Undergraduate Courses – Summer & Fall 2023
Looking for Graduate Courses? Click here.
PLEASE NOTE: Regarding Prerequisites, ARH 3056/3057 are equivalent to the current survey courses ARH 2050/2051. 3056 and 3057 no longer exist. If you see these numbers as prerequisites, 2050 and 2051 are the actual prerequisites.
ARH 4933 is a Special Topics in Art History course with changing topics each term. This course may be repeated to a maximum of twelve (12) semester hours. If you take this course for more than twelve hours (more than four times, in the same semester or in different semesters), any hours over twelve will not count toward earned credit for your degree, though your grade will still count toward your GPA.
Summer 2023 Courses
 |
ARH 4800-01 (Seminar) Global Indigenous Cinema Dr. Kristin Dowell Summer B (second 6 weeks) T/R 1:20–4:30 pm, 2038 WJB Meets Liberal Studies Scholarship-in-Practice and Upper-Division Writing requirements What does sovereignty look like on-screen? Exploring the dynamic field of global Indigenous cinema from Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, the Americas and the Pacific Islands, we examine the innovative ways in which Indigenous filmmakers explore cultural practices, relationships to place, kinship and language revitalization through feature, experimental, and short films. |
 |
ARH 4933-01 Art of the Global Sixties Dr. Tenley Bick Summer A (first 6 weeks) T/R 1:20 –4:30 pm, G40 WJB This upper-division course addresses the global proliferation of experimental artistic strategies within the revolutionary sociopolitical contexts of the “long” 1960s, with an eye to major geopolitical shifts and movements that shaped the period. Rather than providing a survey of 1960s art, course meetings focus on specific international and transnational networks (e.g., Pan-Africanist, “Third-Worldist” and “non-aligned”) and art groups, sites of exchange, and global artistic currents (e.g., the use of found objects, process art, cybernetic aesthetics) in accordance with the thematic focus of the course. Pre-requisite: ARH 2051; 3000- or 4000-level art history coursework in modern and contemporary art; or contemporary art foundations (Studio Art). |
Fall 2023 Courses
 |
ARH 3473–01 Intro to Modern and Contemporary Art Dr. Tenley Bick T/R 11:35 am–12:50 pm, G40 WJB World Arts. What is modern art? When (and where) is the contemporary? This course introduces students to modern and contemporary art as subjects of art historical study. The course introduces major and anti-canonical topics, debates, and movements in the historically Eurocentric and now revisionist, decolonial discourse on modern and contemporary art in an international and global context. Topics include, among others: modernisms and modernities (histories and theories of); avant-gardism; postmodernism(s); art and globalization; and re-conceptualizations of artistic practice and authorship, including photography and moving-image work, the found object, participatory art, social practice, installation, performance art, conceptualism, and digital art. |
|
|
|
 |
ARH 3930–02 History of Illustration Dr. Erika Loic T/R 4:50–6:05 pm, G40 WJB World Arts. Illustration is a transhistorical and global practice of communicating messages or ideas by visual means. This course introduces students to multiple histories of illustration in different parts of the world, from prehistory to the present, with a focus on creators, audiences, techniques, technologies, and forms of expression.
|
 |
ARH 4353–01 Northern Baroque Art Dr. Robert Neuman T/R 1:20–2:35pm, G40 WJB This course examines the Golden Age of painting, sculpture, and architecture in France, England, and the Netherlands, showing how such figures as Rembrandt and Vermeer encoded meaning in works of detailed realism and contributed to the rise of new subjects in art, including still life, landscape, and portraiture. |
 |
ARH 4882-01 Visual Cultures of the African Diaspora in the Circum-Caribbean Dr. Paul Niell T/R 6:35–7:50 pm, G40 WJB World Arts. This course engages the visual cultures of the African Diaspora in the Circum-Caribbean region with attention to such contemporary nation states as Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and Jamaica as well as Brazil and the United States for comparison. We will look especially at the role of visual culture in the religions of Santería, Palo Monte, Vodou, Espiritismo, Rastafarianism, and Candomblé. The course begins with a close study of the development of the institution of Atlantic World slavery and its role in laying the groundwork for a common experience of structural oppression and struggle in the region. We will also look at the process of manumission and its relation to colonial artistic practices and social contexts, the role of the arts in post-emancipation transformations and the negotiation of persistent oppressions, as well as a range of issues concerning the production of visual art for an art market in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. |
 |
ARH 4876–01 Contemporary Global Women’s Art |
Undergraduate Seminars for Fall 2023
Seminars are the capstone courses for the art history undergraduate curriculum. They are research- and writing-intensive courses that give students opportunities to pursue original scholarship. Two seminars are required for the major.
 |
ARH 4800-01 Contemporary Native American Art Dr. Kristin Dowell Monday 9:20–11:50 am, 2038 WJB Meets Liberal Studies Scholarship-in-Practice and Upper-Division Writing requirements. Focusing on work produced in the last twenty years, this course explores the dynamic field of contemporary Native American art. We examine how Native artists create work in dialogue with the global art world while firmly rooted in local connections to territory, identity, and cultural practices through a variety of forms including: painting, photography, installation art, performance art and experimental media. |
|
 |
ARH 4800-02 Michelangelo: Painter, Sculptor, Architect Lorenzo Pericolo Thursday 4:50–7:20 pm, G41 WJB Meets Liberal Studies Scholarship-in-Practice and Upper-Division Writing requirements. Seen alternatively as the perfect embodiment of the Italian Renaissance or as the harbinger of its dissolution, spiritual crisis, and cultural upheaval, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) is not only a universal master, as documented by his vast pictorial and sculptural output and his numerous architectural designs, but also an essential engine of innovation in the evolution of the Italian arts in Italy between the late quattrocento and the age of Mannerism. Spanning almost seven decades, his career gives us the opportunity to examine Renaissance art from its innermost core, through its ideals and dilemmas, its inventive potential and deep-rooted biases. This course focuses on Michelangelo’s works, from the earliest ones produced in the Neoplatonic context of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Florence to the latest ones carried out in counter-Reformation Rome. |
|
 |
|
Recurring Courses
 |
ARH 2050/2051 Art History Surveys Required for Art History majors Sections and times vary; see Student Central Course Search. Making and viewing art are practices fundamental to human experience, and the historical study of art works offers a unique perspective on our social and cultural development. These introductory survey courses provide an overview of Western art history from prehistory to the late Medieval period (2050) and from the early Renaissance to the end of the 20th century (2051). We will explore major themes such as the changing status of the artist and the impact of religion, politics, and technology on the production of art. |
 |
ARH 3930–01 Curatorial Activism Grace Ali W 12:00–2:30 pm, G41 WJB Reserved for students in the Museum Studies Minor. This course examines key exhibitions that have elevated the voices of those historically silenced or omitted from master narratives of art — ex: curatorial projects centering women, artists of color, indigenous and immigrant communities among others. Through several Case Studies — pioneering examples of exhibitions mounted in the past decade — the course explores how these curatorial projects have countered institutional erasure, broken down boundaries and been enriched and provoked through a curatorial activism lens. |
 |
ARH 3794–01 Museum Basics |
 |
IDS 3678-01 Apocalypse: The End of the World in Art Dr. Richard Emmerson Online / Asynchronous This course studies beliefs about how the world will end and how the end is represented in the arts from the Bible to the present. We will analyze how such beliefs influenced history, continue to inform contemporary politics, and are being transformed by fears of nuclear war and environmental disaster. |
 |
ARH 2000 Art, Architecture, and Artistic Vision – Online Dr. Sarah Buck Online / Asynchronous Liberal Studies Designation: State-Wide; Humanities & Cultural Practice Core. NOTE: counts for Art History minor requirements, but not for the 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. |
|
|