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 program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

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

This introductory course surveys major developments in the arts primarily in Europe and North America from the fourteenth century to the present day, looking in particular at painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and, starting in the twentieth century, new media. Topics to be considered include the landmark innovations of Renaissance artists and theorists; the drama of Baroque art; the impact of the Enlightenment on eighteenth-century art; artistic responses to the advent of modernity; and the emergence of abstraction, the avant-garde, and a range of new mediums during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Throughout the semester, we will explore how the artistic practices and theories under consideration relate to their specific historical, intellectual, social, political, and geographical contexts, and we will also consider the roles that works of art and artists played in shaping many of those very same contexts.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
  • Instructor: Warnock, Molly
  • Room: Hodson 311
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Italian Art in the Middle Ages
AS.010.204 (01)

This course explores key monuments of medieval art and architecture in Italy from c. 400 until 1350. We will concentrate on historical, functional, and aesthetical aspects that lead to the creation of single monuments and art works. Emphasis is given to the analysis of “sacred space” by means of architecture, painted, and sculptural decoration, as well as ritual performances. Another focus is laid on the emergence on the political dimension of art for the creation of civic identity as well as in the context of the late medieval courts. We raise questions about the importance of materiality and science for the creation of medieval art works.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 1:30PM - 2:45PM
  • Instructor: Zchomelidse, Nino
  • Room: Gilman 177
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/16
  • PosTag(s): HART-MED

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

This introductory course surveys major developments in the arts primarily in Europe and North America from the fourteenth century to the present day, looking in particular at painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and, starting in the twentieth century, new media. Topics to be considered include the landmark innovations of Renaissance artists and theorists; the drama of Baroque art; the impact of the Enlightenment on eighteenth-century art; artistic responses to the advent of modernity; and the emergence of abstraction, the avant-garde, and a range of new mediums during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Throughout the semester, we will explore how the artistic practices and theories under consideration relate to their specific historical, intellectual, social, political, and geographical contexts, and we will also consider the roles that works of art and artists played in shaping many of those very same contexts.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
  • Instructor: Warnock, Molly
  • Room: Hodson 311
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Michelangelo: Religion, Sexuality, and the Crisis of Renaissance Art
AS.010.301 (01)

The course will focus on the controversies surrounding the representation of the body in the writings and figurative art of Michelangelo and his contemporaries, the historical circumstances under which the most admired artist in Europe was attacked as a blasphemer and an idolator, and the effect of widespread calls for censorship on his later production. The writings of Michelangelo, Pietro Aretino, Benvenuto Cellini and own writings will be considered with a focus on their staging of an ambivalent and transgressive eroticism.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
  • Instructor: Campbell, Stephen
  • Room: Gilman 177
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/18
  • PosTag(s): HART-RENBAR

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

This introductory course surveys major developments in the arts primarily in Europe and North America from the fourteenth century to the present day, looking in particular at painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and, starting in the twentieth century, new media. Topics to be considered include the landmark innovations of Renaissance artists and theorists; the drama of Baroque art; the impact of the Enlightenment on eighteenth-century art; artistic responses to the advent of modernity; and the emergence of abstraction, the avant-garde, and a range of new mediums during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Throughout the semester, we will explore how the artistic practices and theories under consideration relate to their specific historical, intellectual, social, political, and geographical contexts, and we will also consider the roles that works of art and artists played in shaping many of those very same contexts.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
  • Instructor: Warnock, Molly
  • Room: Hodson 311
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Global Amsterdam: The Golden Age of a Small but Mighty Metropolis
AS.010.337 (01)

This course examines the visual and material culture of the Dutch Golden Age as the product of global forces. The young Dutch Republic quickly achieved a global reach in the seventeenth century. And Amsterdam served as its commercial capital, which by 1630 could be counted as one of the most important port cities in the world and home to the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the world’s first multinational corporation. Moving an incredible quantity of goods (spices, silks, porcelain, coffee, precious stones, “exotic” arts, and slaves) generated not only the economic riches, but also the cultural touchpoints that would give rise to art produced by the likes of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, and the many exceptional craftsmen that have left us some of the most enduring masterpieces of the seventeenth century. This course situates that art, and the city of Amsterdam itself, within networks that connected it to such far flung places as Japan, Jakarta, Surinam, Curacao, Brazil, and the Indian Subcontinent.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Hyman, Aaron M.
  • Room: Gilman 177
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 13/15
  • PosTag(s): HART-RENBAR

Art, Medicine, and the Body: Middle Ages to Modernity
AS.010.235 (01)

This course explores seven centuries of fruitful collaboration between physicians and artists, uncovering the shared discourses, diagnostic techniques and therapeutic agendas that united the art of picture-making with the art of healing. Topics include the origin and development of medical illustration; the long, cross-cultural history of the therapeutic artefact; the anatomical investigations of Renaissance artists such as Leonardo and Michelangelo; depictions of bodily pain and disease in the art of Matthias Grünewald and psychosomatic syndromes like melancholy in the work of Albrecht Dürer; the spectacularization of the body in Enlightenment science and the ethics of medical specimen display today -- all in order to bring the complex intersections of the history of medicine and the history of art into view.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
  • Instructor: Merback, Mitchell
  • Room: Gilman 177
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/20
  • PosTag(s): HART-RENBAR, MSCH-HUM

Freshman Seminar: Art and Medicine in the ancient Mediterranean (600-100 BCE)
AS.010.237 (01)

The visual arts played an important role in the foundations of medicine often traced to the ancient Mediterranean. Drawing on a range of objects from representational art to surgical tools and magic spells, this seminar will explore the ways in which the visual arts crafted a different narrative of ancient medicine from that of the texts of the Hippocratic canon. Of particular focus will be the relationship between the doctor Hippocrates and the healing god Asclepius, the representation and subsequent excision of the goddess Hygeia, anatomical votives dedicated in sanctuaries, depictions of medical practices, surgical tools, as well as curse and healing spells. Participation will include visits to local museums and collections.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
  • Instructor: Stager, Jennifer M S
  • Room: Gilman 119
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/12
  • PosTag(s): HART-ANC, ARCH-ARCH

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

This introductory course surveys major developments in the arts primarily in Europe and North America from the fourteenth century to the present day, looking in particular at painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and, starting in the twentieth century, new media. Topics to be considered include the landmark innovations of Renaissance artists and theorists; the drama of Baroque art; the impact of the Enlightenment on eighteenth-century art; artistic responses to the advent of modernity; and the emergence of abstraction, the avant-garde, and a range of new mediums during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Throughout the semester, we will explore how the artistic practices and theories under consideration relate to their specific historical, intellectual, social, political, and geographical contexts, and we will also consider the roles that works of art and artists played in shaping many of those very same contexts.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM
  • Instructor: Warnock, Molly
  • Room: Hodson 311
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Native American Art
AS.010.366 (01)

The works of Native American artists are examined and discussed in their respective social and historical contexts. Such works include Hopewell stone sculpture, Mimbres pictorial painting, and Tlingit guardian figures. We examine the concept of sacred landscape through analysis of monumental earthworks and effigy mounds, Anasazi architecture, and rock art. In conjunction with the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), and Johns Hopkins Special Collections, students will have access to collections for study.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
  • Instructor: Deleonardis, Lisa
  • Room: Hodson 315
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/25
  • PosTag(s): HART-ANC, ARCH-ARCH

Art of the Assyrian Empire, 1000-600 BCE
AS.010.315 (01)

From 900 to 609 BCE, the Assyrian Empire dominated the ancient Near Eastern world, stretching from western Iran to the Mediterranean and Egypt. In concert with imperial expansion came an explosion of artistic production ranging from palace wall reliefs to small-scale luxury objects. This course provides an integrated picture of the imperial arts of this first world empire, situating it within the broader social and political contexts of the first millennium BCE. In its conquest of foreign lands, this powerful state came in contact with and appropriated a diversity of cultures, such as Phoenicia, Egypt, and Greece, which we will also study.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
  • Instructor: Feldman, Marian
  • Room: Gilman 177
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 7/18
  • PosTag(s): HART-ANC, ARCH-ARCH

Art and the Harem: Women’s Spaces, Patronage, and (Self-)Representation in Islamic Empires
AS.010.338 (01)

Long characterized in the Western imagination as exotic realms of fantasy, harems in Islamic tradition served as private domestic quarters for the women of elite households. This course explores the harem—as an institution, a physical space, and a community of women—from various art-historical perspectives, considering such topics as the harem’s architecture, the agency of its inhabitants as patrons and collectors, the mediating role of eunuchs in the harem’s visual and material culture, and the ability of harem women to make their mark through public artistic commissions. Our case studies will address a range of Islamic geographical and chronological contexts, though we will focus on the empires of the early modern period and, above all, the famous harem of the Ottoman sultans at the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. In challenging popular misconceptions, the course will also look at the wealth of exoticizing imagery that the harem inspired in Western art, which we will consider through Orientalist paintings at the Walters Art Museum and illustrated rare books at Hopkins itself.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
  • Instructor: Rustem, Unver
  • Room: Gilman 119
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/15
  • PosTag(s): HART-NW, ISLM-ISLMST

Hands-On Approaches to European Books and Prints before 1800
AS.010.433 (01)

Baltimore’s rich museum and library collections create a dynamic laboratory for students to gain an understanding of early modern European traditions of prints and books. Engraving, etching, woodcut, mezzotint, à la poupée; Rembrandt, Dürer, Aldus Manutius, Plantin-Moretus. This course will introduce students to the basic techniques, concepts, terms, and artists that shaped the production of reproductive works on paper in early modern Europe and their subsequent art historical study. All sessions will be taught out of local collections (BMA, Walters, NGA, Hopkins Special Collections); that is, this is a hands-on class that—while requiring no previous experience—will attend to the nitty-gritty details and methods of studying works in person, giving students the tools, expertise, and confidence to pursue their own research with historical printed materials.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: M 2:00PM - 4:30PM
  • Instructor: Hyman, Aaron M.
  • Room: BLC 2030
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/8
  • PosTag(s): HART-RENBAR

Feminist Modernisms
AS.363.400 (01)

Prize Teaching Fellowship seminar. Triangulating feminist psychoanalysis and theories of embodiment and subjectivity with art criticism and case studies of artistic practice (primarily painting), this course comparatively investigates the routes modernism takes after the Second World War and decolonization (1945/1947). We will be interested in specific postcolonial and postwar contexts where modernism in the domain of the visual arts was mounted as a feminist project. Each week will pair readings that establish conceptual frameworks with close analyses of works by specific artists, including those represented by the Library's Special Collections and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Texts include Freud, Spivak, Butler, Irigaray, Kristeva, and Mahmood.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 3:00PM - 5:30PM
  • Instructor: Ballakrishnen, Meghaa
  • Room: Gilman 134
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 7/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Classics Research Lab: Antioch Recovery Project (ARP)
AS.010.444 (01)

Antioch Recovery Project investigates mosaics from the ancient city of Antioch (modern Antakya, Turkey, near the border with Syria) now in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Excavated by an international team of archaeologists in the 1930s, hundreds of ancient mosaics from the cosmopolitan city were subsequently dispersed to museums across the globe, with twenty-four mosaics entering the collection of the BMA. Phase I will focus on the digital documentation and analysis of the mosaic of Narcissus as a prototype for ongoing research bringing together the fragments of ancient Antioch for contemporary beholders. The Greek myth of Narcissus tells the story of a beautiful Theban hunter doomed to love his own reflection and is the origin of the modern psychiatric term “narcissism”. Researching the mythology, materials, conservation history, archival material, historiography, and contemporary reception of the Narcissus mosaic and myth offers extensive opportunities to collaborate with scholars across a range of disciplines at JHU, in the Baltimore museum community, and beyond. Investigators will move between the Baltimore Museum of Art, the CRL processing lab in Gilman Hall, and Special Collections. The course will involve some travel to visit other mosaics from Antioch now in collections at Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks in Washington D.C., and the Princeton Art Museum in Princeton, New Jersey.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: Th 3:00PM - 5:30PM
  • Instructor: Stager, Jennifer M S
  • Room: Gilman 261
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/12
  • PosTag(s): HART-ANC, ARCH-ARCH

Seminar in Research Methods in Near Eastern Studies: Religion and Science
AS.130.420 (01)

This writing intensive seminar examines the relationship between religion and science in ancient Mesopotamia and the rest of the Near East from the 4th millennium to the Hellenistic period. Using a variety of case studies, and through engagement with scholarly literature pertaining to the topic of the course, students will develop skills in specific research skills such as critical reading, analysis, and interpretation.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: W 2:00PM - 4:30PM
  • Instructor: Delnero, Paul
  • Room: Gilman 130G
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/15
  • PosTag(s): ARCH-RELATE

Encountering American Art
AS.389.373 (01)

Students investigate the Baltimore Museum of Art’s American art collection and its presentation to the public alongside current scholarship on American art to develop strategies for a new permanent collection display that aligns with the museum’s commitment to artistic excellence and social equity. M&S Practicum. Co-taught with BMA curator Virginia Anderson.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Anderson, Virginia, Kingsley, Jennifer P
  • Room: Gilman 150A
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 3/12
  • PosTag(s): PMUS-PRAC

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

Critical readings in and of relevance to the intellectual foundations of the modern discipline of art history. Texts by Wölfflin, Riegl, Warburg, Panofsky, Baxandall, Clark, Krauss, Fried, and others.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Lakey, Christopher
  • Room: Gilman 177
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/10
  • PosTag(s): HART-THRY

Power Dressing: The Politics of Costume between the Ottoman Empire and the West
AS.010.440 (01)

In the Ottoman Empire—a vast multiethnic state straddling Africa, Asia, and Europe—how one dressed was a deeply political affair. Ottoman rulers and subjects alike used clothing to express (and sometimes transgress) the hierarchical, religious, and communal distinctions defining their society, much to the fascination of foreigners who visited the empire or sought knowledge of its sartorial traditions in texts and images. This seminar will explore Ottoman dress and dress codes in the context of the empire’s long and complicated relationship with Western powers, focusing on the role that costume played as a charged site of cross-cultural interaction, posturing, and self-assertion from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Our case studies will include costume albums—books showing people high and low in their characteristic garb—painted by Ottoman artists for Western buyers; diplomatic robes of honor and their attendant ceremonies; and cultural cross-dressing as manifested in European turquerie portraiture and masquerades. Moving into the modern period, we will consider how nineteenth-century dress reforms bridged the gap between Ottoman and Western costume while engendering new modes of Ottoman sartorial self-representation that challenged hardening Orientalist discourses in such venues as mannequin museums and world’s fairs. The seminar will make considerable use of artworks in local collections, including rare books and prints at Hopkins itself.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Rustem, Unver
  • Room: Gilman 119
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 6/10
  • PosTag(s): HART-NW, ISLM-ISLMST

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.010.102 (03)Introduction to the History of Western Art IIMW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PMWarnock, MollyHodson 311
AS.010.204 (01)Italian Art in the Middle AgesMW 1:30PM - 2:45PMZchomelidse, NinoGilman 177HART-MED
AS.010.102 (02)Introduction to the History of Western Art IIMW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AMWarnock, MollyHodson 311
AS.010.301 (01)Michelangelo: Religion, Sexuality, and the Crisis of Renaissance ArtTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMCampbell, StephenGilman 177HART-RENBAR
AS.010.102 (04)Introduction to the History of Western Art IIMW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PMWarnock, MollyHodson 311
AS.010.337 (01)Global Amsterdam: The Golden Age of a Small but Mighty MetropolisTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMHyman, Aaron M.Gilman 177HART-RENBAR
AS.010.235 (01)Art, Medicine, and the Body: Middle Ages to ModernityTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMMerback, MitchellGilman 177HART-RENBAR, MSCH-HUM
AS.010.237 (01)Freshman Seminar: Art and Medicine in the ancient Mediterranean (600-100 BCE)TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PMStager, Jennifer M SGilman 119HART-ANC, ARCH-ARCH
AS.010.102 (01)Introduction to the History of Western Art IIMW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AMWarnock, MollyHodson 311
AS.010.366 (01)Native American ArtTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMDeleonardis, LisaHodson 315HART-ANC, ARCH-ARCH
AS.010.315 (01)Art of the Assyrian Empire, 1000-600 BCEMW 12:00PM - 1:15PMFeldman, MarianGilman 177HART-ANC, ARCH-ARCH
AS.010.338 (01)Art and the Harem: Women’s Spaces, Patronage, and (Self-)Representation in Islamic EmpiresTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMRustem, UnverGilman 119HART-NW, ISLM-ISLMST
AS.010.433 (01)Hands-On Approaches to European Books and Prints before 1800M 2:00PM - 4:30PMHyman, Aaron M.BLC 2030HART-RENBAR
AS.363.400 (01)Feminist ModernismsT 3:00PM - 5:30PMBallakrishnen, MeghaaGilman 134
AS.010.444 (01)Classics Research Lab: Antioch Recovery Project (ARP)Th 3:00PM - 5:30PMStager, Jennifer M SGilman 261HART-ANC, ARCH-ARCH
AS.130.420 (01)Seminar in Research Methods in Near Eastern Studies: Religion and ScienceW 2:00PM - 4:30PMDelnero, PaulGilman 130GARCH-RELATE
AS.389.373 (01)Encountering American ArtTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMAnderson, Virginia, Kingsley, Jennifer PGilman 150APMUS-PRAC
AS.010.413 (01)Historical and Conceptual Bases of Art HistoryT 1:30PM - 4:00PMLakey, ChristopherGilman 177HART-THRY
AS.010.440 (01)Power Dressing: The Politics of Costume between the Ottoman Empire and the WestM 1:30PM - 4:00PMRustem, UnverGilman 119HART-NW, ISLM-ISLMST

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 program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info