISSANCE PAINTING IN ITALY (3 credits) Painting of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in central and northern Italy.

462 - HIGH RENAISSANCE PAINTING IN ITALY (3 credits) Painting in central and northern Italy, from about 1480 to about 1530: Leonardo, Raphael, the early Michelangelo, Sarto, Correggio, Bellini, Giorgione, and the early Titian.

463 - ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE (3 credits) From Nicola Pisano to Giambologna.

466 - HIGH RENAISSANCE PAINTING IN VENICE (3 credits) Painting in Venice, circa 1480 to circa 1580: Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Lotto, del Piombo, Tintoretto, and Veronese.

561 - SEMINAR IN ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ART (5, max. 15 credits) Problems and in-depth study of selected topics of the art of the Italian Renaissance.

566 - SEMINAR IN NORTH EUROPEAN ART (5, max. 15 credits) Deals with problems of style and iconography of the northern European masters of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries.

577 - SEMINAR IN BAROQUE ART (5, max. 15 credits) Iconographic and stylistic problems of the art of the Baroque period, with emphasis on the principal research methods, theories, and types of literature dealing with the art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe.

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380 - NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURY ART (5 credits) Arts and architecture of Europe and America from Romanticism to the present, with emphasis on stylistic and thematic changes in painting.

381 - ART SINCE WORLD WAR II (5 credits) Art of Europe and the United States in the decades since World War II: painting, sculpture, and architecture. multiplication of new forms (video, performance, land and installation pieces, etc.), changing context of patronage, publicity, and marketing.

382 - THEORY AND PRACTICE OF ART CRITICISM (3 credits) Major issues in art and architectural criticism; the nature of art criticism, the aims of the critic, differences between art and architectural criticism. Works by major critics and artists, mostly twentieth century.

384 - AMERICAN ART (5 credits) Major achievements in painting, sculpture, printmaking, the decorative arts, architecture, urban design and folk art in the United States from about 1600 to present.

397 - ART IN ROME: AUGUSTUS TO MUSSOLINI (10 credits) Survey of art in Rome; studies from original monuments. Offered in Italy as part of the Art History Seminar in Rome.  Focuses on representative works from the most important periods of Italian art: Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Modern.  Site visits, field trips, individual research projects.

476 - FRENCH ART - 18TH CENTURY (3 credits) Painting, sculpture, and prints: emphasis on the successive phases of Rococo style and iconography and the emergence of Neoclassicism.

481 - ROMANTICISM (3 credits) Romantic tendencies of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with emphasis on stylistic and iconographic study of painting in Spain, England, Germany, France and the United States to about 1830.

482 - REALISM AND IMPRESSIONISM (3 credits) Art and the world, 1830 - 1880. High Romanticism through Realism and Impressionism, with emphasis on painting in France.

483 - POST-IMPRESSIONISM (3 credits) Post-Impressionism and the great revolution of early 20th-century art, with emphasis on painting. From the first revisions of Impressionism around 1880 to Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, the Blaue Reiter and Dadaism.

484 - TOPICS IN MODERN ART (3, max. 9 credits) Approach to art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries though particular themes, genres, contexts, or other issues.  Focus varies.

485 - ITALIAN FUTURISM, DADA, SURREALISM (5 credits) Survey of three European early modern art movements whose ultimate objective was the collapse of bourgeois culture. Central issues: the role of art and artists in catalyzing social change, strategies for destroying the public faith in logic, integration of verbal and visual signs, and non-aesthetic conceptions of art.

486 - ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM: HISTORY AND MYTH (3 credits) Thematic and chronological survey of Abstract Expressionsim, including major genres of critical interpretation, revisionist scholarship, and the relationship of artistic production to a larger context of visual production.

488 - AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE (3 credits) American architecture from indigenous native American traditions to the present.

490 - NINETEENTH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE (3 credits) From late eighteenth-century French rationalists, Neoclassicists, and the Visionary architects, to fin de siecle Vienna and Paris. Includes theorists such as Ruskin, Viollet-le-Duc, and Semper; major movements, such as the Arts and Crafts, and the French Ecole des Beaux-Arts method of design.

491 - TWENTIETH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE (3 credits) Architecture in the twentieth century, mainly in Europe and the United States. Traces the roots of Modernism in Europe in the 1920s, its demise (largely in the United States) in the 1960s and recent trends such as Post-Modernism and Deconstructivism.

492 - ALTERNATIVE ART FORMS SINCE 1960 (3 credits) Survey of "post-studio" art forms developed in the 1960s by artists who did not equate artmaking with painting, sculpture, or other traditional forms.  Topics include: happenings, Fluxus, land projects, artists' video, artists, books, performance, site works, and art made for distribution on CD-ROM and on the World Wide Web.

493 - ARCHITECTURE SINCE 1945 (3 credits) Theories and forms in architecture from the end of World War II to present.  Includes new wave Japanese architects, recent Native-American developments, and non-Western as well as Western trends.

494 - PARIS: ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (3 credits) Spans the architectural history of Paris, from its Gallic, pre-Roman origins in the second century BCE through the work of twenty-first century architects.  Focuses on changing patterns of the physical fabric of the city and its buildings, as seen within the context of the broader political, social, economic, and cultural history.

495 - ITALIAN FASCISM (3 credits) Fascism in Italy as studied within the broader European context of nationalism, imperialism, and modernization, with particular emphasis on the arts -- literature, film, architecture, and urbanism.

581 - SEMINAR IN MODERN ART (5, max. 15 credits) Art-historical problems of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

590 - SEMINAR IN CRITICISM OF CONTEMPORARY ART (5, max. 15 credits) Contemporary art and appropriate critical methodology.

591 - SEMINAR IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE (3 or 5 credits) Specific focus changes from quarter to quarter.

592 - SEMINAR IN AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE (5 credits) Topics vary.

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330 - TRIBAL ART AND PHILOSOPHY (5 credits) Philosophical inquiry and thought in African, Amer-Indian, and Pacific Island societies as expressed through the visual, musical, choreographic, and oral arts. Natural, moral, and ethical ideas as expressed in the arts.

331 - NATIVE ART OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST COAST (5 credits) Survey of the indigenous arts of the Pacific Northwest Coast from the Columbia River in the south to Southeast Alaska in the north.  Overview of ancient through contemporary times, focusing on the historical and cultural contexts of the arts and the stylistic differences between tribal and individual artists' styles.

337 - AFRICAN ART AND SOCIETY (5 credits) Explores the ideas and notions expressed visually in sculpture, painting, ceramics, textiles and architecture, and describes their relationships to man and culture in Africa.

432 - OCEANIC ART (3 credits) Arts of Oceania, studied through cultures of Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Australia.

433 - NORTHERN NORTHWEST COAST NATIVE AMERICAN ART: METHODOLOGIES IN STYLISTIC ANALYSIS (3 credits) Stylistic and historical analysis of northern Northwest Coast art (Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Northern Wakashan). Intensive analysis of formline rules; stylistic variation through time and between tribal and individual artists' styles.

434 - NATIVE AMERICAN ART AND CEREMONY OF THE SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL NORTHWEST COAST (3 credits) Examination of the role of the visual arts in the ceremonial life of the Native American people of the central and southern Northwest Coast. Emphasis on traditional social and religious aspects of ceremonialism, contrasts between tribal traditions, and continuing twentieth-century traditions.

435 - THEMATIC STUDIES IN NATIVE AMERICAN ART (3, maximum 9 credits) Approach to Native American art through themes and issues. Focus varies from year to year (e.g., shamanism in Native American art, gender identity in Native American art, social and political aspects of Native American art, issues in contemporary Native American art).

436 - ARTS OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA I (3 credits) Traditional arts of the Western Sudan and the Western Guinea Coast with their archaeological antecedents.

437 - ARTS OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA II (3 credits) Traditional arts of the Central Guinea Coast, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Gabon, from precontact times to the present.

438 - ARTS OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA III (3 credits) Arts of Zaire, Angola, the Swahili Coast, and southern Africa.

ART 531- SEMINAR IN TRIBAL ART (5, maximum 15 credits) Methodological and cross-disciplinary problems in the visual arts of pre-colonial Africa, Oceania, and America. Specific content varies.

533 - SEMINAR IN NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN ART (5, maximum 15 credits) Problems in North American Indian visual arts. Content varies.

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