DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY

This survey serves as a first introduction to artistic practices of Asia spanning the ancient, medieval and modern/contemporary periods. In this course we will investigate key examples of art and architecture from India, China and Japan focusing on a selection of artistic traditions, styles, built environments (archaeological sites and monuments) and media (prints, painting, sculpture, decorative arts, photography). Course materials will take up a thematic as well as object/site-oriented case-study based approach, drawing upon the role of religion, cultural interactions, trade and entanglements of art with imperialism, colonialism, modernization and war and current issues around museum display and exhibitions. The survey is aimed at developing skills of visual literacy, analysis and awareness of art-historical debates and will provide opportunities to engage with close reading of objects and their larger historical, cultural and scholarly contexts. 

Stimulated by current interest in decolonization and globalization, the study of ancient empires is now thriving. A major research trend adopts a comparative, cross-cultural framework to try to understand and explain commonalities and differences, which this course explores. Did the first complex territorial states we call empires emerge and develop in similar ways? What factors or institutions were crucial to their trajectory and success, and what theories have been proposed to account for them? What are the benefits and challenges of a comparative, multidisciplinary perspective, and what new kinds of histories might it produce? Many recent investigations compare Rome and Qin/Han China; others consider the historical sequence of empires in the Middle East, such as the Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid Persian empires; still others analyze characteristics of imperial formation and rule in historically unrelated empires in different geographical regions and eras.

This course examines selected case studies drawn from a wide geographical and chronological range, with special focus on the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. We will examine different aspects of territorial expansion, consolidation, and rule, including state ideology, bureaucracy, cosmopolitanism, urbanism, borders and frontiers, religion, and the creation and circulation of the imperial image. Readings will represent contributions by scholars working in different disciplines, including history, art history, and archaeology.

This course explores the art of the High Renaissance in Italy and beyond, celebrating the epoch of the artistic genius. Renaissance style was coveted for its innovation and perfection, and has made a lasting impact on society through present time. We will journey across Italy, chiefly in Milan, Venice, Florence and Rome, examining the major monuments created by legendary figures (such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Raphael) and assess the political, cultural, and religious forces fomenting these creations.  We will also study the enigmatic style of Mannerism in the art of Giorgione, Titian, Bronzino, and Pontormo, among others, covering painting, sculpture, and architecture.  In addition to Italy, our artistic odyssey will also stop briefly in France, Czech Republic, and Poland, to consider how the Italian Renaissance impacted cities and royal courts. 

This course examines the role of photography in shaping and transforming ideas of Africa—its peoples, cultures, and geographies—from the late-nineteenth century to the present. Across colonial and post-colonial contexts, we will consider how artists, amateur and professional photographers, exhibitions, and publications variously register and respond to social, cultural, and political changes on the continent. Through course readings, lectures, and study room visits, we will engage a range of forms including colonial ethnography, studio portraiture, film, advertisements, photojournalism, and contemporary art—paying close attention to the circulation, reception, and material shifts of photographic imagery across time and space. The course will analyze the work of unknown makers as well as paradigmatic figures such as Felicia Abban, Mama Casset, Ernest Cole, Alphonso Lisk-Carew, Seydou Keïta, Albert George Lutterodt, Malick Sidibé, and Zanele Muholi, among others. We will also engage objects in the collections of either the Herskovits Library of African Studies or the Art Institute of Chicago.

This seminar will explore the co-evolution of artistic modernity and the colonial metropolis in the 19^th century through a focus on Ottoman Cairo and its connections with the traditional center of art historical study of art, empire, and modernity: Paris. 

Beginning with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 and ending with the country’s occupation by the British in 1882, this course will trace Cairo’s cultural transformations through close attention to a range of objects and sites—paintings, political cartoons, urban monuments, museums, world’s fairs, architecture, and scientific illustration—all emerging at the nexus of Ottoman and French interimperial rivalry and cooperation. 

This course will challenge the conventional binaries of East vs. West, traditional vs. modern, and local vs. global by exploring art and architecture’s active role in shaping urban life across these two cities, paying special attention to the emergence of national, racial, and sexual identities.

This seminar provides an introduction to art historical research methods for undergraduates, particularly those interested in writing an honors thesis. The seminar will survey the history of art with a focus on recent debates and interventions within the field (e.g. feminist, critical race theory, and decolonial approaches). The seminar will also provide studnets with concrete tools to develop, research, and write original art historical scholarship. What does it mean to ask an original art historical research question? What is hisoriography and how is it critical for mapping out and developing an original thesis statement and argument? How does one effectively analyze primary sources? What constitutes “evidence,” and how is the dominant perception of “evidence” shaped by art history’s origins?