UPCOMING Graduate Courses – Fall 2024
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ARH 5806-01 Harlem Renaissance Art Dr. Karen Bearor Tuesday 1:20–3:50 pm, WJB 2038 Modernities and Modernisms, Visual Cultures of the Americas. The focus for this seminar is the visual culture of the Harlem Renaissance, primarily painting, sculpture, photography, graphic art, and film. While most of the scholarship on the Harlem Renaissance has focused on literature and music, recent decades have seen a rising interest in the visual arts created during this period. Scholarship has been moving toward understanding the global interactions of people migrating to New York not only from the Southern U.S. but also from around the Atlantic. This has caused many to prefer the term New Negro Renaissance in preference to looking at Harlem as the sole source of the energy associated with the movement beginning just prior to World War I and lasting until the mid-1930s. We will explore the literature on this movement and the ways in which this scholarship has been shaped in recent years by cultural studies, Black studies, gender studies, and diaspora studies. |
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ARH 5806–02 Contemporary Art and Theory after 1980 Dr. Tenley Bick Tuesday 9:45 am–12:15 pm, WJB 2038 The discourse on contemporary art and theory since 1980 has long been concerned with the effects of globalization on creative practice and subjectivity. Increasingly, the term “global contemporary art” has been used as a catchall for art of the present in a global context. Meant to include art from around the world and art engaged with global circulation, thinking, and subject positions, the term emerged in acknowledgment of the distinctive connectedness (and rootlessness) of the world in the post-Cold War digital age and artists’ responses to it. The complicated term and subfield of art historical study tends, however, to present contemporary art as a universalist field of global, formal artistic currents that bridge historical constructions of “West” and “non-West.” In so doing, it risks inattention to local histories and varied experiences, as well as world divisions and power struggles that persist or arose anew after the 1980s. Examining these tensions, this graduate seminar investigates global contemporary art, and the broader discourse on contemporary art and theory after 1980, as a rich field of art historical study and exciting area of methodological debate. |
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ARH 5806–03 Photography since 1960 Dr. Adam Jolles Wednesdays 12:00-2:30 pm, WJB 2038 This course concerns the development of art photography after 1960. Topics to be considered include the New Topographics, the New Document, the Boston and Dusseldorf schools, conceptual photography, the emergence of postmodernism, identity politics, and more recent trends. Our goal will be to assess the significant literature on recent photographic practices, and to investigate as well those areas that appear most promising for further critical inquiry.
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ARH 5806–06 Spanish Golden Age Dr. Lorenzo Pericolo Thursdays 4:50 – 7:20 pm, WJB G041. Modernities and Modernisms. This course will explore the rich production of painting and sculpture in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain. The work of canonical painters such as El Greco, Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, will be the object of study. The course will discuss the importance and complexity of certain artistic genres: still-life (bodegón), court portrait, and polychrome devotional sculpture. Emphasis will also lie on the representation of outcasts and children. The course will also focus on the court of the Spanish King Philip IV (r. 1621–1665). |
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ARH 5806–07 Walt Disney’s America Dr. Robert Neuman Fridays 12:00-2:30 pm in WJB 2038 Modernities and Modernisms, Visual Cultures of the Americas. Walt Disney (1901-1966) was arguably one of the most influential men of modern times. The company that he founded in 1923 is today the world’s largest entertainment conglomerate. Our childhoods are permeated with Disney characters and stories, and our leisure activities as adults take place in themed environments. This course asks the question: Who was Disney the man, and how did he create an empire that continues to profoundly affect us today? To find answers, we will develop methods for examining critically the two principal media in which Disney pioneered: the animated film and the theme park. |
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ARH 5806–08 Global Indigenous Cinema Dr. Kristin Dowell Wednesdays 9:20-11:50 am WJB 2038 Visual Cultures of the Americas, World Arts (Non-Western Art). What does visual sovereignty look like on-screen? Exploring the dynamic field of global Indigenous cinema from Australia, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Sápmi, Pacific Islands, and the Americas, we examine the innovative ways in which filmmakers reclaim the screen to articulate Indigenous stories through feature, experimental and short films. Students learn film curatorial practice, and the course will culminate in a student-curated film screening. |
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ARH 5806–09 Archaeology of the African Diaspora Dr. Brendan Weaver Fridays 9:20-11:50 am WJB 2038 Modernities and Modernisms, Visual Cultures of the Americas, World Arts (Non-Western Art). The emergence of an African diaspora, largely due to the transatlantic slave trade at the beginning of the 16th century, was essential to the project of global modernity. Recent estimates from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database suggest that more than 12 million enslaved African survivors of the transatlantic journey of the Middle Passage were sold in markets across the Americas, the Atlantic islands, and Europe. This graduate seminar explores the material and visual culture of Africans and their descendants in the Americas and, more broadly, in the Atlantic World, critically evaluating the archaeology of slavery and freedom among the African diaspora. Readings and discussion in this course will explore the cultural and experiential diversity of the African diaspora, thinking through themes of labor, marronage, emancipation and manumission, diasporic religion, invisibility, heritage, and community, through their material and visual correlates. |
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ARH 6292–01 Seminar in Medieval Art: Byzantium and Africa Dr. Lynn Jones Thursdays 1:20-3:50 pm WJB 2038 The Post-Ancient and Medieval World, World Arts (Non-Western Art). This course is a companion to the exhibition “Africa and Byzantium” at the Metropolitan Museum of art. Students will work from the catalog and associated texts, examining the nature of center(s) and periphery; the effects of local religions and beliefs on art; and the ways in which art produced in the sphere of Byzantine influence negotiates these practices and traditions with Byzantine art. The course covers the art of medieval Ethiopia, Egypt, and Nubia, in addition to that of Byzantium. Students will have the opportunity to work with medieval objects on loan from Kenyon College. |
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ARH 6292–02 Seminar in Medieval Art: Medieval Art and Ecocriticism Dr. Erika Loic Mondays 3:05-5:35 pm WJB 2038 The Post-Ancient and Medieval World. Ecocriticsm entails interdisciplinary research into humans’ literal and metaphorical treatments of their natural surroundings. In the context of the Middle Ages, ecocritical art history examines, but is not limited to, representations of landscapes and the wilderness, personifications of the elements, symbolic uses of natural materials in art and architecture, and allegorical interpretations of non-human creatures. In addition, this seminar considers some of the licit and illicit practices that emerged across Afro-Eurasia in response to perceived interrelationships between the natural and the supernatural. |
Recurring Foundation Courses
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ARH 5797–01 Museum Basics Dr. Susan Baldino Wednesday 12:00–2:30 pm, WJB G41 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. |
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ARH 5813–01 Art History Methods Dr. Stephanie Leitch Thursday 9:45 am–12:15 pm WJB 2038 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. |
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ARH 5838 Museum Object Dr. Jay Boda Time TBD; Ringling Campus ONLY (required) for second-year MCHS students at the Ringling. This course covers the philosophy and practice of acquiring the museum object; the processing of the object in an institutional setting; research methods and interpretation; philosophy in methods of presenting the object and its interpretation through exhibition and display; and various forms of publications and dissemination. |
Interested in courses outside of the Department of Art History/College of Fine Arts?
(Only available to students after demonstration of successful academic progress in their first semester in the program.)
Students may request to take courses outside of those offered by the Department of Art History. Permission from the Director of Graduate Studies or Director of MCHS, as appropriate, will be required in order to ensure that the course will be credited toward your degree. Master’s students are allowed to take a maximum of one course from outside of the Department of Art History.
Students on a graduate assistantship must request Dean’s permission to use tuition waivers to cover a course outside of the college. Permission from the College of Fine Arts is not guaranteed. The college is much more likely to allow waivers to cover a course within the college, for example, in Art Education.
Contact Emily Johnson to discuss your request and initiate the approval process.