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Home » Courses » Undergraduate Courses – Fall 2023

Undergraduate Courses – Fall 2023

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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.

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.
 

ARH 4876–01  Contemporary Global Women’s Art
Dr. Karen Bearor
T/R 9:45–11:00 am, G40 WJB
World Arts. This course covers global women’s art in the 20th and 21st centuries, with investigations into women’s painting, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, film, and multimedia, often challenging conventional perceptions of gendered roles to reshape possibilities for themselves and their communities. The course also includes coverage of immigrant and exiled women’s contributions to the arts in the United States.

Undergraduate Seminars

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
Dr. 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.
 

ARH 4800–03   Mosaics in the Medieval World
Dr. Lynn Jones
Thursday 9:45–12:15 pm, 2038 WJB
Meets Liberal Studies Scholarship-in-Practice and Upper-Division Writing requirements.
Medieval mosaics, made of cubes of precious and mundane materials, survive across the eastern and western medieval world. Readings will focus on the transmission and adaptation of iconographic traditions, and innovations in the mosaics of Byzantium and Islam.  Students will build research papers through a series of cumulative assignments and class discussion of readings, culminating in an open-forum symposium. 
 

  

ARH 4800-04 Incas, Spaniards, and Africans: Art and Archaeology of the Andes 
Dr. Brendan Weaver
Wednesday 9:20–11:50 am, 2038 WJB
Meets Liberal Studies Scholarship-in-Practice and Upper-Division Writing requirements. Students are introduced to Andean art history and archaeology from the rise of the Inca empire through the Spanish colonial period. Through the lens of architecture and visual culture, we will explore the development of late pre-Hispanic societies in western South America, the Spanish conquest, and the origins of key colonial institutions in the Andean region: the Church, coerced indigenous labor, and African slavery. Central to this course is an archaeological interrogation of the underpinnings and legacies of colonialism, race, and capitalism in the region. Students will also consider the material culture of daily life including artistic expressions, visual cultural traditions, and the built environment of those in power and those living on the social margins, both in pre-Hispanic societies and under Spanish rule.

Recurring Courses​​

ARH 2050/2051  Art History Surveys
Required for Art History majors
Sections and times vary; see Student Central Course Search.
These foundation courses introduce students to the discipline of art history through a survey of canonical and anti-canonical narratives of the history of art (ARH 2050: prehistoric to late-Medieval periods; ARH 2051: early Renaissance through global contemporary art). The courses are organized chronologically; they are also unified by the theme of “encounters,” broadly conceived to address a wide range of unexpected meetings, confrontations, and points of exchange between two distinct entities—artistic, cultural, ideological, and more. Encounters may include meetings of different artistic movements, cultural traditions, and belief systems, for example. The courses address select works of art and creative expression from across history, offering students an opportunity for close object-focused study and skills development that are foundational to the discipline. The courses also teach students to build critical thinking and aptitude through discussion of the overarching course theme in a variety of contexts.
  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
Dr. Carey Fee
Friday 9:20–11:50, 2041 WJB
Reserved for students in the Museum Studies Minor.
From cabinets of curiosities to virtual museums, this course addresses museum history, philosophy, practice and careers. Through readings, discussions, guest lectures, field trips to local museums and a number of short topical projects, students will develop a framework for understanding the role of today’s museums. They will also be prepared to evaluate the major issues facing museum professionals today.

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
Meets Humanities & Cultural Practice and Diversity designations
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.
 

 
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