Please consult the online course catalog for cross-listed courses and full course information.
Winter 2025 UNDERGRADUATE COURSES
This course surveys the art and visual culture of North America, primarily in the United States, from European contact to the present. Beginning with imagery of the first New World encounters, we trace the roles played by visual expression in the conceptualization of American culture during the colonial, revolutionary and antebellum periods, the Civil War, southern reconstruction and westward expansion, the Gilded Age, Modernism, the Great Depression, the pluralism and media culture of the later twentieth century. While the course runs roughly chronologically, most lectures are thematic. Some offer in-depth analysis of a topic by focusing on one or two artists while others amalgamate broader sets of objects and issues Among topics considered will be the development of various modes of representation (from painting, sculpture, and photography to more everyday forms such as design, illustration, cinema and other media); the emergence of American artistic institutions including schools, museum; and criticism, the role of the visual in constructions class, race, and gender; issues of local and regional expression; and the relationship between art, nation and identity.
CRN#: 53622
Meetings: Monday and Wednesday, 11:00AM-12:20PM
Place: Watkins 1000
This course is an introductory survey of the art, architecture, and visual culture of Latin America from the colonial to the contemporary period. We will begin by examining the introduction and adaptation of European artistic models into the Americas as well as the transformation of Pre-Columbian art as a result of contact between these cultures, analyzing a variety of materials and media including urban planning, religious and secular architecture, paintings, sculpture, manuscript drawings, and prints from the colonial period (1492–ca. 1820). The second half of the course will be dedicated to studying material from the nineteenth century to the present, examining the role of the arts in the building of independent nations, how Latin American artists and architects responded to international avant-gardes, and conclude by considering current trends in contemporary art from the region.
CRN#: 52120
Meetings: Monday and Wednesday 3:30PM-4:50PM
Place: Arts Screening Room 335
500 years ago, the Aztec (Mexica) capital of Tenochtitlan fell to Spanish invaders. This course uses material culture to examine Mexico’s tumultuous transition into a Christian settler colonial society within the Spanish Habsburg’s global empire. Central to this course will be the study of the physical materials through which Indigenous communities contested, negotiated, and transformed European artistic, sociopolitical, and religious practices. From toppled pre-Hispanic temples to corn-paste crucifixes, fig-bark (amatl) paper to vibrant red cochineal dye, and feather mosaics to imported ivory, Mexico’s organic and inorganic materials supplied a diverse settler colonial society a unique range of resources to intervene in global artistic discourses and devise local solutions to drought, disease, and dispossession. Written assignments will incorporate primary (archival) textual sources and analysis of objects and images. Prerequisite(s): sophomore, junior, or senior standing; or consent of instructor.
CRN#: 57198
Meetings: Monday and Wednesday, 9:30AM-10:50AM
Place: Arts Screening Room 335
This course is an introduction to the art and architecture of Muslim dynasties in South Asia from the eighth century conquest of Sindh by the Umayyads to the eighteenth century when the Mughal Empire was significantly diminished and other, smaller polities were coming to power. Moving across the Indian Subcontinent, this course maps the movement and settlement of religious, political, and intellectual elites through this vast region. The buildings they commissioned — immense forts, monumental tombs, highly ornate mosques — and the artistic objects they produced — illustrated manuscripts, metalwork, ceramics, textiles —illustrate the different motivations that underpinned artistic production in South Asia.
CRN#: 57199
Meetings: Monday and Wednesday, 2:00PM-3:20PM
Place: Arts Screening Room 335
Winter 2025 GRADUATE-LEVEL COURSES
SPRING 2025 UNDERGRADUATE COURSES (PRELIMINARY PLAN, SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
SPRING 2025 GRADUATE-LEVEL COURSES (PRELIMINARY PLAN, SUBJECT TO CHANGE)