This course provides an introduction to painting, sculpture, and printmaking in early modern northern Europe. We will practice key skill sets critical for success in upper-level courses, including text analysis, formal analysis, and the basics of art historical argumentation through writing assignments.

This course surveys the history of photography from its invention in the 1830s up to the present. It addresses the historical development of the medium both topically and chronologically, focusing on photography’s global reach and its diverse array of social functions. Topics include historical debates about photography’s status as art; commercial and scientific applications; advertising and fashion photography; photojournalism and propaganda; the rise of amateur photography; and contemporary trends and practices. Prior experience in photography is not required.

World Arts
This course introduces key issues, concepts, and practices in the field of cultural heritage studies, including such topics as tangible and intangible cultural heritage, authenticity and identity, the impact of development and conflict, and the role of policy, public opinion, ethics, and tourism in the protection and interpretation of cultural heritage.

This course considers Disney and his company in relation to art, society, and politics during the twentieth century. Special attention is paid to Disney’s contributions in the realms of film, architecture, and theme park. Through assigned readings and visual material such as cartoons, slides, and documentaries, the course assesses the relationship between high art and popular art and evaluates Disney’s impact on the production and consumption of leisure.

What is “global contemporary art”? Often used as a catchall term 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 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 as well as other world divisions that persist or arose anew after 1989. Examining these tensions, this upper-division lecture course investigates global contemporary art as a rich field of art historical study and exciting discourse of methodological debate.

From the stateless refugee to the internal exile, the modern era has been marked by the flight of populations seeking relief from persecution, environmental degradation, and economic hardship. This seminar will explore how mass migrations gave shape to modernism, paying close attention to how certain discursive formations emerged in relation to particular itinerant artistic practices.

While copying in the artists’ workshop was sanctioned practice, we moderns seem to view the act of copying images with considerable suspicion. In part, we owe the anxiety that developed around copying to the printing press itself. Moveable type and traveling images made copies almost unavoidable; while many publishers realized the advantage of copies for the purpose of standardizing knowledge, this juncture also represents the point at which artists started to lobby for their rights to their images. This course examines the phenomenon of copying in training artists, transmitting information, and pirating designs in the early modern period. If the printing press began to circulate the exactly repeatable statement in such a way that was impossible to suppress copies, this was in some respects merely an extension of earlier devotional practices that depended on the recognizability of saints and sinners to form the church’s canon of personalities. In this course, we will examine the claims, functions, and limitations of the early modern copy.

This seminar on Golden Age Hollywood analyzes how the Studio System impacted filmmaking from the 1930s to the early 1950s. The course examines how factory-like studio production and set-design practices contributed to the distinct narratives and aesthetic of different movie genres. A key focus is the role of cinema in defining American values during a period of significant social and economic change.

Liberal Studies Designations: Scholarship-in-Practice, Computer Competency/Digital Literacy.  This course introduces students to digital literacy through the lens of cultural heritage. The curriculum of this course includes readings, hands-on activities, discussion posts, quizzes, current events, and a significant final project geared toward the issues and practices of cultural heritage within today’s digital world. This is an online, asynchronous course where students will learn first-hand that digital literacy is not a skillset limited to one field of study or career path alone, and they will find that by gaining new competencies in this arena that they can participate in and help to shape a discourse reaching far beyond their own time and place. Cultural heritage is similarly not limited to one discipline or one culture, and it is not a historical topic – the currency and global nature of cultural heritage are two themes we will continuously see throughout the semester.

The course covers the philosophy and practice of acquiring, processing, preserving, displaying, and interpreting museum objects. Material culture and the museum objects are addressed from the perspective of various disciplines, such as art history, archaeology, anthropology, history, and the natural sciences. Hands-on experience is gained in designing and executing an exhibition of the students’ conception.

Liberal Studies Designation: State-Wide; Humanities & Cultural Practice Core
NOTE: Does not count toward the Art History major.
ARH 2000 is a fully-online art-appreciation course that introduces students to diverse forms of art and architecture created throughout history. Designed for remote learning since 2014, ARH 2000 is organized into weekly thematic modules that conclude with interactive assignments and discussions designed to encourage learning through role-playing, reflecting, and creating (no artistic skill necessary!). By completing this course’s interactive assignments and participating in this class, students actively practice thinking about art and its relevance to the world in which we live.