• Refine Your Search:

Upcoming Graduate Courses - Spring 2027

Click the course titles for full descriptions
Click here to view CURRENT
courses - Fall 2026

Spring 2027 Seminars

Msc.Bibl.22_r 0036
ARH 5222–01 Medieval Illustrated Manuscripts – Dr. Erika Loic

Tuesday 1:20—3:50pm in WJB 2038

Major area: The Post-Ancient and Medieval World
Throughout the Middle Ages, the embellishment and illustration of manuscripts—books written, drawn, and painted by hand—conveyed a range of spiritual, sociopolitical, and intellectual ideas. In this seminar, we examine the ornamentation and pictorial programs of religious and secular manuscripts made by and for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. We also compare the ways in which scholars apply different critical approaches to the same books, opening up distinct vistas on patronage, modes of representation, materiality, and reception.
 
there is a painting of a woman with a red hat in a picture frame
ARH 5806-01 Art, Diaspora, and Curatorial Practice – Dr. Mora Beauchamp-Byrd

Wednesday 4:50—7:20pm in WJB 2038

Major area: Modernities and Modernisms 
This seminar will examine a broad survey of global art, key exhibitions, and curators that have engaged with themes of diaspora, migration, exile, and cultural hybridity. Through lectures, exhibition case studies, group exercises, and written assignments, course participants will consider how concepts of diaspora and migration, including multiculturalism, Black Atlantic theories and other critical dialogues have shaped the production, display, and reception of global contemporary art since the mid-19th century.  In particular, this course will consider the role of group survey exhibitions in shaping discourse regarding contemporary, diaspora-themed works, highlighting major shifts in the critical reception of these projects over time. The course will begin with an overview of global museum and exhibition history, briefly charting the rise, and increasingly public role, of the modern art museum.  It will also engage with the increasing significance of international art shows. Course components include written assignments that employ interdisciplinary methods of analysis drawn from art history, film studies, race and gender studies, and psychoanalysis, for example, and a diverse range of reading assignments that include art history journal articles, artists’ writings, curatorial essays, and exhibition reviews. 

Screenshot
ARH 5806-03  History of Curating – Dr. Adam Jolles

Wednesday 12:00—2:30pm in WJB 2038

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. 
ARH 5806-04  Blood and Bones: Eastern Medieval Relics – Dr. Lynn Jones

Wednesday 9:20—11:50am in WJB 2038

Major area: The Post-Ancient and Medieval World
Eastern Medieval Relics were indicators of piety, religious identity, national or regional identity, and so much more. They were ‘invented,’ traded, stolen, and worked miracles. They were encrusted with gold and gemstones, and enclosed in silver reliquaries, contrasting with the bodily remains they showcased. In this course, students will examine relics that still survive and those that have been lost but which we know by description. We will examine issues of access, identity, and nationality, among others. 

ARH 5806–05  Reformation and Revolt – Dr. Stephanie Leitch

Thursday 1:20–3:50pm in WJB G41

Major area: Modernities and Modernisms
Religious struggles during the sixteenth century changed both the confessional and artistic landscape in early modern Europe. Job stability for artists evaporated as traditional patronage structures dried up. Art production was also altered by a new variety of religious sects, some of which objected to images. Some artists attempted to straddle the confessional divide by producing non-partisan imagery; others shifted media to print in regions where painted altars and sculpture were threatened by iconoclasts. We will also consider art that put viewers themselves in the crosshairs. 
 
there is a man that is standing in front of a bunch of boxes
ARH 5806–06  Art & Cultural Heritage Law & Policy – Dr. Preston McLane

Tuesday 4:50–7:20pm in WJB G41

This seminar explores the complex and controversial relationships  between the history of art, cultural heritage sites, and cultural artifacts through detailed analysis of legal doctrines, ethics, and philosophies, both in the United States and internationally. We will look critically at the conflicts and contradictions in existing art and cultural heritage law and policy in their diverse sectors, including art theft and plunder during wartime, illicit trade in stolen art and cultural artifacts, provenance and ownership disputes, cultural reparations and repatriation, art forgery and counterfeiting, copyright and originality, and artists’ moral rights, among other topics. 
the hollywood sign is lit up on top of a hill
Screenshot
ARH 5806-07  Golden Age Hollywood  – Dr. Robert Neuman

Monday 1:20—3:50pm in WJB 2038

Major areas: Modernities and Modernisms, Visual Cultures of the Americas

ARH 5806–08  Spanish Art of the Golden Age  – Dr. Lorenzo Pericolo

Thursday 4:50—7:20pm in WJB G41

Major area: Modernities and Modernisms
This course explores 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).

Recurring Foundation Courses

ARH 5799-01 Cultural Heritage Theory & Practice – Dr. Paul Niell

Tuesday 9:45am–12:15pm in WJB 2038

Required for first-year MCHS MA students.
This course is a graduate level introduction to key issues in the field of cultural heritage, including such topics as definitions of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, the role of public opinion and tourism in the protection and interpretation of cultural heritage, the impact of development and conflict, questions of authenticity and identity, international law, and ethics.
there are two sculptures on display in a glass case
ARH 5838–01 Museum Object – Dr. Brendan Weaver

Thursday 9:45—12:15pm in WJB 2038

Required for first-year MCHS MA students on the Tallahassee track.
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.)

On a limited basis, 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.

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 (etjohnson@fsu.edu) to discuss your request and initiate the approval process.