Please consult the online course catalog for cross-listed courses and full course information.
WINTER 2021 UNDERGRADUATE COURSES
An introduction to the art and architecture of the Islamic world from its formative period in the seventh century to contemporary practices in the Middle East, North Africa, South and Southeast Asia. This course will be taught as a series of lecture-based discussions, mapping out the historical development of the Islamic world and the role of historical events upon culture and society. Topics will include Qur’anic calligraphy, the role of female patrons in commissioning architecture, and Persian illustrated manuscripts.
CRN#: 48676
Meetings: Tuesday and Thursday, 11:00AM – 12:20PM
Place: Online Synchronous Offering
What makes a work of art “Asian”? Are there borders to Asia within the world geography of visual cultures? If so, what do such borders look like? If not, how and why do we speak of “Asian art”? This course thinks through these questions by way of an introduction to major works of visual arts produced in the large cultural area that we identify today as East, Central, South, and Southeast Asia. Rather than studying these regions and their artistic traditions in isolation from its surrounding regions, we take a broader approach, which considers the contribution of the wider world in catalyzing major artistic innovations throughout Asia’s history. Moving chronologically from the ancient to the modern period, we look at masterpieces and monuments from archaeological sites as well as major museum collections. We consider works of architectural monuments as well as portable objects in a variety of media such as cast metals, stone and wood carvings, paintings, textiles, prints, and porcelains.
CRN#: 49680
Meetings: Monday and Wednesday, 9:30AM – 10:50AM
Place: Online Synchronous Offering
By examining a wide variety of objets d’art, from illuminated manuscripts, to frescoes, to cathedrals, this course will cover formal, theoretical, material, and pragmatic aspects of European art and architecture produced between the 6th and 16th centuries CE. Overarching questions that will guide our studies include: How have humans strived to express their faith through art and architecture? What examples of change, continuity, and cross-cultural connections can be found throughout medieval and renaissance art and architecture? Through close analysis, we will be able to understand some of the functions and significance of objects of visual culture within their historical contexts. This course will emphasize several main themes, including innovation, materials and technology, the concept of beauty, and the shifting meaning of “art.”
CRN#: 30012
Meetings: Monday and Wednesday, 3:30PM – 4:50PM
Place: Online Synchronous Offering
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#: 49684
Meetings: Tuesday and Thursday, 11:00AM – 12:20PM
Place: Online Synchronous Offering
500 years ago, the Aztec 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#: 49691
Meetings: Tuesday and Thursday, 12:30PM – 1:50PM
Place: Online Synchronous Offering
In 1808, Dom João, King of Portugal, fled the Iberian Peninsula as Napoleon’s armies advanced. He sailed for Rio de Janeiro and
declared the colonial city the new capital of the Portuguese empire. This historic event initiates this course, which examines the history
of art and architecture from Brazil over the last two centuries. Drawing on a range of media – including painting, sculpture, photography, murals, architecture, urbanism, landscape design – we will study artworks and buildings through a social historical framework, taking into consideration such topics as colonialism, tourism, modernization, underdevelopment, race, gender, nationalism, internationalism and globalism. Dominant tropes of Brazilian studies – including tropicalism or cannibalism – will reappear throughout the quarter and in relationship to a range of contexts and objects.
CRN#: 49692
Meetings: Monday and Wednesday, 11:00AM – 12:20PM
Place: Online Synchronous Offering
European and American photography in the twentieth century veered wildly from mythic landscape to politically charged satire; from gritty realism to abstracted form. This course offers critical analysis of the key figures, theoretical debates and artistic movements of the period–beginning with pictorialism and ending with the rise of street photography– with emphasis on photography as the central mediator of modern experience.
CRN#: 49693
Meetings: Monday and Wednesday, 12:30PM – 1:50PM
Place: Online Synchronous Offering
WINTER 2021 GRADUATE LEVEL COURSES
SPRING 2021 UNDERGRADUATE CourSES
Ancient Mexico boasted some of the world’s largest cities, expansive trade routes, and complex systems of writing. Beginning with the Olmec in 1500 BCE, turning to the Maya and Teotihuacan, and ending with the fall of the Mexica Empire in 1521, this course examines how ancient Mexican cultures used art and architecture to craft a distinctive visual identity, forge sprawling empires and powerful city-states, and communicate with the gods. From ball courts to pyramids, and jade to feathers, the art and architecture of ancient Mexico tells a vivid story of cross-cultural exchange and artistic innovation. Through close analysis of objects, architectural plans, and historical texts, students will hone the ability to write cogently about what they see, as well describe the place of Mexican antiquity in the crafting of modern Mexican political and social identities.
CRN#: 68480
Meetings: Tuesday and Thursday, 2:00PM – 3:20PM
Place: Online Synchronous Offering
By examining a wide variety of buildings, gardens, and urban areas, with a special focus on the architectural and urban history of California, this course will cover formal, theoretical, material, pragmatic and conceptual aspects of architecture and urbanism. We will be concerned with both the formal elements of a site (what does a site look like and why does it look like this?) and the larger historical context that produced each site. Through close analysis of diverse sites and figures, including the California Missions and the Eames House, architects Julia Morgan and Frank Lloyd Wright, we will be able to understand some of the larger functions and significance behind sites, structures, and their makers. This course will emphasize several main themes including innovation, materials and technology, marking the landscape, the growth of urban space, and the shifting meaning of “architect” and “architecture.”
CRN#: 65728
Meetings: Monday and Wednesday, 9:30AM – 10:50AM
Place: Online Synchronous Offering
For over two thousands years, the basis of Western artistic culture had been the art of ancient Greece. In taking up the artistic, religious, social, and political factor which shaped the art of this great culture, this course focuses on the role of the city-state in the formation of Greek painting, sculpture, and architecture from the earliest days to the loss of freedom of the Greek city-states under Alexander the Great.
CRN#: 65774
Meetings: Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 11:00AM – 11:50AM
Place: Online Synchronous Offering
Spring 2021 GRADUATE LEVEL COURSES