Department of Art History

ARTH 30618. What Was Art? What Is Art? What Will Art Be? 100 Units.

In this course we will consider thorny questions about art and its existence in contemporary society. Our primary focus will be on visual art, generally contemplated within Euro-American contexts across the long twentieth century. We will read texts from within the discipline of art history, as well as others in allied fields-of a critical, philosophical, or theoretical bent, and still others by artists, critics, curators, and enthusiasts. Throughout the quarter we will endeavor to contemplate works from a wide range of spatial and temporal situations.

Instructor(s): M. Jackson     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 30618, ARTV 20618, ARTH 20618

ARTH 30908. Media Revolutions Then and Now. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): T. Golan and C. Wild     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, pre-modern (pre-1800)
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 33101, RLVC 30908, GRMN 25908, RLST 28708, HIST 23101, CDIN 30908, GRMN 35908, ARTH 20908, CDIN 20908, MADD 15908

ARTH 31014. Medieval Indian Cities. 100 Units.

This seminar examines the fascinating, surprising, and confounding ways in which cities developed in "medieval" South Asia-a millennium long period comprising roughly ca. 500 to 1500 CE. Some of these cities, such as Delhi, have grown to become modern metropolises. Some others, such as Hampi (one of the largest cities on earth at the height of their fame), have become abandoned archaeological towns. What social, political, religious, and mercantile networks shaped their development? How did people-the elites and the so-called subalterns-live in these cities? And what can a serious study of this distant period tell us about the pressures that shaped medieval built environments and that continue to affect cities today? Among the cities to be discussed are Delhi, Surat, Thanjavur, Hampi (Vijayanagara), Warangal, Daulatabad, and Gwalior. Final assignment could take the shape of an academic paper, or, in consultation with the instructor, a creative assignment that imagines an aspect of urban life in a medieval Indian city. Seminar is directed towards students with interests in medieval history, religious history, South Asian history, urban history, and architectural history.

Instructor(s): M. Manohar     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian pre-1800
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 21114, SALC 31014, SALC 21014, CEGU 31114, ARTH 21014, ARCH 21014, MDVL 21014

ARTH 31310. Art and Technology: From the Historical Avant Gardes to the Algorithmic Present. 100 Units.

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, 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.

Instructor(s): T. Shabtay     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 21310, ARTH 21310, MADD 15310

ARTH 31326. Can a Photograph Change the World? 100 Units.

Can a single lens-based image change the course of history? This course traces iconic photographs from across the documentary tradition to examine their formal character, circulation, and social impact. In our approach to this question, we will explore traditional frameworks for discussing documentary truth and ethics in photojournalism, but we will also consciously set aside those concerns to consider the influence of images in the public sphere regardless of their integrity as photographs. At stake in this reframing is how photographs function in the "post-truth" era. Course sessions will be based around individual case studies of iconic and "viral" images.

Instructor(s): C. Fulnder     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 21326

ARTH 31333. (Re)Branding the Balkan City: Comtemp. Belgrade/Sarajevo/Zagreb. 100 Units.

The freedom to make and remake our cities (and ourselves) is one of the most precious yet most neglected of the human rights," argues David Harvey. In this course, we use an urban studies lens to explore the complex history, social fabric, architecture, infrastructure, and cultural transformation of the former Yugoslav capitals. Since their inception, these cities have relied on multifaceted exchanges of peoples and political projects, forms of knowledge, financial and cultural capital, means of production, and innovative ideas. Among others, these exchanges produced two phenomena, Yugoslav architecture, embodying one of the great political experiments of the modern era, and the Non-Aligned Movement, as explored in recent documentary films (Turajlić 2023), museum exhibits (MoMA 2018, "Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia 1948-1980"), and monographs (Tito in Africa: Picturing Solidarity). Drawing on anthropological theory and ethnography of the city, we consider processes of urban destruction and renewal, practices of branding spaces and identities, metropolitan citizenship, arts and design, architectural histories and styles, and the broader politics of space. The course is complemented by cultural and historical media, guest speakers, and virtual tours. Classes are conducted in English.

Instructor(s): Nada Petkovic     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 24008, BCSN 21300, BCSN 31303, ARTH 21333, REES 31303, ARCH 21300, REES 21300, GLST 21301

ARTH 32115. Iconoclasm. 100 Units.

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" initially was 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; for example, what motivated Byzantine destruction of icons is distinct from why European colonizers destroyed Native American heritage. 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. The seminar spends a week defining the key terms before delving into particular case studies of iconoclasm.

Instructor(s): M. Manohar     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian pre-1800, Asian post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 32115, PARR 22115, NEHC 22115, SALC 22115, ARTH 22115, RLST 28312

ARTH 32120. Ecocritical Art History: Perspectives from South Asia. 100 Units.

How can art history contribute to the ongoing discourse about environmentalism? What can the study of art tell us about the interrelatedness of human creativity and the environment? In this seminar, we will wrestle with these questions through an ecocritical study of South Asian art. Ecocriticism has its origins in literary studies, although it is now an interdisciplinary field of study that explores how the natural world is portrayed in the arts, broadly conceived. Art history has long been interested in analyzing how artists depicted the natural world. However, such explorations have usually been framed by a narrow set of discreet concerns that have their origins in Enlightenment-era discourse; for example, landscape studies, animal studies (zoology), plant studies (botany), etc. Ecocriticism does not have any such limiting framework. An ecocritical study attempts to move beyond the irreducibly anthropocentric approach in the humanities to understand the natural environments in which humans made art. South Asian art is fundamentally marked by an interest in nature. The towers of Indian temples were conceived of as physical manifestations of the Himalayas. The door guardians that stand on either side of temple entrances are anthropomorphic depictions of the rivers Ganga and Yamuna.

Instructor(s): M. Manohar     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 22120

ARTH 32305. Interpreting and Exhibiting Textiles from North Africa and Southwest Asia. 100 Units.

This seminar explores visual culture and historical arts of Africa primarily from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with a focus on traditional textiles and adornment in North Africa and Southwest Asia. We will cover that 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 storage and spend time in the galleries for the exhibition, Embroidered Traditions from Morocco to Afghanistan, for in-person, close looking and to fuel discussions surrounding the role of museums, museum display, and interpretation. At least two class sessions will take place at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Instructor(s): J. Purdy     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Consent only. This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: African Art
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 22305, RLVC 38345, ARTH 22305, RLST 28345

ARTH 32338. Heaven・Earth・People in Korean Arts and Letters. 100 Units.

This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the histories, methodologies, and practices foundational to Korean visual, literary, oral, and performing traditions. Its central concern is how historical overlaps, ruptures, and interactions among diverse media and various cultural origins have shaped Korean artistic and cultural production-and contributed to its contemporary global visibility. The first half surveys Korean history, writing systems, and philosophical thought from ancient to modern periods, organized around the thematic framework of "heaven (ch'ŏn; hanŭl), earth (chi; ttang), and people (in; saram)." This triad has underpinned the Korean vernacular script (han'gŭl), indigenous belief systems, and artistic practices from antiquity to the present. The second half turns to intertwined studies of visual and literary sources ranging from the late Chosŏn period (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) through the pre-digital contemporary era-the era in which Korea was richly and irrevocably exposed to the world outside. Designed for undergraduate and graduate students with limited or no prior exposure to Korea who wish to incorporate Korean materials into their studies or deepen their understanding of Korean culture, the course requires no prior knowledge of Korea or the Korean language.

Instructor(s): K. Choi, S. Ryu     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 32338, ARTH 22338, EALC 22338

ARTH 32410. Architecture Studio: Bodies, Objects, Spaces. 100 Units.

How do we experience the world beyond what we simply see? Architecture Studio: Bodies, Objects, Spaces is a hands-on, multisensory introduction to architecture that centers the human body as a starting point for design. Open to students with no prior experience in architecture or drawing, the studio begins with close observation of an everyday interior space, mapping its sensory landscape through measurement, drawing, and annotation that attends to sight, sound, smell, and touch. Students then engage in a series of design investigations, including the fabrication of a body-scale object that amplifies or alters a chosen sense. In the final phase of the course, students play with scale, transforming a bodily object into an architectural proposition by designing a room that frames, houses, or activates it for others to experience. Through making, drawing, and iteration, students explore how architectural ideas can emerge from the relationship between bodies, objects, and spaces, developing conceptual clarity while gaining foundational skills in architectural representation and spatial thinking.

Instructor(s): C. Haouzi     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Architecture Studios: Architecture Studios introduce students to technical skills and creative approaches for designing the built environment. While exploring different themes, the cumulative design exercises of these studios prepare students for Advanced Architecture Studios. No prior studio or art experience is required. This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 32410, CEGU 22410, CHST 22410, ARCH 22410, ARTV 22410, ARTV 32410, ARTH 22410

ARTH 32425. City of the Century: Vienna 1900 and the Making of the 20th Century. 100 Units.

In 1910, Vienna, with a population of 2 million was the 6th largest city in the world; it was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a multiethnic and multilingual state. As the "cradle of modernism and fascism, liberalism and totalitarianism" (to use a phrase from The Economist), Vienna around 1900 has fundamentally altered the way we understand ourselves in the West. In this course, we will examine the cultural currents that came together in the city and have since determined our self-image as psychological, sexual, gendered, and political beings. We will explore these and other revolutions in our sense of identity through the lens of literature and art in conjunction with other historical materials. Readings and discussions in English. Undergraduate and MAPH students welcome.

Instructor(s): Margareta Ingrid Christian     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 32425

ARTH 32526. Aby Warburg and the Memory of Images. 100 Units.

Trained as an art historian with an expertise in Renaissance art, Warburg morphed into a historian of images (i.e., Bildwissenschaft) and - more broadly - into a historian of culture. We will trace Warburg's cultural historical method as it develops primarily from philology, but also art history, anthropology, the comparative study of religions, and evolutionary biology. How does Warburg read culture? What is his methodological approach for examining a wide variety of cultural artifacts ranging from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Poliziano's poetry, and Dürer's etchings to postal stamps and news photographs? How can these artifacts be vehicles for cultural memory? And how does the transmission of cultural memory in artworks manifest itself in different media such as literary texts, religious processions, astrological treatises, photography, and painting? Moreover, how does Warburg's work help us contextualize and historicize "interdisciplinarity" today? This course explores Aby Warburg in the context of other thinkers of the time including Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Alois Riegl, and others. Readings and discussions in English. Undergraduates and MAPH students welcome.

Instructor(s): Margareta Ingrid Christian     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 32526, MAPH 32526, GRMN 32526

ARTH 32814. Who's to Blame for the Renaissance? 100 Units.

Gombrich once called periodization a "necessary evil," an epistemological need that nonetheless distorts what it claims to describe. This seminar takes up the problem of periodization in art history, focusing on the division between medieval and Renaissance (or "early modern") Europe. We will read foundational accounts of stylistic change alongside critiques that question periodization's ideological underpinnings and its flattening of regional diversity. Case studies may include figures long credited with inaugurating new eras, such as Giotto, Van Eyck, and Dürer, as well as objects and images that resist tidy classification. Throughout, we will ask what such divisions enable and foreclose, how they shape canons and hierarchies, and whether the medieval/Renaissance boundary looks different when viewed from outside western Europe or from other disciplines entirely. Students are encouraged to bring questions about periodization from their own subfields to bear on our discussions.

Instructor(s): T. Golan     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, pre-modern (pre-1800), Theory and Historiography
Equivalent Course(s): MDVL 22814, ARTH 22814

ARTH 32816. Narrative Frescos in Early Modern Italy. 100 Units.

In this course we will observe different ways to tell a story through painting, and we will analyze strategies used by artists in early modern Italy to describe space and time in visual terms. Students will engage with different artists, from Giotto to Raphael and Pellegrino Tibaldi, and different cultural and geographic contexts, from Padua and Bologna to Florence, Venice, and Rome, over the span of about three centuries.Students will explore a wide range of visual examples and textual sources on various subject matters, from poetry to history, from the Bible to vernacular accounts about saints, from mythology to contemporary chronicles, in order to investigate what kind of stories were told on the walls of halls and courts of honor, private rooms, or public spaces, aiming at understanding why each of them was chosen. Complex projects such as narrative mural and ceiling paintings usually involved a tight collaboration among artists, patrons, and iconographic consultants, all figures with whom students will become familiar. We will also analyse the theory behind the comparison of poetry and painting ("ut pictura poesis", "as is painting so is poetry") by investigating the meaning and the reception of this ancient concept in early modern times, and its implications on the social role of the artist. Students will investigate the significance of narrative frescos in early modern times, while also asking questions about their value and impact today.

Instructor(s): F. Caneparo     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American pre-1800
Equivalent Course(s): ITAL 32888, ARTH 22816, ITAL 22888

ARTH 33324. The Human Form in Contemporary Art. 100 Units.

In a present where humanity faces planetary challenges with an unprecedented urgency, the human form - what Marx calls our "genus-being" (Gattungswesen) - has become a focus for artistic production of all sorts. The thesis of the class is this: Contemporary art is an actualization of the human form that doesn't presuppose the form, doesn't take it for granted, but instead troubles the form and poses it as a question. The class considers presentations of the form in performance art (Tino Sehgal, Anne Imhof, Wu Tsang), sculpture (Kara Walker, Cai Guo-Qiang, Cecilia Vicuña), writing (Friederike Mayröcker, Layli Long Soldier, Tracie Morris), sound (Maria Chavez, Christina Kubisch, Samson Young), and painting (Michael Armitage, Tammy Nguyen, Mark Bradford). The class contextualizes these artists with theoretical work by Sylvia Wynter, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Peter Sloterdijk, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Jane Bennett, Achille Mbembe, Eva Horn, and Emanuele Coccia. Readings and discussion in English.

Instructor(s): Florian Klinger     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 32324, GRMN 23324, MUSI 23324, CMLT 23324, CMLT 33324, ARTH 23324

ARTH 33325. Touch and Tactility in East Asian Art. 100 Units.

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

Instructor(s): S. Yi     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian pre-1800
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 23325

ARTH 34030. Sexuality Studies in American Art. 100 Units.

TBD

Equivalent Course(s): AMER 34030, GNSE 26102, ARTH 24030, AMER 24030

ARTH 34091. Environmental Art History. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): S. Ryu     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 24091

ARTH 34092. Public and Political Locations of South Asian Art History. 100 Units.

This seminar will be addressing some of the new directions in South Asian art history over the turn of the 21st century, foregrounding the public and political inhabitations of the field. The background is set by two broad shifts in disciplinary focus and approach - from the ancient and medieval artistic pasts of the subcontinent to the modern and contemporary era; from the canonical genres of architecture, sculpture and painting to different visual media, image complexes, and spheres of popular production and consumption. The geo-political map of South Asia that frames the course is that of the dismantled empire and the dismembered subcontinent, born out of the twin occurrences of Independence and Partition, the making of multiple nation-states, and the ceaseless eruption of linguistic, ethnic and religious divisions. Placed within this historical context, South Asian history can be seen as an unquiet discipline: one that keeps interrogating the categories of art, nation and modernity, and recalibrating the registers of the secular and the religious, the national and the regional, the global and local in this sphere.

Instructor(s): T. Guha-Thakurta     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): This course is intended for advanced undergraduates in their final year as well as graduate students.
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 34092, SALC 24092, ARTH 24092

ARTH 34181. Introductory Architecture Studio: House, Housing. 100 Units.

This course positions the architect as an advocate, engaging the building and zoning code as a critical site of design practice in addressing the housing crisis. Rather than treating regulation as a constraint, students will examine how architects can shape policy to expand housing supply, affordability, and typological breadth. Focusing on "missing middle" housing, the course investigates how provisions-such as egress requirements, parking requirements, and unit standards-shape the production of housing, inclusive design, alongside emerging nation-wide movements such as the expansion of ADUs. Through readings, case studies, and conversations with policymakers, attorneys, and designers, students will develop strategies for advocacy as a form of design work. Working in groups and individually, they will produce targeted code reform proposals that connect spatial thinking and design with regulatory change. The course culminates in three-minute public comment presentations at a City Council committee, where students test their arguments in a live civic forum, positioning architectural practice as an active agent in shaping housing policy.

Instructor(s): A. Lui     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Architecture Studios introduce students to technical skills and creative approaches for designing the built environment. While exploring different themes, the cumulative design exercises of these studios prepare students for Advanced Architecture Studios. No prior studio or art experience is required.
Equivalent Course(s): ARCH 24181, CEGU 24181, ARTH 24181, CEGU 34181

ARTH 34210. Advanced Studio: Complex Curves/Plastic Shapes. 100 Units.

This course examines the design and construction of "plastic shapes" in 20th century art and architecture. Investigation begins by study of several mid-20th century artists, including Gabo, Albers, Moholy-Nagy, Arp, and Hepworth, all of whom had deep architectural interests. Investigation is done of their spatial organization of three-dimensional forms, and these studies inform your own drawings and models. Throughout the quarter, work grows in both control and complexity, and is done in both orthogonal and curvilinear geometries. Issues studied include regulatory lines, boundary conditions, transparency, and shallow and deep space. Modeling is done with software, ending in the making of three-dimensional objects. The formal discipline learned has wide application, for intimate spaces as well as larger architectural landscapes. Recommended: familiarity with any design processes and active engagement in class.

Instructor(s): G. Goldberg     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Experience with the arts or design is recommended. Advanced Architecture Studios: Advanced Architecture Studios engage deeply with specific topics in the built environment, architectural and design practice, or representation. Students should have completed at least one introductory Architecture Studio before enrolling
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 20020, ARCH 26510

ARTH 34267. Architecture of Memory. 100 Units.

This architecture studio course asks students to design a memorial. By imagining spaces that evoke emotion and incite action, and examining relationships and meaning between architecture and place, students will explore concepts for spaces created for the purpose of holding, preserving or honoring aspects of culture and history. The South Side of Chicago will be the primary focus. Students will reflect on readings about the South Side and 2020 events. Guest presentations and Arts + Public Life media and archives will be key resources. To form a basis for understanding and analyzing space and form, students will research and critique precedents. The class will visit spaces around the city either in-person or via virtual tours. As a beginning point for inquiry about space and emotions, students will reflect on readings about phenomenology in architecture. Seminars and discussions about architecture practice today will also be presented. Students will generate an analog portfolio of drawings and models throughout the quarter. For final design projects, students will choose real sites and will create a design for a memorial for an aspect of social history of the South Side of Chicago.

Instructor(s): N. Bharani     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): ARCH 24267, RDIN 24267, RDIN 34267, ARTV 34267, ARTH 24267, CHST 24267, CEGU 24267, ARTV 24267

ARTH 34613. Rhoades Seminar: Provenance Research into the Art Institute of Chicago's Collections. 100 Units.

This course invites students to think about the journey taken by cultural objects from all over the world to Chicago and into the Art Institute's collection. By asking the question of who owned these items in the past (their 'provenance'), we will look beyond the objects' surface, turning our attention to the people who cared for them and the societies these objects inhabited. Reconstructing the 'social biographies' of objects as they traveled through time and from place to place, we will explore how this knowledge changes the way in which we understand them as museum objects. Given that museums have historically presented themselves as the authority on the objects in their care, it may be surprising to learn how challenging this research can be in practice. Museum records often only tell us the name of the individual who owned the object right before it was acquired. In some cases, this leaves provenance gaps of several hundred years. Together, we will explore how provenance research has evolved from an auxiliary science focused on prestige and authenticity into a forensic tool that seeks to uncover the full history behind the objects in the galleries and storerooms. The course will introduce the key research strategies, methods, and resources that can be used to fill in these gaps and enable students to carry out their own research into select objects drawn from across the Art Institute's wide-ranging collection.

Instructor(s): J. Schuhmacher     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: African, Asian, premodern (pre-1800), European and American, modern (post-1800), European and American, pre-modern (pre-1800), Theory and Historiography
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 24613

ARTH 34614. Public Art, Land Art in Europe-Gold Gorvy Traveling Seminar. 100 Units.

This class examines the intersections of two categories of sculpture traditionally understood separately: land art and public art. If the former term typically captures artworks made in remote locations, the latter concept is associated with objects conceived in relation to architecture for dense urban contexts. Land Art usually features ephemeral earthen or other natural ingredients, whereas public art tends to be made from durable industrial and other man-made materials. In the context of postwar Europe and in the wake of the continent's reconstruction, however, artists often worked across these categories, problematizing dichotomies of nature and civilization, landscape and urbanism, artwork and context, figure and ground. We will read foundational texts on postwar sculpture; test the relevance of theories of the public; consider the roles of context, site-specificity, commemoration, architecture, and photography; and examine questions of materials and conservation. This is a Gold-Gorvy Traveling Seminar and students will travel to relevant artworks, sites, and exhibitions, including the 2027 iteration of Skulptur Projekte Münster and documenta 16 in Kassel, Germany. Students must be available for two weeks of department-sponsored travel following June 5 convocation and prepare guided reading and research during spring quarter leading up to the traveling seminar itself.

Instructor(s): C. Mehring     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent note: Students should email instructor explaining relevant background and interest by January 10, 2027. This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 34614, CEGU 34614, ARTV 30461, ARTV 20461, ARCH 24614, ARTH 24614, CEGU 24614, GRMN 24614

ARTH 34618. Rhoades Seminar: Unamerican Photographs. 100 Units.

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?

Instructor(s): Y Zhao     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800. This course will meet at the Art Institute of Chicago but the first meeting will be in CWAC 152.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 24618

ARTH 34621. Do You Read Me? Curating Postwar Artists's Books. 100 Units.

This course is a combined research seminar and curatorial practicum with students co-curating an exhibition of artists' books. Following World War II, visual artists took up the book as an artistic medium, experimenting with and expanding the essential components of a medium that had remained unchanged for centuries. The results defied all expectations about traditional understandings of what constitutes a book, including the primacy of text and the use of paper, pages, and binding. This class will consider how books became visual and material objects to be viewed rather than read; made from modern materials such as plastics, concrete, or newspaper and in sizes as small as a square inch or as large as an over-life-sized wood construction; featuring unusual objects such as a sack of flour, a display shelf, or a comic book with stenciled holes; or prompting readers to actions with urban performance instructions or do-it-yourself watercolor kits. Drawing on (U)Chicago collections and a recently gifted private collection, students will work on a fall 2027 exhibition in the Regenstein Library's gallery, including researching artists, visiting local collections, selecting artists' books, assessing conservation needs, writing object and section labels, and designing layout.

Instructor(s): Christine Mehring     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Students should email instructor explaining relevant background and interest. This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 34621, ARTV 30642, FNDL 24621, GRMN 24621, ARTV 20642, ARTH 24621

ARTH 34651. Latest Experiments in Architectural History. 100 Units.

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 argument, 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.

Instructor(s): J. Huet     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Historiography
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 34561, ARCH 24651, ARTH 24651, CEGU 24651

ARTH 34712. Envisioning Tokyo: City, Capital, Metropolis (Traveling Seminar) 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): C. Foxwell     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent only via application. Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Asian, modern (post-1800). Weekly sessions on campus will be supplemented by a mandatory 4-day field trip to Houston, Texas in January.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 24222, EALC 34222, ARTH 24712

ARTH 34713. Animated Things in Premodern China. 100 Units.

This course explores how material objects from premodern China became animated, responsive, and efficacious through their design, manufacture, use, and transformation across media. By closely examining a wide range of objects-from bronze vessels and tomb figurines to fashion accessories and everyday utensils-we ask how matter came to possess vitality, affect, and the capacity to act in the world. Rather than treating objects as passive, the course foregrounds their roles in shaping perception, practice, belief, and emotion. The course emphasizes close looking and object-based analysis. Through lectures, discussions, museum visits, and readings drawn from art history and related fields, it aims to develop students' interpretive skills that connect material and visual qualities to meaning, and equip them with the tools to situate material things within broader social, cultural, and intellectual contexts.

Instructor(s): S. Yi     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian pre-1800
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 24713

ARTH 34815. Collecting the Ancient World: Museum Practice and Politics. 100 Units.

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 UChicago.

Instructor(s): K. Neumann     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Historiography, Asian, premodern (pre-1800), and African
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 24815, HIST 20509, NEHC 24815, HIST 30509, NEHC 34815

ARTH 35001. Theatricality in Modern Art from 1700 to the Present. 100 Units.

We examine the dramatic dimension of art in the modern era broadly speaking, paying attention to recurring themes like the Aristotelian theory of acton, the Diderotian theory of acting, and the linguistic theory of speech acts, as well as to momentous historical events like the French Revolution, the rediscovery of antiquity, and the advent of photography and motion pictures. Paradigms that have been influential in one or another discipline like Michael Fried's theory of theatricality (in art history), Heinrich Kleist's theory of puppets (In German literature and theatre theory) and Friedrich Nietzsche's theory of tragedy (in music and philosophy) and will also be scrutinized.

Instructor(s): Andrei Pop
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 35001, SCTH 35001

ARTH 35009. Platonic Aesthetics. 100 Units.

The anachronism of the course title constitutes our program: to what extent can Plato's thinking about artworks, images, poets in the polis, beauty, the visual world, the senses, subjectivity and criticism be viewed coherently as an aesthetic theory? Does his style and dramatic mode of writing interact significantly with these views? How have they been received, and to what extent are they right?

Instructor(s): Andrei Pop     Terms Offered: Autumn. Autumn 2024
Equivalent Course(s): CLAS 38020, SCTH 25009, FNDL 29005, SCTH 35009

ARTH 35012. Caricature. 100 Units.

Though usually traced to Renaissance experiments with drawing deformed heads, caricature as a mode of parody, humor and invective has various roots, in ancient comedy, ancient modern physiognomy and psychology, the literature and (pseudo)science of social types, and above all in the rise of a public sphere of newspaper readers and broadsheet buyers avid for the ridiculing of public figures, beloved or otherwise. We approach caricature broadly, considering its inverse relation with a neoclassical aesthetics of the ideal body, its theorization around historically significant moments like 1848 and 1939, its relation to technological developments like the newspaper comic and the animated cartoon, and most recently, the viral meme.

Instructor(s): Andrei Pop     Terms Offered: TBD. Will not be offered 21-22 or 22-23
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 13012, SCTH 35012

ARTH 35013. Immersive Poetics and Permeable Screens. 100 Units.

What does it mean to call a book, a film, or an artwork "immersive"? What do we gain when we lose ourselves in a work of art, and what is it that we lose? Whereas Diderot lauded the feeling of "delicious repose" elicited from pastoral paintings, literary theorist Victor Shklovsky claimed that art exists "to return sensation to life, to make us feel objects, to make a stone feel stony." Are these reactions opposed or related? What are the dangers of this kind of attraction in the age of mass spectacle or of its use for the ends of an autocratic or fascist ideology? In this seminar, we will examine literary, film and media theories of immersion in international perspective. Case studies in world cinema and literature, from 19th century second-person narratives to recent VR experiences. Students will introduce works from their own area of specialization over the course of the term. Advanced undergraduates may enroll with permission of instructor.

Instructor(s): Anne Eakin Moss     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Undergraduates by consent only
Equivalent Course(s): REES 35010, CMST 35010, CMLT 35010, REES 25010

ARTH 35115. Winckelmann: Enlightenment Art Historian and Philosopher. 100 Units.

We approach the first great modern art historian through reading his classic early and mature writings and through the art and criticism of his time (and at the end, our own). Reading-intensive, with a field trip to the Art Institute.

Instructor(s): Andrei Pop
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 25115, KNOW 35000, GRMN 35015, CLAS 35014, SCTH 35000, GRMN 25015

ARTH 35116. The Art of Inca Sovereignty. 100 Units.

Inca art has often been described as abstract-but it was created before twentieth-century Euro-American concepts of abstraction even existed. While earlier Andean cultures produced a great deal of representational art, as well as motifs and styles that recurred from one culture to the next, Inca art can be geometric and something of an anomaly within the artistic traditions of the region. What caused this marked shift? And how might we interpret it? While surviving objects present one corpus of information, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish and Quechua texts offer additional understandings of how objects were used within the Inca Empire and what they potentially meant. Inca art produced after the Spanish invasion further manifests how this artistic canon transformed under colonial European influences. Early art historical analyses also logged distinct reads of Inca art, decrying it as repetitive and even boring. On the one hand, this course offers a deeper understanding of the art and architecture of the largest Indigenous society ever to exist in the Americas; on the other, it tries to get at how we perceive, react to, and evaluate art that is different-perhaps strikingly different-from what we're led to think it should be.

Instructor(s): A. Hamilton     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Latin American
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 25116

ARTH 35118. Color Everywhere: Synthetic Dyes and Modern Art. 100 Units.

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. Those enrolled in this course will participate in the making of an accompanying exhibition as part of CWAC Exhibitions. This installation will feature the work of Chicago-based artist Lialia Kuchma as well as works in her textile collection. To register, please email the instructor explaining your academic background and interest in this course (2-3 sentences).

Instructor(s): Erica Warren      Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800. Students must have taken at least one other art history course and attend the first class to confirm enrollment. Consent is required to register. Please email the instructor with a brief paragraph stating your interest in the course.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 25118

ARTH 35119. Architecture and Colonialism in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. 100 Units.

This seminar invites students to examine the intersections of colonialism with architecture in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Throughout the semester, we will discuss the designs of architects working in the region (Le Corbusier, Fernand Pouillon, Shadrach Woods, etc.) and concepts defining colonialism as a design project (segregation, repression, primitivism, etc.). We will also pay particular attention to modes of opposition pursued by residents and their historical impact toward the region's decolonization. Moments of heightened historical consequence, such as the strategic use of selected architectural spaces by independentist guerrillas, will be thoroughly discussed. The class will progress through a chronological scope, from Orientalism as a 19th century phenomenon to the enmeshment of modernism with colonialism in the 20th century. We will conclude with the emergence of postcolonial modernities.

Instructor(s): Jacobé Huet      Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 35119, ARCH 25119, RDIN 25119, ARTH 25119

ARTH 35121. Design with A Mission. 100 Units.

This studio course invites students to explore architecture's potential to serve mission-driven organizations and address pressing social, cultural, and environmental issues. Through research, fieldwork, and iterative design exercises, students will investigate how architecture can function as a tool for advocacy, empowerment, and meaningful change. By examining case studies and crafting design manifestos, students will develop a personal approach to mission-driven practice. The course culminates in a design project that explores how architecture can embody personal and collective values. Starting November 17, please visit arthistory.uchicago.edu/archconsent to request instructor consent for this class or other ARCH studios. (Please do not send consent requests by email.)

Instructor(s): C. Haouzi     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800.
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 25120, ARCH 25120, ARTH 25120

ARTH 35122. Architecture Studio: Drawing, Visualization & Modeling:Architectural Skills in Depth. 100 Units.

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. Starting November 18, please visit arthistory.uchicago.edu/archconsent to request instructor consent for this class or other ARCH studios. (Please do not send consent requests by email.

Instructor(s): S. Park     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Architecture Studios: Architecture Studios introduce students to technical skills and creative approaches for designing the built environment. While exploring different themes, the cumulative design exercises of these studios prepare students for Advanced Architecture Studios. No prior studio or art experience is required. This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 32512, CEGU 25121, ARTV 22512, ARCH 25121, ARTH 25121

ARTH 35140. Aesthetic Ecologies. 100 Units.

What would an intellectual history of the environment look like when told from the perspective of art history writing? The geographer Friedrich Ratzel, who first began using the term "Umwelt" ("environment") in a systematic way, claimed that, up to the end of the 19th century, the idea of environment had been primarily discussed not in scientific contexts but rather in aesthetic ones, by "artistically predisposed thinkers." In this course, we will take Ratzel's claim seriously and aim to recuperate the aesthetic side of theories of environment across diverse areas such as: notions of landscape ("the picturesque"); aesthetic and biological theories of media (Haeckel's "ecology," Taine's "milieu," Uexküll's "Umwelt"); the "sculpture of environment" (Rodin and Rilke); in architectural and urban space (Camillo Sitte, Otto Wagner, Paul Scheerbart); and in modern dance's "space-body" (Rudolf Laban). We will trace evocations of air as the material space surrounding an artwork in texts that thematize the continuity between artwork as image and material object. We will also trace evocations of air in which the media-theoretical notion of medium and the biological concept of milieu and environment intersect. Additional materials include: Claude Cahun, Anaïs Nin, Hilda 'H.D.' Doolittle, Aby Warburg, Siegfried Ebeling, Alois Riegl, Wassily Kandinsky, Loie Fuller, and others. Readings and discussions in English. All students welcome!

Instructor(s): Margareta Ingrid Christian     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 33523, ARTH 25140, GRMN 23523

ARTH 35203. The History of Collecting from Treasury to Museum. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): L. Markey     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, pre-modern (pre-1800)
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 25203

ARTH 35712. Photography and Political Ecology. 100 Units.

This seminar explores the role of photographic imagery in the global environmental movement from the 1960s through the present. We will investigate the uses of photography in shaping, documenting, and disseminating narratives surrounding ecological crises, activism, and public policy. Through a survey of photographic works in a variety of formats and media, we will explore how visual culture has shaped ecological thought and international politics over the last half-century, starting with the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. Adopting an interdisciplinary human-centered framework, this course foregrounds questions of environmental justice, sustainability, and the impacts of colonialism on landscapes and communities, offering insight into the role of photographic media as a catalyst for societal change.

Instructor(s): C. Fuldner     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MAPH 35712, ARTH 25712

ARTH 36001. Religion and Visual Culture in the Late Antique Mediterranean. 100 Units.

In this seminar, we examine sacred sites and artifacts of early Christians and their neighbors in the regions around the Mediterranean from the third century to about 750 CE. Case studies will illustrate the wealth of religious art and architecture associated with different religions that existed side by side-Christianity, Judaism, polytheism, and emerging Islam. This course has five main objectives: (1) to examine how the designs of religious spaces, buildings, and objects respond to specific spiritual or ritualistic needs; (2) to gain familiarity with typical features characterizing the arts of each religion or sect; (3) to identify elements of a common visual language that result from shared traditions or artistic cross-pollination; (4) to examine different ways in which material artifacts were employed as means of ideological propaganda; and (5) to study art and architecture as evidence of doctrinal competition and conflict. While this course foregrounds the study of material culture, written sources (in translation) complement the analysis of the visual evidence.

Instructor(s): Karin Krause     Terms Offered: Spring. Not offered 2025–26
Note(s): This course meets the HS or LMCS Committee distribution for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 26001, CLAS 36024, RLST 26001, RLVC 36001, MDVL 26001, CLCV 26024, HCHR 36001, JWSC 26020, ARTH 26001

ARTH 36107. Moving Objects, Dispersed Cultures: Case Studies from China and the Middle East. 100 Units.

In this course, we will delve into "big problems" created by the movement, relocation, or displacement of objects that are assigned special cultural, artistic, and historical values in new contexts. We will follow the movement of artifacts across both geographical and disciplinary boundaries, challenging established notions of cultural heritage and art. We often study and read ancient texts as primary sources, but we don't always pause to consider that those texts were written on physical objects like pieces of wood, leaves, or animal skin. Similarly, we're familiar with the display of ancient artwork inside museums or galleries, but have we wondered about the journey of individual objects to those new locations? How do objects move from their original place to modern collections? How do they become art? And how do they become historical sources? Guided by an art historian and a social historian, this course presents different ways to look at "objects that move", both as sources about past societies and as mirrors for contemporary ones. Through studying examples from the history of China and the Middle East, we will reconsider concepts such as cultural heritage, national patrimony, or even art that have been taken for granted. We will learn about the different histories of the dispersal of cultural heritages in those two regions, from nation-building and colonial projects in the twentieth century to the illicit trade in antiquities and the creation of digital replicas today.

Instructor(s): Wei-Cheng Lin, Cecilia Palombo     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): PQ: Third or fourth-year standing.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 36107, RLST 26107, EALC 16107, NEHC 36107, ARTH 16107, BPRO 27100, NEHC 16107

ARTH 36501. Straight-line sensibilities. A hidden history of 20th Century Art. 100 Units.

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 modern 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.

Instructor(s): I. Bloom     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, modern (post-1800), Theory and Historiography
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 26501, CMST 26505, CMST 36505, ARTH 26501

ARTH 36616. Tracing Time. 100 Units.

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. While this class does not require prior experience, all ARCH studio courses require consent. Starting November 18, please visit arthistory.uchicago.edu/archconsent to request instructor consent for this class or other ARCH studios. (Please do not send consent requests by email.

Instructor(s): A. Schachman     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): While this class does not require prior experience, all ARCH studio courses require consent. Starting November 17, please visit arthistory.uchicago.edu/archconsent to request instructor consent for this class or other ARCH studios. (Please do not send consent requests by email. This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 26616, ARTH 26616, ARCH 26616

ARTH 36704. Art and World Making in the 1890s. 100 Units.

While the final decade of the nineteenth century is often heralded as the cradle of artistic modernism, this seminar will take a more expansive view of artistic practices in the larger world of the 1890s. We will consider the ways in which painters, designers, architects, and art theorists developed a range of formal and innovative techniques to engage and represent a new global order beset by nationalist and populist fervor, unbounded scientific discovery, new forms of labor and social belonging, legal definitions of personhood and property, and the combined force of global conquest and attempts to resist it. Following a case-study approach grounded in Europe yet reaching out to its entanglement with the wider world (including West Africa, North America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia), students will dive deeply into artists', designers', and architects' bids to meaningfully represent experience of this extraordinary period while also reflecting on remarkable parallels with our own moment of global transformation. Participants need not be specialists in the period to enroll, but should be broadly interested in dissecting the ways in which art could meaningfully represent larger social, political, and conceptual concerns, often in unexpected ways. Assignments will include short writing assignments that engage objects from university archives, local collections, and a traveling exhibition.

Instructor(s): A. Fraser     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent Only. This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 26704, MAPH 36704

ARTH 36710. Eisenstein. 100 Units.

TBD

Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 26504, CMST 26610, CMST 36610, ARTH 26710

ARTH 36810. Topics in Curating Indigenous Art. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): A. Hamilton     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Latin American
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 26810

ARTH 37204. Art in the Age of Computation: From Cybernetics to AI. 100 Units.

This course explores how artists have engaged with computation-not only as a technology, but as a way of thinking about systems, information, thought, and perception-from the mid-twentieth century to the present. We consider how cybernetics and systems thinking helped reconfigure the work of art and visual perception; collectives that sought to institutionalize collaborations between artists and engineers; art in the age of nuclear energy, space exploration, and global telecommunications; as well as contemporary creative and critical responses to AI. Students will engage in close study of key artworks through lectures, discussions, and visits to local art collections. Discussions and short assignments will help students to situate artworks within broader historical, technological, and aesthetic contexts.

Instructor(s): T. Shabbtay     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 27204

ARTH 37205. Advanced Architecture Studio: The Next Chicago School. 100 Units.

TBA

Instructor(s): A. Schachman     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Advanced Architecture Studios engage deeply with specific topics in the built environment, architectural and design practice, or representation. Students should have completed at least one introductory Architecture Studio before enrolling. This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): ARCH 27202, ARTH 27205

ARTH 37308. Advanced Architecture Studio: Future City, Chicago Year 2137. 100 Units.

This studio imagines the future city of Chicago two centuries after its founding, to create visions of how climate change, migration, shifting mobility patterns, and economic and demographic transformations have the potential to literally reshape urban life. Students will engage in speculative design by asking "What if: X?"-using hypothetical scenarios to test the limits of architecture and urbanism. The course takes a multi-scalar design approach, from imagining transformations in everyday objects like a cup of coffee to re-visioning infrastructure, public space, or cultural institutions, connecting personal experience with city- and region-wide systems. The studio will combine data-driven analysis, including introducing students to GIS mapping to present geospatial information, with speculative approaches inspired by science fiction in novels and films, translated into digital image making. Students will develop visual narratives that catalyze conversations about future urban conditions, with areas of focus of their choosing. The studio is complemented by a lecture series featuring future-oriented architects and designers in adjacent disciplines, introducing ways that speculative thinking can produce new conversations on modes of climate adaptation, social resilience, and emerging technologies at the city-scale.

Instructor(s): A. Lui     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Advanced Architecture Studios: Advanced Architecture Studios engage deeply with specific topics in the built environment, architectural and design practice, or representation. Students should have completed at least one introductory Architecture Studio before enrolling
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 37308, CEGU 27308, ARCH 27308

ARTH 37314. Writing Art Criticism. 100 Units.

This course is a practicum in writing art criticism. Unlike art historians, art critics primarily respond to the art of their time and to developments in the contemporary art world. They write reviews of Chicago exhibitions that may be on view in galleries or museums and that may focus on single artists or broad themes. Importantly, art critics often produce the very first discourse on a given art, shaping subsequent thinking and historiography. Accordingly, art criticism is a genre that requires particular skills, for example, identifying why and how artworks 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 critics ranging from Denis Diderot to Peter Schjeldahl and of artists active as critics ranging from Donald Judd to Barbara Kruger. 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 six exhibition reviews, four of which will be rewritten substantially based on instructor, visitor, and peer feedback and general class discussion. Off-campus field trips also required.

Instructor(s): C. Mehring     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor required. Preference given to students with background in visual arts or architectural practice or writing. Please email mehring@uchicago.edu explaining relevant background. Fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, modern (post-1800), Theory and Historiography
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 27314, CHST 27314, ARCH 27314, ARTV 37314, ARTH 27314

ARTH 37316. Crafting Modernity. 100 Units.

This course proposes that craft defined artmaking in the United States during the the period after World War I and through to the post-World War II era. For the purposes of the course, craft will be broadly understood to encompass handmade items designed for practical use as well as artworks that, through concepts, materials, and/or processes, trace their lineage to a functional and handmade past. In framing this modernist history through craft, and discussing pedagogy, practitioners, objects,and theories of making, the course positions craft as a primary propagator of modernity. Artists with diverse material practices, such as Anni Albers, Emma Amos, Ruth Asawa, Faith Ringgold, and Lenore Tawney, will be central to the discussion and will foster an assessment and interrogation of craft's role in producing and popularizing modern art more broadly. In addition to foregrounding the ubiquity of craft and its wide-reaching impacts on culture and society (including educational initiatives and programs, exhibitions and museum collections, and publications), this course will also question craft's relative absence (until recently) in narratives oftwentieth-century modernism in the United States. Furthermore, while craft has the potential to surface the classism, sexism, and media hierarchies in modern art historical discourse, the need to critically examine craft's relationship with colonialism, racism, and sexism will also be addressed

Instructor(s): E. Warren     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 27316

ARTH 37412. Design as Advocacy: Housing. 100 Units.

This course positions the architect as an advocate, engaging the building and zoning code as a critical site of design practice in addressing the housing crisis. Rather than treating regulation as a constraint, students will examine how architects can shape policy to expand housing supply, affordability, and typological breadth. Focusing on "missing middle" housing, the course investigates how provisions-such as egress requirements, parking requirements, and unit standards-shape the production of housing, inclusive design, alongside emerging nation-wide movements such as the expansion of ADUs.

Instructor(s): A. Lui     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Historiography
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 27412, ARCH 27412

ARTH 37421. Advanced Architecture Studio: Room for Art. 100 Units.

By investigating how we encounter art in space, this architecture studio asks how furniture and display can be used to create better rooms for art. The course begins with an exploration of galleries and exhibition spaces, examining how art is framed, supported, and experienced. While we often think of museums as empty containers, the way we experience art is shaped by smaller elements: the height of a pedestal, the weight of a frame, and the way a bench invites us to linger. Through an iterative process of drawing, modeling, and prototyping, students will design and build their own exhibition displays. The studio is in partnership with the Art History Department's Visual Resources Center, whose team will share their collection, past exhibitions, and needs for future displays. Working both individually and collaboratively, students will produce architectural drawing sets and fabricate physical works for the VRC's collection, gaining hands-on experience in construction, material assembly, and craft. The studio emphasizes the full arc of architectural practice: engaging a client, designing for real-world conditions, and testing ideas through making. Final built pieces will be publicly installed alongside drawings and process work and will be made available to future curators.

Instructor(s): C. Haouzi     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Advanced Architecture Studios engage deeply with specific topics in the built environment, architectural and design practice, or representation. Students should have completed at least one introductory Architecture Studio before enrolling
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 27421, ARCH 27421

ARTH 37440. Buddha Then and Now: Transformations from Amaravati to Anuradhapura. 100 Units.

The Buddhist sculptures in Amaravati are arguably the earliest to influence the early Buddhist art of the other parts of the sub-continent as well as south and southeast Asia. The course begins with the discussion of the context in which the Buddha images were made in Amaravati and the factors including Buddhist doctrinal developments that contributed to the spread of these images to various parts of Sri Lanka. Then it traces the course and function of Buddhist iconography in Sri Lanka until into the 21st century to assess the role of geopolitical factors. The positionality and portrayals of the images of Buddha are also considered and analyzed. The course traces the trajectories that transformed the image of the Buddha from a symbol of peace to jingoist assertiveness. Through the study of the images of the Buddha, the aim is to comprehend the ways Buddhism has changed over centuries from an inclusive posture which helped it sustain and spread to different parts of the world only later to become exclusionary.

Instructor(s): Sree Padma Holt     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 37440, ARTH 27440, HIST 36704, RLST 27440, SALC 27440, HREL 37440, RLVC 37440

ARTH 37441. Interregionalism in Modern and Contemporary Asian Art. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): S Ryu     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian post-1800, Theory and Methodology
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 27441, ARTH 27441, EALC 37441

ARTH 37442. Environmental Art Histories of South Asia. 100 Units.

How can art history contribute to the ongoing discourse about environmentalism? What can the study of art tell us about the inter-relatedness of human creativity and the environment? In this seminar, we will wrestle with these questions through an ecocritical study of South Asian art. South Asian art is fundamentally marked by an interest in nature. The towers of Indian temples were conceived of as physical manifestations of the Himalayas. Temple doors often include anthropomorphic depictions of the rivers Ganga and Yamuna. Animals and birds are active agents in major Indian epics. Forests drew in meditating mystics, exiled princes, forlorn lovers. The ocean, capricious and vast, was a thing to fear. In the seminar we will look at the environment and its depiction in art. In considering the two together, we will ask: How did the natural environment shape and affect the arts? What significance can the arts have when the environment that gave it meaning is in danger of vanishing? We live in a time of unparalleled environmental crisis. While scientific disciplines have traditionally been at the forefront of describing our transforming environment, the present crisis calls on us to rethink all forms of scholarly discourse to offer a holistic view of the problems we face. To that end, an ecocritical approach allows us to rethink how humans have coexisted with the environment, and can, perhaps, offer a way forward.

Instructor(s): M. Manohar     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 37442, ARTH 27442, CEGU 27442

ARTH 37451. Advanced Architecture Studio: Ancestral Wisdoms for Climate Futures. 100 Units.

What can ancestral building wisdom teach us about living with climate change today? If many traditional buildings were already climate-responsive, what have contemporary building practices forgotten? In this architecture research studio, we explore how Indigenous structures from around the world embody long-standing relationships between climate, materials, landscape, and cultural practice; and consider how this knowledge can inform living environments today. Through case studies and drawing as our primary mode of inquiry and communication, we will examine global architectural traditions alongside the ecological and cultural contexts that shaped them. While the course centers architectural systems that support human comfort, we will also engage the cultural frameworks, recognizing that climate knowledge is embedded within broader social worlds. Students will analyze passive strategies for thermal comfort and represent their findings through analytical drawings. Over the course of the quarter, the studies form a collective visual compendium, documenting environmental systems across diverse Indigenous building traditions. The shared research becomes a lens for reviewing contemporary conditions in the latter part of the quarter. Students will consider climate change and explore how ancestral building knowledge might inform adaptations to everyday structures in the city.

Instructor(s): N. Bharani     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Advanced Architecture Studios engage deeply with specific topics in the built environment, architectural and design practice, or representation. Students should have completed at least one introductory Architecture Studio before enrolling
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 27451, ARCH 27451

ARTH 37490. Art as Buddhism in Ancient India. 100 Units.

This course will examine the visual construction of early Buddhism in India, focusing in particular on stūpas and especially on the art of the great stūpa (mahachaitya) at Amarāvatī in Andhra Pradesh. We will examine questions of Buddhology, of the diversity and range of conversations within early Buddhism, leading to the rise of the Mahāyāna, in relation to the visualization of Buddhist theory and narrative in the extensive and extraordinary decorations of the major sites. The course will introduce those taking it to the rich visual, material and epigraphic culture of the Buddhist stūpas as well as the vibrant textual world of Indian Buddhist writing - from stories to suttas to commentaries. Students will have the opportunity to develop their own final papers in relation to this material or comparatively with other material in which they also retain an interest (not necessarily only Buddhist).

Instructor(s): Jaś Elsner     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 37490, HREL 37490, RLST 27490, ARTH 27490, SALC 27490, RLVC 37490

ARTH 37799. Materiality and Artistic Intent: The Object, Conservation and Art History-Suzanne Deal Booth Seminar. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): H. Strauss     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Methodology
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 27799

ARTH 37800. The Material Science of Art-Suzanne Deal Booth Conservation Seminar. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): M. Kokkori     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Methodology.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 27800, MENG 20210, MENG 30210

ARTH 37802. 'Conserving Active Matter' - ((Suzanne Deal Booth Conservation Seminar) 100 Units.

Conserving contemporary art is a complex activity. This course raises questions about the goal of conservation in various media (painting, sculpture, and variable media) as well as in artistic movements since the 1960s, when the notion of authenticity and originality shifted. Conservation today is not limited to the treatment of the physical artwork; it demands an open dialogue with the varying stakeholders: the artist, collector, fabricator, curator, gallerist, dealer, shipper, art handler, as well as with other specialized conservators. The course also examines various models of artist estates, archives, and artist interviews, responding to the inevitable consequences of contemporary art without the artist.

Instructor(s): C. Scheidemann     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Methodology
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 27802

ARTH 38105. Body, Space, Desire; Feminist Theories of Visuality. 100 Units.

TBD

Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 38105, ARTH 28105, GNSE 28102

ARTH 38302. Experimental Art. 100 Units.

This seminar offers an in-depth study of the artistic movement in Korea known as Experimental Art (silheom misul). Loosely formed and spanning multiple mediums - photography, video, installation, sound, performance and its documentation - Experimental Art signaled a grassroots, counter-institutional direction in South Korean art that has only recently garnered international attention. The movement also effloresced during pivotal political moments, including nearly three decades of authoritarian rule (1961-1988) and the subsequent democratization movements as well as nation-wide labor struggles. Beginning with close readings of key artworks, the course examines the movement's interregional emergence (in conversation with artists from Japan, France, the Philippines, and the U.S.), its relevance to global contemporary art, and recent efforts in exhibition-making and historicization, with an eye toward methods for alternative historicizations of Korean art and Asian art more broadly. Reading knowledge of Korean and/or Japanese is helpful, but everyone is welcome. Those interested in global contemporary art, Korean history, interregionalism, art and politics, and/or art theory are highly encouraged to enroll.

Instructor(s): S. Ryu     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian post-1800, Theory and Methodology
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 28302

ARTH 38303. Art and Ethnography. 100 Units.

This course provides an overview of the intersections between art and ethnography, with a focus on modern and contemporary art of the Global South. The aim of the course is to equip advanced undergraduates and graduate students with historical and theoretical foundations in art and ethnography, as well as helpful skillsets for intensive field research, artistic or creative research, artist interviews, and critical/engaged ethnography. The first half of the course will focus on analyzing relevant texts and projects produced from the 1990s to the present; the latter half is dedicated to project workshops, with greater emphasis on sharing practical skills and familiarizing students with best practices for working in the "field." The course will be especially useful for students across disciplines who plan to undertake field research in the near future, although those at earlier brainstorming stages are also welcome.

Instructor(s): S. Ryu     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Asian post-1800, Theory and Methodology
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 30303, ARTH 28303, ARTV 20303

ARTH 38311. Image, Iconoclasm, Animation. 100 Units.

This course will explore the fantasies of the animation of images both ancient and early Christian, both secular and sacred, as the backdrop to examining the phenomenon of iconoclasm as an assault on the image from pre-Christian antiquity via Byzantium to the Protestant Reformation. It will tackle both texts and images, the archaeological context of image-assault and the conceptual (indeed theological) contexts within which such assault was both justified and condemned. These historical issues cannot be separated, in our scholarly approaches and responses, from a vibrant contemporary culture around question of virtuality, animation, image-worship and image-destruction in the current world. The course will provide space to reflect on the problems raised by this. The course will be taught over the first four and a half weeks in the Spring Quarter on an intensive schedule. 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.

Instructor(s): Jaś Elsner     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): The course will be taught over the first 4 and a half weeks in the Spring Quarter on an intensive schedule.
Note(s): This course meets the HS or LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): CLAS 35923, MDVL 28311, RLVC 38311, ARTH 28311, CLCV 25923, RLST 28311, KNOW 38311

ARTH 38319. Iconophobia: The Prohibition and Destruction of Religious Images. 100 Units.

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. 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 modernity. Readings will include, but are not limited to, texts from the Hebrew Bible, Christian exegesis, the Qur'an, Byzantine Iconoclasm, and the Protestant Reformation. Material evidence of iconophobia and iconoclasm from different religious contexts will also be discussed.

Instructor(s): Karin Krause     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 28319, RLVC 38319, CLAS 38325, GLST 28319, CLCV 28325, MDVL 28319, HCHR 38319, RLST 28319

ARTH 38325. Art and Description in Antiquity and Byzantium. 100 Units.

This course explores the rich tradition of ekphrasis in Greco-Roman antiquity and Byzantium - as it ranges from vivid description in general to a specific engagement with works of art. While the prime focus will remain on texts from Greece, Rome and Byzantium - in order to establish what might be called the ancestry of a genre in the European tradition and especially its fascinating place between pagan polytheistic and Christian writing -- there will be opportunity in the final paper to range beyond this into questions of comparative literature, art (history) writing and ekphrasis in other periods or contexts, depending on students' interests and needs. A reading knowledge of Greek in particular could not be described as a disadvantage, but the course can be taken without knowing the ancient languages. The course will be taught over the first 4 and a half weeks in the Spring Quarter on an intensive schedule. 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.

Instructor(s): Jaś Elsner and Karin Krause     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): The course will be taught over the first 4 and a half weeks in the Spring Quarter on an intensive schedule.
Note(s): This course meets the HS or LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): MDVL 28325, CLAS 38323, ARTH 28325, KNOW 38325, CLCV 28323, RLVC 38325, RLST 28325

ARTH 38330. Art and Religion from the Roman to the Christian Worlds. 100 Units.

This course will be an introduction to Roman and early Christian art from the early empire to late antiquity. It will explore the significance of the changes in visual production in relation to different attitudes to religion and society; its specific and conflictive historiography; the particular issues involved in the move to Christianity and a Christian visual culture. We shall veer between an empirical inductive approach, looking at lots of stuff and a more general account of theoretical overviews that have been offered for Roman and late art - overviews that have been influential in the broader historiography of art history as a discipline.

Instructor(s): Jaś Elsner     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): The course will be taught over 5 weeks in the Spring Quarter on an intensive schedule. This course meets the HS or LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 28322, RLST 28330, ARTH 28330, RLVC 38330, CLAS 38322

ARTH 38500. History of International Cinema I: Silent Era. 100 Units.

This course provides a survey of the history of cinema from its emergence in the mid-1890s to the transition to sound in the late 1920s. We will examine the cinema as a set of aesthetic, social, technological, national, cultural, and industrial practices as they were exercised and developed during this 30-year span. Especially important for our examination will be the exchange of film techniques, practices, and cultures in an international context. We will also pursue questions related to the historiography of the cinema, and examine early attempts to theorize and account for the cinema as an artistic and social phenomenon.

Instructor(s): Daniel Morgan     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Prior or concurrent registration in CMST 10100 is required. Course is required for students majoring or minoring in Cinema and Media Studies.
Note(s): For students majoring in Cinema and Media Studies, the entire History of International Cinema three-course sequence must be taken.
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 29300, ENGL 48700, CMST 48500, MADD 18500, CMST 28500, MAPH 33600, CMLT 22400, ARTH 28500, ARTV 20002, CMLT 32400

ARTH 38600. History of International Cinema II: Sound Era to 1960. 100 Units.

The center of this course is film style, from the classical scene breakdown to the introduction of deep focus, stylistic experimentation, and technical innovation (sound, wide screen, location shooting). The development of a film culture is also discussed. Texts include Thompson and Bordwell's Film History: An Introduction; and works by Bazin, Belton, Sitney, and Godard. Screenings include films by Hitchcock, Welles, Rossellini, Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni, and Renoir.

Instructor(s): James Lastra     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Prior or concurrent registration in CMST 10100 required. Required of students majoring or minoring in Cinema and Media Studies.
Note(s): CMST 28500/48500 strongly recommended
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 28600, REES 25005, ENGL 29600, MAPH 33700, ARTH 28600, CMST 48600, REES 45005, ARTV 20003, ENGL 48900, CMLT 32500, MADD 18600, CMLT 22500

ARTH 38717. The Veil and the Vision: Image and Cover in the Western Artistic Tradition. 100 Units.

This course will explore the fascinating culture of covering and veiling sacred icons, portraits and images that were thought to cause trauma or outrage in the European tradition. It will begin in the ancient world and explore mediaeval, Renaissance and modern art - both paintings and sculptures, as well as images that represent the covering of images… It will attempt to restore the sensual, the tactile and the performative to the experience of viewing art and engaging with its powers, by contrast to the prevailing regime of disinterested contemplation encouraged by the modernist art gallery. The course will be taught with much encouragement to students to experiment and think against the grain.

Instructor(s): Jaś Elsner     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): The course will be taught over 4.5 weeks in the Spring Quarter on an intensive schedule. This course meets the LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLVC 38717, ARTH 28717, RLST 28717

ARTH 38818. Institution/Critique: Within, Against, Beyond. 100 Units.

Students in this course will study creative applications to institutional engagement and institutional critique via material, social, scholarly, and embodied/movement research. This course will be scaffolded by conversation/debate with guest practitioners directly engaged with questions regarding art funding structures and alternative economies, ideological roadblocks, carceral culture in the contemporary landscape, and arts criticism. Students will study critical methods to making and presenting art vis-à-vis artist-run institutions of all kinds, particularly those emergent over the last sixty years. Students will leave class with an increased sense of artistic approaches to institutional engagement, refusal, and intervention as a series of tactics and strategies rooted in space, generosity, and research. We will play throughout the course with interpretations of work, production, and resolution, but students should be prepared to spend the quarter responding to readings, viewings, visits, and conversation, and eventually develop and complete a final collaborative project. This course will be of particular interest to students working collaboratively or in social practice, engaging in social or institutional critique, participating in the programming and administrative side of the arts, and those who generally find themselves feeling awkward in whatever they understand as The Art World.

Instructor(s): A.M. Whitehead     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): PQ: ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 28818, ARTV 28818, ARTH 28818, ARTV 38818

ARTH 39765. Cultural Heritage Management Crisis in Conflict Areas. 100 Units.

As a result of the widespread destruction of monuments, museums, and archaeological sites in conflict areas, combined with the creation of brand-new international funds to protect heritage in situations of armed conflict or climate change, this class presents a series of lectures and discussions by the course instructors along with guest lectures by heritage specialists who focus on the various geographical zones concerned. It will also adopt a transdisciplinary approach where several fields of expertise will be convoked, from archaeology and curatorial to international heritage protection law.

Instructor(s): Marc Maillot, Gil Stein     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 39765, KNOW 39765, KNOW 29675, NEHC 29765

ARTH 39800. Approaches To Art History. 100 Units.

This seminar will examine a range of methodological approaches to doing the work of art history. Through close reading of key texts, we will interrogate how various authors have constructed novel ways of seeing and understanding visual and material objects. Crucially, this course doesn't assume "theory" or "methodology" to be a set of texts we use to explicate or read works of art in specific ways. Rather, we investigate how each of our authors forges new concepts in response to an object's specific exigencies. Students need not self-identify as art historians to enroll in this seminar-it will be helpful for all students who want to think deeply and in self-reflexive ways about their own approaches to visual and material objects (still or moving images, sculpture, performance, architecture, etc.), particularly if those objects feel genre-bending, difficult to theorize, or recalcitrant in any way.

Instructor(s): E. Warren     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Open to MAPH students concentrating in Art History. Others by consent only.
Equivalent Course(s): MAPH 39800

ARTH 39900. Methods and Issues in Cinema Studies. 100 Units.

This course offers an introduction to ways of reading, writing on, and teaching film. The focus of discussion will range from methods of close analysis and basic concepts of film form, technique and style; through industrial/critical categories of genre and authorship (studios, stars, directors); through aspects of the cinema as a social institution, psycho-sexual apparatus and cultural practice; to the relationship between filmic texts and the historical horizon of production and reception. Films discussed will include works by Griffith, Lang, Hitchcock, Deren, Godard.

Instructor(s): S. Skvirsky     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 40000, ENGL 48000, MAPH 33000

ARTH 40010. Ruins. 100 Units.

Ruins" will cover texts and images, from Thucydides to WWII, via the Reformation. We will include films (e.g. Rossellini's "Germany Year Zero"), art (e.g. H. Robert, Piranesi) archaeology, and the museum (Soane). On ruins writing, we will read Thucydides, Pausanias from within antiquity, the Enlightenment responses to the destruction and archaeological rediscovery of Pompeii, Diderot, Simmel, Freud on the mind as levels of ruins (Rome) and the analysis as reconstructive archaeologist as well as on the novel Gradiva and the Acropolis, the Romantic obsession with ruins, and the firebombing in WWII. We will also consider the photographing of ruins, and passages from the best-known works on photography (Benjamin, Sontag, Ritchen, Fried, Azoulay). The goal is to see how ruin gazing, and its depictions (textual, imagistic, photographic, etc.) change from the ancients (Greek and Roman), to the Romantic use of ruins as a source of (pleasurable) melancholy, to the technological "advances" in targeting and decimating civilian populations that describe the Second Word War.

Equivalent Course(s): CDIN 40010, RLIT 40010, CMLT 40010

ARTH 40100. Art History Methodology. 100 Units.

How do we do art history? What is it? What are its premises and where does it come from? This seminar will explore the historical foundations, formulations and applications of current art historical methods, as well as the foundations of the art historical discipline as it emerged from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Theory and practice will be considered through select texts, with special focus on art history as a distinct scholarly discipline today. Rather than attempting to cover a comprehensive history of the methodological and historiographic traditions, the readings will attempt to present a coherent, if highly complex and conflictive, narrative that remains open to continued interrogation by its practitioners.

Instructor(s): C. Foxwell     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Enrollment limited to ARTH PhD students
Note(s): Fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Methodology

ARTH 40160. Writing on the Walls: Art and Poetry in the Streets of Early Modern Florence. 100 Units.

Street art inscribes a story across public surfaces and urban spaces, celebrated by some for its unique representation of cultural identity while criticized by others as vandalism. Such tensions associated with street art today were no less significant in early modern Florence, where the emerging presence of art in public spaces, from murals memorializing military victories, to portraits of criminals, and sculptures occupying strategic squares, engaged deeply with political, social, and economic structures of power while addressing a diverse network of viewers. How then, does public art embody complex systems of knowledge, power, and resistance in early modern Florence, and what does it look like for writers to adopt visual modes of representation to explore subversive tensions in both real and imaginary spaces? We will explore the influence of public visibility and environment on descriptions of public art in both fictional and historical sources. From Dante drawing in the Vita Nuova, to Boccaccio's tales in the Decameron, and the political staging of Cellini's Perseus, we will situate these images and texts within the cultural modes and means of representation that generated them to investigate how street art could create artistic and literary spaces of resistance and define or affirm cultural identity in the Renaissance. Finally, we will look at street art and graffiti in contemporary Florence as well as digital media to consider the legacy of these early modern tensions.

Instructor(s): Cosette Bruhns     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ITAL 33405, RLLT 23405, MAPH 40160, ITAL 23405, RLLT 33405

ARTH 40200. Art History Proseminar. 100 Units.

How do we do art history? What is it? What are its premises and where does it come from? This seminar will explore the historical foundations, formulations and applications of current art historical methods, as well as the foundations of the art historical discipline as it emerged from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Both theory and practice will be considered through select texts, with special focus on art history as a distinct scholarly discipline today. Required of all first year ARTH PhD students.

Instructor(s): D. English     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Open to and required of first year Art History PhD students only.

ARTH 40204. Destruction of Images, Books & Artifacts in Europe and S. Asia. 100 Units.

The course offers a comparative perspective on European and South Asian iconoclasm. In the European tradition, iconoclasm was predominantly aimed at images, whereas in South Asian traditions it was also enacted upon books and buildings. The combination of these traditions will allow us to extend the usual understanding of iconoclasm as the destruction of images to a broader phenomenon of destruction of cultural artifacts and help question the theories of image as they have been independently developed in Europe and South Asia, and occasionally in conversation with one another. We will ask how and why, in the context of particular political imaginaries and material cultures, were certain objects singled out for iconoclasm? Also, who was considered to be entitled or authorized to commit their destruction? Through a choice of concrete examples of iconoclasm, we will query how religious and political motivations are defined, redefined, and intertwined in each particular case. We will approach the iconoclastic events in Europe and South Asia through the lenses of philology, history, and material culture. Class discussions will incorporate not only textual materials, but also the close collaborative study of images, objects, and film. Case studies will make use of objects in the Art Institute of Chicago and Special Collections at the University Library.

Equivalent Course(s): SALC 50204, CMLT 50204, HREL 50204, CDIN 50204, RLVC 50204

ARTH 40307. Seeing and Knowing. 100 Units.

The concept of visuality attends to the ways in which things become seeable, knowable, and governable. Scholars who study optical instruments, architecture, cinema, and media have done much to show us how visual technologies change our ways of seeing. Others in the history of science study how practices of observation transform our understanding of nature-and ourselves. This comparative course analyzes regimes of visuality in different cultural and historical contexts. After a short introduction on the philosophy of visual experience and psychology of visual perception, we will investigate a series of configurations of seeing and knowing. These sites range from the history of disability to contemporary climate science, and students will be asked to contribute visual topics from their own research or disciplines for collective exploration in our seminar. Through comparative study, we will work to develop new categories or relationships for linking perception and knowledge.

Instructor(s): Alex Campolo     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 40307, CMST 47007, CHSS 40307

ARTH 40310. The Discovery of Paganism. 100 Units.

How do we know what we know about ancient religions? Historians of religion often begin by turning to texts: either sacred texts, or, in the absence of such scriptures, descriptions of belief and practice by observers from outside the faith. Archaeologists focus their attention on the spaces and traces of religious practice-or at least those that survive-while art historians begin by examining images of deities and religious rites. Yet we often fail to see the extent to which the questions which we ask of all of these diverse sources are conditioned by Christian rhetoric about pagan worship. In this course, we compare two moments when Christians encountered "pagans": during the initial Christian construction of a discourse on paganism (and, more broadly, a discourse on religion) during the late Roman empire and during the Spanish discovery of the New World. Our course examines silences and absences in the textual and material records, as well as the divergences between texts and objects, in order to further our understanding of ancient religious practice. We will begin to see the many ways in which, as scholars of religion, we are in effect still Christian theologians, paving the way for new approaches to the study of ancient religion.

Equivalent Course(s): ANCM 44916, CDIN 40301, HREL 40301, CLAS 44916, HIST 64202, LACS 40301, KNOW 40301

ARTH 40311. Technology and Aesthetics. 100 Units.

New technologies regularly enable new mediums, styles, genres, and narrative forms as they offer us new ways to record the world, express ourselves, and tell stories. But the advent of each new artistic and literary form raises anew fundamental theoretical questions: what is the difference between an objective record of the world and an artistic rendition of it? Is what makes something art the creator's intent or the viewer's perception of it as art? That is, can something be experienced as art if it is not intended as such? What, even, is a narrative, given our minds' tendency to resolve any random pattern into a coherent series of cause and effect? And, finally, as new technologies offer endless new creative possibilities, how can we continuously recalibrate how we define art and engage with it? This class will span the 19th through the 21st centuries to explore how technological innovation has produced new literary and aesthetic forms while addressing the above questions. Its aim is two-fold: to offer a deeper understanding of literary and artistic movements and (often-canonical) texts by relating them to technoscientific concerns and contexts, and to strengthen students' foundation in literary and aesthetic theory. Thus, we will read key works of fiction that represent new aesthetic paradigms alongside scholarship that puts them into context and theoretical texts, including those of Walter Benjamin, Michael Saler, Catherine Gallagher, and Henry Jenkins.

Instructor(s): Anastasia Klimchynskaya     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 40410, ARTV 40310, KNOW 40310

ARTH 40400. Ekphrasis: Art, Description and Religion. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Jaś Elsner     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course will be taught virtually for the last two weeks of the quarter. This course meets the HS or LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 21702, CLCV 29600, RLVC 40400, MDVL 29004, BIBL 40400, CLAS 42600, RLST 29004

ARTH 40401. Ekphrasis: Description, Vision and Imagination in Art and Religion. 100 Units.

This course explores the rich traditions of the description - ekphrasis -- from Greco-Roman antiquity to modernity. 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 primarily intended for graduates but interested undergraduates are welcome. The course will be taught over 5 weeks in the Spring Quarter on an intensive schedule. 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.

Instructor(s): Jaś Elsner and Francoise Meltzer     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Note: Consent of instructor required for undergraduates; email Professors Meltzer and Elsner a paragraph long description about what you bring and what you hope to get out of this seminar. (CDI seminar enrollment is capped at 18 students.)
Equivalent Course(s): CDIN 49002, DVPR 49002, CMLT 49002, RLVC 49002

ARTH 40701. The Yangshi Lei Archives and Late Imperial Chinese Architecture. 100 Units.

The Yangshi Lei archives comprise architectural drawings and models produced before and during the construction of imperial architecture in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Many of the building blueprints and diagrams in the archives can be verified against their counterparts in the Forbidden City, state ritual sites, and imperial gardens. The Yangshi Lei thus provides valuable visual and architectural materials for the study of late imperial Chinese architecture. A high-quality facsimile of the entire collection, now held in China's National Library, has been published, and the Regenstein Library recently purchased one set. In this seminar, students will closely study the collection using the following questions as guidelines: What is the nature of this collection? How was architectural knowledge generated and communicated in visual forms? How can the collection tell us about the construction process and final results? How can this collection be positioned within the court system of architecture? How did the blueprints and diagrams shape what can be defined as China's late imperial architecture?

Instructor(s): W. Lin     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent Only. Students must have experience with Classical Chinese

ARTH 40702. Tokyo: Architecture and Urban Analysis. 100 Units.

This graduate seminar course aims to introduce what is arguably the most complex product of society and Japanese society in particular - the city, and to concentrate on the city of Tokyo. Our study will encompass a range of issues concerning the city and the consequences of urban development under modern and contemporary conditions. We will observe how the city has defined, and has been defined by, a particular reality at a particular time, beginning in Edo period and concluding in the present. Such approach emphasizes a need to examine the city within a certain context, particularly its social, cultural, and political circumstances. Thus, we will look at the creation and recreation of the city's physical texture, at architecture, urban landscape, infrastructure, and technology, and at the same time observe the city as a social product determined by everyday life and habitual practices, organization of the immediate surrounding, personal rites and the micro-politics of life in the city. In the same manner, we will look at buildings and neighborhoods per-se, as a material construct guided by geometry and legal code, but at the same time recognize how the pragmatics of this built environment interrelate with cultural expressions such as literature and film, and thus examine the mechanisms that relate the city to culture.

Instructor(s): E. Golani Solomon     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent only

ARTH 40703. The Hand Scroll: History, Form, and Materiality. 100 Units.

As one of the oldest and most significant painting formats in East Asia, the hand scroll holds a central place in the region's artistic tradition. This course examines its historical development in China from roughly the 2nd century CE to the modern era. It focuses on interrogating how the scroll's distinct materiality and formal conventions were strategically employed by artists to realize shifting aesthetic and intellectual objectives across time. Such study is essential to constructing a nuanced history of the hand scroll, thereby deepening our comprehension of Chinese and broader East Asian pictorial art.

Instructor(s): W. Hung     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent Only.

ARTH 40704. Luoyang Circa 500 CE. 100 Units.

Around 500 CE, Luoyang was the political and religious center of Northern China, ruled largely by the Tuoba (Tabgach) clan of the Xianbei, who established the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-535). The decision to relocate the imperial capital from Pingcheng (today's Datong in northern Shanxi) to Luoyang had significant implications, particularly for the construction of the capital city and the Longmen Grottos, as well as for cross-fertilization with the Southern dynasties and the regions to the west of the empire. Though the "Luoyang period" was short-lived, it was one of the most productive periods, as evidenced by artistic production. The seminar proposes to study this period of art history by focusing on the city as the hub of the politicoreligious network, not only because the Buddhist caves in Longmen still exist and archaeological excavations over the past several decades have yielded valuable physical remains and knowledge of the city, but also because a great deal of literature about the period remains available. Luoyang in this case is not just a historical site but a methodology for studying the art history of this particular period.

Instructor(s): W. Lin     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent Only. Must have familiarity with Classical Chinese

ARTH 41031. The South American 1970s. 100 Units.

This course will examine major developments in art practices from the late 1960s through the early 1980s in key site across South America. Questions and themes will include: the emergence and theorization of non-objectual and conceptual art practices in the region, the relationship between art and repressive political regimes, the establishment of new networks of exchange, and the formation of new definitions of a "Latin American art." Our goal will be both to analyze the works of art under study and to interrogate leading scholarly approaches to that material. Cases will be drawn primarily from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, with a focus on recent literature in the field, but students are welcome to work on artists from other countries in the region for their individual research projects.

Instructor(s): M. Sullivan     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent Only
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 41031

ARTH 41150. Art & the World Religions: First Millennium from India to Ireland. 100 Units.

This course, building on the recent Empires of Faith project at the British Museum will explore the interface of visual and religious identity in the formative period when all the religions currently considered 'world religions' were developing their characteristic iconographies. The course will attempt to open comparative and historical perspectives on religion through material culture, interrogating the normative models of constructing religion through written rather than visual sources. Students will be encouraged to work from images as well as texts. The course is open to graduates as well as undergraduates, and will be taught in a speeded up form twice a week for the first five weeks of the quarter.

Instructor(s): Jas Elsner     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RLVC 41150

ARTH 41310. Images and Science. 100 Units.

TBD

Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 51310, ENGL 51310

ARTH 41313. Media Archeology vs. Media Aesthetics. 100 Units.

The course stages an encounter between media archeology and media aesthetics, two distinct but related research perspectives that are at times seen as incommensurable approaches to the media technological environment. Media archeology focuses on the non-human agencies and complex machinic arrangements that are at work in technologies whose microtemporal operations cannot be grasped by human perception: media archeology typically refuses phenomenological approaches. In contrast, media aesthetics focuses on the phenomenological interface between machine systems and human perception and sensation, and various forms of cultural and political negotiations of a lifeworld that is increasingly dominated by technologies that both store and produce time. We will read key texts from both fields and discuss how we may understand their differences as well as their points of intersection.

Instructor(s): I. Blom     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend 1st class to confirm enrollment.
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 47801

ARTH 41602. The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond. 100 Units.

The cult of relics played a vital role in Byzantine culture and, consequently, left a strong imprint on the artistic production. Not only did the veneration of relics find expression in personal devotion, but the image of the Byzantine court was largely modeled on the claim that the emperors possessed the most precious of all sacred remains, first and foremost those associated with the Passion of Christ and the Virgin Mary. The outstanding treasure of relics housed in the imperial palace significantly contributed to the understanding in the medieval Christian world of Constantinople as the "New Jerusalem. We will begin our investigation in the ancient Near East, where major centers of pilgrimage developed from the fourth century on. These sites considerably fueled the early Byzantine cult of relics and the associated artistic production. The chief focus of the seminar will be on the major urban centers of the Byzantine Empire, especially the capital city of Constantinople. We will closely study different types of reliquaries manufactured in the Byzantine Empire over the centuries and investigate how their design responded to devotional needs, ritual practice and political claims. Historical developments and primary texts (in English translation) will be addressed throughout to better understand the circumstances of the acquisition of relics and the motivations guiding their veneration.

Instructor(s): Karin Krause     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 26004, HCHR 41604, RLVC 41604

ARTH 41750. The Sacred Gaze: Beholding as a Spiritual Exercise in the European Artistic Tradition. 100 Units.

This course spans the history of Western Art from the ancient Greeks to the Early Modern Period. It explores the sacred gaze, construed as a series of technologies for constructing the relationship between images and their viewers and as a key piece of social equipment for the ethopoiesis of the human subject. It asks how vision became the object of a moral discourse in Greco-Roman antiquity in both sacred and 'philosophical' contexts, and what happened to this problematic in the historical emergence and development of Christianity. We will do some comparative work on similar processes in relation to Buddhism. Drawing on ideas in the philosophical work of Michel Foucault, Pierre Hadot and Arnold Davidson, our hypothesis is that these issues precipitate in encounters with visual representations, such that the beholding of inter alia statues and paintings became a topic of concern, with the implication that a suitably attentive and informed study of those images will be informative for prehistorians of the aesthetic subject. Although the course will give weight to description and theological/philosophical investigation, the principal focus will be on objects themselves and their own material/visual articulation of the conditions of seeing.

Instructor(s): Jaś Elsner, Richard Neer     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CDIN 41750, RLVC 41750

ARTH 42205. The Holy Land in the Middle Ages. 100 Units.

This course will examine written and visual material that testifies to the medieval encounters of the Abrahamic religions in a sacred landscape where the histories of Jews, Christians, and Muslims overlap. While bearing witness to the cultural wealth and religious pluralism that characterize the Holy Land during the Middle Ages, texts and visual artifacts likewise testify to religious competition, conflict, loss, and exclusion. Among the primary textual sources we will read (in English translation) are accounts by pilgrims and other travelers to the Holy Land, extracts from medieval chronicles, and eye-witness accounts from the period of the Crusades. In addition to the textual material, we will study art and architecture created for different religious communities (e.g., synagogues and their richly decorated mosaic floors, sites and souvenirs of Christian pilgrimage, major works of Islamic art and architecture). We will also investigate phenomena of the reception of the Holy Land's sacred sites and dynamic history in medieval Europe (e.g., replicas and evocations of the Holy Sepulchre, narratives of the "Holy Grail" and associated artifacts).

Instructor(s): Karin Krause     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HCHR 45200, RLVC 45200, ARCH 45200

ARTH 42605. Refashioning the Forbidden City: Emperor Qianlong and Qing Court Art and Interior Decoration. 100 Units.

During his long reign from 1735 to 1796, Qianlong made numerous innovations in Qing court art and interior decoration. This course investigates these innovations from two new perspectives. First, instead of studying them in the separated domains of architecture, object, and painting, it will explore the interconnections of these three visual forms within Qianlong's specific art/architectural projects. Second, after identifying these projects, the course will use "space" as the central analytical concept to reconstruct their content and process, and to explore Qianlong's intention, imagination, and experimentation.

Instructor(s): Wu Hung     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Reading ability of Chinese, the instructor’s consent

ARTH 42813. Advanced Reading in South Asian Art History. 100 Units.

In this seminar, we will read recent scholarship in the field of South Asian art history. Sections of the class will also focus on writing reviews, whether of a single volume or of a thematic kind. Some prior knowledge of South Asian art history and/or methods of art history would be necessary.

Instructor(s): M. Manohar     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Class is geared towards graduate students, with the instructor’s prior approval. Advanced undergraduate (years 3 and 4), with some training in South Asian history and/or culture, may write to take this course, with the instructor’s prior approval.

ARTH 42911. 21st Century Art. 100 Units.

This course will consider the practice and theory of visual art since 1989. We will focus on questions of art's location within society and art's varied development in differing locales.

Instructor(s): M.J. Jackson     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 39901

ARTH 42913. New Readings in the History of Modern Art. 100 Units.

This course focuses on recently published works in the field of modern art, especially those published in the last five years. Our emphasis will be on emerging methodologies and approaches in the field, especially regarding the study of modernism outside of the North Atlantic and the participation within modernism of subjects usually excluded from its canons and discourses.

Instructor(s): M. Sullivan     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Previous coursework in the history of modern art needed. Consent only.

ARTH 42914. Art of the Sixties in Europe. 100 Units.

Counter to the narrative of "How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art," this seminar examines Continental European art coming into its own. Between the late 1950s and early 1970s, Western European artists increasingly disentangled themselves from a crippling competition with North American art and focused on issues and ways of making that emerged out of their specific social, political, and cultural contexts. We will investigate the ways in which artists engaged with the Cold War, decolonization, urbanism, "68," a limited art market, and an emerging pan-European identity and continental networks. With few exceptions, the class will focus on the art of France, Italy, the Benelux and German speaking countries. We will emphasize primary source documents, art with no or limited scholarship, and recently published books.

Instructor(s): C. Mehring     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Familiarity with postwar art and reading knowledge of at least one West European language—German, French, or Italian—is essential. Consent Only

ARTH 44002. COSI Objects & Materials Seminar. 100 Units.

Taught with the assistance of the Smart Museum of Art and visits to other campus and downtown collections, this course focuses on sustained, close engagement with art objects, and the methods and questions such inquiry raises. Students will be introduced to basic techniques of stylistic and technical analysis as well as recent theoretical debates that resituate art history as a study of physical artifacts and their mediation.

Instructor(s): A Pop     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): AH PhD 2nd years. No undergrads or MAs, other PhD students will be admitted by instructor consent.

ARTH 44014. The Veneration of Icons in Byzantium: History, Theory, and Practice. 100 Units.

In order to appreciate the pivotal religious significance icons had in Byzantium for private devotion, in the liturgy, in civic ritual, and in military campaigns, we will survey the visual evidence along with a vast array of written sources. We will explore the origins of the Christian cult of icons in the Early Byzantine period and its roots in the ancient Greco-Roman world. Through the close analysis of icons executed over the centuries in different artistic techniques, we will examine matters of iconography, style, and aesthetics. We will also have a close look at image theory, as developed by Byzantine theologians and codified in the era of Iconoclasm. Typically, meetings will consist of both lecture and interactive discussion sections. Students are expected to prepare the mandatory readings for each week, which serve as a basis for an informed, and thus productive, classroom discussion.

Instructor(s): Karin Krause     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course meets the HS or SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): HCHR 44004, RLVC 44004

ARTH 44705. The Long Nineteenth Century in Japanese Art. 100 Units.

This course centers around the Smart's preparations to host the exhibition Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan. Reading primary and secondary sources in Japanese and European languages, we will assess the history of collecting and exhibiting Meiji art and debate the relevance of a long nineteenth-century approach that emphasizes continuities across the Edo-Meiji divide. Ample attention will be paid to craft, three dimensional objects, and the built environment in addition to paintings and prints. Themes include: gender and the body; the development of a metalanguage through which to discuss art; the changing position of Chinese art and culture; issues of "orientalism" and "occidentalism;" and the designation of "craft" and "calligraphy" as new fields on the margins of the beaux-arts.

Instructor(s): C. Foxwell     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent only
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 44705

ARTH 45011. Toward a "material" approach in studying Chinese Art. 100 Units.

This course explores the predominant significance of materials, rather than image or style, in conveying the intended meaning of works of art and in manifesting artists' aesthetic judgement or social critique. These materials can be natural or artificial, personal or generic. They are "selected" either collectively or individually to become the major means of making art over a significant period in history or an artist's career. What are the sources of power of such materials? How are they transformed into works of art? What are their connections with technology, environment, economy, society, religion, culture, and personal experience? Students are expected to conduct individual studies on selected cases (from any time in Chinese history) and to actively respond to other presentations.

Instructor(s): Wu Hung     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): The instructor’s consent.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 45011

ARTH 45012. Materializing China's Cultural Ephemera. 100 Units.

This seminar explores how a wide range of texts, paintings, and calligraphy originally meant to be ephemeral gain multilayered cultural values over time through materialization in different media. In particular, we will focus on Song and Ming-Qing periods (before modern era) when learned people avidly amassed, compiled, and published these cultural ephemera, an interest further stimulated by the proliferation of printing and a pronounced nostalgia and resulting antiquarianism. The focus of our inquiry will be on the ways in which materiality and media played a critical role in not only transmitting but also enriching and recreating, intentionally or not, their cultural significance, even though the ephemera often survived only in fragments.

Instructor(s): Wei-Cheng Lin     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Reading Chinese is required to register

ARTH 45013. Rethinking Northern Qi (550-577 CE) Art. 100 Units.

Northern Qi (Bei Qi) is one of the short regimes established during the chaotic Northern and Southern Dynasties period from the fourth to sixth centuries. Archaeological excavations in the past half century have revealed that it was a pivotal moment in Chinese art history, creating numerous works of art with innovative styles and iconography. How could a brief regime of only twenty-seven years produce so many works, including those of monumental scales? What were the sources of new images and where did the inspirations come from? Why did this wave of creativity appear across the fields of Buddhist art, funerary art, and secular painting? Who financed these art projects and organized them? This course hopes to respond to these questions by examining existing archaeological finds, transmitted paintings, and historical documents. Students are expected to conduct independent research and to give biweekly presentations.

Instructor(s): Wu Hung     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Prerequisite: reading ability of Chinese, the instructor’s consent

ARTH 45885. Practices of Classicism in the French Seventeenth Century. 100 Units.

This seminar has two goals. One is to combine the text-based tradition of French literary studies with the image-based, comparative tradition of art history-and, in so doing, to change the taxonomies of both. The other is to re-evaluate French Classicism by attending to practices of reading, writing, performing, looking and making. The seminar's breadth is designed to appeal to all students interested in the theory and history of aesthetics, and the interleaving of visual and literary evidence. Looking will be no less important than reading, as we will conduct sessions with original objects in the Art Institute and in Regenstein Special Collections. Authors studied will include Corneille, Molière, La Fontaine, Pascal, and Descartes; among the artists, Poussin, Claude Lorrain, La Tour, and Callot. Critical readings will range from Leo Spitzer to Louis Marin and Foucault.

Instructor(s): Larry Norman and Richard Neer     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructors required for all students. For French credit, FREN 20500, 20501 or an introductory-level literature course taught in French is also required. The seminar will be conducted in English; all primary texts will be made available in both English translation and, for those with reading knowledge, in the French original. This seminar will travel to Paris during exam week (March 2027); airfare and lodging covered by university.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 24420, CDIN 44420, CMLT 44410, TAPS 44420, CDIN 24420, FREN 34420

ARTH 46005. Algorithms and Aesthetics. 100 Units.

This class will explore questions raised by the use of algorithms, and similar systemic processes, in the arts. Recent developments in computational tools have dramatically increased the availability, and complexity, of algorithmic methods. This seminar will reach back to examine cases-with and without electronic computation-over the last century in a range of artistic fields, including architecture, painting, sculpture, music, and literature. We will consider the challenges that algorithmic methods present for concepts such as authorship, intentionality, originality, meaning, beauty, taste, and art itself.

Equivalent Course(s): CDIN 46005

ARTH 47102. Reading Chinese Architecture. 100 Units.

This class investigates different ways and contexts in which text and architecture are related. The most obvious evidence of their relationship comes from literature, e.g., lyrics, poems, travelogues, diaries, etc., epigraphic documents, and official records. Material texts could also be inscribed on the buildings as traces that reveal practices of building trade, beliefs, or conventions. Religious texts in spells or talismans could also be applied to architecture to exorcise unwanted forces. More extreme examples can be found in the so-called sutra pagodas, literally constructed on paper by sutra texts. Conversely, architecture was also built to contain texts, such as libraries or sutra pavilions. The primary inquiry of the class is to ask how Chinese architecture can be redefined and its cultural/religious/political significance enriched, teasing out not just its spatiality but temporality through text.

Instructor(s): W. Lin     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent only. Chinese reading proficiency is required

ARTH 47211. What Was Mise-en-scène? 100 Units.

Mise-en-scène is often understood as a synonym for the act of directing, especially in theater. In film style it is associated with the importance accorded to the placement of props and characters within the film frame, usually in combination with camera movement. This concept was especially important in film criticism of the fifties and sixties and often connected with key post-WWII filmmakers such as Nicholas Ray, Douglas Sirk and Otto Preminger. This seminar will explore the concept both as historical critical concept, and as an ongoing way to discuss the nature of film style.

Equivalent Course(s): CMST 67211

ARTH 47219. The Romantic Book. 100 Units.

In his Gespräch über den Roman, Friedrich Schlegel declared programmatically: "Ein Roman ist ein romantisches Buch." The convoluted relationship between Roman and romantisch will give us the point of departure for the seminar - but is the third term, Buch, so obvious? We will thus also attempt to offer some definitions of what a book is in the period around 1800. To that end, we will consider works that reflect on Romantic scenarios of manuscript and book production (Schreibszenen) and collecting, as well as evolving forms of literary mixed media around 1800, such as the illustrated book and the Taschenbuch. Our readings will include works by F. Schlegel, A. W. Schlegel, Wackenroder and Tieck, Novalis, E. T.A. Hoffmann, Arnim and Brentano, the Grimms, Runge; and scholarly works by Kittler, Campe, Piper, Spoerhase, and others. The seminar will make use of the holdings of the Rare Book Collection and other area resources; and it will introduce students to working with material texts. Good reading knowledge of German required.

Instructor(s): Catriona MacLeod     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Good reading knowledge of German required.
Equivalent Course(s): SCTH 47219, GRMN 47219

ARTH 47220. Temporal Dunhuang. 100 Units.

This course examines multiple temporalities of the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang, as implied in the history of the entire cave complex, the construction process of individual caves, the successive creation of "family caves," the relationship of specific caves to the central government and local regimes, and the temporal structures of different pictorial and sculptural programs. It is hoped that such investigations will lay a methodological basis to envision a new history of the Dunhuang Caves. Students will conduct independent research on well-chosen topics.

Instructor(s): Wu Hung     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent Required, Chinese reading ability is required.

ARTH 47606. Narrating the Artist in East Asia and Beyond. 100 Units.

For the past century, the artist's monograph -the 'life and works' account- has been a mainstay of museum research and art historical publication, even though the genre has been garnering criticism for some time. In the wake of the deconstruction of the author and the emergence of new theories of subjecthood, what is to be gained by writing an extended study of a single artist? Is the model hopelessly encumbered by assumptions about the artist as (white, male) creator-genius, or is there still something important to be accomplished by the intimate study of an individual and her works? How is this project affected as we turn our attention to artists in different centuries and locales?

Instructor(s): C. Foxwell     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Preferred: Arts of Japan or Art of the East: China
Note(s): Registration is granted by permission only. Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 47606

ARTH 48211. Modern Dunhuang. 100 Units.

After its modern discovery, Dunhuang-the home of Buddhist grottoes constructed between the 4th and 14th centuries-had been a site of intensive research that paved the way for the rise of Dunhuang Studies later in the twentieth century, including research in cave art and retrieved manuscripts. While these earlier endeavors made an indelible contribution to our knowledge of Dunhuang, this course posits a complexity in building the site into the discourse of modern China and a dialectic relationship between modern Dunhuang and the research of historical Dunhuang. To better understand this complexity, this course foregrounds how Dunhuang came to be known and studied in the politics of Western colonialism and the restructuring of modern China. The course will also trace the trajectory in which modern Dunhuang developed through a spectrum of different "representations" -architectural diagrams, photographs, paintings, exhibitions, etc. By focusing on these representations, students will analyze the agenda in the conception of Dunhuang as a site of national pride and heritage and consider its role in narratives of twentieth-century East Asian Art.

Instructor(s): W. Cheng Lin     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent Only
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 48211

ARTH 48213. Research on Chinese Art since the 1980s. 100 Units.

How has the study of Chinese art evolved since the 1980s? This course charts major trends in the scholarship on both traditional and contemporary Chinese art. Guided by the instructor's reflections on his major writings from the past 45 years-and the changing intellectual contexts that shaped them-the class will read these and other key works from different periods, contextualize major debates in the field, and analyze their underlying theoretical and methodological positions.

Instructor(s): Wu Hung     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent Only

ARTH 48301. Neoclassical Aesthetics: Transnational Approaches. 100 Units.

Though "aesthetic" philosophy first developed as an autonomous field in the mid-eighteenth century, it has important roots in earlier eighteenth- and seventeenth-century debates concerning literature and the arts. In the wake of Cartesian rationalism, could reasoned method be reconciled with non-rational creativity, or decorous order with the unruly "sublime"? Just what kind of "truth" was revealed by poetry or painting? What is the value of the Greco-Roman models versus authorial innovation? We will consider the relation between literature and other media (particularly opera and the visual arts) and read French texts in dialogue with other, and often contending, national trends (British, German, Italian). Readings will include Descartes, Pascal, Perrault, Félibien, Dryden, Du Bos, Addison, Vico, Montesquieu, Staël, and A.W. Schlegel.

Instructor(s): Larry Norman     Terms Offered: Not offered this academic year
Prerequisite(s): Reading knowledge of French is required. Undergrads permitted with consent of instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 38600, FREN 37000, SCTH 37000

ARTH 48905. Style and Performance from Stage to Screen. 100 Units.

Actor is the oldest profession among arts. Cinema is the youngest art there is. What happens with faces, gestures, monologues, and voices; ancient skills like dance or mime; grand histrionics etc. when arts of performance hit the medium of screen? This course will focus on the history of acting styles in silent films, mapping "national" styles of acting that emerged during the 1910s (American, Danish, Italian, Russian) and various "acting schools" that proliferated during the 1920s ("Expressionist acting," "Kuleshov's Workshop," et al.). We will discuss film acting in the context of various systems of stage acting (Delsarte, Stanislavsky, Meyerhold) and the visual arts.

Equivalent Course(s): CMST 68400

ARTH 49208. Modernism in the Black Metropolis. 100 Units.

TBD

Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 49200

ARTH 49213. New Readings in the History of Modern Art. 100 Units.

This course focuses on recently published works in the field of modern art, especially those published in the last five years. Our emphasis will be on emerging methodologies and approaches in the field, especially regarding the study of modernism outside of the North Atlantic and the participation within modernism of subjects usually excluded from its canons and discourses.

Instructor(s): M. Sullivan     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Previous coursework in the history of modern art is required. Consent only.

ARTH 49700. The Archive: Materiality, Aesthetics, Visual Culture. 100 Units.

This graduate seminar will prepare students to conduct archival research, and to build a research archive from different historical, methodological, and theoretical perspectives. While we will engage a range of texts on archival methodology, theory, and the phenomenology of the archive, we will also examine questions concerning aesthetics, materiality, visual culture, and the digital that inform our understanding of archives today. The seminar will be partially organized around case studies that foreground different archival modes of discovery, evaluation, and interpretation-including those that constitute the "counter archive." Students will learn practical skills for conducting research in filmic, paper and print, and internet archives, and develop the investigative, analytical abilities that are necessary for building an archive around either material objects or theoretical questions.

Instructor(s): Jennifer Wild     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 69110, FREN 49100

ARTH 49800. Independent Research: Art. 100 Units.

Individualized study focused on PhD research in Art History. This course can also be used as the preliminary exam reading course.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter

ARTH 49808. Qualifying Paper Course I. 100 Units.

Individualized study for Art History students working on their Qualifying Paper; first of two quarters.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn,Spring,Winter

ARTH 49809. Qualifying Paper Course II. 100 Units.

Individualized study for Art History students working on their Qualifying Paper; first of two quarters.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn,Spring,Winter

ARTH 49820. Preliminary Exam Reading Course. 100 Units.

Individualized study for Art History students working on their Preliminary Exams.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter

ARTH 49939. The Visual and Literary Worlds of Dream of the Red Chamber. 100 Units.

The Dream of the Red Chamber is hailed as the masterpiece of the Chinese traditional novel, equally beloved by scholars and readers. This interdisciplinary seminar will explore the relationship of the complex narrative structure of the novel and its manifold engagements with eighteenth-century visual and material culture. All materials (or their equivalent) will be available in English. Students may opt to read the novel in Hawkes' translation as The Story of the Stone or in Chinese as Honglou meng. Instructors' consent required; advanced undergraduates admitted with permission

Instructor(s): J. Zeitlin and Wu Hung     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Instructors' consent required; advanced undergraduates admitted with permission
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 49939

ARTH 50100. Teaching Colloquium. 100 Units.

In the fall of their third year, students register for the Art History Department Teaching Colloquium. The requirements for this class, fulfilled over the course of the entire academic year, consist of attending three department-sponsored teaching workshops, one each quarter, in addition to at least six hours of programming at the Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning (CCTL), chosen by each student to match their individual pedagogical training needs. All faculty and graduate students in the department are welcome at the quarterly teaching workshops, the topics of which are determined with student input and may include: the structure of the art history college core course program in which all faculty and students teach; instructor authority and classroom dynamics; leading discussion; effective lecturing; strategic use of images in classroom teaching; small-group class projects; designing and grading assignments; preparing lesson plans; designing syllabi. The department requires third-year students to participate fully in the workshops and in their chosen CCTL programming, to register for the teaching colloquium for credit, and to earn a Pass, which will be recorded once the requirements are completed in Spring quarter.

Instructor(s): C. Brittenham     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Methodology

ARTH 50101. Teaching Colloquium. 100 Units.

Led by a faculty member each fall, this seminar meets weekly for 80 minutes, to address various topics through discussion with visitors (especially department faculty members) and occasionally through discussion of assigned readings. On the premise that one learns the most about teaching not well in advance but rather by reflecting with peer and senior colleagues on techniques and problems when one is in the midst of the challenge, this forum is meant to address participants' specific concerns and experiences, especially those related to art history. The quarter's topics are determined with student input and may include: the structure of the art history college core course program in which all faculty and students teach; the jobs of course assistant and writing intern; instructor authority and classroom dynamics; leading discussion; effective lecturing; strategic use of pictures in classroom teaching; small-group class projects; designing and grading assignments; designing syllabi. From year to year, the colloquium may address similar topics but the emphasis and tips will change depending on the participants. The department requires third-year students to participate fully in the colloquium, register for credit, and earn a Pass. More advanced students who have previously taken the colloquium are welcome to return on an occasional or regular basis to share experiences, strategies, and to seek advice on new teaching challenges.

Instructor(s): M. Ward     Terms Offered: Autumn Winter
Note(s): Required of all third year ARTH PhD students.

ARTH 50200. Dissertation Workshop. 100 Units.

This course is conducted by a faculty member every spring to introduce third-year students to the tasks of preparing grant proposals and applications. The aim of the workshop is to help you produce a finished dissertation proposal by the early autumn of your fourth year and to prepare you to apply for grants at that time. The department requires third-year students to participate fully in the workshop, register for credit, and earn a Pass.

Instructor(s): C Foxwell     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent only
Note(s): Open to third year art history PhD students only.

ARTH 50400. Logic, Truth, and Pictures. 100 Units.

The course aims at the logic of pictures, but because it is controversial whether such a topic exists, or should exist at all (some arguing that pictures are alogical, others that they require a logic sui generis), the course will be less a primer in "visual logic" or "logic of artifacts" than a preliminary investigation of what sets pictures apart from and how they are like other modes of thinking. Resemblance, reference, and fiction will be recurring topics; we begin with questions about the nature and peculiarity of pictures and move on to the prospects of arguing about and through pictures, concluding with the questions of their relation to truth. We will actually look at pictures besides talking about them. We will also ask what kind of objects beside conventional two-dimensional images and sculptures might usefully be called pictures. Reading will include classics (Plato, Gombrich), as well as some of the instructor's own work in progress, based on the ideas of Gottlob Frege.

Terms Offered: Not offered 21-22.
Equivalent Course(s): SCTH 50400

ARTH 70000. Advanced Study: Art History. 300.00 Units.

Advanced Study: Art History