Studies of word and image interacting in art, architecture, and material culture are not limited to specific media, regions, historical periods, or methodologies. This seminar introduces students to a vast and diverse field of inquiry, with case studies ranging from antiquity to the present. Among other topics, we consider literary sources and textual descriptions of images, images that respond to texts, word–image interplay on individual objects or monuments, and the often blurred or dissolved boundaries between verbal and visual communication.

This course will examine a broad survey of global art, exhibitions, and curators that have engaged with themes of diaspora, exile, globalization, hybridity, migration, multiculturalism, and/or transnationalism.  Through lectures, exhibition case studies, group exercises, and written assignments, course participants will consider how concepts of migration and diaspora, including Black Atlantic theories and other critical dialogues, have shaped the production, display, and reception of global art from the mid-19^th century through the present. 

This course inspects how the early modern world began to sift and filter the new information they encountered and the visual frameworks they invented to contain it. We’ll examine the development of theories about perspective, memory, physiognomy, and methods of documentation and collecting that left a footprint on modern ideas about archaeology and science.

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.

This course intends to provide students with a clear knowledge of the techniques and functions of sculpture in Italy from the early thirteen to the late seventeenth century. Students will become familiar with and scrutinize major works by Nicola Pisano (1120–1284), Arnolfo di Cambio (d. 1302), Jacopo della Quercia (1374–1438), Donatello (1386–1466), Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378–1455), (Michelangelo (1475–1564), Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), Giambologna (1529–1608), Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), and many others. The course will explore a variety of media and typologies: marble, bronze, wood, terracotta; medals, bas-reliefs, funerary tombs, fountains, and desk pieces. Its thematic structure will allow students to think about the functions of sculpture diachronically, and within the cultural, social, political, and religious contexts of Italian city-states and centers of art production. 

This graduate level seminar examines current ideas and methods in cultural heritage work from both local and international perspectives. Topics of discussion will include tourism, heritage management, public history, repatriation, the impact of development and global conflict, curatorial practice and museums, identity, international law, social justice, and ethics.

Required for all first-year MCHS students on the Tallahassee track. Students on the Ringling track will take Museum Object at the Ringling in Year 2.  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.