Undergraduate Courses

The courses listed below are provided by Student Information Services (SIS). This listing provides a snapshot of immediately available courses within this department and may not be complete. Course registration information can be found at https://sis.jhu.edu/classes/.

Please consult the online course catalog for cross-listed courses and full course information.

Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another pogram, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

Intro to History West Art
AS.010.101 (01)

A survey of painting, sculpture, and architecture from Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and medieval culture.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 20/20
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Art of the Ancient Americas
AS.010.105 (01)

This course provides a basis for the study of ancient Americas art and architecture and a broad exposure to the issues relevant to its study. Select visual arts within the primary regions of Mexico and Central America will be emphasized. In conjunction with the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) and the JHU Archaeological Museum (JHAM), students will participate in on-site study of the collections.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/25
  • PosTag(s): HART-ANC, ARCH-ARCH

Freshman Seminar: Mapping the Middle Ages: Sites and Destinations
AS.010.114 (01)

This course is about the visual representation of built environments and geographical locations during the Middle Ages: architectural sites, cities, regions of the world, and the world itself. It surveys the full range of medieval modes of mapping, including itineraria (road maps), T-O maps, mappaemundi, and portolan charts; and explores dynamic changes in the conventions for depicting cityscapes and urban topography, from Roman antiquity to ca. 1500. In investigating this material, we will pay special attention to scientific and allegorical representations of places foreign to the culture within which they were made––an illuminated depiction of Venice from late medieval Paris; the fresco with representations of six world rulers at Qasr Amra in Jordan. Students will consider in what ways these images help us to understand pre-modern conceptualizations of geographical space, distance, ethnicity, and otherness. And to what extent did these images help shape these notions? Texts from the period, especially guidebooks and accounts written by medieval travelers, will help guide our discussion. The geographical focus of the course is Europe and the Mediterranean basin, but will include comparisons with the art of East Asia, Persia, and sub-Saharan Africa. The course includes a group visit to the Walters Art Museum.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 9/15
  • PosTag(s): HART-MED

Freshman Seminar - Lower, Later, Farther Away: Roman Art Beyond the Center
AS.010.112 (01)

This course will introduce students to the art of the Roman world through art created by and for the Roman lower classes, art created in late antiquity, and art created in the far provinces of the empire. These topics represent a dramatic shift away from the traditional “center” of the study of Roman art (art created for the wealthy and politically privileged citizens of central Italy between the first century BCE and the first century CE), and are leading to new understanding of marginalized groups in the Roman world.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 12/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Intro to History West Art
AS.010.101 (02)

A survey of painting, sculpture, and architecture from Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and medieval culture.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 20/20
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Intro to History West Art
AS.010.101 (03)

A survey of painting, sculpture, and architecture from Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and medieval culture.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/20
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Abstraction
AS.010.203 (01)

This course will examine the elaboration and dissemination of major iterations of “abstract” art at key junctures throughout the twentieth century, with an emphasis primarily on developments in Europe and the Americas. Why abstraction? What were the formal, social, and philosophical stakes of divergent models and paradigms of abstract practice? And what difference do they make in the history and theory of artistic modernism? Class visits to the BMA and Special Collections.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/20
  • PosTag(s): HART-MODERN

Art, Architecture and Urban Life in Renaissance Italy
AS.010.207 (01)

In recent years architectural and urban historians have begun to approach the built environment of the city not as a stage upon which an urban drama played out, but as the very medium that gave that drama form and shaped its meaning. This course aims to introduce students to the multifaceted features of the Italian Renaissance city by investigating the social and cultural history of urbanization as expressed in sculpture, painting, and architecture. We will explore a range of cities in central and northern Italy, including the major centers of Rome, Florence, Siena and Venice. A number of public works, monuments, and buildings will be discussed in a wide context informed by urban design and ritual life. Emphasis will be placed upon examining the role of works of art operating in conjunction with architecture in the shaping of public spaces and the creation of civic identities. The conditions of artistic production and the materials and techniques of painting, sculpture and architecture will also be discussed. A variety of texts will be read in conjunction with classroom analysis of visual materials in order to explore how urban spaces were lived and experienced. The course will be approached as a working seminar in which students will be expected to participate in discussions of the weekly readings, as well as conduct their own research culminating in the production of research papers.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/10
  • PosTag(s): HART-RENBAR

Representing Roman Power: Sculpture as Political Rhetoric from Republic to Empire
AS.010.222 (01)

Rome created one of the world’s most powerful empires that dominated the Mediterranean from the 3rd century BCE into the 4th century CE. As Rome expanded its borders, its cities saw a proliferation of sculptural monuments that produced a visual political rhetoric and expressed imperial ideologies. This class examines the close relationship between Roman sculpture and politics from the Republic through the Severan principate. Through close visual analysis of the ancient materials and critical readings of scholarship, this course will examine the role of sculpture in the formation, reproduction, and attenuation of imperial rule.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 7/12
  • PosTag(s): HART-ANC

Intro to History West Art
AS.010.101 (04)

A survey of painting, sculpture, and architecture from Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and medieval culture.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/20
  • PosTag(s): n/a

The ‘Long Sixties’ in Europe
AS.010.310 (01)

This seminar examines aspects of advanced artistic production that emerged in France, Italy, the Benelux, and German-speaking countries primarily in the years 1945-1972 as constituent elements of the “Long Sixties,” a period of extraordinary and often rapid social transformation. Among our questions: How was the work of art reimagined and repositioned in the wake of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust, in the context of reconstruction and an emerging consumer society, and in light of the Cold War, decolonization, and other political tensions and cataclysms? How did artists conceive the claims of artistic tradition in a rapidly expanding field of aesthetic practices and possibilities? What were the relations among advanced artistic practices and the “cultural revolutions” generally taken to have come to a head ca. 1968? Integral to this course is a student-curated exhibition of avant-garde materials at the MSE Library, to open in November 2018.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Closed
  • Seats Available: 4/10
  • PosTag(s): HART-MODERN

Art of Colonial Peru
AS.010.320 (01)

Viewed within the dynamic historical context of colonial society, we consider the pictorial, sculptural, and architectural programs that ensued in viceregal Peru (1532-1825). We examine the role of religious orders, art schools, artisan guilds and cofradía, and consider the social and political implications of art patronage.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 10/25
  • PosTag(s): HART-NW

Arts of the Spanish Empire
AS.010.325 (01)

From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, visual forms and practices linked such disparate places as Mexico City and Naples, Manila and Lima, Cuzco and Antwerp, Quito and Madrid: all cities in the Spanish Empire. This course provides an overview of the visual strategies deployed by the Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church across these vast global geographies to consolidate political power and instill religious faith. Such regimes of visuality were reshaped by local conditions and concerns. Focusing on different cities in the Spanish Empire, this course will examine the entanglements between the global and universal ideals of empire and their local manifestations and contestations. Students will gain a broad understanding of the diversity of artistic production in the Spanish empire, exploring religious paintings and sculptures; maps used for imperial surveillance; luxury goods crafted from shimmering feathers, ceramics, ivory, and precious metals; urban design and architecture from the ports of Europe to the highland outposts of the Andes; ephemeral cityscapes for civic performance. Through an examination of such topics, this course offers an introduction to the art historical methods and theoretical concerns used to study objects within an imperial frame.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 16/20
  • PosTag(s): HART-RENBAR

Patronage and Power: The Art of the Book in the Middle Ages
AS.010.425 (01)

This research seminar surveys the rich history of manuscript painting in the Middle Ages through the lens of patronage. By focusing on elite patrons – i.e. Popes, Clerics, Holy Roman Emperors, Princes, Princesses, and other ruling figures – we will investigate how changes in style from the early Christian period through the fifteenth century reveal the fluid nature of politics and power during this volatile time period. We will visit local collections of manuscripts (e.g. the Walters Art Museum) and make use of the extensive holdings of medieval facsimiles in Special Collections.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/9
  • PosTag(s): HART-MED

Passion Image, Passion Cult, Passion Drama: Narrative and Metaphor in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Beyond
AS.010.419 (01)

A set of interdisciplinary explorations of the Passion of Christ narrative in Scripture, theology, visionary literature, cultic devotion, the visual and dramatic arts in Europe from the Central Middle Ages to the Reformation, with a special fast-forward to modern cinematic retellings of the Passion story.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/6
  • PosTag(s): HART-RENBAR

Celebration and Performance in Early Greece
AS.040.218 (01)

Surviving imagery suggests that persons in Minoan and Mycenaean societies engaged in various celebratory performances, including processions, feasts, and ecstatic dance. This course explores archaeological evidence of such celebrations, focusing on sociocultural roles, bodily experience, and interpretive challenges.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 6/15
  • PosTag(s): ARCH-ARCH

Object Encounters at the Baltimore Museum of Art
AS.389.384 (01)

Using the Baltimore Museum of Art as a laboratory, students examine canonical narratives in art museums and iterate new approaches to objects in museums that build equity, interrogate privilege, decolonise, revisualise and offer alternative stories. Class meets at the museum every other week.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 3/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Introduction to the Museum: Past and Present
AS.389.201 (01)

This course surveys museums, from their origins to their most contemporary forms, in the context of broader historical, intellectual, and cultural trends including the social movements of the 20th century. Anthropology, art, history, and science museums are considered. Cross-listed with History and History of Art.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 16/30
  • PosTag(s): HIST-EUROPE, ARCH-ARCH

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.010.101 (01)Intro to History West ArtMW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AMStager, Jennifer M SGilman 50
AS.010.105 (01)Art of the Ancient AmericasTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMDeleonardis, LisaHodson 216HART-ANC, ARCH-ARCH
AS.010.114 (01)Freshman Seminar: Mapping the Middle Ages: Sites and DestinationsM 1:30PM - 4:00PMLansdowne, John CareyGilman 177HART-MED
AS.010.112 (01)Freshman Seminar - Lower, Later, Farther Away: Roman Art Beyond the CenterTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMBevis, Elizabeth AllisonGilman 177
AS.010.101 (02)Intro to History West ArtMW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AMStager, Jennifer M SGilman 50
AS.010.101 (03)Intro to History West ArtMW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PMStager, Jennifer M SGilman 50
AS.010.203 (01)AbstractionTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMWarnock, MollyGilman 177HART-MODERN
AS.010.207 (01)Art, Architecture and Urban Life in Renaissance ItalyTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMWiens, Gavin TylerGilman 177HART-RENBAR
AS.010.222 (01)Representing Roman Power: Sculpture as Political Rhetoric from Republic to EmpireMW 1:30PM - 2:45PMMiranda, Amy ChristineKrieger LavertyHART-ANC
AS.010.101 (04)Intro to History West ArtMW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PMStager, Jennifer M SGilman 50
AS.010.310 (01)The ‘Long Sixties’ in EuropeTTh 3:00PM - 4:15PMWarnock, MollyGilman 134HART-MODERN
AS.010.320 (01)Art of Colonial PeruTTh 1:30PM - 2:45PMDeleonardis, LisaGilman 119HART-NW
AS.010.325 (01)Arts of the Spanish EmpireMW 3:00PM - 4:15PMHyman, Aaron M.Bloomberg 178HART-RENBAR
AS.010.425 (01)Patronage and Power: The Art of the Book in the Middle AgesW 4:00PM - 6:30PMLakey, ChristopherGilman 177HART-MED
AS.010.419 (01)Passion Image, Passion Cult, Passion Drama: Narrative and Metaphor in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and BeyondW 1:30PM - 3:50PMMerback, MitchellGilman 177HART-RENBAR
AS.040.218 (01)Celebration and Performance in Early GreeceM 1:30PM - 4:00PMAnderson, Emily S.K.Gilman 108ARCH-ARCH
AS.389.384 (01)Object Encounters at the Baltimore Museum of ArtTh 1:30PM - 3:50PMKingsley, Jennifer PGilman 10
AS.389.201 (01)Introduction to the Museum: Past and PresentMW 12:00PM - 1:15PMKingsley, Jennifer PGilman 119HIST-EUROPE, ARCH-ARCH

Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another pogram, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

Introduction to the History of Western Art II
AS.010.102 (02)

A survey of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Renaissance to the present.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Introduction to the History of Western Art II
AS.010.102 (04)

A survey of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Renaissance to the present.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Introduction to the Art of Asia
AS.010.103 (01)

A survey of the art and architecture of Asia, from the ancient world to the present and including the Indian subcontinent, China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 1/25
  • PosTag(s): ISLM-ISLMST

The Art of Colonial Latin America
AS.010.210 (01)

This course offers a broad introduction to the arts of colonial Latin America: students will become familiar with the artistic production in the areas of Latin America invaded and controlled by the Spanish Crown from the time of the conquests in the sixteenth century to independence movements in the early nineteenth century. We will explore a wide range of materials from maps to featherwork, paintings to urban grids, cathedrals to mummy bundles. The course is thematically organized, such that students will not only become familiar with the art of Latin America, but will come to understand critical topics related to the study of early modern colonialism: conquest, race, missionary control, literacy, extraction, and indigenous and imperial systems of governance.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 20/25
  • PosTag(s): HART-RENBAR

Medieval Spaces: Site, Image, and Viewer in the Middle Ages
AS.010.251 (01)

This course serves as an introduction to medieval art by analyzing the formal relationships between architecture and images at important cultural sites between the third century and the fourteenth century. The course will focus primarily on how those relationships structured viewers’ experiences of the divine and other ideological forces by understanding how works of art functioned for specific audiences in a particular spatial context. Along the way we will encounter a wide array of geographical sites and histories, including early Christian examples in Rome and Byzantium (e.g. the Roman catacombs and Hagia Sophia); monastic settlements in France and Germany during the eighth and ninth centuries (e.g. St. Gall); the interaction of Islamic and Christian visual culture in Spain and North Africa; twelfth century architectural sculpture along the pilgrimage routes; French, German, and Italian Romanesque and Gothic churches; and monumental painting cycles in Italy (e.g. the Arena Chapel in Padua).

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 14/25
  • PosTag(s): n/a

By the Book: Illuminated Manuscripts in the Middle Ages
AS.010.260 (01)

This course aims to introduce students to Western medieval book painting from the birth of the codex to the advent of the printed book, between 400 and 1500 C.E. Each week we will study a theme of particular importance for the period. Besides learning about questions central to medieval art and history (artistic practices, patronage, gender, race, and representation of power), we will pay particular attention to the issue of how these manuscripts were read, perceived, and used. To this end, the course will have an interdisciplinary approach to codices. Beside art history, we will mobilize the tools of history, history of religion, manuscript and book studies, anthropology, and psychology. Taking advantage of the rich collections of Johns Hopkins and Baltimore, we will study original manuscripts, facsimiles, and incunabula every week.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/10
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Mirror Mirror: Reflections in Art from Van Eyck to Velázquez
AS.010.212 (01)

Explores the different ways Early Modern painters incorporated mirrors and optical reflections into their works for the sake of illusion and metaphor, deception and desire, reflexivity and truth-telling. By exploding the boundaries of sense perception and human knowledge, embedded mirror images often made claims about the nature of the self, the powers of art, and the superiority of painting in particular.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 20/20
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Freshman Seminar: Investigating Gender and Sexuality in Mesopotamian Art
AS.010.104 (01)

Specifics of gender and sexuality are not universal norms, but rather are the product of particular cultural formations. Works of art are especially critical in shaping and conveying these particularities. This seminar examines how artistic products expressed and constructed gender identities and notions of sexuality in ancient Mesopotamia from the 4th millennium to the Hellenistic period. As a group, we will explore a variety of case studies, through which students will be introduced to ancient Mesopotamian culture and will develop skills in specific research skills such as critical reading, analysis, and interpretation.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 9/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Introduction to the History of Western Art II
AS.010.102 (01)

A survey of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Renaissance to the present.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Venice: Art, Architecture and Ecology from the Late Middle Ages to the Present
AS.010.316 (01)

This course is an investigation into the fashioning of Venetian identity in architecture and the visual arts, with a particular address to the encounter with Byzantine and Islamic traditions and exchanges with other centers of the Italian peninsula.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 20/25
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Introduction to the History of Western Art II
AS.010.102 (03)

A survey of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Renaissance to the present.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

The Idea of Athens
AS.010.309 (01)

This course will explore the art, architecture, material culture, and textual evidence from the ancient city of Athens, the many cultures and social positions that made up the ancient city, and the idea of the city as something far beyond its reality.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/18
  • PosTag(s): HART-ANC, ARCH-ARCH

Classics Research Lab: The Symonds Project
AS.040.420 (01)

This course gives participants a unique opportunity to engage directly in empirical research and its interpretation and dissemination. Topics vary. This semester’s offering is organized around a project to reconstruct digitally the library of the nineteenth-century writer John Addington Symonds, author of one of the first studies of ancient sexuality. No prerequisites, but potential students should contact instructor for permission to enroll.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 2/12
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-ITAL

Modern and Contemporary Art in South Asia
AS.010.423 (01)

How does modernism operate in the colonial context, work with and against the nationalisms of new countries (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh), challenge existing norms of the art world and the art market, engage with the difficult and violent upheavals of Partition and sectarian conflict, and allow for experimentations and new forms all the while? This course will explore the history of the art of the subcontinent from c. 1880 to the present by critical engagement with the art, artists, and theories at play in the South Asian region.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/15
  • PosTag(s): HART-NW, HART-MODERN, ISLM-ISLMST

Tombs for the Living
AS.010.398 (01)

Centering on the tomb as the unit of analysis, this course examines the cultural and material aspects of death and funerary ritual. Case studies are drawn from North America, Mesoamerica, and the Andes. Collections study in museums.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/35
  • PosTag(s): ARCH-ARCH

Interrogating the Material Turn
AS.010.415 (01)

This course considers the turn to centering materials and materiality in the history of art. Since the publication of Michael Baxandall’s Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy (1972) and in particular since the turn of the millennium, critical engagement with the materiality of art has proliferated. This seminar will tackle renewed investment in materiality within the discipline of art history and draw on perspectives from archaeology, philosophy, anthropology, conservation science, feminist and queer theory, and postcolonial studies, among others. Particular emphasis will be placed on the polycentrism of materiality as a theoretical lens that cuts across seemingly disjunct cultural, social, and political frames and subject positions. While this course focuses on the art of the ancient Mediterranean, students will be encouraged to bring their own subfields to bear on the material turn and to pursue research topics related their individual research goals. Open to interested students from all disciplines.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/6
  • PosTag(s): HART-ANC

Ancient Americas Metallurgy
AS.010.407 (01)

This course addresses the technology, aesthetics, and social significance of metals. Case studies are drawn from North America, Mesoamerica, and the Andes. Collections study in museums.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 9/25
  • PosTag(s): ARCH-ARCH

Historical and Conceptual Bases of Art History
AS.010.413 (01)

Critical readings in the intellectual foundations of the modern discipline of art history, with close attention to its most influential figures and innovative practitioners. Texts by Wölfflin, Riegl, Warburg, Benjamin, Panofsky, Schapiro, Gombrich, Baxandall, Alpers, Clark, and others. There will be two papers and short weekly writing assignments; no exams.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 10/20
  • PosTag(s): HART-THRY

Theories and Works of “The Baroque”
AS.010.409 (01)

There is perhaps no more confounding, though also no more persistent, art historical concept than that of “the Baroque.” This course introduces students to foundational histories and critiques of “the Baroque” while exploring works of art that have proved central to these formulations. That is, this course will balance careful reading of historiography with close examination of works of art (both digitally presented and visited in local collections). Students will come away with a layered understanding of the Baroque objects—from relatively small-scale museum works to major architectural and sculptural monuments—and their place within the broader evolution of the history of art. Particular attention will be given to newer global and (post-)colonial approaches to notions of the Baroque, ultra-Baroque, and neo-Baroque.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/5
  • PosTag(s): HART-RENBAR

Revolution in European Theater & Film
AS.211.305 (01)

Contemporary local and global social movements such as the uprisings in Egypt, Gezi Park, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter create modes of non-hierarchical politics beyond established institutions of representation. Artists continue to join this venture by critically examining institutional as well as aesthetic forms of representation and by searching for artistic expressions that accompany and inspire politics in new public spaces. Concomitantly, art institutions – from film festivals to galleries and museums – display a certain hunger for ‘political art’. But what makes art political? Is only socially engaged art political? And how can we characterize the specific forms and modes of engagement? In order to assess these questions, the course will take you onto a journey into the rich history of art and political movements in Europe after World War II with a special emphasis on Germany. We will focus on theater and film as genres that presuppose and promote collective experiences, and discuss how artists such as Chris Marker, Bertolt Brecht, Helke Sander, Christoph Schlingensief, the Black Audio Collective and others reflected upon, represented, transformed and performed ideas of ‘revolution’. You will practice the analysis of film and theater, will examine key words of the debate on art and politics (such as “autonomy”, “realism”, “documentary” and fiction”) and will explore ideas that continue to shape and inspire contemporary aesthetic practices and notions of “revolution”

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 7/15
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-GERM, INST-GLOBAL

World of Things
AS.389.303 (01)

The course introduces and applies new concepts about materials, and materiality to museum objects. It treats the museum as a site for investigating the relationship between people and things.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Critical Issues in Art Conservation
AS.389.340 (01)

The course examines recent controversies in the conservation of major global art works and sites, raising questions concerning the basic theoretical assumptions, practical methods and ethical implications of art conservation. Cross-Listed with History of Art and Anthropology

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): ARCH-ARCH

Babylon: Myth and Reality
AS.010.364 (01)

Babylon – the name resonates even today, from the biblical whore of Revelation to sci-fi. It evokes exotic places and time long past. But what do we really know about the ancient city and the civilization that flourished there thousands of years ago? The first part of this course examines the archaeological city of Babylon, located in the modern state of Iraq, and considers its artistic and architectural achievements in the context of Mesopotamian history. The second part of the class explores the ongoing impact of Babylon in the cultural imagination of later periods, from the Classical and biblical authors, to European artists, Hollywood movies, science fiction, and contemporary political movements.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/20
  • PosTag(s): ARCH-ARCH

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.010.102 (02)Introduction to the History of Western Art IIMW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AMWarnock, MollyHodson 311
AS.010.102 (04)Introduction to the History of Western Art IIMW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PMWarnock, MollyHodson 311
AS.010.103 (01)Introduction to the Art of AsiaMW 1:30PM - 2:45PMBrown, Rebecca MaryGilman 119ISLM-ISLMST
AS.010.210 (01)The Art of Colonial Latin AmericaMW 3:00PM - 4:15PMHyman, Aaron M.Gilman 119HART-RENBAR
AS.010.251 (01)Medieval Spaces: Site, Image, and Viewer in the Middle AgesTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMLakey, ChristopherGilman 177
AS.010.260 (01)By the Book: Illuminated Manuscripts in the Middle AgesM 1:30PM - 2:45PM, W 1:30PM - 2:45PMMednyanszky, OrsolyaGilman 177
AS.010.212 (01)Mirror Mirror: Reflections in Art from Van Eyck to VelázquezTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMMerback, Mitchell 
AS.010.104 (01)Freshman Seminar: Investigating Gender and Sexuality in Mesopotamian ArtT 1:30PM - 4:00PMFeldman, MarianGilman 177
AS.010.102 (01)Introduction to the History of Western Art IIMW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AMWarnock, MollyHodson 311
AS.010.316 (01)Venice: Art, Architecture and Ecology from the Late Middle Ages to the PresentTTh 1:30PM - 2:45PMCampbell, StephenGilman 119
AS.010.102 (03)Introduction to the History of Western Art IIMW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PMWarnock, MollyHodson 311
AS.010.309 (01)The Idea of AthensMW 12:00PM - 1:15PMStager, Jennifer M SGilman 177HART-ANC, ARCH-ARCH
AS.040.420 (01)Classics Research Lab: The Symonds ProjectTTh 3:00PM - 4:15PMButler, Michael ShaneGilman 108GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-ITAL
AS.010.423 (01)Modern and Contemporary Art in South AsiaM 4:30PM - 7:00PMBrown, Rebecca MaryGilman 119HART-NW, HART-MODERN, ISLM-ISLMST
AS.010.398 (01)Tombs for the LivingTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMDeleonardis, LisaHodson 305ARCH-ARCH
AS.010.415 (01)Interrogating the Material TurnF 1:30PM - 4:00PMStager, Jennifer M SGilman 177HART-ANC
AS.010.407 (01)Ancient Americas MetallurgyTTh 1:30PM - 2:45PMDeleonardis, LisaHodson 305ARCH-ARCH
AS.010.413 (01)Historical and Conceptual Bases of Art HistoryTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMMerback, MitchellGilman 119HART-THRY
AS.010.409 (01)Theories and Works of “The Baroque”Th 1:30PM - 4:00PMHyman, Aaron M.Gilman 177HART-RENBAR
AS.211.305 (01)Revolution in European Theater & FilmM 2:30PM - 5:00PMKetteler, ChristianeAmes 218GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-GERM, INST-GLOBAL
AS.389.303 (01)World of ThingsT 1:30PM - 4:00PMKingsley, Jennifer PGilman 313
AS.389.340 (01)Critical Issues in Art ConservationF 1:30PM - 4:00PMBalachandran, SanchitaGilman 150AARCH-ARCH
AS.010.364 (01)Babylon: Myth and RealityTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMFeldman, MarianGilman 177ARCH-ARCH