History of Art & Architecture
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CAS AH 111: Pyramids to Cathedrals: An Introduction to Ancient and Medieval Art
A chronological examination of the fundamentals of art and architectural history, this course introduces students to major monuments and works of art from antiquity to the middle ages in their social, religious and historical contexts. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. Effective Fall 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Creativity/Innovation. -
CAS AH 112: Introduction to Art in Europe and the United States from the Renaissance to Post- Modernism
Major monuments and artists in Europe and the United States from the Renaissance to Post-Modernism. Sequential development of major styles in architecture, sculpture, painting, and photography. Relationship of visual art to social and cultural forces. Effective Spring 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Teamwork/Collaboration. -
CAS AH 113: Arts and Monuments of Asia
An introduction to the art and architecture of Asia from the earliest times to the present. Course addresses not only important cultural monuments but also portable art objects within museum collections. Course examines a wide range of media, including ink painting, ceramics, textiles, photography, as well as major architectural projects, monuments, and built environments. It aims to challenge and rethink monolithic definitions of "Asian art" by allowing students to understand the complex and sophisticated processes of interregional and global cultural exchange. Effective Spring 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Oral and/or Signed Communication, Aesthetic Exploration. -
CAS AH 114: Kongo to Cuba: Art, Exchange, and Self-Determination in Africa and Latin America
This course introduces the arts of Africa and Latin America. It explores the rich diversity of each continent's artistic production and highlights the impact of their intertwining histories on visual expression in the wake of transcontinental exchange and globalization. Effective Fall 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Aesthetic Exploration, Critical Thinking. -
CAS AH 201: Understanding Architecture
Introduces a range of approaches to understanding architecture in an historical perspective. Learn how architects and others have interpreted meaning through rubrics of art, nature, and culture, focused upon European and American architecture from 1400 to the present. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS AH 210: Learning to See
Strengthens your ability to describe and analyze the visual world. From fundamentals such as color and composition to the design of advertisements, propaganda, and appliances. A lab component provides opportunities for direct engagement with objects, images, and the built environment. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking. -
CAS AH 215: Arts of Africa and Its Diaspora
Exploration of a diversity of visual and performing arts from Africa, including royal regalia, masquerades, and contemporary painting. Examines how the dispersal of Africans, due to the transatlantic slave trade and immigration, contributed to the cultural richness of the Americas. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. -
CAS AH 220: Islamic Art and Architecture
Examines key monuments of Islamic art and architecture within their historical and cultural context, and emphasizes the diversity within the visual cultures of the Islamic world. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS AH 240: Medieval Art in Europe
This course covers roughly one thousand years of art and architecture in Europe, Western Asia, and the Mediterranean from the Late Roman Era to the Renaissance. A broad range of media from stained glass to sculpture, gem encrusted metalwork, mosaics, ivories, manuscript illumination, lavish textiles, and other types of visual culture are examined. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS AH 257: Renaissance Art
Survey of the arts in the Renaissance in Italy from the communes of the early fifteenth century to the courts of the sixteenth century. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking. -
CAS AH 284: Arts in America
A survey of art and visual culture made in North America between the early colonial period and World War I, exploring the ways that painters, sculptors, photographers, and graphic artists navigated major aesthetic debates, political conflicts, and economic crises. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. Effective Fall 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Teamwork/Collaboration. -
CAS AH 316: African Diaspora Arts in the Americas
This course introduces arts of the African diaspora in the Caribbean, South America, and the United States by examining aesthetic, religious, and philosophical systems. Examines artistic forms including Santería altars, Haitian architecture, Caribbean masquerading, and contemporary African-American artists. -
CAS AH 323: Topics in Latin American Art
Study of a region, theme, or period in Latin America art and architecture. May be repeated for credit as topics change. Topic for Spring 2023: Artivism Since the 1960s. Examines art and aesthetics in political activism, focusing on artists, activists, and curators' contributions to the struggles against dictatorships during dirty wars, ongoing racial and gender discrimination, as well as environmental over-exploitation -
CAS AH 325: Art, Media, and Buddhism
Examines how textual, visual, and material forms of religious expressions have been conceptualized by Buddhists as well as how Buddhist objects are understood and re- contextualized in the West. Topics include: self- immolation; museums; war propaganda, and pop culture. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Teamwork/Collaboration. -
CAS AH 326: Arts of Japan
The arts of Japan, from prehistory to the twentieth century. Lectures intend to cover a broad range of media (painting, sculpture, ceramics, prints) and building types (temples, palaces, castles, teahouses). Special attention is paid to major projects integrating multiple forms. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS AH 327: Arts of China
Explores major works of Chinese art, from bronze vessels, Buddhist caves, ink painting, to contemporary performance. Addresses topics such as constructions of monumentality, cultural exchange, displays of power, literati identity, feminine space, and quests for modernization. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Aesthetic Exploration, Research and Information Literacy. -
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. Effective Spring 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS AH 352: Venetian Renaissance Art
A study of art and architecture in Renaissance Venice with focus on the "Myth of Venice," Byzantinne heritage, introduction of the oil medium, Scuole, and the work of the Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Palladio, Veronese, and Tintoretto. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation. -
CAS AH 361: Southern Baroque Art
Explores transformations in painting, sculpture, and architecture of late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Italy, Spain, and France. Topics include: crisis of the religious image and Counter-Reformation; arts in service of a rejuvenated, triumphant Catholic faith; papal nepotism and patronage. Effective Spring 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS AH 363: The Arc of Russian and Ukrainian Art
This course introduces students to the history of art and architecture of Russia and Ukraine from the early Slavic period to the present day. The lectures and readings are organized chronologically and follow the main artistic developments throughout this period.
