Courses

• CAS AH 541: Courtly Commissions: Ottoman Art and Architecture
  Explores the artistic patronage of the Ottoman court, fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. Questions of self-fashioning, artistic agency, courtly behavior, decorum, and the formation of an imperial style frame the discussion of specific works of art and architecture.
• CAS AH 543: Latin American Art and the Cold War
  Study of Latin American artistic practices in relation to Cold War political frameworks, such as development and dependency discourses, the impact of the Cuban Revolution, U.S. and Soviet cultural policies, and the rise of numerous political dictatorships.
• CAS AH 553: Documenting Historic Buildings and Landscapes
  A seminar designed to train students in architectural research techniques through supervised reading, fieldwork, and writing. Students are introduced to the skills needed to conduct research on both individual resources and groups of resources, clustered within an area or scattered throughout a community. Also offered as CAS AM 553.
• CAS AH 557: High Renaissance and Mannerist Art in Italy
  Topic for Fall 2014: Early Modern Collectors and Collecting. This seminar considers the emergence of collectors of Renaissance art and their varied collecting practices from the sixteenth century until the present day. Topics covered in the course include theories of collecting and collections.
• CAS AH 563: Alliance of Art and Power in the Baroque
  Explores the relationship between visual culture and political authority in seventeenth century Europe. Focus on painting, architecture, and sculpture by major artists of the period, including Rubens, Van Dyck, Velázquez, Rembrandt, and Bernini.
• CAS AH 570: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century American Architecture
  Lectures and field trips explore American architecture and building from initial European contact through the end of the eighteenth century. Emphasis on New England, with discussion of architectural forms from other regions.
• CAS AH 571: African American Art
  Studies African American art and craft production from the early nineteenth century to the present against the background of the diaspora, reconstruction, and the modernist movements of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Also offered as CAS AA 571.
• CAS AH 572: Gilded Age America: Visual Culture from 1865-1900
  
• CAS AH 580: Architectural Technology and Materials
  An introduction to the history of architectural construction, technologies, and materials, and their consequences in the built environment. Students receive a practical understanding of the building process and of its social and cultural contexts.
• CAS AH 582: Historic Houses
  Studies the preservation of historic homes as museums, a phenomenom involving more than 26,000 houses throughout the U.S. since 1850. Considers Boston's excellent examples as works of architecture and design and as icons in debates about national and regional identities.
• CAS AH 584: Greater Boston: Architecture and Planning
  Examines the buildings, development patterns, and open space planning of greater Boston, with particular emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Weekly visits to neighborhoods and buildings throughout the city are combined with independent research projects for each member of the seminar.
• CAS AH 585: Twentieth-Century Architecture and Urbanism
  Topic for Spring 2014: Architecture in Europe, 1945-1989. Covering a period that ranges from the conclusion of the Second World War to the wave of social unrest at the end of the 1960s, this seminar examines how European architectural culture responded to transformations of the postwar years.
• CAS AH 587: Green Design
  This seminar explores the historical context for issues of sustainability and green architecture from the eighteenth century to the present, charted through questions of landscape theory, public park making, suburbanization, adaptive re-use, and new materials and methods of construction.
• CAS AH 589: Topics in Nineteenth-Century Art
  Topic for Spring 2014: Seminar: Impressionism through Symbolism. Major currents in nineteenth-century European art are examined in light of contemporary developments in politics, science, religion, literature, music, and the history of ideas.
• CAS AH 591: Seminar in Photographic History
  Topic for Spring 2013: Documentary Photography. Changing uses, definitions, and archives of documentary photography from 1839 to the present. Topics include urban photography, war imagery, topographical and survey landscapes, architectural records, social reform photography, New Deal imagery, and digital documents.
• CAS AI 101: Introduction to Asian Studies
  Mini-seminar to analyze and integrate students' coursework of the Asian Studies Major. Student presentations on relevant events outside coursework; reading and discussion focused on current issues in Asian studies. Required of all Asian Studies majors.
• CAS AM 200: Introduction to American Studies
  An exploration of the multi-faceted themes of American society and culture in selected historical periods using a variety of approaches to interpret such topics as American art, literature, politics, material culture, and the mass media. Required of majors and minors. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS AM 250: American Arts and Society
  Investigates key issues and themes in American arts and letters. Topic for Spring 2015: Cold War and Consensus in 1950s America. Explores the tensions between domestic ideals and fractured reality in Cold War America. Combining film study, literary criticism, material culture, and cultural history, students gain a thorough, interdisciplinary understanding of the 1950s. Topics include Elvis Presley, McCarthyism, suburbia, and Disneyland.
• CAS AM 301: Perspectives on the American Experience
  American history and society as viewed by those who made it. Topic for Fall 2014: America on Television. An exploration of the ways American culture and people are represented on television, how those representations evolve over time, and the way television representations influence public debate over important social and political issues.
• CAS AM 313: Internships in Public History
  Students undertake supervised work in Boston-area institutions dedicated to the public presentation of America's past. Students meet with the instructor to discuss themes in public history theory and practice that, together with the internship experience and related readings, inform a final research project and class presentation. Also offered as CAS HI 313.

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