Major area: Modernities and Modernisms 
This seminar addresses postwar Italian art in context, examining major artistic issues of the period with an eye to cultural and sociopolitical shifts in the decades after World War II, concluding with the end of the tumultuous “years of lead” in the 1980s. Topics include fraught legacies of Fascism and earlier twentieth-century Italian artistic movements, debates surrounding realism and abstraction, pittura materica and the Informale, the Italian “neo-avant-garde,” reconceptualizations of artistic work and Italy’s labor movement, Italian Pop, Arte Povera, radical architecture and design, and the Transavanguardia. Close analysis of primary texts and secondary literature will support discussion of historiographic trends and identification of areas for new research.

Major area: Modernities and Modernisms
This course explores the emergence of curatorial practices during the late modern era. We will examine the major debates that have helped shape this discourse at several key moments throughout its history and focus on several exemplary case studies in its development. The course begins with the rise of curating in the eighteenth century alongside the establishment of public museums. Among other topics, we will address eighteenth-century debates concerning the preservation of national heritage and the despoliation of antiquity, the appearance of the house-museum and the style room in the nineteenth century, the advent of competing curatorial narratives on modern art and the reconceptualization of exhibition design during the interwar period, postwar institutional critiques leveled at the art museum by contemporary artists, and the inception of artist- and activist-curators.  Our goal will be to make sense of the major critical and conceptual currents that drive discourse on curating today as well as those that undergird its historical formation.

Major area: The Post-Ancient and Medieval World
This course focuses on Rome during the early medieval period (2nd-8th centuries). Particular focus will be given to the slow cultural shift from pagan religions to Christianity, and the ways in which this is reflected or denied in art. How is Roman identity given visual expression? Readings and discussions will explore such issues of identity, including the continuation of pre-Christian motifs and their subsequent adoption and adaptation to serve the new religion. 

Major area: Modernities and Modernisms
This interdisciplinary seminar deals with artists and the construction of identity in art during the period 1400-1800, that is, during the Renaissance, the Baroque, and the Rococo. We will look at painters both celebrated and obscure, such as Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, focusing on the function of their work in the context of their respective historical times. In addition, the course will address the issue of patronage in the realm of painting, sculpture, architecture, and collecting. Students will report on selected critical readings, present a PowerPoint focusing on a major artist, and write a research paper. The format of the class is informal discussion. Our work is collaborative, in the sense that we will share our knowledge and experience. For each class period you must come ready to stimulate discussion and prepared to participate. A major goal of this class is to develop a research agenda: students will learn to build their research program through a series of cumulative assignments that incorporate class discussion and feedback. Papers will focus narrowly and in depth on something visual, like an image. There are, however, six broad areas of discourse to keep in mind in developing a paper: artists; patrons; sources of power; the Church; the life cycle, including childhood, marriage, and parenthood; costume and beauty.

Major areas: Modernities and Modernisms, Visual Cultures of the Americas (VCA)
This seminar investigates the manifold relationships between architecture and ecology. The latter will be considered first and foremost as human-environmental relations (i.e. “natural” ecological systems). However, we will also explore how the idea of ecology has been extended to include social, cultural, and political systems. Those evolving entanglements between the built environment and ecological systems will be our key emphasis. The seminar’s geographical focus will encompass the architectures of the Americas, Southeast Asia, Europe, and Africa.

Major area: Modernities and Modernisms
It is a historiographical commonplace that a “revival” of the ancient world (of Greek and Roman antiquity) was at the core of what we now call the Italian Renaissance. But what was antiquity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? What perception and knowledge did Italian Renaissance artists have of antiquity? And what was the role of literary sources in conveying or specifying the notion of ancient art? These are some of the questions that this course intends to answer. 

Major area: Visual Cultures of the Americas (VCA)
This seminar explores the dynamic role of space, place, and landscape in art history and archaeology, emphasizing their influence on aesthetic experiences and the production of human subjectivities. Students will analyze the spatial contexts of visual and material culture through a multidisciplinary lens, including readings from art history, anthropology, and geography. The seminar is designed to equip graduate students with the theoretical toolkit necessary to apply these perspectives to their own research.

Required for ALL first-year graduate students if not previously taken at FSU. 
This seminar introduces incoming graduate students to the analysis of art, architecture, and material culture as a historical and critical discipline. Weekly readings showcase theories and methods in action, as well as some of the developments and ongoing debates in the history of art. Students consider their place within (or in opposition to) existing traditions while developing their skills in careful looking, critical reading, and persuasive writing.

Required for all first-year MCHS students.  The Museum Basics Seminar examines traditions, transformations, and the current state of museums, concerns and theories of museum studies, practical matters in the professional museum field, and prognoses for the future of museums. Students will learn through scholarly and professional literature, interaction with museum theorists and practitioners, on-site observation, and analysis in museums or on museum websites, discussion, and research.

Required for all first-year MCHS students. Cultural Heritage Studies explores the relationship between the interpretation, construction, and valuation of the past and the contemporary communities and stakeholders who remain connected to this heritage. This seminar provides a graduate-level introduction to the debates, theories and case studies of tangible and intangible cultural heritage including topics such as tourism, heritage management, public history, repatriation, the impact of development and global conflict, curatorial practice and museums, international law, and ethics. We will examine theories and methods in cultural heritage work from local and international perspectives with an emphasis on global case studies and visits to local heritage sites in Tallahassee. We will learn about material forms of cultural heritage interpretation, preservation and exhibition while also exploring the capacity of digital technology to preserve and circulate cultural heritage in new ways.

This professional development seminar is offered to doctoral students engaged in dissertation research and other professional activities. The goal of the seminar is to help equip students with the competencies necessary to meet their long-term professional goals in teaching, research dissemination, service, and employment.