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Great Introductory Course Offerings

ART History 225: Introduction to Medieval Art

Professor Christina Normore

Fall 2024

This course offers an introduction to major artistic monuments and artistic developments of the medieval period (roughly 300-1450 CE) with a focus on Europe. It surveys a diverse range of works of art and architecture from this period and positions them within their original social, political, spiritual, and economic contexts. Lectures and discussion sections will trace the shifting ways in which images were defined and perceived over time and consider how the flow of objects and styles linked Europeans to broader world systems. We will also identify key moments in the birth and development of architectural forms still common today such as churches and mosques. Students will develop skills in visual analysis and gain a basic understanding of the methods and aims of art historical study.

Art History 232: Introduction to the History of Architecture: 1400 to Present

Professor Hollyamber Kennedy

Winter 2025

How does the built environment shape social meaning and reflect historical change? In this introductory-level course, we will survey the human designed environment across the globe, from 1400 to the present day. Through in-depth analysis of buildings, cities, landscapes, and interiors, we will observe how spatial environments are created and invested with meaning. From Tenochtitlan, riverine capital of the Aztec empire, to the Forbidden City in Beijing and the Palazzo Medici in Florence, from the Palace of Rudolf Manga Bell in Douala to the Colonial Office of the Bank of London, and from Lina Bo Bardi’s Glass House in São Paulo to David Adjaye’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., this course will introduce students to the changing technologies, materials, uses, and aesthetics that have helped define architecture’s modernity across time and geographies. Through detailed visual analysis and the study of primary source documents, students will become familiar with architectural terminology and historical techniques of architectural visualization. Through written exercises and guided slow looking, students will learn how to critically analyze and historically interpret the built environment at various scales.

ART History 255: Introduction to modernism

Professor Jessy Bell

Winter 2025

This undergraduate lecture course introduces one of the most contested terms of art historical inquiry today: modernism. Broadly, the term refers to the collective efforts of cultural producers to respond to the ever-shifting conditions of perception and social life brought on by modernity. The course examines some of the key moments in global modernity from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. It provides a critical introduction to the rise of modern art practices from a range of locales, pushing against the hegemonic discourses upholding the Western canon to underscore the interdependencies between the Global North and the Global South.

From anti-colonial modernism in India to considerations of race and modernism in mid-century Jamaica, this course takes seriously the diversity of experiences of global modernity by examining movements and moments formed in opposition to the ravages of capitalism, colonialism, industrialization, imperialism, and war that continue to define our world. We will examine how the aesthetic of newness, ideas of “progress,” and radical formal invention characteristic of modernism were rooted in the societal transformation of modernity. The work of the course contests the idea of modernism as a purely European or American phenomenon while considering artists’ efforts to elaborate internationalist artistic languages, reflecting and refracting the concurrent rise of the modern nation-state. Across the quarter, we will focus on how modernist traditions transformed through their circulation across cities, nations, and continental borders. The overarching goal of this course is the consideration of how the formal concerns of distinct movements in modern art, responding to modernization, emerged out of specific historical and cultural contexts and how each movement pushed against the tastes of society at large to radically challenge ideas about art itself.

Art History 250: Introduction to European Art, Early Modern (1400-1800)

Professor Thadeus Dowad

Spring 2025

Course description forthcoming.

Art History 230: Introduction to art of the united states: Native Modern and contemporary art

Professor Risa Puleo

Spring 2025

Course description forthcoming.