Art History (ARHS)

ARHS 50103. Case Studies in Art History. 3 Hours.

This class provides in-depth studies of selected artists, themes, or specific groups of art works. This course is only offered during intersession. (Typically offered: Irregular) May be repeated for up to 9 hours of degree credit.

ARHS 55603. Pre-Columbian Art. 3 Hours.

An introduction to pre-Columbian art from Mexico (3000 BC- 1521 AD) through a survey of works of art from different media: sculpture, architecture, and mural painting. Topics examined include: sacred images, political uses of sculpture, architecture and cosmogony, as well as the relationship between the material and content. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 55703. Artists of New Spain. 3 Hours.

An overview of colonial art in colonial New Spain. Focused on native agency, social function of art, and cross-cultural communication. Topics include indigenous materials and techniques, the use of images in legal contexts, and ritual liturgy. Some consideration will be given to artworks from the viceroyalty of Peru. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 57603. Seminar in Critical Theory. 3 Hours.

Study of critical theory as it relates to problems in modern and contemporary art. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 47603 and ARHS 57603. (Typically offered: Spring)

ARHS 57703. History of New Media Art. 3 Hours.

Examines the history of "new media" art in relation to larger shifts in technology, philosophy and politics. Beginning in the 19th century, the course explores the development of photography, film, video, performance, sound and digital art through the 20th century. Culminates with an examination of contemporary practice. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 47703 and ARHS 57703. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 57903. Making the Museum: History, Theory and Practice. 3 Hours.

Presents a broad overview of the institutional history and the contemporary professional practice of the museum world. Features numerous visiting lectures from a working professionals from the local area and nationwide institutions. (Typically offered: Spring Even Years)

ARHS 58103. The History of Photography. 3 Hours.

Survey of photography from 1685 to present. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 48103 and ARHS 58103. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 58203. History of Graphic Design. 3 Hours.

Survey of graphic design history from 1850 to the present. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 48203 and ARHS 58203. Prerequisite: ARHS 21003. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 58303. Ancient Art. 3 Hours.

Study of selections from the visual arts of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, or Rome. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 48303 and ARHS 58303. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 58403. Medieval Art. 3 Hours.

Study of Early Christian, Byzantine, Early Medieval, Romanesque, and Gothic styles. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 48403 and ARHS 58403. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 58503. Italian Renaissance Art. 3 Hours.

Study of Proto-Renaissance, Early, High Renaissance, and Mannerist styles in Italy. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 48503 and ARHS 58503. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 58603. Northern Renaissance Art. 3 Hours.

Study of Late Gothic and Renaissance styles in the Netherlands, Germany, and France. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 48603 and ARHS 58603. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 58703. Baroque Art. 3 Hours.

Study of art styles of the 17th century, primarily in Italy, Spain, France, Flanders, and the Netherlands. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 48703 and ARHS 58703. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 58803. 18th and 19th Century European Art. 3 Hours.

Study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art and architecture in Europe. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 48803 and ARHS 58803. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 58903. 20th Century European Art. 3 Hours.

Study of the major styles and movements of the century, including Cubism, Fauvism, German Expressionism, and Surrealism. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 48903 and ARHS 58903. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 59103. American Art to 1860. 3 Hours.

The visual arts in the United States from Colonial times through 1860. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 49103 and ARHS 59103. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 59203. American Art 1860-1960. 3 Hours.

The visual arts in the United States from the onset of the American Civil War through the Cold War Era. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 49203 and ARHS 59203. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 59303. Contemporary Art. 3 Hours.

Study of styles and major trends in the visual arts since 1960. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 49303 and ARHS 59303. (Typically offered: Fall)

ARHS 59503. Art Museum Studies. 3 Hours.

A survey of the history and function of the art museum and an introduction to museum work. Investigation of collections and collections management, conservation, exhibitions, education and public programs, museum management, and contemporary issues which effect the museum profession. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 49503 and ARHS 59503. Prerequisite: ARHS 20003 and ARHS 21003, or graduate Art MFA standing. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 59703. Seminar in Art History. 3 Hours.

Special studies of periods and styles of art. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 49703 and ARHS 59703. Prerequisite: 9 hours of Art History. (Typically offered: Irregular) May be repeated for up to 6 hours of degree credit.

ARHS 59803. Special Topics in Art History. 3 Hours.

Subject matter not covered in regularly offered courses, and relating to the history of art before the nineteenth century. May be repeated for different topics. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 49803 and ARHS 59803. (Typically offered: Irregular) May be repeated for up to 9 hours of degree credit.

ARHS 59903. Special Topics in Modern Art. 3 Hours.

Subject matter not covered in regularly offered courses, and relating to the history of art from the nineteenth century to the present. May be repeated for different topics. Graduate degree credit will not be given for both ARHS 49903 and ARHS 59903. (Typically offered: Irregular) May be repeated for up to 9 hours of degree credit.

ARHS 60003. Art History's Histories: Critical Historiography and Methodology. 3 Hours.

Provides a theoretical, historiographic, and methodological foundation in art history. Exposes students to methods they can use throughout their degree work while providing them with the conceptual tools needed for meaningful engagement with the key debates animating the field. (Typically offered: Fall)

ARHS 60103. Immersive Travel. 3 Hours.

Involves hands-on research beyond the classroom. Includes site visits and access to collections, showcasing the multiplicity of perspectives one brings to cultural work. (Typically offered: Summer) May be repeated for up to 6 hours of degree credit.

ARHS 60203. Graduate Art History Writing Workshop. 3 Hours.

Prepares students to present their ideas in a range of formats and contexts for a variety of audiences. Guides students through the Qualifying Paper process. (Typically offered: Fall)

ARHS 60303. Art History Qualifying Paper. 3 Hours.

Focused work on the art history Qualifying Paper, supervised by an art history faculty member/advisor. Preparation for art history symposium, the capstone event of the degree program. (Typically offered: Spring)

ARHS 60403. Art History Practicum. 3 Hours.

Internship at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art or another arts institution. (Typically offered: Spring) May be repeated for up to 6 hours of degree credit.

ARHS 61003. Seminar in Spatial Practices in Mesoamerica and New Spain. 3 Hours.

Explores space as a category for historical analysis. Examines how different Mesoamerican cultures conceptualized space through the analysis of a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, such as archaeological sites, architecture, urbanism, maps, painted manuscripts, ceramics, and mural paintings. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 62003. Seminar in Art and Artifice of Americana. 3 Hours.

Explores the aesthetic and social operations of Americana, loosely defined as things associated with the culture and history of the United States. Concepts to include imagined communities and usable pasts inform analysis of a wide range of material, from painting and sculpture to literature, magazine illustration, and interior design. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 62103. Seminar in Visual Legacies of the American West. 3 Hours.

Explores the work of Euro-American painters who popularized visions of a mythic West and foregrounds the dramatically different stories told by Plains and Southwest artists. Indigenous methodologies and best practices with respect to community engagement are considered. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 62203. Seminar in Monuments and Public Space. 3 Hours.

Examines the relationship between ideology and space through the study of monuments, memorials, and public art. Explores the impacts monuments have on the built environment, the politics of iconoclasm, the meanings of memorialization, and interventions that reimagine, re-contextualize, and re-site existing monuments. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 62303. Seminar in Making and Unmaking the "Modern. 3 Hours.

Investigates contested notions of the modern, modernism, and modernity in art historical discourse. Examines how modernism has been constructed by museum exhibitions and scholarship in specific historical and cultural contexts, and the power structures and investments that have shaped these narratives. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 62403. Seminar in Mining Museums. 3 Hours.

Examines museums as complex sites of cultural production, with particular focus on contemporary debates. Students will be invited to reimagine the museum, testing their own approaches to collecting, curation, education, and public outreach by using the museum as a site for experimentation. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 62503. Seminar in Abstraction and Identity. 3 Hours.

Addresses how artists have used abstraction to make social arguments and how art institutions have framed the relationship between identity and abstraction with respect to their collections, by focusing on artworks in local collections. Brings together recent critical theory and the practical concerns of a public museum. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 63003. Seminar in Culture Wars: Politics, Protest, and Activism in the Arts. 3 Hours.

Explores the relationship between art and politics both historically and in the present. Examines art as activism and protest, considers theories of revolution, and discusses censorship and cultural appropriation, among other topics. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 63103. Seminar in Contemporary Native American Art. 3 Hours.

Explores the foundation and development of contemporary Native American art through a centering of Indigenous knowledge, world views, and voices from what is now known as Canada and the United States. Examines the scholarship, exhibitions, and art forms that have shaped the field historically through the present. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 64003. Seminar in Contemporary Latinx Art. 3 Hours.

Studies Latinx contemporary art, 1960 to the present, with an emphasis on the past 30 years. Addresses the political realities of migration, globalization, diaspora, crisis and violence, through theoretical frameworks including biopolitics, rasquachismo, relational aesthetics, and Majority World-ism. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 64103. Greek Art and Archaeology. 3 Hours.

Greek Art and Archaeology focuses on how visual and material culture shaped and were shaped by Greek society (religion, politics, military, economy, gender, etc.) from the Bronze Age through the Hellenistic period. Masterpieces of Greek art are analyzed alongside the material remains of everyday Greeks in civic and domestic spaces. (Typically offered: Spring Odd Years)

ARHS 64203. Roman Art and Archaeology. 3 Hours.

Roman Art and Archaeology focuses on how visual and material culture shaped and were shaped by Roman society (religion, politics, economy, gender, ethnicity, etc.) from the Iron Age through the Late Antique period. We encounter famous masterpieces, but also the material remains of everyday Romans in civic and domestic spaces. (Typically offered: Spring Even Years)

ARHS 64303. Seminar in Queer, Trans, and Feminist Art. 3 Hours.

Examines Queer, Trans, and Feminist art practices of the Americas, which challenge heteronormative, cis, settler colonialist, Western, and patriarchal frameworks of bodies, histories, and ideas. Uses tools from queer theory, Latin American and Latinx studies, critical race studies, and women's, gender, and sexuality studies. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 66103. African Art and Society. 3 Hours.

Situates the artistic production of modern Africa (1800-present) within a socio-cultural framework, taking into consideration the role of the artist, the methods of production, the relationship between form and function, and the impact of geopolitical shifts (including intercontinental trade, colonialization, and globalization) on the artistic practice. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 66203. African American Art History. 3 Hours.

Surveys African American art from the seventeenth century to the present. It begins with a discussion of the transatlantic slave trade and it examines art produced in what Pratt terms the "contact zones". It then follows developments in African American art from the Antebellum Period to the present. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 66303. Contemporary African Art. 3 Hours.

Serves as a forum for the study of contemporary African art. It situates African art from the 1980s to the present within a historic context, addressing the impact of geopolitical ruptures on artistic practices, and it examines how the work operates across different intellectual, political, and geographical spheres. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 66403. Seminar in Imagining Africa. 3 Hours.

Traces the history of Pan-Africanism and related aesthetic imaginaries of Africa over the twentieth century. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 66503. Seminar in Cross-cultural Artistic Production in the Atlantic World. 3 Hours.

Examines the interdependent art cultures of bordering countries in Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe. Draws on postcolonial theory, migration studies, and critical race theory to look at modes of exchange around the Atlantic and conceptions of modernity. (Typically offered: Irregular)

ARHS 68203. Case Studies in Art History and Curatorial Practice. 3 Hours.

Topics in art history and curatorial practice that focuses on specific exhibitions at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art or other museums. Investigates theoretical as well as practical considerations of exhibiting specific content for public audiences. (Typically offered: Irregular) May be repeated for up to 9 hours of degree credit.

ARHS 68803. Special Topics in Art History. 3 Hours.

Examines specialized topics in art history, with special attention to cutting-edge issues today. (Typically offered: Irregular) May be repeated for up to 9 hours of degree credit.

ARHS 69303. Graduate Research In Art History. 3 Hours.

Independent study in specific areas of art history and criticism. (Typically offered: Irregular)