In this course we will investigate the rising, diffusion, function, and theoretical complexity of portraiture in Italian art from the early Renaissance through the XVIII century. We will analyse the concepts of likeness in its multiple nuances, from physical resemblance to psychological interiority, to understand how identity was constructed, codified, and performed through the visual arts. 
Approaching painted and sculpted portraits as sophisticated rhetorical devices, we will examine the shift from the commemorative profile to the psychological three-quarter view, the tension between idealization and realism, and the role of portraiture in courtly politics, gender relations, and memorialization. We will pay attention to material elements such as clothing, jewels, and other objects, the use of light, and the characteristics of the background in order to understand intention and function of portraits from the point of view of both the artist and the patron. Our analysis will include artists’ self-portraits: observing the passage from the hidden portraits of the Quattrocento (where the artist appears as a bystander in religious narratives) to the psychological self-studies of the sixteenth century and beyond, we will consider how the status of the artist changed over time from mechanical craftsman to celebrated intellectual. Students will engage with primary sources (including Vasari, Castiglione, Aretino, as well as letters by artists such as Titian and Bernini) alongside modern critical theories regarding self-presentation. We will visit museums and the special collections at the Regenstein and the Newberry libraries.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American pre-1800

This seminar tracks the entanglements of visual art and “technology,” a term which took on an increasingly expanded set of meanings beginning in the early decades of the twentieth century. Focusing on the period between World War I and the present, we examine these expanded meanings and ask how the work of art fundamentally shifted with, extended, tested, or acted upon “technology.” We consider cases from the art historical avant gardes, the impact of cybernetics and systems thinking on architecture and visual perception, midcentury collectives that sought to institutionalize collaborations between artists and engineers, the myriad ways contemporary artists engage AI, as well as more subtle exchanges between art and technology brewing since the Cold War. 

Course readings drawn from art history and the histories of science and technology, as well as site visits to art collections on campus, will inform our investigation. Students will gain historical insights into the relation between visual art and technology; develop analytical tools for critically engaging with the present-day interface of art, science, and engineering; and consider the implications for the futures we imagine.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800

This course considers East Asian art through the dimensions of touch and tactility. What happens when we think of art not just as something to be seen, but felt? How do material, tactile, and haptic qualities shape creative processes, as well as our understanding of art across China, Japan, Korean, and beyond? How have modern museum practices, with their “do not touch” signs, transformed our relationship with these works? Through various case studies—from the sensuous surfaces of Chinese decorative objects and the ritualized grinding of ink on stone, the hand-formed and deliberately textured Japanese tea bowls meant to be cradled in hands, to the illusionistic tactility in Korean chaekgeori still-life paintings—we will explore the significance of touch and materiality in artistic expressions and aesthetic experiences in East Asian art history. We will engage with art objects hands-on when possible, develop methodologies for analyzing tactile dimensions of art, and critically examine how touch intersects with cultural values, social hierarchies, and aesthetics across East Asian traditions.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian, modern (post-1800), Asian, premodern (pre-1800)

This course examines the construction and use of complex shapes in 20th century art and architecture. We begin with study of several mid-20th century sculptors, including Gabo, Albers, Moholy-Nagy, Arp, Hepworth and others, who focused on the use of geometry in complex three-dimensional form-making. Students will investigate abstract form through a series of weekly exercises building up in complexity that we then discuss as a group during class. Through these exercises, students will also build up digital modeling skills, which provide a fundamental connection between their drawings and three-dimensional objects. We will ground our investigations by studying the sculptors, from whom we can learn formal organizing principles such as regulatory lines, boundaries and edges, shallow and deep space, and variations on transparency. The discipline learned is applicable at a variety of scales, from small shapes to larger architectural or landscape endeavors. Familiarity with any design process is recommended.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800

Photography has played a pivotal role in the history and visual culture of the United States since the mid-nineteenth century, from Civil War albums to Nan Goldin’s diaristic photographs of the downtown New York club scene during the AIDS crisis. Popular conceptions of photography often frame it as a ‘democratic art’ by pointing to its ease of use and low barrier to entry, implying a unique affinity to American democratic society and its values. This framing belies the contradictions at the heart of photography in America, which has been used to support projects of dispossession, racial hierarchy, and state violence, but also struggles for liberation, individual expression, and self-determination. Drawing on the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection of photographs made in and about America from the nineteenth century to the present, this seminar will explore photography’s role in establishing, sustaining, and critiquing some of the country’s foundational narratives and principles. Who gets to be an American, and to whom does America belong? Who gets to be an American photographer, and whose photographs are allowed to represent America? What are ‘American’ values, and how have photographers tried to uphold or dismantle those values? 

This course aims to look at Winckelmann not just as a passionate advocate of antiquity but as a “philosophical historian of ancient art”, as his American translator put it in 1849. In particular, the question of a developmental history with history-transcending high points remains of pressing interest: art historians today tend to pluralism, but remain normative in what art they consider worthy of attention. An examination of Winckelmann’s unique mix of personal and historical criteria of flourishing (beauty, pleasure, happiness), of book learning and visual imagination, is thus worthwhile on any account, not because we want to be as subjective as he is, but because we should be aware of what role our subjectivity, our hopes and fears, play in history. Accordingly, texts from the programmatic Gedanken (1755) and antiquarian writings to the monumental History of Ancient Art (1764, and an even longer posthumous version, 1776) will be examined, as will his analyses of beauty, of the representation of gender, of symbol and concept in art. 

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American pre-1800,Theory/Historiography

This course will investigate materiality in the context of art-historical study. Thirty years ago technical art history was a burgeoning field of study among a small number of museum conservators, curators and scientists. Today curatorial/conservation partnerships are common and analytic methods to examine and characterize artworks are sophisticated and often nondestructive. The intersection of the three disciplines – art history, conservation and materials science – has made it possible to study art in a more holistic and objective manner by understanding the art-making materials, the methods of using them, and the conscious choices made by artists to achieve their aesthetic goals. Additionally, changes to works of art, whether the result of inherent instability, external environmental factors, or artist’s intent may be more readily identified and assessed. 
 
Case studies will be presented to show how artists’ methods and materials can be informative within a broader art-historical context. The course will address the meaningful integration of technical study into one’s own curatorial/art history practice. Students will examine works of art firsthand to determine the materials and methods used in their making, to assess their condition, and to see how various manipulations of different art-making materials inform their appearance. Students will evaluate selected readings and recent technical studies. Class participation is encouraged and expected. 

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Methodology

This course will introduce students to the methods, theories, and strategies of scientific approaches to the study of art objects and will consider the meaning of different materials and surfaces across artistic media. It will showcase new scholarship in the fields of heritage science and object-driven art history, drawing strength from collaborative work among scientists, conservators, art historians, and curators. Heritage science draws on the applied sciences and engineering to understand how to preserve the world’s cultural heritage and forge connections between making and meaning. The course will explore scientific methods for investigating the production and use of art objects. Focusing on the material studies of paintings and sculptures, pigments, and their binding media, students will learn about the material makeup of art objects. Readings will be drawn from a variety of disciplines, including material science and chemistry, art history, visual and material culture, anthropology, and philosophy.

This course develops skills in perception, comprehension, and evaluation of various art objects and the built environment. It encourages close analysis of visual materials, exploring the range of questions and methods appropriate to works of art and buildings, in their historical, theoretical, and social dimensions. Most importantly, the course emphasizes articulate writing and salient argumentation about visual and other aesthetic phenomena. Three coherent units, on Monument/Site, Image/Medium, and Object/Museum, explore these issues across cultures and periods. Examples draw on original objects in campus collections and sites on campus.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, pre-modern (pre-1800), Latin American, and Asian, premodern (pre-1800)

This course develops skills in perception, comprehension, and evaluation of various art objects and the built environment. It encourages close analysis of visual materials, exploring the range of questions and methods appropriate to works of art and buildings, in their historical, theoretical, and social dimensions. Most importantly, the course emphasizes articulate writing and salient argumentation about visual and other aesthetic phenomena. Three coherent units, on Monument/Site, Image/Medium, and Object/Museum, explore these issues across cultures and periods. Examples draw on original objects in campus collections and sites on campus.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, pre-modern (pre-1800), Asian, premodern (pre-1800), Asian, modern (post-1800)

This is an introductory course and survey of the major patrons, architects, and building programs that defined the spatial contexts of the Renaissance in Italy and meets the general education requirement in the Humanities Core.

Between the 15th and 16th centuries, the political aspirations of governments, popes, princes, and merchants demanded a more articulated architectural environment that would facilitate increasingly complex modes of public and private life. They were aided in this endeavor by the emergence of a newly professionalized class of architects, who turned their eyes towards both a systematic study of the classical past and a critical assessment of their contemporary world. Renaissance urban palaces – both civic and private – and rural villas provided the stages upon which a new art of living could be performed. New inventions in military engineering responded to rapidly advancing technologies of warfare. Urban planning techniques created new topographies of spiritual and political triumph and reform, while treatises on ideal cities laid the foundations for the modern integrated multi-functional city.

Between Venice, Florence, Rome and their rural surroundings, this course will focus on a range of important patrons such as Roman Popes, Venetian Doges, princely courts and private merchants, and we will explore what made the works of such architects as Filippo Brunelleschi, Giuliano da Sangallo, Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco di Giorgio, Michelangelo, Jacopo Sansovino, and Andrea Palladio, so creative, innovative, and influential well into our own contemporary architectural landscape.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, pre-modern (pre-1800)

This course introduces students to key histories, artworks, and theoretical discourses surrounding modern Korean art. Covering the period from the late 19th to mid-20th century, the course explores historical junctures—late Joseon, the Korean Empire (1897–1910), the colonial period (1910–1945), and the Korean War (1950–1953)—as critical moments during which the concepts of modernity and "modern art" (geundae misul) were imported and contested. Beyond providing a basic understanding of modern Korean art history, the course engages with broader art-historical inquiries, particularly how modernity and modernism can be articulated within a global framework. Readings encompass art historical texts as well as theories on multiple modernities, global modernisms, theories of imperialism, and decoloniality. Discussion sections will emphasize the close reading of texts and visual materials, including drawings, paintings (oil and ink), photography, sculpture, and architecture.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian post-1800, Theory and Historiography

Surveying the history of modern Western art from the 18th through the 21st century, this course will introduce students to the artists, art works, and issues central to the relationship between art and modernity: the rise of the self and identity politics, the growth of the metropolis, the questioning of the "real" and the invention of photography, the autonomous thrust and semiotic potential of abstraction, the political ambitions of the avant-garde, and the impact of consumer and media cultures. Most discussion sections will center around original works of art at the Smart Museum of Art, the library's Special Collections, in public spaces, and in other local collections.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800

This course is an introduction to the arts of China, covering the period from the Shang-Zhou dynasties to the twentieth century. It focuses on significant monuments and artworks produced in imperial, aristocratic, literati, religious, and public contexts. We will study archaeological finds, underground architecture, temples, paintings and calligraphy, objects, and artworks. The goal is to help students comprehend Chinese art’s main ideas and concepts, use proper language to communicate art historical ideas, and think critically about issues arising from China’s visual and material culture.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Asian, modern (post-1800), Asian, premodern (pre-1800)

This course is an introduction to the arts of China, covering the period from the Shang-Zhou dynasties to the twentieth century. It focuses on significant monuments and artworks produced in imperial, aristocratic, literati, religious, and public contexts. We will study archaeological finds, underground architecture, temples, paintings and calligraphy, objects, and artworks. The goal is to help students comprehend Chinese art’s main ideas and concepts, use proper language to communicate art historical ideas, and think critically about issues arising from China’s visual and material culture.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Asian, modern (post-1800), Asian, premodern (pre-1800)

This course is an introduction to the arts of China, covering the period from the Shang-Zhou dynasties to the twentieth century. It focuses on significant monuments and artworks produced in imperial, aristocratic, literati, religious, and public contexts. We will study archaeological finds, underground architecture, temples, paintings and calligraphy, objects, and artworks. The goal is to help students comprehend Chinese art’s main ideas and concepts, use proper language to communicate art historical ideas, and think critically about issues arising from China’s visual and material culture.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Asian, modern (post-1800), Asian, premodern (pre-1800)

This course introduces the visual arts and architecture of Japan through a selection of objects and themes intended to develop the skills of close looking, critical thinking, and writing about the visual arts. We will examine major works from prehistory to the 1800s, such as shrines and temples, Buddhist art, folding screens, tea bowls, and woodblock prints.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Asian, premodern (pre-1800)

France emerged from the 16th century devastated by wars of religion; sixty years later it was the most powerful state in Europe. This course will provide an overview of French art in this period, with a strong emphasis on the city of Paris. Three themes will predominate: philosophical skepticism (pyrrhonisme) and the New Science; practices of knowledge, self-transformation and art-making; and the rise of absolute monarchy.  Each week will be divided evenly between lectures at the Paris Center; site visits and walking tours in Paris to discuss architecture, urbanism and to see pictures in their original settings; and visits to the Musée du Louvre.  Walks will be about two hours in duration; visits to the Louvre will be two or three hours; a final visit to a nearby château (Vaux-le-Vicomte or Versailles, depending on schedule) will take much of a day.  Readings will be drawn chiefly from primary texts (in translation).

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, pre-modern (pre-1800)

This course invites students to consider the intertwined architectural histories of France and Algeria in the colonial and postcolonial eras. From colonial designs in French Algeria to counterhegemonic spaces of Algerian communities in postcolonial France, students will examine how architecture engages with fraught historical episodes and contested cultural landscapes. Case studies include Paris as a Eurocentric paradigm for the modern city, dialectics of construction and destruction in Algiers under colonial rule, and urban multiplicity in Marseille. Protagonists include Le Corbusier, arguably the most canonical architect of the 20th century, and underexamined figures like Abderrahmane Bouchama, who declared being the sole Muslim Algerian architect at the independence. By the end of the quarter, students will have gained substantial knowledge of the history of these two countries, their architecture, and the historiographical stakes of connective architectural history.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: African, European and American, modern (post-1800)

With its ideal proportions inscribed in perfect geometry, the Vitruvian Man long served as the iconic model of early modern architecture, inspiring Renaissance designers to reimagine buildings and cities in pursuit of its ideal form. Yet this abstract male figure, often framed as a symbol of human dignity, conceals the vital multiplicity essential to both human and urban life and obscures the diverse experiences of early modern populations. 

This course challenges students to consider how the human body—both as a cultural construct and a site of lived experience—shaped the design and reception of early modern architecture. While the Vitruvian Man serves as our point of departure, we will move beyond its idealised geometry to explore how sensory experience and embodied practice animated and reconfigured Renaissance architectural space, paying particular attention to urban inhabitants who negotiated, reshaped, and at times overturned the harmonious projections of architects and designers.

Students will engage with canonical architects such as Michelangelo, Alberti, and  Leonardo alongside ordinary inhabitants—including artisans, women, Jewish communities, and travellers—who deployed their eyes, ears, hands, mouths, and feet to rewrite the meaning of urban space and inscribe their own presence in the fabric of Renaissance cities. With their support, we will also explore the potential for historical urban experience to inform, unsettle, or inspire the way we imagine cities today.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American pre-1800

This course surveys key histories and theoretical discourses of contemporary art, with a particular focus on Korea, both North and South. Beginning at the end of the Korean War (1950–1953), the course reexamines the notion of the "postwar" from Korean and broader Asian perspectives, extending the conversation to art produced in the present day. The parallel postwar histories—industrialization, authoritarianism, democratization movements, and globalization across East and Southeast Asia—necessitate an interregional and global approach. Korea, from the aftermath of the Korean War onwards, has served as a significant testing ground within these interconnected historical trajectories. While centering discussions on artworks and discourses from Korea, the course will also engage with artistic practices from other regions, including but not limited to Japan, China, Taiwan, Europe, the United States, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. This course may include a self-directed visit to the MCA and the Art Institute, as well as participation in selected artist talks.
 

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian, modern (1800-present)

This course examines the ways in which French colonialism has been celebrated, commemorated, taught, and contested in visual art, monuments, institutions and neighborhoods, from the late 18th century to the present. From the commemorations of Napoleon’s Egyptian Expedition to the recently redesigned Islamic Art wing of the Louvre; from the Palais de la Porte Dorée that housed the 1931 Colonial Exposition to the National Museum of the History of Immigration; from the Grand Mosque of Paris to the Institut du Monde Arabe; we will explore together the many ways that artists, sculptors, architects, city planners, and activists have responded to the French imperial project. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, successive regimes sponsored large- and small-scale efforts to make metropolitan citizens aware of French colonial efforts, ranging from monumental celebrations of military victories to the naming of streets after colonial administrators. At the same time, critics of empire, both colonial subjects and French activists, and postcolonial states have used art and architecture to contest those same efforts, exposing the limits of the French universalizing mission and the human costs of empire building. In examining the many ways different artistic forms have engaged with France’s colonial projects, we will pay particular attention to how historical events and contemporary political debates have shaped their production.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
 

This course invites students to reflect on the idea of modernity in architecture as it developed from the 15th century to the late 20th century. Its aims are twofold: first, to introduce students to selected architectural episodes across time and space; second, to demonstrate that modernity is a concept deeply charged with power dynamics. Historically, the idea of modernity has defined its margins by systematically portraying certain people, cultures, and places as deficient in the modern mind, techniques, or aesthetics. In this respect, modernity and its antonyms are inseparable, like two sides of the same coin. Over the quarter, we will examine exclusionary visions of modernity, challenge their claims to universality, and amplify the voices of those who proposed alternative models for modernity in architecture.

Introductory courses serve as gatekeepers of our field, ritualizing students’ entry into architectural history as a discursive space and reinforcing hierarchies through the subtexts of knowledge. In response, this course invites students to reflect on the values and limits of inclusion and exclusion of certain figures, buildings, and geographies in architectural history as an active practice. Students will engage both canonical moments in architectural history and episodes often omitted from introductory courses. These marginalized segments are of particular interest because they redefine inclusivity in modernity on the basis of race, class, and gender. Lectures and assignments are designed to encourage students to situate their own position in toward and against prior models of discursivity in architecture.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: African, Asian, modern (post-1800), European and American, modern (post-1800), Latin American, Theory and Historiography

From the Renaissance to the present day, architecture has been a blatantly male-centric field. This course invites students to consider women who overcame systemic barriers to become figures of agency in 20th-century architecture. We will examine the lives and works of women who have managed to attend architecture schools, despite historical gender-based exclusion or restriction on enrollment, as well as those who found impactful ways to play architectural roles without academic training. We will pay particular attention to how these protagonists add necessary complexity to the modernist canon. The course will start with a first module on positionality (women as architects, women as clients, and women as residents) followed by a second module with a biographical scope (Minnette De Silva, Eileen Gray, bell hooks, and Sibyl Moholy-Nagy).

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, modern (post-1800), Theory and Historiography

The built environment serves as a powerful connection to its time, place, and cultural origins. This course examines East Asian architecture and landscapes that have transcended their native contexts, as well as East Asian-style buildings designed for cultural others. From the bustling streets of Chinatown to the serene Japanese gardens and the meticulously curated period rooms showcasing East Asia’s arts and cultures, the course explores a wide range of architectural forms, urban designs, and landscapes spanning two centuries. These structures are studied not as static artifacts but as dynamic platforms for social events, cultural debates, and political opportunities, shaped by historical and ongoing negotiations between their home and host contexts.
Central to the course is the concept of diaspora, through which we investigate how the experience of living outside one’s home country—sometimes in foreign or even unwelcoming environments—can be understood through the lens of the built environment. In this framework, architecture becomes a reflection of the dynamic experiences of immigration, racialization, cultural exchange, and confrontation. It is also subject to processes of representation, appropriation, modification, and reinvention.
Through immersive field trips in the Chicago metropolitan area, students will critically analyze the formal language, spatial experiences, cultural symbolism, and social dynamics embedded in East Asian-style architecture and landscapes.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Asian, modern (post-1800), European and American, modern (post-1800)

This course is an introduction to the Islamic art of the book, with a particular focus on Arabic and Persian manuscripts spanning the 11th to 17th centuries and beyond. By paying attention to the relationships between calligraphy, illumination, and painting through the lens of manuscript materiality and bookmaking technologies we will explore key histories, artworks, and discourses surrounding Islamic manuscripts, from Qur’ans to lavishly illustrated historical, scientific, and literary texts.
While attending to issues of style, image-text relationships, and the transmission of knowledge in a roughly chronological framework, the course also engages with broader questions about materiality and the socio-economic conditions of manuscripts including economies of manuscript production and circulation, and systems of patronage.
The course emphasizes close looking and in-depth study of manuscripts from the ISAC, the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Sessions will also include workshops at the Seldon Institute in Hyde Park. Visits to local collections will supplement classroom discussions and assigned readings.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian pre-1800, Asian post-1800

Focusing on roughly 1200-1900 CE in East Asia, this course considers the social functions of East Asian paintings and craft objects in conjunction with their subject matter, materiality, and style. Art historian Timon Screech has observed that the function of most paintings in early modern Japan was to radiate positivity and auspiciousness --a fact also connected to Wu Hung's observations about the absence of 'ruins' in traditional Chinese art. How can we put a finer point on a painting's auspicious qualities, and what were some other functions that paintings were fulfilling during this time period, either in tandem with auspiciousness or in place of it? 

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Asian, modern (post-1800), Asian, premodern (pre-1800)

“Media Revolutions Then and Now” explores how the Protestant Reformation and innovations in printing technology coincided to catalyze a sweeping revolution that paved the way for media culture as we know it today. The seminar aims to interrogate traditional narratives that center on printing technology as the driving force of the Reformation, and instead shows how essential religious thought and practice were for the emergence and success of modern media. We will highlight how Reformers like Martin Luther not only provided content but also a theological legitimacy that sustained the print industry, thereby transforming print from a nascent technology into a powerful tool for religious and cultural change. Central to this historical and critical interrogation is the notion of the Reformation as the first modern media event, showcasing how this interplay of theology and technology laid the foundation for our modern media landscape. Accompanying an exhibition at Regenstein’s Special Collections which is running through the winter quarter, the seminar draws not only on the displayed items but also the library rich holdings in early prints. Students will be encouraged to put their own understanding and experience of contemporary media ecologies in dialogue with media ecosystem of the early Gutenberg Galaxy.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, pre-modern (pre-1800)

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This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian pre-1800

This course surveys the landscape of Mexican art from the late nineteenth century into the 1940s, exploring the developments, debates, and problems of this particularly rich moment in the history of twentieth-century art. Within the context of post-revolutionary society and politics, we will study the production, circulation, and reception of prints, photographs, easel painting, film, and craft, along with the work of the famed muralists. Issues to be addressed include: the formation of new ideas of nation and citizenship, the relationship of artists to the state, the place of indigenous peoples and their art in a new social order, the influence of foreign artists and trends, the incorporation of both old and new media and technologies, and the intersection of gender, class, and national identities.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Latin American

The course gives a critical introduction to early video and television art – from the proto-televisual impulses in the historical avant-gardes to the increasing proximity between analog and digital technologies in video art in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. We will focus on the various technical aspects of analog video, as well as on artistic practice and early writings on the subject. Topics  include the technics and politics of time; video, feedback systems and ecology; the reconfiguration of the artist’s studio; guerilla politics and alternative TV; video and autobiography; the relation between video and painting; the musical history of video; the invention of new machines; and video as a “television viewer”. 

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, modern (post-1800), Theory and Historiography

This course will be a thoroughgoing study of American art critic Clement Greenberg’s seminal “Avant-Garde and Kitsch.” Published in 1939, Greenberg's essay is not only a passionate defense of the superiority of so-called “formal,” “elevated,” or “highbrow” culture relative to the “rudimentary,” “popular,” or “lowbrow” forms abounding within modern industrial society; it is also a subtle argument for what art is and why art matters, one indebted to a Marxist theory of history and grounded in a belief in the possibly imminent realization of global socialism. For Greenberg, it was not bourgeois elitism but rather popular entertainment that most seriously threatened humanity's complete cultural flourishing: Socialism demanded Modernism in the arts. But by his death in 1994, having earned a reputation as a reactionary aesthete, the critic had long since abandoned his leftist commitments.

Was Greenberg’s shift in political sensibility inevitable? How are socialism and modernism related historically? Is elitism in art necessarily incompatible with socialism in politics? These will be some of our core questions. Ultimately, the course is a nine-week rumination on the contemporary relevance of the rather enigmatic final lines of Greenberg's famous essay: “Today we no longer look toward socialism for a new culture – as inevitably as one will appear, once we do have socialism. Today we look to socialism simply for the preservation of whatever living culture we have right now."

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: American and European post-1800

This seminar will introduce students to key medieval theories of vision in western Europe ranging from the theological to the scientific. We will explore the ways in which beholders approached and interacted with images, as well as how they understood and theorized these visual experiences. Ultimately, this course will interrogate the overlaps and gaps between theories and practices of looking in order to better understand what looking at an image in the Middle Ages entailed. Topics will include, but are not limited to: visionary experience; optical science; female mystics; devotional images; the Book of Revelation; and changes in pre-modern “visuality” on the eve of the Reformation.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, pre-modern (pre-1800)

The recent removal of Confederate statues in the US and ISIL’s destruction of ancient sites in Iraq and Syria, while motivated by different aims, find a common solution in dealing with images deemed inappropriate. Context is crucial to understanding what is at stake in these different iconoclastic acts: What is being destroyed? Who is destroying it and why? Although the term “iconoclasm” was initially used to describe the violent clashes between rival Christian ideologies over the status of images in a religious context in the 8th century, scholars now use it more capaciously and it refers to any movement dedicated to the destruction of images, be it in ancient Mesopotamia, Reformist Europe, or Talibanist Afghanistan. While the term offers syntactical clarity, it simultaneously obscures the various processes that go into practicing iconoclasm. This seminar proposes a broad and historically contingent study of iconoclasm. By looking at a range of examples from different periods and geographical contexts, we will examine the ways in which images have been perceived as threats, aberrations, seductions, or inconveniences best removed. We will also explore the various ways in which removed images continue to resonate with new meanings. Some class sessions will take place in ISAC.  
 

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor:  Asian pre-1800, Asian post-1800

This seminar explores visual culture and historical arts of Africa primarily from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with a focus on traditional textiles. We will cover a broad geographical range with case studies that center on production, practices, and uses for textiles and related objects of devotion in everyday life. Investigations will highlight textiles’ tangible and intangible elements to examine their spiritual and protective dimensions through various lenses: organized religions, including the three Abrahamic faiths, local belief systems and ritual practices, social or political organizations, and other cultural distinctions. Such contextualization will contribute to students’ recognition of the diversity and historical depth of the continent’s arts and cultures. We will visit objects in local museums and exhibitions for in-person, close looking and to fuel discussions surrounding the role of museums and museum display and interpretation. At least two class sessions will take place at the Art Institute of Chicago.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: African Art

What role have those objects considered superfluous, lavish, fashionable, and personal played in sculpting our collective social, political, and economic worlds? Furnishings, tapestries, silverware, porcelain, clothing, and jewelry have long been understood as superficial indulgences of the elite, existing outside the space and time of historical change. Yet such items have of course permeated all classes of society and processes of production, promotion, consumption, disparity, power, exploitation and attempts to resist it. Some Marxist historians have understood crisis as integral to capitalist modernity and its rupture, while theorists of art and architectural modernism have somewhat paradoxically imagined luxury as instrumental in building socially equitable futures. In this seminar, we will investigate a series of case studies in which luxury and crisis, these seemingly opposed terms, were negotiated and galvanized by makers, wearers, collectors, and the objects in their possession.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, modern (post-1800)

On the one hand, this course explores the cartographic imagination in the medieval early modern period, focusing primarily on developments in cartographic representation in Italy and around the Mediterranean. These spatial experiments were crucial in the formation of knowledge about territories, cities, and urban societies and they have left a rich visual record of the built environment from the 15th to the 17th centuries. Through a range of readings that take maps, cartography, and space as their subject to study, we will explore the methods creating a spatial history of the early period. On the other hand, this course will also allow students to experiment in digital techniques of mapping historical space through a collective project in which we will all be learning to geo-reference historical maps of Rome to trace the city’s urban morphology across several centuries and, at the same time, explore ways of interpreting the past through such cartographic expressions.

Course fulfills the following criteria in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, pre modern (pre-1800)

This studio course, similar to a "senior seminar" in other disciplines, serves five purposes: (1) to allow students to pick up a few elements (drawings, models, collages, visual and place-based research, etc.) they've produced in other ARCH studio courses and spend more time refining them, outside the broader demands of a thematic studio class, (2) to acquaint students with advanced skills in expression and representation related to the revision and refinement of these elements, based on student interest and needs, (3) to assist students in the development of a portfolio of studio work, either toward application for graduate school or simply to have for themselves, and in systems to organize projects and revisions, (4) to add to students' typographic and graphic design skillsets, primarily using the Adobe Creative Suite, as part of the portfolio process, and (5) to practice and hone communication and writing skills related to discussing architectural projects. While there will be a modest set of skills-based exercises each week, to help structure the studio, most of the work for this class will be students' own project revisions and portfolios, and most of class time will be spent sharing and refining both. Work will be primarily individual, but students will be expected to actively and eagerly support one another, and learn from each other, all along the way. Students will be required, throughout this course, to work with both Adobe Creative Suite and Rhinoceros, as well as through hand drawing and whatever other media the original projects used; other tools or software will be optional, based on student interest.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, modern (post-1800)

This course explores recent forays into collecting and displaying contemporary Native American Art for the Field Museum, a museum of natural history and anthropology.  Through gallery and collections visits, dialogues with Field Museum staff, contemporary Native American artists, and readings, the course introduces students to the potential and problematic of locating, defining, and representing contemporary art within the colonial context of the Field Museum and how collaboration with artists and community members plays a role in shifting the paradigm toward one that centers collaborative curation and is inclusive of the direct voice of artists.  Students will have the opportunity to closely explore the new exhibition: Native Truths: Our voices, Our Stories, discuss the process by which contemporary art was selected for the exhibition and potentially dialogue directly with selected artists who contributed to the exhibition.    
Over 50 new works of art have been commissioned for the exhibition and are on display.  Students will also examine other contemporary art that is in the collection.    

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800

Artifacts from pre-modern China are often on display in museums today as art objects, and appreciated for their aesthetic value and craftsmanship. However, before entering modern collection, many of them had participated in people’s daily, cultural, religious, and/or social lives. They were used, touched, collected and exchanged; they also inspired and mediated intimate emotions, philosophical discussions and artistic creations. In this course, we will study an array of objects of this sort, from bronze vessels and mirrors, to porcelains and textiles. Taking cues from their material and visual aspects, we will examine a selection of objects within their original contexts where they were made and used, and think about how they would have engaged their historical beholders. We will also explore the objects’ “journeys” across time, space and medium, and discuss the theoretical and ethical issues that arise from each scenario. Through lectures, in-class discussions, museum visits, readings and writing assignments, students will familiarize themselves with the cultures of pre-modern China through the objects it produced, and develop skills of visual thinking and material-based analysis of art objects. Student will also review key discourses surrounding objects and material culture within and beyond the discipline of art history.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian pre-1800

This course invites students to engage critically with the materials and mediums used to create East Asian artworks, spanning from antiquity to the contemporary era. In addition to exploring subject matter and iconography specific to various historical periods, we will approach these works as physical, image-bearing objects and architectural structures—considering how their material forms shape both their creation and reception.

As a COSI Mellon Museum Seminar, the course meets once weekly in a three-hour session held at local collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum, the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, Heritage Museum of Asian Art, and the Smart Museum of Art. Each session focuses on a major art medium—such as metalwork, scroll painting, albums and bound books, folding screens, stone carvings and rubbings, and woodblock prints. Students will read selected primary sources in translation alongside modern scholarship, and participate in close, in-person examination of objects. Over the quarter, students will build a historically grounded understanding of prominent East Asian art forms, gain hands-on experience in object observation and handling, and develop a critical sensitivity to various visual media in the contemporary world. 

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian pre-1800

Over the course of the 19th century in France, landscape emerged as a preeminent genre for exploring the complexities of the modern world.  The massive growth of cities, industry, tourism, and other environmental changes dramatically affected inherited notions of ecological balance.  How did landscape painters respond to these challenges by developing new aesthetic attitudes and representational strategies?  We’ll study how landscapes evolved from the Romantics and the Barbizon school, through the Realists at mid-century, to the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.  Artists to be considered in depth include Théodore Rousseau, Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, and Vincent van Gogh.  As many classes as possible will be held at the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay.  We’ll also make field trips to some of the sites represented by these painters.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, modern (post-1800)

This course explores the historical and contemporary relationships between art and the environment in a global context. Two central questions will guide our inquiry. First, what constitutes “environmental art” as a field that is both theoretically and historically grounded yet open to redefinition, methodological innovation, and interdisciplinary experimentation? Second, what are the stakes of historicizing this field in a global framework? For instance, in parts of Asia, the term “environmental art” often refers to the environment in spatial and technological terms detached from environmentalist thought. Similarly, Land Art, a key milestone in the field, creates a productive tension with land-based or ecological perspectives. Considering the term’s porosity and evolving definitions, the course adopts a broad purview, encompassing landscape painting, still life paintings, and plantation architecture, as well as recent debates on the Anthropocene, Indigenous land-based thought, environmental justice, and new materialisms. In addition to examining the objects and theories that constitute environmental art, the course will also consider cases of environmentally-informed art historical practice.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Methodology, Asian, modern (post-1800)

This course will examine the life of buildings-– how they perform, evolve, and adapt over time. How do particular design decisions influence human experience and behavior? Which parts of the building align with its intended use and what are surprising outcomes or changes? These questions aim to provide students with a deeper understanding of the built environment and the series of decisions that shaped them. Through readings, surveys, site visits, and conversations with architects and building users, we will measure and examine the spaces around us. Students will begin with a series of short analysis and design exercises and create short films, projective collages and diagrams, and architectural concept models. Building on our collective observations, research, and analysis, we will then finish with a final project where we respond to an existing building and propose an alternate life path. The format of the course is part-seminar, part-studio that aims to equip students with practical tools and strategies needed to shape our world and account for the long-term impact of design.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800

The city continually erases itself, replacing the spaces, architectures, objects and activities that resonate in the memory of its inhabitants. While this process is the consequence of familiar forces — capitalist development, socio-cultural changes, environmental responses — the phenomenon of perpetual erasure sometimes produces a form of collective amnesia, interfering with our ability to reconcile with our pasts, especially histories of systemic displacement, exclusion, and exploitation. This course, a hybrid of a seminar and studio, will examine the deep cultural and urbanistic implications of Chicago’s Bronzeville. Via poetry, fiction, history, testimony, interviews, photography,and films, students will recover Bronzeville’s layered history and contemporary implications. In the studio, students will develop drawings to connect these narratives so space and time. Via site visits and conversations, this course will connect with artists, architects and researchers currently completing projects within and adjacent to this area of the city.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800

Architecture is for People. In this architecture studio, students will explore design through the lens of the human experience. For the final project, students will design a memorial. By imagining spaces
that evoke emotion and inspire action, and examining relationships between architecture and place,
we will develop concepts for spaces for the purpose of holding, preserving or honoring aspects of
human culture and history.
Studying how our human senses and spatial forms shape experience and evoke memory is the
primary focus of the course. Students will engage with readings and media on architectural
phenomenology, memory in relation to material and place, and the City of Chicago. To form a basis
for understanding and analyzing space and form, we will research and critique existing built
memorial projects. Learning will be enriched through guest presentations, field trips, and resources
from Arts + Public Life media and archives.
This course emphasizes creativity and hands-on making with work taking the form of physical
models and drawings. Through discussions and critique, students will reflect on their own projects,
iterate on their designs, and provide constructive feedback to their peers.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800

This course explores the dynamic, international movement of Art Nouveau (new art), which flourished from the 1880s through the early 20th century. Characterized by organic motifs, Art Nouveau emerged as a modern style that sought to dissolve traditional boundaries—between art and life, fine arts and craft, and tradition and innovation. While the movement spread rapidly across Europe and the United States, each region adapted the style to articulate its own national identity through ornament and heritage. This paradox—of a style that is both international and deeply nationalistic—is further complicated by Art Nouveau’s reliance on a wide array of global decorative traditions, many shaped by colonial encounters and orientalist frameworks. Centering on cross-cultural exchanges, this course reconsiders Art Nouveau through a global lens. How do its international references—from Japanese prints, Chinese ceramics, Indonesian textiles, Central African natural motifs, to Islamic ornament—challenge the idea of Art Nouveau as a purely Western or European phenomenon?

Rather than framing Art Nouveau as a singular stylistic break, we will examine it as a complex network of artistic transmission, translation, and appropriation. In doing so, we’ll ask: how do global influences reshape our understanding of this “modern” style? And how might a reframing through the lens of the global open broader questions about cultural exchange, power, and modernity in the late nineteenth century?

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800

One of the world’s largest and most populous cities, Tokyo has long captivated the imaginations of Japanese artists, especially ukiyo-e (woodblock print) designers, who returned repeatedly to the tradition of the “100 Views” (hyakkei) of the city in an effort to capture its mystery, majesty, and constant transformations.
This course is related to the planning phase of a special exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. It posits a periodization of Tokyo based around four major ukiyo-e series of “100 Views" from Hiroshige in the 1850s, to Kobayashi Kiyochika's 1876-1882 series in the Meiji period, and continuing on to the “100 Pictures of Great Tokyo in the Showa Era” (Showa dai Tokyo hyakuzue) by Koizumi Kishio (1893-1945), issued from 1927-1940. These prints will allow investigation of the creeping nationalism and rise in imperialism that would characterize the newly expanded “Great Tokyo” (Dai Tokyo) during the 1930s. The course concludes with an examination of a collaborative work entitled “100 Views of Tokyo: Message to the 21st Century” made from 1989-1999, which will allow investigation of new printing techniques, such as lithography and linocuts, as well as the culture and economy of “The Metropolis of Tokyo” (Tokyo-tou) in the post-Bubble era, concluding with Takashi Murakami’s famed commissions for the real estate development Roppongi Hills.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Asian, modern (post-1800)

Where is this artifact from? Who does it belong to? How did it get here? Who’s telling its story? Critical inquiry into the practice and politics of museums has reached a new zenith in contemporary discourse. From discussions of acquisition and repatriation to provenience (archaeological findspot) and provenance (an object’s ownership history) and the ethics of curation and modes of display, museum and art professionals—and the general public alike—are deliberating on the concept of museums and the responsibilities of such institutions towards the collections in their care. This course will explore the early history of museums and collecting practices and their impact on the field today, with a focus on cultural heritage collections from West Asia and North Africa. We will first spend time on such topics as archaeological exploration of “the Orient,” colonial collecting practices, and the antiquities trade, as well as the politics of representation and reception in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Next, we will look at critical issues presently facing museums, including ethical collection stewardship, provenance research, repatriation, community engagement, and public education. The course will be structured in a seminar format, with lectures devoted to the presentation of key themes by the instructor and critical discussion as a group. Meetings will include visits to the ISAC Museum at the University of Chicago.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Historiography, Asian, premodern (pre-1800), and African

This course will consider the profusion of new dyes (aniline, azo, and vat) available for coloring textiles, foodstuffs, and other materials in the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth and ask if these industrial innovations, which fueled subsequent rapid shifts in fashion, paved the way for modernist experiments with color. Artists who engaged with various media, including Sonia Delaunay, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and Marguerite Thompson Zorach, will be central to the discussion. Modern artists’ engagement with theories of color, particularly those expounded by specialists working in the textile industry, such as Michel-Eugène Chevreul, will also be examined. The relationship between colors, dyes, coloniality, politics, and modernity will be interrogated in order to surface the othering and misrecognition of artists and artforms within art historical discourse.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, modern (post-1800), Theory and Historiography

This studio course challenges students to explore architecture’s potential to serve mission-driven organizations and address social, cultural, and environmental issues. Through research, fieldwork, and design exercises, students will investigate how architecture can become a tool for advocacy, empowerment, and positive change. By examining case studies and crafting their own manifestos, students will develop a personal approach to mission-driven design. The course will culminate in a final project where students design a space, object, or intervention that reflects their personal design philosophy and responds to a specific mission-driven context.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800

This hands-on studio introduces students to how architects visualize and communicate their design work. Architectural drawings can do so much more than represent physical form--they can convey atmosphere, emotion, and meaning, sometimes taking on a life of their own. Through a series of workshops and design projects, students will develop skills in mixed-media drawing, digital modeling and rendering, post-processing, and physical model-making. No prior studio or art experience is required. This course is highly recommended for students interested in taking studios, want to expand their creative skill set, or are planning to pursue careers in any design related field. 

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800

Renaissance collecting transcended the traditions of medieval treasuries, developed out of modes of categorization derived from antiquity, and ultimately became the foundation for the rise of the museum in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Motivated by aesthetic consideration, curiosity, a quest for order and knowledge, and an interest in personal display, renaissance princes, noblewomen, emperors, naturalists and artists alike acquired art, objects, flora, fauna, ethnographic materials and exotica within a variety of different collecting spaces such as studioli, gardens, libraries, and kunst and wunderkammern. Through an examination of primary sources such as inventories, accounts and letters, of secondary sources about particular collections and collectors, and of various modern theories regarding possessing, consuming and gift giving things, this course explores the multifarious Renaissance collections of Europe, primarily focusing on Italy, Spain, Germany, France, the Netherlands and England.

 This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, pre-modern (pre-1800)

This course, co-taught between English and Art History, considers the fertile cross-pollination between photography and literature in the United States from the late nineteenth century through the present. Tracing the reciprocal influence of text and image-based practices, we will look to photographs in social documentary tradition as a creative foundation for works of prose, poetry, and fiction, while also analyzing the integration of these literary modes into visual media like photobooks and exhibitions. Using archival theories as a critical frame, we will consider photographs as a basis for historical knowledge, as well as sites of creative intervention and revision. The aim of our comparative investigations will be to develop an interdisciplinary toolkit and critical vocabulary to bridge literature, art history, and cultural studies. The course will include multiple visits to museums and campus archives.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, modern (post-1800), Theory and Historiography

This seminar invites students to examine recent scholarly experiments in architectural history. Participants will read and discuss a corpus of books published in the last five years. Each week, we will take a deep dive into a single publication by synthesizing its contribution, unpacking its structure, and demonstrating its potential limits. In-class activities will catalyze dialogue and debate on the readings as well as highlight resonances across assigned books. By the end of the quarter, students will have developed transversal views of contemporary practices in architectural history and heightened their senses of methodological self-awareness.  

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Historiography

The proliferation of straight lines in 20th Century art and architecture is generally associated with rational and universalist procedures and perspectives, and closely associated with the rise of industrial society. This course will look at straight lines in moden art from a very different perspective. We will study a hidden genealogy of straight lines that all seem to evoke the vagaries of sensory realities and capacities and that are aesthetic through and through.  These type of straight lines are all, in their various ways,  related to the close interaction between bodies and media technologies - one of the major themes in modern art. The question, of course, is how and why straight lines comes to express this relationship. To look at this question, we will study artworks and ideas that extend from the mid 19th-century to 21st century art and that includes a wide range of media and expressions, including architecture, painting, drawing, film, video and computer art. More specifically, we will look at how the changing deployment of the straight lines in art signals changes in the relation between bodies, technical systems and the concept of infrastructure. The course will start by paying close attention to one paradigmatic work: La Monte Young's "Composition 1960 # 10 (To Bob Morris): Draw A Straight Line And Follow It". We will  use this work as a preliminary template for moving back to 19th Century encounters between art, architecture and physiological aesthetics and for moving forward in time to recent forays in electronic and digital art. In between we will visit significant moments in pre- and postwar avant-garde art. My hope is that you will never think of straight lines in the same way again.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800

Tracing Time is a hybrid seminar and studio. The first portion of the course will invite students to engage with a curated selection of techniques for representing time as a broad category of concerns, containing a wide range of nuanced conceptual frameworks and constructs: subjective time, objective time, proper time, coordinate time, sidereal time, emergent time, encoding time, relativistic time, time dilation, reaction time, spacetime, etc. The second portion of the course will invite students to develop their own models, visualizations, and representations of time or temporal phenomenon as a support for considering time as a factor of change in relation to their own research or interest in a particular concern or context, or where time is bound to physical, psychological, ecological, climatic, biological, geological, economic, historical, geographic, or other entangled processes. This course requires no preparation and is therefore open to students from any discipline who share a general interest in urban design, architecture and the arts or who specifically wish to develop a deeper understanding of drawings, models, photographs, video and other graphic mediums as material supports for inquiry.
 

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800

This course is a socio-spatial analysis of Florence and its most important urban complexes, which incorporated the interactive experience of images, objects, buildings, and urban communities. As a result, it draws on, both implicitly and explicitly, on the material, methods, and approaches of other disciplinary territories such geography, anthropology, social and cultural history, art and architectural history, as well as urban studies and it encourages you to think broadly about what it means to analyze history through an analysis of site specific practices both in terms of their design and production but also their historical reception, use, and experience. The motivation for this course comes from the way in which both Florence and the Renaissance have largely been explored from the perspective of design and production, artists, planners and patrons. Therefore, this course attempts to look at the way the city’s inhabitants actually responded to some of the most important developments in early modern cultural production, and how actively they contributed to some of the most familiar environments of western Europe and continues to be the site of some of the most intense cultural tourism.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, pre-modern (pre-1800)

In twenty-first century museums, the curation of Indigenous objects brings with it many dynamically changing responsibilities and considerations, as well as ethical and legal questions that vary by region, country, and legislation. These topics are essential knowledge for students studying Indigenous art and archaeology in their curriculum and who may be considering careers in related fields. That said, even scholars who do not directly study Indigenous art may someday find themselves responsible for it, whether as a department chair or museum director, making familiarity with these issues essential preparation. Ultimately, the curation of Indigenous art is shaping the leading edge of curatorial practice in museums today—as well as popular discourse.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Latin American

This course is a practicum in writing art criticism. Unlike historians, critics primarily respond to the art and architecture of their time and to developments in the contemporary art world and built environment. They write reviews of exhibitions that may be on view in galleries or museums and that may focus on single artists or broad themes; they respond to urban plans and newly built structures. Importantly, art critics often produce the very first discourse on a given art or design, shaping subsequent thinking, historiography, and making. Accordingly, art criticism is a genre that requires particular skills, for example, identifying why and how artworks and buildings matter, taking a fresh look at something familiar or developing a set of ideas even if unfamiliar with a subject, expressing strong yet sound opinions, and writing in impeccable and engaging ways. Students will develop these skills by reading and writing art criticism. We will examine the work of modern art and architecture critics ranging from Denis Diderot to Michael Kimmelmann and of artists active as critics ranging from Donald Judd to Adrian Piper. Class discussions will be as much about the craft of writing as about the art reviewed. We will deliberate the style and rhetoric of exhibition reviews, including details such as first and last sentences, order of paragraphs, word choices, and the like. This seminar is writing intensive with a total of five exhibition reviews, some of which will be rewritten substantially based on instructor, visitor, and peer feedback and general class discussion. Off-campus field trips also required. Selected student writing will be published in CWAC Voices (https://voices.uchicago.edu/artcriticism/).

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, modern (post-1800), Theory and Historiography

This course introduces “interregional art history” as an alternative to the dominant nation-state-based framework in the study of Asian art. The robust discourse on global art history in recent decades has generated a range of methodological approaches, including comparison, transnationalism, internationalism, regionalism, and the global contemporary. These approaches are also reflected in practice, as seen in artist-led collaborations, traveling exhibitions, and biennales. To capture the diversity of interregionalist thought and praxis, the course adopts a case study approach. Key themes include artistic engagements with Pan-Asianism, the 1955 Bandung Conference, Southeast Asian regionalism and ASEAN, Afro-Asia, Transpacific migration, the construction of the Third World and Global South, and the Asia Pacific Triennial (1993–present). While the course materials focus on East and Southeast Asia, students with diverse geographical interests are welcome. A significant portion of class time and assignments will be devoted to critically assessing the strengths, limitations, and future directions of global art history.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian post-1800, Theory and Methodology

Required of third-year students who are majoring in art history; open to non-majors with consent of instructor. The aim of this seminar is to deepen an understanding of art history as a discipline and of the range of analytic strategies art history affords to students beginning to plan their own BA papers or, in the case of students who are minoring in art history, writing research papers in art history courses. Students read essays that have shaped and represent the discipline and test their wider applicability and limitations. Through this process, they develop a keener sense of the kinds of questions that most interest them in the history and criticism of art and visual culture. Students develop a formal topic proposal in a brief essay and write a final paper analyzing one or two works of relevant, significant scholarship for their topics. This seminar is followed by a workshop in Autumn Quarter focusing on research and writing issues for fourth-year students who are majoring in art history, which is designed to help writers of BA papers advance their projects.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Methodology

This workshop provides guided research on the topic of the senior thesis. Students arrange their program of study and a schedule of meetings with their assigned section leader. Required of fourth-year Art History majors who wish to pursue honors.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Methodology

This course will consider the history of exhibiting the art of the ancient Americas from the colonial period until the present. From the European Wunderkammer to the development of the modern museum to recent exhibition, we will consider how colonial institutions and categories shaped the reception of visually elaborated objects from past Indigenous cultures. Paying close attention to the choice of objects presented in exhibitions as well as to the museographical decisions that shaped their presentation—to the extent that they can be reconstructed from archival materials—we will explore how exhibitions both reflected and shaped changing understandings of the ancient American past, and continue to do so today.

Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Latin American

This course examines concepts of art that reflect iconophobia, “fear of images,” in the Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Since antiquity, iconophobia has led to theological debates that resulted in the prohibition of images in sacred spaces, rituals, and other forms of religious practice. In extreme cases, iconophobia has caused acts of iconoclasm, the violent destruction of art. In all three religions, fear of idolatry (“idol worship”) has been the main cause of iconophobia. We will examine what exactly constitutes an idol and how the definitions of idols differ from iconophile (“image-loving”) assessments of religious art. Both iconophobic and iconophile arguments shed light on the various functions and effects of religious images and illustrate their power. Furthermore, they reveal attitudes towards artistic creation, materiality, aesthetics, sensory perception, and truth in art. In order to understand the causes and manifestations of iconophobia, we will examine a range of primary sources, both textual and visual, and engage with the relevant scholarship. We will take a comparative approach, but also pay attention to phenomena and developments that are unique to each religion. Most of the topics and readings will focus on the premodern period from antiquity to the 16th century. However, we will also look at some of the effects of iconophobia in our own time. 

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American pre-1800

This course explores the rich traditions of description – ekphrasis – from Greco-Roman antiquity into the middle ages. It tackles texts (both prose and verse) in order to establish the ramifications of a genre in the European tradition, and its applications in particular to visual culture and religion. There will be opportunity in the final paper to range beyond these into questions of comparative literature, art (history) writing, religious imagination and ekphrasis in all periods or contexts, as well as into the use of images or films as themselves forms of descriptive response. The course is intended for graduates but interested undergraduates are very welcome. It will be examined on the basis of a paper, due on a subject to be agreed and on a date to be agreed at the end of the Spring quarter. Course Note: This course will be taught virtually for the last two weeks of the quarter. 

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American pre-1800

This course lays out the background to the historiographic complexities of studying visual culture and art history now in relation to the ways the dominant theories and methods of the discipline involved in the context of 20th-century history and ideologies. It is impossible in 9 sessions to cover the entire historiography of an ancient discipline. The course will therefore take a selective approach by focusing on the foundations of the art historical approaches in Germany in the Twentieth century that have proved most formative for the development of the discipline in Anglo-American contexts after the Second World War. This may be seen as a narrowing of focus, but it has the benefit of offering a coherent if highly complex and conflictive story to uncover: effectively the most philosophically intense moment in art history from 1900 to the 1950's, the relation of the discipline and its exiles to the rise, triumph and demise of the Third Reich, and the beginnings of its development in the post-War period. Course Note: This course will be taught virtually for the last two weeks of the quarter.

This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800