Courses - Spring 2023
ARTH200
Art and Society in Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean
Examines the material culture and visual expressions of Mediterranean and European societies from early times until ca. 1300 CE, emphasizing the political, social, and religious context of the works studied, the relationships of the works to the societies that created them, and the interrelationship of these societies.
ARTH201
Art and Society in the West from the Renaissance to the Present
Examines representative European and American works of art from the later Middle Ages to the present, highlighting the dynamic exchange between artistic and cultural traditions both within periods and across time.
ARTH240
Introduces students to the practices of a field that is only about twenty years old: the Digital Humanities. We will explore how humanities scholars can reexamine their materials, configuring them as "data" that can be gathered and visualized in order to ask new questions about the past. Using traditional humanities source materials from this different perspective, students will produce entirely new data; using new digital platforms, they will create visualizations of that data; and using humanistic methods, they will interpret those visualizations. Focusing on the original Humanists from the Renaissance period, this course will teach students to engage closely with the most traditional materials of the humanities - primary texts produced in an historical period - and with the newest tools to work with humanities data. Students will complete two major projects by collecting data on the same humanist figures: mapping their travels, and tracing their networks. We will also consider how texts can be treated as data.
ARTH262
How does public art function on a university campus, in major cities, and across the United States? This course invites students to empirically study the modern history and civic values of public art spanning sculpture, painting, mixed-media, and installation. We consider the nature of public space, the politics of representation and community, and the civic and memorial functions of art. The course is built around a semester-long project in which students will commission a work of public art for our College Park campus.
ARTH265
How (and Why) to Look at Art in the Era of Climate Change
Credit only granted for: ARTH265 or ARTH465.
Formerly: ARTH465.
How can art help us build the mindset necessary for fashioning a sustainable civilization? Paintings, photographs, films, novels, songs, and other creative works as they shape beliefs related to sustainability and justice.
ARTH301
Aegean Art and Archaeology
Sites and monuments of painting, sculpture, architecture, and the minor arts of Crete, the Cycladic islands, and the Greek mainland from the earliest times to the downfall of the Mycenaean empire.
ARTH313
Medieval Art: Cultural Exchanges in the Byzantine World
Recommended: ARTH200 or ARTH201.
Focuses on the art and architecture from the eastern Mediterranean, specifically, the Byzantine empire. Our broad focus will be on the formation and evolution of the visual arts in Byzantium as a result of exchanges with various cultural, ethnic, and religious entities and traditions. In this context, we will be looking at the legacy of the Graeco-Roman past, contacts with Islamic world, as well as with people and cultures along the periphery of Byzantium: from the Balkan peninsula, to Sicily and Russia.
ARTH324
Leonardo's World: Art and Experience in Renaissance Italy
Painting, sculpture, architecture, and the decorative arts of the sixteenth century in Italy.
ARTH330
Seventeenth-Century European Art
Painting, sculpture and architecture concentrating on Italy, Spain, France, and England.
ARTH359O
Film as Art; Film Gazes and Points of View
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
Films have a Point of View that is constructed through different elements of form and narrative, from where the camera is placed to who is writing the script. This POV or the gaze -- tells us who we are when watching a film (or look at a painting). We will explore Laura Mulvey's original theory of the gaze from the 1970s and then consider how or if it changes in films up to the present day, exploring literal points of view, subjective and unreliable narrative, the way films make us Identify with the "wrong" characters, define normality, the way changing a POV changes meaning, and the how the same story changes over time, across cultures or between directors.
ARTH361
Explores diverse artistic movements and makers in the United States, beginning at the end of the Civil War in 1865 and concluding with the art of Civil Rights era in the 20th century. We will ask how the visual arts construct and challenge formations of race, class, gender, and citizenship in the context of political transformations and social movements over a century of US history. This course emphasizes the practice of close looking as we encounter works art across a range of media--photography, painting, sculpture, film, material culture, performance art and public art.
ARTH376
Living Art of Africa
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
Art styles among the segmentary, centralized, and nomadic people of Africa. The iconography and function of their art and its relationship to their various societies, cults and ceremonies.
ARTH386
Experiential Learning
Prerequisite: Permission of ARHU-Art History & Archaeology department.
Restriction: Junior standing or higher.
Supervised internship experience in diverse areas of art historical, archaeological, and museological work.
ARTH389Y
Special Topics in Art History and Archaeology; Rooting our Shared Stories in Shared Places: Community-Centered African American Heritage Interpretation
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
ARTH389Z
Special Topics in Art History and Archaeology; Curation, Care, Comradeship in Contemporary Art
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
This course explores the history of curating and what it has meant for artists, curators, critics, and other cultural figures to mobilize art as a means to express or enact care. We will explore collective, individual, and institutional modes of caring--for materials, for cultural objects, and for people. We will also investigate some of the key ways that social relationships, such as friendship and comradeship, shape the ideologies and strategies of curating, and inform the activist possibilities of curating art.
ARTH391
Transnational Chinese Cinema
Cross-listed with: CINE335.
Credit only granted for: ARTH391 or CINE335.
Chinese cinema has made a big impact on contemporary world film culture. This course will introduce students to the films directed by some of the most representative filmmakers working in different geopolitical locations (mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong) and the Chinese diaspora. The films of these directors, in a spectrum of genres, themes, and styles, have inspired global scholarship, not only in visual culture and cinema, but also in the study of women's issues, gender and ethnic studies, as well as the fields of adaptation and intermedia studies. Students will explore these films in their socio-historical and artistic contexts, considering the influences and innovations that have shaped them and analyzing their reception by audiences and critics. After reading about the films they view, and participating in class discussions, students will be ready to complete their analytical written assignments, for which they will critically examine the films by applying key concepts such as gender, sexuality, race, gaze, style, representation, power, diaspora, etc.
ARTH488K
Colloquium in Art History; Copy That! Replicas and Facsimiles of Ancient Art
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
This course explores the history, theory, and technology of copies of ancient objects unearthed in Greece, Italy, and the wider Mediterranean world. Focus falls equally on replicas made and displayed in antiquity and on those produced for exhibition in world museums. Key projects, funded by a TLTC Experiential Learning grant, will involve the production of 1:1 copies of ancient artifacts and the design and production of a pieceof art that expresses ancient ideas in a contemporary mode.
ARTH488R
Colloquium in Art History; Visual Cultures of Resistance and Reform
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
Why does it matter what social change looks like? Students in this class will examine the visual cultures of social movements from abolition to suffrage, from the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) to Black Lives Matter. What role did prints, photographs, posters, performances, and public art play in the advancement of movement goals? How can visual forms resist dominant narratives and produce new visions for the future? Can images simultaneously agitate for change and uphold the status quo? You will engage these questions, among others, through our case studies and through final projects focused on the visual cultures of social movements of your choosing.
ARTH498
Directed Studies in Art History I
Credits:
2 - 3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
ARTH499
Honors Thesis
Credits:
3 - 6
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
ARTH689Y
Selected Topics in Art History; Rooting our Shared Stories in Shared Places: Community-Centered African American Heritage Interpretation
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, Aud, S-F
ARTH708B
Seminar in Ancient Art and Archaeology; Arena Games and Audience Applause: The Art and Archaeology of Roman Spectacle
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, Aud, S-F
The Roman architecture built for mass entertainment the amphitheater, bath, circus, stadium, theater, and so forth to understand how and why spectacle entertainments were fundamental to Roman daily life will be explored. We will consider first the art, architectural, and archaeological evidence for these buildings as a distinct class of public architecture, and then reconstruct how these buildings were used in antiquity with the help of various literary sources in English translation. Along the way, we will examine the ways in which Greek forms of entertainment differed from Roman; the levels of violence and types of equipment involved; and the question of amateurism versus professionalism.
ARTH759I
Seminar in Twentieth-Century Art; Art and Climate Change
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, Aud
This seminar asks how we should rewrite the history of art now that we live in the era of climate change. We will consider such concepts as nature, civilization, and the human being as they have been constructed by culture and as they might be reconstructed for the future. We will studynot only landscape painting but all forms of art-making from the perspectives of environmental impact, sustainability, and mythmaking. Readings will be drawn from art history, ecocriticism, and from across environmental studies.
ARTH778B
Seminar in Chinese Art; Border Crossing, Chineseness, Diaspora, Exile
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, Aud
After considering Chinese art in the Euro-American imagination through the writings of Roger Fry, Francois Jullien, and Marianne Moore, and the artworks by Henri Michaux, Robert Motherwell, and Brice Marden who were inspired by Chinese art, the seminar will explore such critical concepts as cosmopolitanism, cultural politics, diaspora, transnationalism, and visuality as seen through artists in the Chinese diaspora such as Maya Lin, Ai Weiwei, Cai Guoqiang, Chuang Che, Gao Xingjian, Huang Yao, and Zao Wou-ki.
ARTH779B
Seminar in Japanese Art; No More Hiroshimas! Art and the Atomic Bomb.
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, Aud, S-F
This course considers the use of art as a medium of political resistance, expression, and mobilization in Japan and elsewhere during the Cold War and beyond in response to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the escalating nuclear arms race. From a transnational perspective, we will analyze the various modes of expression and presentation adopted by activist artists, their roles in communities of resistance, their efforts to build solidarities across nations and cultures, and their belief in the power of the visual arts to envision amore just and peaceful world.
ARTH798
Directed Graduate Studies in Art History
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, Aud
ARTH799
Master's Thesis Research
Credits:
1 - 6
Grad Meth:
S-F
ARTH898
Pre-Candidacy Research
Credits:
1 - 8
Grad Meth:
Reg
ARTH899
Doctoral Dissertation Research
Credits:
6
Grad Meth:
S-F
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University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
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