An interdisciplinary approach to the study of the basic structures (gender, art within political sphere, and spiritual aspects of visual culture) and cultural institutions (initiations, closed associations, kingship, title association, etc.) around which the study of African visual culture revolves.
An introduction to the art and architecture of East Asia, including China, India, Southeast Asia, and Japan. In order to achieve a fuller understanding of the arts of these countries a historical, cultural, and religious context is provided.
Introduction to the study of religious currents and practices in China and their visual expression. In addition to religious art, topics include such pivotal matters as body concepts and practices, representations of the natural world, and logics of the built environment. (Formerly course 80G.)
Introduces the visual cultures of Southeast Asia. Topics include indigenous megalithic art, textiles, and jewelry, as well as Hindu and Buddhist art and architecture. Also considers shadow play and dance performance as alternative lenses to looking at ritual and visual narratives rendered on stone temples.
Examination of the ways social, religious, and political patronage have affected the production and reception of art in the Indian subcontinent. The course is designed as a series of case studies from different periods of Indian history.
An introduction to the European tradition in visual culture, from antiquity to the present, but not in chronological order. All media, including the fine arts, architecture, film, video, and installation and performance work are incorporated. Presents the major visual regimes of representation while it probes the meanings and limits of Europe and the European tradition in the context of the visual.
Explores the history of collecting and displaying art (museums, galleries, fairs) since the mid-19th century and the effect of institutional changes on aesthetic conventions. Follows the history from the origins of museums and collections to contemporary critiques of institutional exclusion and misrepresentation.
Examines the social, economic, and political significance of European and U.S. modernist art and architecture, moving from French realism to American minimalism. Provides the historical background and theoretical frameworks needed to make sense of modernist art and culture. (Formerly Modern Art in Context.)
Examines the origins and development of modern architecture, from the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution to the 20th Century and beyond. Buildings, urban plans, and works of art and design are discussed in relation to political, social, and cultural currents.
Introduces the complex interplay between design--including architecture, art, engineering, and city planning--and conceptions of environment during the 20th Century in the American West. (Formerly Design and Environment in the American West.)
Explores recent methods and approaches in photography. Surveys significant aesthetic, conceptual, and theoretical shifts occurring in the photographic medium and related discourses. Special attention given to the current landscape of contemporary photography (1980-present).
Overview of U.S. art and visual culture from the late 18th Century to the present. Examines art as evidence for understanding evolving beliefs and values of Americans. Explores the social and political meanings of art, and pays particular attention to how artists, patrons, and audiences have constructed nationalism, race, class, sexuality, and gender.
Introduces students to major debates and practices in contemporary art from 1960 to the present. Not a strict chronological survey or exhaustive catalogue, the course attends to movements and theoretical frameworks that still fuel contemporary practice and criticism.
As climate change grows more severe, artists and activists are creating strategies of consciousness-raising, mass mobilization, and sustainable living. This course investigates the convergence of climate justice and cultural politics, exploring imperatives for a just transition to a post-carbon future.
Introduction to digital visual culture including critical and historical approaches to memes; social media and politics; and the many intersections of data, images, and society. Sample topics include: digital art, digital activism, and surveillance. (Formerly A Short History of the Digital.)
The role that ancient art and visual culture play in constructing social identities, sustaining political agendas, and representing various cultural, ritual, and mythological practices in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, including the sociology of ancient cultures, mythology, religious studies, gender studies and history.
The central role of visual communication in ancient Greek civilization: examines the construction of cultural, social, political, religious, and gender identities through material objects and rituals. Includes discussions of images of the public and private sphere, athletic and theatrical performances, mythology, pilgrimage, and magic.
The human body without clothing in European and European-American art and visual culture from ancient Greece to the present day. Among the themes to be addressed: gender, youth and age, sexuality and sexual preference, fecundity and potency, erotic art and pornography, primitivism and the naked body of the non-European. (Formerly course 31, The Nude in the Western Tradition.)
Examines some of the most representative creations of Islamic visual culture from the 7th Century to the present in order to appreciate the richness of this tradition and its extensive influence on other cultures. Focuses on the social, political, and religious role of a variety of materials, from mosques, palaces, and gardens to visual narratives, ceremonies, dance, and contemporary films.
Selected aspects of art and architecture of the first peoples of the Americas, north, central, and south, from ca. 2000 B.C.E. to present. Societies to be considered may include Anasazi, Aztec, Inca, Northwest Coast, Maya, Navajo, Plains, and others.
Interdisciplinary course examines visual cultures of Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia from the archaeological past through contemporary periods.
The arts and visual cultures of selected cultures that developed outside the spheres of influence of major European and Asian civilizations, with an emphasis on the history and influence of colonialism in creating current ethnic and racial categories.
Introduces the study of architecture and the built environment from a global perspective, focusing on architecture's relation to themes, such as ritual, power, the city, technology, and climate. (Formerly course 47.)
Supervised study for undergraduates. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Introduction to major issues of method and critique in study of art and visual culture. Focuses on understanding disciplinary and critical modes of scholarly inquiry in the visual arts, including role of historical research. Emphasizes intensive reading, discussion, and writing. Course 100A is a prerequisite for all History of Art and Visual Culture seminars.
Explores visual cultures of West Africa through time (Nok to present). Attention paid to relationships between peoples and impact of European/Arab presence on visual cultures. Prerequisite(s): course 10 or 80 recommended.
Examination of visual cultures of Central Africa within a historical sequence from the Sanga archaeological excavations to contemporary easel painting.
In Africa, relationships exist between gender and visual culture. Course examines where categories come from, differences in men's and women's visual cultures, and how visual cultures teach, reinforce, and negotiate gender definitions. When are male/female boundaries crossed, and why?
Study of the built environment in Africa. Focusing in depth on 10 major architectural forms or sites, this course explores the diversity of architectural types and how gender, politics, religion, and culture shape and are shaped by architectural spaces.
Examines contemporary arts in post-colonial Africa, 1960-present, including new popular cultural forms; arts resulting from new class and national structures; commodification of culture; Pan-Africanism; exhibitionism; and questions of destiny.
Considers contemporary art by African artists operating in metropolitan centers, as well as Afro-British, Afro-Caribbean, and African-American production. Topics are organized thematically and address constructing and deconstructing the idea of Africa; cultural authenticity; diaspora; Creolite and creolization; hybridity; cosmopolitanism; post-black; and globalism in the arts.
Using contemporary art and other visual materials, examines how select African cities are structured, imagined, and contested, and how migration, colonialism, race, ethnicity, and globalization inform their spatial politics. Draws from urban studies, political theory, memoire, anthropology, and visual studies.
An examination of the close relationship of religious traditions and the natural world in China, and its expression in visual representation. Particular emphasis on the ways in which competing groups sought to define or re-envision an understanding of the terrain.
Consideration of biographies and portraits in China as representations of human types and individuals, and the use of these representations as models for constructing lives. Attention to historical and social contexts, early times to present. Special focus on Chinese Buddhist traditions. A previous course that focuses on traditional China or Buddhist studies strongly recommended.
Examines material and conceptual phenomena of writing in Chinese visual culture. Focuses on the intersections of places and practices of writing through various inscribed sites, ranging from oracle bones, seals, and mountain facades to hand scrolls, architecture, and contemporary art.
Examines the history and significance of the subjects most prominent in Chinese painting during the past one thousand years, focusing on the cultural factors that made landspace a fundamental value in the Chinese tradition and the methods whereby painters created pictorial equivalents.
Introduces images, thoughts, and practices of bodies in Chinese culture. In China and Taiwan, the body is to be cherished, adorned, nourished, cultivated, and gazed upon, but also disciplined, altered, and controlled. Examines texts and images of the Chinese body in relation to religion, gender, ethnic politics, martial arts, sports, nationalism, food, medicine, and death. No knowledge of the Chinese language is required.
Deals with artistic responses to the forces of modernity, colonialism, industrialization and globalization in India during the 19th and 20th centuries. Addresses the complex and often painful climb toward re-establishing a truly Indian artistic identity. (Formerly Modernity and Nationalism in the Arts in India.)
South Asia is the home of many religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, and Sikhism). Introduces the role images (painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, film) play in shaping these diverse religious traditions.
Focuses on Hindu and Buddhist arts of ancient Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand). Materials covered include indigenous megalithic arts, stone sculptures, and monumental temple architecture such as Angkor Wat, Borobudur, Prambanan, and the Bayon.
Examines how photography was used in Southeast Asia to document the racial difference and the exotic Others under the regime of colonialism. Considers the role photography played in documenting the Vietnam-American War and how contemporary Southeast Asian-American artists challenge this photographic history in their art.
Consideration of the arts and architecture in Theravada Buddhist traditions in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Topics and themes include ritual, relics, visual narrative, mural painting, contemporary art, mass-meditation movement, and political protest.
Examines the respective national notions of modernity in the region through a comparative lens. How global capital flow and transnational cultural exchanges impact the production of arts of Southeast Asia and its diaspora. Themes and issues include: colonialism and art education; nationalism; identity politics; memory; trauma; gender; race; sexuality; and the body.
Focuses on Southeast Asian refugee visual culture in the United States. Themes and issues include: trauma; memory; the politics of race and ethnicity; gender and sexuality; and the politics of inclusion and exclusion from the nation-state.
Introduction to the study of Buddhist visual traditions, from their beginnings to the present day. Case studies examined with careful attention to historical, social and cultural contexts; particular emphasis on the relation of visual traditions to Buddhist practices.
Conceptions of pure lands have engaged the imaginations of Mahayana Buddhists for more than two millennia. Course considers literary and visual representations of pure lands and their inhabitants, as well as related practice traditions. Special emphasis on Chinese traditions. Previous courses in Asian visual cultures and/or Buddhist studies recommended.
Examination of interaction between image and ritual in Asian religious art. Case studies from different historical periods and geographical locations (e.g., China, Tibet, Japan, Indonesia, India). Examples include mandalas, ritual bronzes, tankas, sacred caves, temples, tea ceremonies, and calligraphy.
Combination of theoretical perspectives on narrative from literary criticism, rhetoric, folklore, and film theory with art historical focus on images (cave temples, stone reliefs on stupas, scrolls, dance-drama, etc.) from India, Pakistan, China, Japan, Cambodia, and Indonesia.
Examines 20th- and 21st-century architecture in the Asia Pacific. Examines how aesthetic, socio-political, economic, and technological networks have contributed to Asia Pacific's dynamic and experimental approaches to contemporary architecture.
Examines Asian American artists as well as representations of Asian Americans through U.S. history. Addresses such themes as migration and dislocation, race and identity, intergenerational relationships, origins and diasporas, and American foreign policies in Asia.
Many issues associated with contemporary artistic production and visual culture originated in the Middle Ages. Themes to be considered: role of secular art; women as artists and patrons; aesthetic attitudes; relationship between cultures in holy war, crusade, and pilgrimage.
Expressionism, agitprop, the Bauhaus, New Objectivity, attacks on modernism, National Socialist realism. Painting, sculpture, graphic art, and some architecture and film, studied in the context of political events from the eve of World War I to the end of World War II.
The art of David, Gros, Ingres, Gericault, Delacroix, the Barbizon School, and Courbet studied in relation to the changing status of the art and the political events from 1789 to 1848.
An exploration of the theoretical and practical or experiential applications of Jewish identity in European visual representation. Brief background on pre-emancipation textual and cultural issues followed by study of the Jewish subject and Jewish subjectivities in modernity.
The history of European books circa 500-1600, primarily medieval, illuminated manuscripts and the first years of printing. Focuses on the relationship between text and image. Topics include techniques of book production, the archeology of the book, and the life and travels of individual books. (Formerly course 191R.)
Examines images of war from 1400 to the present. Class discusses the many aspects of war while considering major painters of the last 600 years, including da Vinci, Rubens, Goya, Picasso. Class also discusses Callot, Marinetti, etc., and other media, including film, photography, and public monuments.
Consideration of how and why Europeans in Europe and Europeans and European-Americans in North America blended nature and human response between 1600 and the present in a variety of media and practices (painting, maps, photography, tourism, film, scouting, artist colonies).
Examines the places, spaces, practices, and representations of Paris in the 19th century. Tracing the changing face(s) of Paris by way of its literary and visual representations, students consider the experiences and constructions of the modern city.
Considers the painting and prints produced in Northern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. Major issues include the status of realism and classicism, the role of religion and religious reform, and the rise of popular imagery.
Examines the issues surrounding the technology and uses of printed images from the early Renaissance through the end of the early modern period. Topics may include the political, religious, and satirical uses of prints and the representation of women in prints.
Introduction to American visual arts: architecture, painting, photography, sculpture, and performance art, from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century. Explore social and political meanings of art and what art reveals about our nation's values and beliefs, in particular, gender and race.
Examines how American writers and artists negotiated complexities of U.S. society during the 19th century. Emphasis on issues ranging from women's rights to laissez-faire capitalism, and from Reconstruction to manifest destiny. Considers how the era's cultural products provided artists, patrons, and audiences with metaphorical coping strategies to counteract what Victorians perceived to be the period's overwhelming social and political changes.
Investigation of the role played by visual arts in fashioning the racial identities of European-Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos in the United States.
Taking the terms Chicano and Chicana as a critical framework, addresses cultural and conceptual themes in visual art production since 1970. Questions concerning aesthetics, identity, gender, and activism in painting, photography, murals, and installation art explored.
Examines the relationship between art and scientific inquiry in American visual culture from earliest European exploration through the 19th century, when new scientific theories and technological advancements challenged earlier modes of understanding vision, spirituality, and the physical world.
Examines how Pop Art and popular culture in the Untied Stateswere (re)formulated into public icons that challenged the visual and ideological associations between high and low art. (Formerly Pop and Popular Culture.)
Modern art in Europe and America, 1848-1914. Consideration of painting, graphic arts, and sculpture in Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism (Symbolism) Art Nouveau, Fauvism, and Cubism as well as exploration of photography's changing status and influence.
Explores war, consumption and desire in the art of the 20th century. From Paris to New York, Cubism to Feminism, explores the relationship between the visual arts and intellectual movements such as psychoanalysis, existentialism, and phenomenology with particular attention to racial and sexual politics. (Formerly Modern Art: Cubism to Pop,)
Surveys major art forms and critical ideas that have shaped artistic practice from the 1950s to the present, including an overview of the socio-political, economic, and cultural forces that inspire artists to articulate human experience in visual form.
Introduction to the histories of photography and the critical debates around different photographic genres such as medical photography, art photography, and political photography. Students will develop a critical language in order to analyze photographs while considering the importance of social and institutional contexts.
Through the study of historical and contemporary visual texts (from ethnography and portraiture to advertising and erotica), this course explores how photographic images of the body, while masquerading as natural, self-evident, or scientific, participate in highly coded sign systems that influence who looks at whom, how, when, and why.
An introductory examination of the writing about the issue of medium and media theory in visual culture. Technologies, discourses, and practices from all periods that use the comparison of media as a major approach to understanding the problems of the visual are highlighted. New media, film, television, video, traditional arts are also treated.
From the "happenings" of the late 1950s to contemporary ecological art, this course will examine temporary, site-specific projects of the U.S and Western Europe. Students will be introduced to theories of public art and the social production of space, and invited to explore practices that change the role of the audience, remake museum spaces, situate art in nature, or transform urban life. (Formerly Environments, Installations, and Sites.)
Considers the relationship between art, cinema, and postmodernism. Specific, thematically oriented topics are considered including: the impact of cinema aesthetics on contemporary art; film and digital technology; cinematic structure as cultural critique; and filmic strategies as an ideological tool.
Students explore art and technology produced for social change since 1960 within the context of major historical ruptures, such as the Vietnam War, the women's movement, environmental protection, AIDS activism, anti-capitalist, and international human rights movements.
How are museums organized, categorized, visited? How are objects physically handled, documented, and displayed? Course explores various concepts upon which museum practices are based and the impact these concepts have on society and cultures.
Through critical readings, interactive assignments, and primary sources, this course explores cultural and political issues around data, emphasizing the impacts of relevant technologies and practices on art and visual culture. Sample topics: digital art, critical mapping, social media, and surveillance.
Focuses on contemporary experiments in artistic documentary practice, including photography and digital imagery, moving-image media, and artistic installations. Considers artistic case studies and leading theoretical and critical elaboration in relation to international cultures of documentary practice. (Formerly Contemporary Documentary Arts)
Through critical readings and primary sources, this course explores the historical and theoretical developments in the interactions of art, culture, nature, and technology. Sample topics include environmental art; media infrastructures; concepts of nature and the nonhuman; and climate change and visual culture.
Investigates contemporary art and the politics of ecology. Examines the intersection of art criticism, politico-ecological theory, environmental activism, and postcolonial globalization, considering geopolitical areas diverse as the Arctic, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, Europe, and the Americas.
Examination of practitioners, projects, issues, and theories in contemporary architecture circa 1968 to the present. Topics include the architecture of aftermath, the ethics of memory and memorialization, the corporatization of museums, the role of criticism and exhibitions, and the cult of the brand-name architect.
Examines urban design from the Renaissance to the present, including Latin American colonial cities, Utopian plans, and sites such as Brasilia and Chandigarh. The course focuses on social justice, diversity, and the role of art and architecture.
Presents Latin America's modern architecture with relation to colonization; the influence of immigrants from Europe, Africa, and Asia; the presence of indigenous cultures; and the search for autonomy. Case studies include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, and Uruguay.
Examines the modern and contemporary depictions of cities in visual and material culture, from paintings and photographs to logotypes and souvenirs. Also examines the roles of narrative in spatial representations, including literature, film, and television productions.
Traces the connections between key movements in modern design and the evolution of technology in society. Also provides a framework for engaging critically with the proliferation of technology in society today.
How have architects engaged memory and place in architectural projects and built landscapes since World War II? Examines memorializing, memory, and erasure of place in reconstruction of cities, creation of memorials, and design of buildings. (Formerly Constructing Memory and Place in Postwar Architecture.)
Explores critical issues in the history of architecture and urbanism from 1968 to the present. Major themes in the development of contemporary architecture are introduced, including the uneven legacy of modernism, the growth of cities, changing technologies, environmental issues, and the social and political context of design.
Investigates Latin American and Caribbean art and visual culture. Studies decolonial resistances, alternative modernisms, examining the shaping of race and ethnicity under global capitalism. Looks at practices by Latin American and Latinx artists, focusing on Afro-Latinx and indigenous knowledges.
Myths dominated the culture and visual production of the ancient Greek world, and their presence is still strong today. How did they codify social, political, and religious realities and needs? How were they perceived in different time periods? In addition to ancient Greek and Roman and later European sculptures and paintings, this course considers less conventional sources, such as modern films, comics, and advertisements. Course 51 recommended as preparation.
Visual culture in the ancient Roman world, from temples and public monuments to houses and tombs, performances, and rituals. Examines the construction of social and cultural identities, including class, gender, and sexuality, through architecture, sculpture, painting, household objects, jewelry, etc.
Centered on the capital city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul), the Hellenized and Christianized Roman Empire of the Easter Mediterranean today known as Byzantium played a major, yet often overlooked, role in European history for more than a millennium. This course examines its visual production and relation to politics and religion in court and church ceremonial, expressions of Christian faith, and cultural interactions with Western Europe, Islam, and the Slavic world.
The construction of female identity and the production of history through the myth of Cleopatra. Critical analysis of archeological data and ancient sources, later sculptures and paintings, and contemporary films, movies posters, Internet sites, advertisements, comics, games, dolls, and household objects.
Lives of Italian Renaissance people from birth to death, examining the nature and roles of the institutions which defined human existence in this period. Uses visual arts both illustratively and to study how institutions fashioned their images through art and architecture.
An investigation of the High Renaissance as a period and stylistic concept, using the major artists and monuments of the period 1480–1525 to discuss issues of theory, history, and art. Artists considered include Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael.
Considers Venetian art in the 15th and 16th centuries. Topics include major artists (the Bellini, Carpaccio, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Palladio) and the relationship of the city to outside forces (Byzantine Empire, Turkish Empires) and other Italian cities.
Art and architecture of selected pre-Hispanic cultures from the gulf coast, central, western, and southern Mexico including the Olmec, Zapotec, Toltec, Mixtec, Mexica (Aztec), and others. (Formerly Pre-Hispanic Visual Culture: Mexico.)
The art of selected pre-hispanic cultures of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia including the Nazca, Moche, Chimu, and Inca. (Formerly Pre-Hispanic Visual Culture: The Andes.)
The art and architecture of the Maya of southern Mesoamerica from the first century C.E. to ca. 1500. Courses 80, 60, or 160A (formerly course 150A) are recommended as preparation. (Formerly Advanced Studies in Pre-Hispanic Visual Culture: The Maya.)
The visual culture of the Inka of the Andean region of western South America including textiles, metalwork, and the built environment. Courses 60 (formerly 80M) or 80 (formerly 10E) are recommended as preparation. (Formerly Advanced Studies in Pre-Hispanic Visual Culture: The Inka.)
Indigenous contributions to colonial Spanish American visual culture including architecture, manuscripts, sculpture, painting, textiles, feather-work, and metallurgy. Focus on colonial Mexico, the Andes, and California.
Examines the diverse art and visual culture of California's Indigenous communities, by learning about historic practices and revitalization, artistic engagement with the built environment, performance and public art, activism through visual culture, and the deconstruction of stereotypes.
The Missions of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Georgia and Florida impacted the lives of Indigenous peoples who were vital to the artistic and architectural development of these spaces. Course examines Indigenous contributions and ongoing reactions to these sites.
Explores art of the body, defined broadly, from various perspectives. Examines colonial representations of Oceanic bodies, self-representation through bodily adornment and display (including tattoo, scarification, body painting, ornament, and dress), and bodily metaphors in Oceanic visual cultures.
Investigates how textiles contribute to cultural fabric of Oceania. Explores women's roles in socioeconomic exchanges and cultural production; gender issues regarding production and function of Oceanic textiles; and history of processes, functions, and aesthetics. Prerequisite: Prior coursework related to Oceania recommended.
Examines representations of Pacific Island cultures. Explores the history of indigenous communities' relationships with museums and heritage institutions, and strategies to represent Oceanic histories, knowledges, and futures. Studies how stakeholders in cultural representation develop collaborative approaches to pursuing decolonized heritage practices.
Examines selected and changing topics in the study of oceanic visual culture. The specific topic varies with each offering in order to keep up with recent directions in scholarship. Possible topics include: archaeological material and visual cultures; colonial-era images, objects, and spaces; architecture and environments; performance; gender; race and ethnicity; modern/contemporary art and visual culture; and/or a regional focus.
Examines major developments in art and theory, 1980s-present. Close consideration of how artists from around the globe innovatively respond to often fraught social, political, and economic circumstances. Topics include: experimental social relations, diaspora, migration, decolonization, institutional critique, globalization, the commons, and ecology. (Formerly Global Contemporary Art.)
Introduces the practices and production of art historical/visual cultural knowledge. Topics include: interdisciplinarity, pedagogy, museums, art criticism, digital humanities, cultural property, preservation, conservation, art/cultural organizations, art markets, archives, and the role of the humanities in contemporary life. (Formerly Critical Issues and Professional Practices in Visual Studies.)
Explores the theme of horror in 20th/21st-Century visual culture. Unpacks how horror is often reflective of entrenched cultural anxieties around the interplay between gender, morality, and female sexuality.
Examines how indigenous artists and activists visually respond to issues related to land and sovereignty. Looks at a broad range of media used by indigenous creative practitioners, including documentary filmmaking, printmaking, photography, and performance.
Students gain critical skills to grapple with queer art, visual culture, and theory of diverse histories and geographies. Students consider how queer is applied and appropriated in the scope of in/visibility in a transnational context.
Investigates display histories of natural, ethnographic, and historical objects as well as contemporary art curation practices. Explores how curatorial methodologies can reinforce or challenge inequalities implicit in choosing what and how objects are seen.
Explores the recent history of curatorial practice. Through studying important exhibitions produced in recent decades, students learn about the range of social, political, and economic factors influencing how art is conceived and displayed today.
Examines key moments and projects in site-specific art since the 1960s, including Earth Works, the rise of installation art, and the interplay between artists and institutional venues sponsoring such projects, including museums, private galleries and patrons, and biennials.
Ideas of heritage suggest fixed origins and stable histories yet are changing and plural in human life. Course considers materials from around the world to explore how concepts of heritage address the present through commemorating (or forgetting) the past.
Advanced seminar requiring intensive research and writing on changing topics related to a specific area of African art and/or visual culture chosen to demonstrate critical mastery of this subject.
Compares how play and ritual construct worlds and regulate visual cultures—from dolls to ritual objects and performances. Attention given to areas where play and ritual overlap and the visual cultures that result.
Examines the visual culture of the Mediterranean from the 3rd to the 7th centuries A.D., focusing on the historical and cultural developments which led to the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire and its transformation to what we call Byzantium.
Close study of the principal text of East Asian Buddhism as a self-enclosed vision of reality, with careful consideration of the forms and functions of the world of visual and aural representation that it has inspired.
Explores the distinctive conceptual world of the Buddhist Huayanjing (Avatamsaka-sutra) and its expression in visual forms. This long text, composed in Sanskrit and later translated into Chinese, is a principal scripture of the international Mahayana Buddhist traditions of Asia.
Examines selected issues in history of Chan (Zen) Buddhist traditions in China from medieval times to the present day. Concepts, methods, and visual expression of Chan practice situated through study of texts and visual materials.
Careful study of Mahayana Buddhist perfection-of-wisdom traditions--texts and related material culture, including visual imagery and illustrated books--with focus on the particular vision of reality that they aim to produce or reveal.
Examines the visual culture of the Vietnam-American war and its legacy in contemporary art of Southeast Asia. Considers representations in different media: painting, drawing, photography, film, novels, and material cultures. Issues addressed include memory, trauma, identity politics, body, race, gender, pornography, and prostitution.
Undergraduate seminar that takes topical and thematic approaches to looking at the visual cultures of Southeast Asia and its diaspora. Media and themes include textile, film and literature, comparative modernity, race, gender, and sexuality. The specific topic and them varies from year to year. (Formerly Thematic Approach to Visual Cultures of Southeast Asia.)
Deals with representations of the female divinity in Indian religious imagery, and of women in secular and courtly paintings. Also examines roles women play in the production of art in the Indian subcontinent.
Examines selected and changing topics in the study of Mediterranean visual culture. Topics vary with each offering to keep up with recent directions in scholarship. Possible topics: Bronze Age Aegean cultures; myth, ritual, and religion in the Near East; Greek and Roman gender and sexuality; seafarers and cross-cultural interactions in the ancient Mediterranean; Islamic cultures of North African and Spain.
Explores Berlin's urban and architectural history through themes: the meaning of memory in architecture; the political and cultural implications of preservation, globalization, and tourism. Because these questions are relevant beyond Berlin, course draws comparisons with other cities.
What are the relations between the mortal body and politics in times of crisis? What purposes can death, or the threat of death, serve? Examines representations of executions, assassinations, and funerals during the French Revolution, with an emphasis on the Terror.
Western portraiture and self-portraiture at certain key moments (early modern Italy, 16th-century Germany, 17th-century Holland, France from the reign of Louis XIV to the Revolution, contemporary U.S.) are explored by reading 20th-century interpretations and some primary sources. This course can be taken for senior exit credit only by permission of the instructor.
Explores how critical theory illuminates forms of cultural production, from art and cinema to popular culture. Considers how scholars, artists, and filmmakers use critical theory both creatively and in the study of aesthetic objects and experiences. (Formerly Critical Issues in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture.)
Seminar on changing topics related to the current scholarship on pre-Hispanic and colonial Spanish American visual culture.
Religious, scientific, and secular manuscripts of Byzantium: examines how words and images interacted to express and promote central concepts of Byzantine culture; serve liturgical needs of private devotion; reflect imperial ideals; diffuse moral values and knowledge; and proclaim social status and cultural affiliations.
Why did the cult of the Virgin Mary become so important in Byzantine culture? Examines historical, cultural, theological, political, and social reasons for this development, seen through the interaction of Byzantine visual culture and literature.
Examines impact of culture contact on Oceanic and Euro-American visual cultures in context of discovery, colonialism, and postcolonialism. Topics include 18th-century visual culture, colonial identities, primitivism, syncretism, impact of Christianity, contemporary art/market, media, tourism, transnationalism, and globalization. Prior coursework related to Oceania recommended but not required.
Theoretical discussions and Pacific Basin case studies on 1) definitions of cultural, ethnic, and national identities; 2) relationship between art, museums, and construction of historical and cultural narratives; 3) ways tradition defined in art practices and used by groups to assert an identity in their present. Participants first develop a theoretical framework and vocabulary for analyzing artistic production in a variety of cultures. Through specific case studies, will explore how art, architecture, and museums actively contribute to define and challenge ethnic and national identities. Prior course work related to Oceania recommended but not required.
What happens when, to control an object, it is destroyed? Examines destruction of art as a way of ending the object's life cycle, as a device of social tension/change, and as a colonial and post-colonial mechanism of religious/political control.
Focus on the histories of miraculous images of La Virgen de Guadalupe de Extremadura (Spain) and La Virgen de Guadalupe de Tepeyac (Mexico). The foundations and growth of the cult of the Mexican Guadalupe during the colonial period is examined along with the multivalent symbolism of her image. Considers contemporary appearances of the Virgin of Guadalupe, from the miraculous images on a tree in central California and the compositions of Chicano artists, to mass-produced kitsch.
Explores how visual representation (in fine art, popular art, film, and television) encodes difference in selected cultural and historical contexts. Considers (post)colonial image-making both as a strategy of domination as well as resistance.
How can visual culture be understood as the production, circulation, and recirculation of signs? This course offers a history of semiotics and its methodological application in the analysis of images in popular culture and within the discipline of art history.
A close reading of works of art and theoretical texts by feminists working from 1970 to the present. The course encourages debate around the past, present, and future relevance of feminist theories to visual cultural studies, paying particular attention to issues of cultural and ethnic difference.
Examines what visual representations (feminine and masculine) reveal of gender in 19th- and 20th-century European and American culture; how images reflect norms of gender; and how we are conditioned to read images in gendered terms. Explores how femininity and masculinity were conceived during historical periods and how gender ideals changed in response to social, political, and economic pressures. Students encouraged to consider the fluid nature of 21st-century notions of ideal femininity and and masculinity and possible alternatives.
Explores how theory can illuminate various forms of cultural production from art and cinema to popular and material cultures. Considers how scholars and visual producers utilize theory creatively and in the study of aesthetic objects and experiences.
Focuses on selected topics in the history of art and visual culture. Topics vary depending on instructor.
Examines contemporary visual culture and processes of decolonialization in relation to topics including: petrocapitalism, indigeneity, ecology, race, gender and sexuality, and multispecies ontology. Case studies include cultural practices in North America and Mexico, with diverse theoretical approaches.
Students create and install and exhibition. Students take the roles of museum departments, moving the project from concept to installation.The impact exhibitions make in culture and society is examined throughout each step of the process. Prerequisite(s): HAVC 100A and HAVC 141M. Enrollment restricted to History of Art and Visual Culture majors and minors. Enrollment by instructor permission.
Seminar on changing topics related to the current scholarship on the art and visual culture of the Renaissance.
Seminar on current scholarship on Oceanic visual culture. Topics include pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial visualities; place and the built environment; performance; race; gender; travel and tourism; cultural institutions. Prior coursework related to Oceania recommended but not required.
Addresses changing topics in contemporary art. The specific topic varies with each offering to keep up with new directions in scholarship.
Advanced seminar requiring intensive research and writing on changing topics related to a specific area of American art and/or visual culture chosen to demonstrate critical mastery of this subject.
Explores the history of campus design in North America. Traces the ways designers have used the campus for staging new ideas of education and work, stimulating social relations, and connecting architecture with the natural world. Emphasis is devoted to UCSC and the Silicon Valley tech campus.
The history of architecture and design along the California coast. Through a series of case studies selected from topics in twentieth century design, course explores the roles of designers in mediating relationships between infrastructure and landscape, technology and natural forces, ideas of the artificial and natural, as well as between humans and non-human species.
Explores how art and other visual cultural practices--like participatory mapping, data visualization, and image sharing--negotiate the material and social consequences of both sudden and slow-moving disasters. Emphasizes critical, activist, and regenerative methods of representation, collaboration, and response.
Integrates academic study with meaningful community service to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities. Projects may serve non-profit agencies, schools, or art/culture institutions. Enrollment is restricted to junior and senior history of art and visual culture majors and minors. Enrollment is by instructor permission.
Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Independent field study away from the campus. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Independent field study away from the campus. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Individual study in areas approved by sponsoring instructors. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Individual study in areas approved by sponsoring instructors. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Introduces the visual studies discipline, providing students with an overview of the field's development, its primary texts, and its issues of central concern. Features intensive readings and student-led discussions.(Formerly course 201, Introduction to Visual Studies.)
Examines research methods and approaches in a variety of materials, cultures, periods, and subjects that are relevant in the discipline of visual studies. Discussions focus on research and readings by history of art and visual culture faculty who share practices, experiences, and advice.
Devoted entirely to writing grant proposals. Students work on grants for educational support, their doctoral dissertation grants, or both.
Devoted to grant-writing. Students work on composing and peer-reviewing research proposals, personal statements, bibliographies, CVs, and writing samples. Readings include literature on grant-writing and scholarly writing in the humanities.
Yoruba conceptions of visuality are explored and compared to seeing through Western eyes. Critical reading focuses on Western and Yoruba scholars' work on visualities and complementary theoretical writings on Yoruba aesthetics and philosophy.
Examines theories that attempt to explain iconoclasm, the willful destruction of religious or political objects, by applying the theory (including theories of cultural heritage) to various case studies. The universal aspect of iconoclasm and the differences in understanding and practice are explored.
Examines selected and changing topics in the visual studies of Asia. The specific topic varies with each offering to keep up with recent directions in scholarship.
Indian Buddhist sage-monks (arhats) are portrayed in China in ways that represent a remarkable variety of visual/historical/practice traditions. This seminar examines these depictions and explores the ranges of means and functions attached to this theme.
Begins with an analysis of photography and films capturing the Gandhian and Dalit movement in India. Students then read key Buddhist texts on engaged Buddhism, and look at the rise of engaged Buddhism in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and how it impacted modern and contemporary art in Southeast Asia and its diaspora.
Investigates modern monuments (1750 to present) and the creation or maintenance of a nation, especially in terms of war and its immediate aftermath. Destruction or alteration of monuments and production of anti- or counter-monuments are also examined.
Examines selected and changing topics in the contemporary art and visual culture. The specific topic varies with each offering to keep up with recent directions in scholarship.
Investigates the complex relationship between photography and history. Considers the evolving perceptions of photography's capacity to capture reality, the discursive means by which photographic truths are produced, and the utility of photographs as primary evidence.
Interdisciplinary approach to the study of democratic political theory of the last two decades and its relation to contemporary art practice with an emphasis on activist art, public art, and theories of speech and performance.
Investigates how discursive systems racialized the sight of various racial and ethnic groups in 19th- and 20th-century U.S. society. Focuses on the construction and maintenance of racial values systems and on the historically specific ways in which an eclectic assortment of visual artifacts have been read by groups over time. Considers the visual and material implications of race-based sight.
Considers how visual culture intersects with environment. Considers how, in the age of neoliberal globalization, documentary and neo-conceptual practices confront the biopolitics of climate change; the financialization and rights of nature; climate refugees; and indigenous ecologies.
Examines and compares radical futurisms-Indigenous, Afro, Chicanx/Latinx,multispecies, Postcapitalist-and situates them in relation to experimental visual cultural,media, and aesthetic practices, asking critical and creative speculative questions about what comes after end-of-world narratives.
Focuses on what is commonly left out of architectural history: the ephemeral, informal, illegal, and uncertain. Topics include: anonymous and collective architecture; temporary interventions; everyday urbanism; and vestigial urban spaces. These topics are understood through theories of space as socially produced (Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, among others), and through cultural movements and manifestoes (Situationist International, Aesthetics of Hunger, etc.)
Explores how human subjects come to be visually defined and marked by race discourse. Covers diverse theoretical literatures on the topic, primarily in visual studies, but also in cultural studies, post-colonial studies, and psychoanalysis.
An interdisciplinary exploration of the performative dimensions of art, visual culture, and new media. Investigates theories of performance and action across multiple fields and considers their relevance to themes, problems, and contexts of interest to those enrolled.
Through the study of the Byzantine cult of Mary, we examine diverse modalities in the construction and interaction of political, religious, and gender values, and we investigate the interrelated role of images, rituals, and text in human experience, expression, and communication. (Formerly The Cult of Mary in Byzantium.)
Visual literacy is considered as a particular predicament of colonial societies. Students consider the legibility of artifacts in colonial Spanish American contexts given its culturally diverse audiences and examine specific instances of (mis)interpreted images and transcultured representations.
Examines collections and exhibitions of colonized people, places, and objects through primary sources, theoretical texts, and analytical case studies (with some emphasis on Oceania). Focuses on visual discourses of race, science, religious conversion, colonial settlement, nation-building, education, and entertainment.
Considers 18th-century to 21st-century colonialisms, especially in Oceania. Concentrates on representations conditioned by particular cross-cultural engagements in colonial peripheries rather than focusing on metropolitan representations. Explores the construction and transgression of rigidly defined colonial identity categories, as expressed in visual/material form.
Explores the visual cultures of travel and tourism with some focus on Oceania. Travel and tourism are implicated in the histories of colonialism, ethnography, and globalization, and offer rich sites for critical engagement with theories of transnationalism, imperialism, diaspora, and identity.
Examines selected and changing issues in visual studies. The specific issue varies with each offering to keep pace with recent directions in scholarship.
Explores art movements that played a role in major struggles for independence and liberation from colonial regimes or reflected upon them subsequently. These art movements are examined though international art and media exhibitions. Case studies vary with each course offering.
Directed graduate research and writing coordinated with the teaching of undergraduates. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Directed reading that does not involve a term paper. Students submit petition to course-sponsoring agency. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.
Independent study or research for graduate students. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Independent study or research for graduate students. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Students submit petition to course-sponsoring agency. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.
Students submit petition to course sponsoring agency. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.
Students submit petition to course sponsoring agency. Enrollment restricted to graduate students.