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.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
  • 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.
    • 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.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Oral and/or Signed Communication
  • 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.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • Critical Thinking
  • 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. 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.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
    • Research and Information Literacy
  • CAS AH 232: Archaeology of Ancient Egypt
    The technology, economy, social life, political organization, religions, art, and architecture of Egypt from Predynastic times through the Hellenistic period, based on archaeological and historical sources. Emphasis on the period of the pharaohs (ca. 3000-323 BCE). Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. Also offered as CAS AR 232. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
  • 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.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
  • CAS AH 242: Latin American Art Since Contact
    Course surveys Latin American art from the colonial period to present and relates it to imperial, state, institutional, and private agendas. Course interrogates both notions of art within colonial / neo-colonial contexts and changing roles of artists over past half-millennia. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
  • CAS AH 251: Ancient Maya Civilization
    An exploration of the Maya civilization of Mexico and Central America, including its origins, intellectual achievements, city-state rise and collapse cycles, and the cultural endurance of the Maya people of today. This course carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
    • Historical Consciousness
    • Social Inquiry I
  • 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.
    • 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.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
  • 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. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation.
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • Digital/Multimedia Expression
    • Creativity/Innovation
  • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • Research and Information Literacy
  • CAS AH 331: Arts of Archaic Greece
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120)
    Examines the origins of Greek art and architecture through ancient accounts, modern scholarship, and physical remains. Topics include town and sanctuary planning, theories of the orders, wooden and stone sculpture, painted pottery, miniatures, color, artists, technologies, and myth. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Writing-Intensive Course.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
    • Writing-Intensive Course