Great Introductory Course Offerings

Below you will find a list of introductory course offerings, which are offered on a rotating basis. Recent examples of course descriptions are provided. Be sure to consult our updated course offerings page to see which courses are being offered this year. 

ART History 224: Introduction to ancient art

Spring 2024, Professor Gunter

Some of the most influential works of art and architecture and enduring styles in world history were created in the ancient cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, Greece, and the Roman Empire. In this course we investigate their artistic traditions, styles, and built environments, focusing on the highlights—by general consensus—of these cultures’ artistic and technological achievements. Primary objectives are to analyze the key monuments that have influenced both Western and global art over the centuries, along with acquiring skills in visual literacy and an understanding of art historical methods and aims. Another goal is to gain insight into the specific historical contexts in which buildings, sculptures, and paintings were produced and reproduced, and the particular political, social, and religious functions they served. To provide exposure to a wide variety of material within a critical framework, we will examine specific case studies to supplement textbook readings.

ART History 225: Introduction to Medieval Art

Fall 2025, Professor Normore

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, economic and spiritual contexts. Lectures and discussion sections will trace the shifting ways that 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 226: Art and Visual culture of the islamic world

Winter 2026, Professor Esener

This course surveys the diverse arts and visual cultures of the Islamic world from the seventh century to the present day. Following the rise of Islam as a new faith in the Judeo-Christian line, the Middle East developed a dynamic cultural order that integrated earlier traditions, including those of Byzantium and Iran. Our course traces the emergence and development of art, architecture, and archaeology in Islamic regions, beginning in the Arabian Peninsula and extending to the Mediterranean, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Iran, Turkey, Central Asia, China, and the Indian subcontinent. We will start with the Ka‘ba in Mecca, the revelation of the Qur’an, and the significance of calligraphy in Islam, analyzing how Islamic art and visual cultures have engaged and connected with local, regional, and global traditions for over a millennium. We will investigate monuments, urban planning, architectural styles, portable objects, calligraphic designs, paintings, and prints that have circulated among dynasties, kingdoms, and empires across time and space. Contemporary artistic and visual expressions in Muslim-majority regions continue to thrive today by drawing on historical practices and adapting traditional forms. Through calligraphy, figural representation, or geometric patterns, the arts and visual traditions of Islam offer significant insights into human creativity, artistic exchange, and cultural heritage. 

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

Winter 2026, Professor Kennedy

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 235: Introduction to Latin american art

Spring 2024, Professor Escobar

This class surveys art and architecture in Latin America from around 1495 to around 1945. From Mexico to Chile and from the Caribbean Sea to the Río de la Plata, we will explore churches, public buildings, and works of art in a variety of media—including wood and stone sculpture, feather and mural painting, prints and books—as expressions of the complex societies that emerged in the Americas after 1492. Along the way, we will study the output of artisans, artists, and architects whose names have been forgotten by history and the work of others whose biographies have become better known in recent years such as the Indigenous Andean painter Andrés Sánchez Galque. Additionally, the class will consider familiar figures such as Guaman Poma de Ayala, Cristóbal de Villalpando, Miguel de Cabrera, Diego Quispe Tito, Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, Juan O’Gorman, Joaquín Torres García, and Óscar Niemeyer.

ART History 240: Introduction to asian art

Fall 2023, Professor Sharma

This survey serves as a first introduction to ancient, medieval and modern/contemporary artistic practices of South Asia, its relationship with East Asia (China, Japan), Central Asia, and Europe. Key examples of art and architecture will focus 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.

ART History 255: Introduction to modernism

Fall 2025, Professor Kiaer

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)

Spring 2025, Professor Dowad

 This introductory course offers a survey of European art from the Italian Renaissance to the French Revolution (c. 1400-1800). Focusing on the arts of painting, sculpture, and printmaking, this course introduces students to the significant artists of early modern Europe, including Michelangelo, Dürer, Brueghel, Caravaggio, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Rubens, Watteau, and Vigée Le Brun. Through close study of individual artworks, students will learn how to analyze works of art as products of their particular social, political, and historical contexts. Along the way, students will study the major historical forces that shaped the evolution of European art during this period, including the wars of religion, the establishment of royal art academies, the rise of the art market and the art critic, and the expansion of trade and colonialism in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Students will also consider the roles of gender, race, sexuality, and class in the development of European art.

Art History 260: Introduction to Contemporary Art

Spring 2024, Professor Feldman & Professor Relyea

What is contemporary art? When is contemporary art?  For whom is contemporary art? Where is contemporary art? And…why does contemporary art matter? This undergraduate slide-based survey introduces majors and non-majors to some of the central artists, themes, works, and debates comprising the rich and varied history of contemporary art (roughly 1960 to today) in multiple media, with a particular focus on the social and political engagements that have informed artistic developments during those decades, as well as how they are historicized in relation to other art, geopolitical conflict, and the institution. The ways in which artists have approached, contested, reflected, and reconfigured the problems and possibilities of institutions—be they social, governmental, academic, political, commercial, media-based, or the art world itself—is a central theme around which the course will find critical traction and build historical context. In addition to cultivating an understanding of what has made particular genres and instances of artistic practice significant to art history, this course allows us to think about how globalization, technology, current world conflicts, and social media, for example, have shaped artistic production, art criticism, and the art market. It also asks us to reflect upon the temporality of our present and what it is that is “contemporary” to our “now.” Assignments might include short writing assignments based on local art exhibitions of international artists, weekly readings and online viewings, a midterm, and a take-home final exam.