Undergraduate Courses
ARTH200
Art of the Western World to 1300 (Professor Gerstel)
MW 9-9:50 + section (ASY 2203)
ARTH201 Art of the Western
World after 1300 (Professor Georgievska-Shine)
TuTh 11-11:50 + section (ASY 2203)
ARTH 250, Art and
Archaeology of Ancient America (Professor Pillsbury)
MW 9-9:50 + section (ASY 2203)
ARTH275 Art and Archaeology of Africa (Professor Eyo)
MW 11-11:50 + section (ASY 2203)
ARTH290 Art of Asia (Professor Kuo)
TuTh 9:30-10:20 + section (ASY 2203)
ARTH313 Early Medieval Art (Professor Kornbluth)
TuTh 12:30-1:45 (ASY 3215)
ARTH320 Fourteenth and Fifteenth-Century Northern European
Art (Professor Martinez)
TuTh 2-3:15 (ASY 3215)
ARTH324 Sixteenth-Century Italian Renaissance Art (Professor
Georgievska-Shine)
TuTh 2-3:15 (ASY 3211)
ARTH330 Seventeenth-Century European Art (Professor Colantuono)
TuTh 11-12:15 (ASY 3215)
ARTH335 Seventeenth-Century Art in the Netherlands (Professor
Wheelock)
M 3:30-6:00 (ASY 3211)
ARTH350 Twentieth-Century Art to 1945 (Professor Mansbach)
TuTh 11-12:15 (ASY 3211)
ARTH361 American Art Since 1876 (Professor Ater)
TuTh 9:30-10:45 (ASY 3221)
ARTH384 Art of Japan (Professor Kita)
TuTh 9:30-10:45 (ASY 3211)
ARTH386 (PermReq) Experiential Learning; Individual Instruction
Course
TBD
ARTH407 Art and Archaeology of Mosaics (Professor Spiro)
TuTh 11-12:15 (ASY 3221)
ARTH444 British Painting, Hogarth to the Pre-Raphaelites
(Professor Pressly)
TuTh 3:30-4:45 (ASY 3215)
ARTH457 History of Photography (Professor Stapp)
W 3:30-6:00 (ASY 3215)
ARTH462 Twentieth-Century Black American Art (Professor
Ater)
TuTh 12:30-1:45 (ASY 3221)
ARTH488A Colloquium in Art History: Twentieth-Century
Latin American Art (Professor Bland)
TuTh 9:30-10:45 (ASY 3217)
ARTH488B Colloquium in Art History: Art and Architecture
in the Age of Justinian the Great (Professor Spiro)
TuTh 2-3:15 (ASY 3217)
ARTH489A Special Topics in Art History: Film Noir Style
and Modern Anxiety
(Professor Metcalf)
Tu 3:30-7:00 (HBK 4210T)
ARTH489C Special Topics in Art History: Chinese Calligraphy,
Painting, and Poetry
(Professor Kuo)
TuTh 12:30-1:45 (ASY 3211)
ARTH498 (PermReq) Directed Studies in Art History I. Individual
Instruction Course
TBD
ARTH499 (PermReq) Honors Thesis. Individual Instruction
Course
TBD
Graduate Courses
ARTH 609: Studies in Late Roman, Early Christian and Byzantine
Art
The Exchange of Art and Commodities in the Late Medieval
Mediterranean
Professor Sharon Gerstel
Mondays 3-5:40
This course will examine "works of art" through
the lens of trade in the late medieval period (13th?15th
century), focusing particularly on the role of Italian
city?states in the economy of the islands and coastal
regions of the eastern Mediterranean (including such cities
as Damascus, Venice and Constantinople and such islands
as Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus). We will examine commodities
including cheese, alum, anchors and sugar, but also look
at the manufacture, imitation and exchange of coinage,
glass, ceramics, fabrics/items of clothing and panel paintings
from economic, archaeological, and artistic perspectives.
In discussions of trade, we will focus on the role of
merchants through their own voice as captured in legal
documents and wills and envision their spatial context
by examining the construction of trading posts and cities
along maritime routes.
ARTH 658: Studies in American Art
Content and Meaning in American Paintings, 1740?1920
Professor Frank Kelly
Thursday 3-5:40
Many recent investigations of American paintings have
de?emphasized traditional art historical tasks such as
analyzing style and composition, tracing influences, or
preparing artistic biography in favor of interpreting
individual works or groups of related works within an
artist's oeuvre. Although the methodologies employed vary
enormously, these studies assume that there is content
and meaning (often of a complex and profound kind) in
American paintings that may not be obvious but can, and
should, be revealed. This course will not be concerned
with investigating methodologies specifically, but with
searching for the meanings implicit in a wide variety
of American paintings. In spite of the great increase
in attention paid to American art over the last two decades,
there remain many works that have not been probed sufficiently
for meaning. Students will give class presentations interpreting
single paintings or small groups of closely related works;
reinterpretations or alternative readings of well?know
paintings will be especially encouraged.
ARTH 669: Studies in African Art and Archaeology
Contextualizing Archaeological Art Works from Non?Literate
Societies
Professor Ekpo Eyo
Wednesday 3-5:40
Many world civilizations adopted writing very late in
their histories. In west Africa, writing was not generally
adopted until late in the 19th century, yet the visual
arts are a developed and authentic form of communication
which go back to the beginning of art itself. Based on
the internal evidence from the well known terracotta sculptures
from Nok (500BC-200AD), Calabar (500-1400AD), Ife (1100-1500AD)
and Owo (1500AD), and the famous bronzes from Igbo Ukwu
(900-1000AD) Ife (1100-1500AD) and Benin (1500-1897AD),
the class will attempt to reconstruct the lives and times
of the societies that were responsible for the making
of the art pieces. The reconstruction process will be
aided by reviewing actual excavations of some of the sites,
looking into available oral histories and utilizing local
ethnographic parallels. Students will then be requested
to construct papers that contextualize these art works
with respect to the societies that created them.
ARTH689A Selected Topics in Art History: Visual Culture
in the Anglophone Caribbean
Professor Krista Thompson
Wednesday 3:30-6:00
ARTH 708: Seminar in Ancient Art
Representations of Sexuality in Greek Art
Professor Marjorie Venit
Tuesday 12-2:40
This seminar will interrogate images and monuments of
Greek vase painting and sculpture produced primarily in
the Classical and Hellenistic periods in order to elucidate
their role in reflecting or modeling Greek attitudes toward
sexuality. Among the themes these monuments will engage
are eroticism, female nudity, homosexuality, effeminacy,
bisexuality, heterosexuality, masculinity, and cross-dressing.
Background reading for the course might consider the essays
in the following books on Greek sexuality: Michel Foucault,
The Use of Pleasure. The History of Sexuality, vol 2.,
David M. Halperin, et al., Before Sexuality. The Construction
of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World. David
M. Halperin, How to Do the History of Homosexuality. John.
J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire, and essays that
relate sexuality to Greek representations: Elaine Fanthem,
et al. Women in the Classical World (the essays that deal
with the Greek experience) Natalie Kampen, ed., Sexuality
in Ancient Art (ditto)
Robin Osborne, Archaic and Classical Greek Art, specifically
Chapter 8: Gay Abandon. The scholarly website Diotima
(http://www.stoa.org/diotima/) provides a much more extensive
bibliography of relevant books and articles, as well as
links to original source material in translation and images,
all of which might be of interest.
ARTH748: Seminar in Eighteenth- Century European Art
British Art and the French Revolution
Professor William Pressly
Tuesday 6-8:40
Everyone in Europe recognized that the events unfolding
in France during the French Revolution marked a political
and social upheaval of unprecedented proportions. British
writers argued at length over its meaning. Political caricaturists
such as Gillray and Rowlandson also depicted with great
frequency the impact of the Revolution on British life.
Yet in high art there is remarkably little direct representation
of these cataclysmic events. This course will concentrate
on those British artists who indirectly as well as directly
commented on the developments taking place across the
Channel. In addition to the caricaturists some of the
artists to be considered are Blake, Romney, Fuseli, Barry,
West, Zoffany, and J. F. Rigaud.
ARTH768: Seminar in Latin American Art and Archaeology
Palaces of the Ancient New World
Professor Joanne Pillsbury
Monday 12-2:40
This graduate seminar explores the topic of elite residential
architecture in the ancient Americas.
As private residences with a very public role, palaces
offer an opportunity to study the articulation of royal
space, and examine how architecture can reflect and reiterate
power and legitimacy. Among the questions we will consider
are: how is a palace properly identified? Are there discernable
patterns in the placement and articulation of palace buildings?
What were their materials, dimensions, amenities? What
artifacts remain, and what do they suggest about the activities
of the palace? What were their programs of ornament, and
how did these programs reflect royal rhetoric?
Following an introduction to our sources of evidence,
we will explore problems of definition and archaeological
identification, as well as the basics of building materials
and structures. We will then move to a consideration of
several of the major urban palaces in the Andes and Mesoamerica,
to be followed by the study of a selection of country
palaces or villas. As part of the seminar, we will visit
the exhibition Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya at the
National Gallery of Art, to examine some of the portable
works of art that were part and parcel of palace life
in ancient Mesoamerica.
The first part of the course will focus on discussions
of specific readings. In consultation with the professor,
students will choose a research topic of interest to them,
develop bibliography, and prepare an in-class presentation
of the research, followed by the completion of the final
paper (due at the last class meeting). Topics may include
a close examination of specific sites such as the Inca
villa of Machu Picchu or the Aztec imperial stronghold
of Tenochtitlán, or they may be more comparative
in orientation.
ARTH779: Seminar in Japanese Art
Japanese Prints
Professor Sandy Kita
Thursday 12-2:40
There are over 300,000 Japanese prints or Ukiyo?e in this
country, making this art of Japan one that can be adequately
studied here with no need to go abroad. New understandings
of Ukiyo?e also relate it to developments in modern art,
so that even those with no extensive knowledge of Japanese
culture or language can understand it and work with it.
The course features a consideration of new and old views
of Ukiyo?e and provides the opportunity to work with actual
woodblock prints and printed books in conjunction with
an upcoming exhibition.
