Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the Student Link for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

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  • CAS AH 486: Architecture Capstone
    This course guides junior and senior architectural studies majors through a capstone experience as an internship or research project. It focuses on integrating competencies gained through the major and BU Hub, and on developing post-graduate directions. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Ethical Reasoning.
    • The Individual in Community
    • Ethical Reasoning
  • CAS AH 497: Seminar: Contemporary Art
    Topic for Fall 2019: Contemporary Art, Politics, and Activism. Addresses a wide range of global contemporary art practices that link protest, performance, and activism in order to explore art's role in fostering social and political change since the 1980s.
  • CAS AH 501: Practicum in Museum Studies
    Centered on an internship, which must comprise a supervised project approved in advance by the Director of Museum Studies. Stamped approval prior to the internship is necessary for registration in the course. Internships in Boston-area museums, galleries, historical agencies, and houses arranged for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, 10-12 hours per week (150 hours per semester) at the host institution, with written report.
  • CAS AH 502: Practicum in Museum Studies
    Centered on an internship, which must comprise a supervised project approved in advance by the Director of Museum Studies. Stamped approval prior to the internship is necessary for registration in the course. Internships in Boston-area museums, galleries, historical agencies, and houses arranged for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, 10-12 hours per week (150 hours per semester) at the host institution, with written report.
  • CAS AH 503: Art Historical Methods
    Explores a wide range of theories and methodologies (including semiotics, Marxism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, feminism, and post-structuralism) employed by art historians and critics to assess art produced in Europe and the United States since 1900.
  • CAS AH 504: Topics in Religion and the Visual Arts
    In-depth discussion of special issues in the study of religion and art. May be repeated for credit as topics change. Topic for Fall 2019: Sacred Precincts of East Asia. Introduction to East Asian art and architecture through studies of sacred precincts across China, Japan, and Korea. Each class focuses on an important religious site and its connection with other disciplines such as religious studies, literature, social history, and anthropology.
  • CAS AH 520: The Museum and Historical Agency
    History, present realities, and future possibilities of museums and historical agencies, using Boston's excellent examples. Issues and debates confronting museums today examined in the light of historical development and changing communities. Emphasis on collecting, display and interpretation.
  • CAS AH 521: Curatorship
    Topic for Spring 2020: Museums, Politics, and Representation. Examines the politics of cultural representation in art museums, galleries, and cultural spaces. Through different case studies, this course engages with the ways in which museums, exhibitions, and curators articulate and exercise their relationship to different communities, identities, and "Others."
  • CAS AH 527: Topics in Art and Society
    May be repeated for credit as topics change. Two topics are offered Spring 2020. Section A1: Landscapes: Art and Environment in China. Explores art and nature in China by investigating mountain cults, miniature gardens, cartographic imagining, ink painting, and film mise-en- sc?ne. We look at contemporary art that engages with landscape traditions or current environmental issues such as the Three Gorges Dam. Section B1: The Bayeux Tapestry and Beyond. Buildings, manuscripts, sculpture, liturgical works and the events that contextualize the Bayeux Tapestry.
  • CAS AH 531: Modern Asian Art in a Global Context
    Topic for Fall 2018: Japan on Display. This seminar explores the various ways that Japan--as a national entity, cultural entity, and/or artistic entity--has been presented, performed, and received in the last 150 years. Focus primarily on Japan's participation in major world's fairs, design exhibitions, and the Olympics.
  • CAS AH 532: Japanese Print Culture
    Seminar on print culture of Japan from the eighteenth century to the present. Study of woodblock prints, photographic prints, book art, print advertisements, postcards, and manga. Focus on their function as both artistic expression and instruments of mass communication.
  • CAS AH 533: Seminar: Greek Art and Architecture
    Topic for Spring 2019: Greek Architecture. Greek stone architecture from its origins, including the emergence and development of the Doric and Ionic orders, to the role of architecture in sanctuaries, forms of houses, invention of special buildings, accessibility, use of models, construction techniques, and gigantism. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Oral and/or Signed Communication, Research and Information Literacy.
    • Oral and/or Signed Communication
    • Research and Information Literacy
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • CAS AH 534: Seminar in Roman Art
    In-depth examination of varying topics in the study of Roman art and architecture. Topic for Spring 2020: The Pax Romana. Roman art and architecture at the height of the Roman Empire under the Five Good Emperors (Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius) with introductory sessions on Augustus, the Julio-Claudians, and the Flavians.
  • CAS AH 540: Europe and the Islamic World: Medieval and Early-Modern Cultural Exchange
    Cultural exchange between Europe and the Islamic world, and its impact on visual culture during the late medieval and early modern periods; the transmission of aesthetic concepts and visual traditions via specific patrons, artists, and works of art and architecture.
  • 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 546: Places of Memory: Historic Preservation Theory and Practice
    Covers key aspects of the history, theory, and practice of historic preservation. Preservation is discussed in the context of cultural history and the changing relationship between existing buildings and landscapes and attitudes toward history, memory, invented tradition, and place. Also offered as CAS AM 546 and CAS HI 546.
  • CAS AH 548: Global Heritage Conservation
    Examines global approaches towards heritage conservation through a study of concepts, charters and case studies, using themes such as world heritage, cultural tourism, historic towns, new design, intangible heritage, authenticity, integrity, recent past, historic landscapes, conflict, disasters, revitalization and reconstruction.
  • CAS AH 554: Boston Architectural and Community History Workshop
    This course focuses on class readings, lectures, and research on a single neighborhood or community in Boston (or Greater Boston). Greatest emphasis is on using primary sources-- land titles and deeds, building permits, fire insurance atlases and other maps.
  • CAS AH 557: High Renaissance and Mannerist Art in Italy
    Topic for Fall 2018: The early modern concept of art as a living thing through a consideration of likeness, illusion, automata, anatomy, wonders, and monsters. Attention also given to the role of thing theory, phenomenology, and artificial intelligence in art history.

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