Current Upper Level Courses in Art History

Rose Hill
Spring 2025 Courses

ARHI 2311 - Athen and Ancient Greece: Athens and Pericles in the 5th Century BC
Long remembered as a political and artistic highpoint in the western traditions of art, architecture, history, philosophy, politics and theatre, this course takes a holistic look at the challenges and opportunities of writing about 5th century BC Athens. Students will analyze a range of writing about Athens, and its most famous statesman, Pericles. Genres from modern scholarship on technical evidence (such as stone inscriptions and archaeological field reports) to 19th century poetry seeking to evoke a lost “golden age” of art and democracy will all inform students’ own writings. This wide range of modern texts and ancient evidence will allow us to consider all parts of Athenian society. A final project will require students to alter their writing for a more general audience, by devising, writing, and shooting a short animated film.

ARHI 2553 - Art, Gender, and Sexuality in Asia
This upper-level art history course probes into artistic and cultural representations of bodies in Asia in relation to such themes as sex, gender, sexuality, race, nationhood, war, and post-humanity. Through thematic examinations of diverse bodily representations, students will learn a broad range of interpretive tools and frameworks to appreciate artistic objects.

ARHI 2580 - Contemporary Black and Indigenous Art
This course investigates global contemporary art with a focus on the Black and Indigenous artists who some would say form the vanguard of the 20th and 21st century art world. We examine exhibitions, art criticism, biennales, and art fairs that have positioned Blackness and Indigeneity at the forefront. We will consider the limits of representation in our present moment of “neoliberal globalization” while analyzing the strategies in which Black and Indigenous artists resist and indulge the demands of racial capitalism.

Rose Hill
Fall 2024

ARHI 2211 – The Arts and Visual Culture of China and Beyond
This course examines Chinese art and visual culture from ancient to contemporary periods. Going beyond the materials conventionally covered in the survey of Chinese art, this course will also explore the global significance of Chinese art by examining objects in the Americas, Europe, and other countries in Asia that were influenced by Chinese aesthetics through transcultural dialogues. Additionally, the course will examine cultural products created by Chinese diasporas. Through the analysis of cultural products both within and outside China, the course will pay special attention to themes such as religion, socio-economic class, gender, sexuality, imperialism, war, orientalism, transnational dialogue, migration, and racism. Furthermore, through visits to museums and galleries in New York City, the class will discuss curatorial practices. At the end of the course, students will submit a proposal for an exhibition featuring Chinese objects. Throughout this course, students will develop skills in visual analysis, familiarize themselves with major Chinese art objects, engage with prominent scholarly writings, learn to conduct basic art historical research, and consider how to present their research to the general public through exhibition curation.

ARHI 2360 - Illuminated Manuscripts
Before the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, every book was a precious, hand-produced object. Often these manuscripts were richly decorated with painting, called illumination. This course examines the development of manuscript illumination over the length of the Middle Ages in Europe (circa 300 to 1500). Issues examined include illuminated manuscripts and the establishment of the church, illumination and royal power, manuscripts and popular devotion, relations between Christians and Jews, and the role of the artist as illuminator. This course includes site visits.

ARHI 2535 - History of Photography
This course explores the uses and possibilities of the photographic medium since its inception in the early nineteenth century. Our focus this semester will be on histories of photography in what is now the United States, with particular attention to questions of migration, race, diaspora, and belonging. How have photographs been used to shape, negotiate, and challenge ideas about identity in both individual and collective senses? In exploring this central question, we will consider a wide array of images and contexts, including cut-paper silhouettes, daguerreotypes, cartes-de-visite, family albums, yearbooks, passport photographs, and film. Practitioners explored include J.P. Ball, Gertrude Käsebier, Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Roy DeCarava, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Tōyō Miyatake, Will Wilson, ASCO, and Carrie Mae Weems. Classes will be complemented by a hands-on workshop on darkroom techniques as well as visits to area collections.

ARHI 2575 - Visualizing Black Queer Feminisms
This course explores contemporary visual culture through the lens of queer and Black feminist artists, activists, and scholars.  What does it mean for Black women and queer artists to garner unprecedented mainstream visibility, but Black queer feminism is still marginalized in art criticism?  How can we study art history in such a way that this separation is remedied?  Together we study Black lesbian and queer feminist texts alongside 21st century new media art, photography, cinema, sculpture, and painting.

ARHI 4600 - Senior Seminar
As the capstone seminar for art history majors, this seminar has several goals: to give art history majors an introduction to the principal thinkers who shaped the field of art history; to explore some of the key methodological approaches to art history today; to hone students’ skills in critical reading and viewing; and to provide students the opportunity to conduct independent research on an art historical topic of their own choosing. Offered fall semesters only; required for majors.

Lincoln Center
Spring 2025 Courses

ARHI 2361 - Italian Art, Politics, and Religion in the age of Dante
This course investigates the relationship between art, politics, and religion on the Italian peninsula during the later Middle Ages (ca. 1250-1400). We will focus on the major cities as patrons of the arts (e.g. Florence, Siena, Padua, Milan, Naples, Venice, and Rome), to understand how the elite used art to further their political and religious agendas. Select themes include: the rise of the Mendicant orders; the cultural impact of Dante’s Divine Comedy; artistic competition among communes; the rise of the individual artist; humanism and the arts; the influence of Islamic intellectual and visual culture on the Italian peninsula.

ARHI 2565 - Architecture and the Environment
How has the natural environment shaped the design of the human-made environment? How have buildings, in turn, been constructed to mitigate unwanted climatic effects and provide comfort to their inhabitants? Most pressingly, how should the construction industry respond to the climate crisis? In this class, we will examine the history of architecture not as a series of stylistic developments, but in relation to structural and mechanical technologies of climate control. We’ll trace how fossil fuels transformed how we build, and the complicated histories of passive design, alongside a discussion of how thinkers from ancient times to the present have connected climate with what it means to be human, to understand the politics, economics, and cultural features of environmentally responsive design.

ARHI 4555 - Art and Ecology in the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries
This course investigates the work of artists, writers, and filmmakers who have dedicated themselves to creating solutions to specific environmental problems or whose works have broadened public concern for ecologically degraded environments. Students will participate in a wide variety of discourses about the personal, public, and ethical dimensions of current environmental issues. 

ARHI 4610 - Senior Capstone Project
This course allows students to hone research skills and conduct a semester-long project on an art-historical topic of their own choosing.

Lincoln Center
Fall 2024

ARHI 2315 – Roman Art 
This course is a survey of the art and architecture of Rome from the Republican and Hellenistic periods through the era of Constantine (fifth century BCE to fourth century CE). Through the course, students try to understand why and how Roman art changed as Rome itself changed, from a small city-state republic to one of history's largest empires. The course covers the following themes in Roman art: the power of images in the ancient world; the place of monuments, artists, and patrons in Roman society; Roman ways of thinking about art and representation; art as a way to spread or resist Roman imperialism; and the influence of Roman art on almost every later artistic style or movement. NOTE: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

ARHI 2432 – Renaissance Centers
Covering the period from 1400-1600, this course examines the concept of the "Renaissance" in artistic production and reception in a variety of European centers. We will consider the role that different forms of government and styles of social life played in the development of Renaissance art in Italy and in its reception outside the traditional "centers" of the Italian Renaissance art. The course aims both to offer a comprehensive survey of fifteenth and sixteenth century Italian art and to provide an in-depth analysis of particular centers, both urban and courtly. Topics that will be covered include antiquarianism, the role of religious institutions, private patronage, the impact of political change on artistic practice, and the concepts of "center" and "periphery" in defining the Renaissance. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

ARHI 2545 – Museum Architecture
How does architecture support (or undermine) the museum’s goals to display objects for the public and preserve these objects for the future? Is the museum building a monument or a type of public infrastructure, and who should pay for it? What new considerations for museum design have emerged in the face of climate change? In this course, we’ll explore these questions through a historical analysis of museum design, connecting the construction of cutting-edge spaces to a longer tradition of building public museums. We will pay special attention to museums in New York City, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, the American Museum of Natural History, and the National Museum of the American Indian. We’ll also consider buildings that no longer exist, such as the former home of the American Folk Art Museum, and buildings that have housed the collections of multiple institutions, such as the Breuer building, to practice reading architecture to better understand museums and their varied missions.