History of Art & Architecture

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  • CAS AH 111: Introduction to Art History I: Antiquity to the Middle Ages
    An introduction to art history and the analysis of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Study of masterpieces from prehistoric to medieval times. Focus on monuments of Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages, with a survey of Egyptian and Near Eastern art. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
  • CAS AH 112: Introduction to Art History II: Renaissance to Today
    Major monuments and artists. Sequential development, from the Renaissance to the modern period, of major styles in architecture, sculpture, painting, graphic arts, and photography. Relationship of visual art to social and cultural trends. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
  • CAS AH 201: Understanding Architecture: Theoretical Approaches to the Built Environment
    Introduces a range of approaches to the analysis of architecture. Learn how scholars and architects have interpreted meaning in architecture through the rubrics of art, structure, language, nonverbal communication, experience, and culture.
  • CAS AH 205: Architecture: An Introduction
    Examination of the factors involved in architectural design including program, spatial composition, structure, technology, iconography, and the role of architecture in society. Discussion of major monuments of Western architecture and urbanism from ancient Egypt to the twenty-first century. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
  • CAS AH 215: Arts of Africa
    Exploration of key themes in royal art and architecture from western central, eastern, and southern Africa. Topics include state cosmology, dynastic history, palace architecture, royal regalia and ceremonies, court women, and the importance of art in diplomacy and war. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
  • CAS AH 225: The Arts of Asia
    Surveys of the major artistic traditions of Asia. Important monuments are examined analytically in order to explain why certain forms and styles are characteristic of specific times and places, and how these monuments functioned in their cultural contexts. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
  • CAS AH 233: The Arts of Greece
    Greek architecture, painting, sculpture, and minor arts. Emphasis on developments in Athens and on the creation of the classical style in art and architecture.
  • CAS AH 240: Medieval Art
    European art and architecture from the Fall of Rome through High Gothic. Covers media including sculpture, textiles, stained glass, and precious metalwork. Monuments treated are Rome's great churches, the Book of Kells, the Bayeux Tapestry, and Chartres and Rheims cathedrals.
  • CAS AH 295: History of Photography
    An introduction to the study of photographs. The history of the medium in Europe and America from its invention in 1839 to the present. After lectures on photographic theory and methodology, photographs are studied both as art objects and as historical artifacts.
  • CAS AH 313: Imperial Reflections: Early Modern Islamic Art and Architecture
    Architecture, manuscripts, textiles, metalwork, and ceramics of the Mughal, Ottoman, and Safavid Empires. Focus on the formation of imperial styles, intersections between art and politics, and the importance of the arts in dynastic legitimization.
  • CAS AH 317: From Morocco to Timbuktu: Art and Architecture at the Saharan Crossroads
    Cultural exchange between North and West Africa, and its impact on art and architecture from the medieval period to the present; the interaction between Islam and other modes of African religious practice and how this interaction influenced African aesthetic expression.
  • CAS AH 326: Arts of Japan
    The arts of Japan, from prehistory through the twentieth century. Painting, calligraphy, sculpture, and architecture (including landscape architecture) are emphasized, but attention is also paid to woodblock prints, ceramics, lacquer, and metalwork.
  • CAS AH 328: Modern Japanese Architecture
    An introduction to the major architects, buildings, theories, and critical issues of Japanese architecture from 1850 to the present. Focus on the development of new forms in response to interchanges with the West, new technologies, earthquakes, nationalism, international wars, and colonialism.
  • CAS AH 333: Arts of Classical Greece
    Examines architecture, sculpture, painting, and metalwork of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. in their original contexts. Addresses such larger issues as development of portraiture; tension of "real" and "ideal"; roles and shifting iconographies of myth; and political use of monuments.
  • CAS AH 352: Venetian Renaissance Art
    A study of art and architecture in Renaissance Venice with focus on the "Myth of Venice," Byzantine heritage, introduction of the oil medium, Scuole, and the work of the Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Palladio, Veronese, and Tintoretto.
  • CAS AH 361: Southern Baroque Art
    Seventeenth-century art in Italy, France, and Spain; emphasis on Caravaggio, Bernini, Poussin, Velazquez.
  • CAS AH 367: Material Culture
    Introduction to the theory and practice of the interdisciplinary study of material culture, which includes everything we make and use, from food and clothing to art and buildings. Topic for Fall 2013: American Folk Art. Course will explore the range of objects, created from the seventeenth century to the present, known as American Folk Art. Also offered as CAS AM 367.
  • CAS AH 368: The Grand Tour
    The culminating educational experience for the elite of Enlightenment Europe took the form of an extended trip to Italy, "The Grand Tour." This course recreates the itinerary of the Tour and analyzes its impact on art, architecture, collecting, and connoisseurship.
  • CAS AH 377: American Furniture and Allied Arts, 1630-1830
    Survey of furniture and related arts-painting, architecture, and silver-with an emphasis on aesthetics and quality, sources, style changes, regional differences, materials, and construction.
  • CAS AH 382: Nineteenth-Century Architecture
    Survey of European and American architecture from 1750 to 1910. Explores issues in architecture, landscape architecture and city planning, and examines style, technology, and architectural theory.

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