Expand the sections below to explore our Fall 2025 course descriptions.
Undergraduate Courses
CAS AH111: 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 the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
T|R 11:00-12:15 Martin / Kahn
plus a discussion section – see the academic planner on MyBU for section times
CAS AH114: 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 the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Aesthetic Exploration, Critical Thinking.
Meets with CAS AA 114.
M|W|F 1:25-2:15 Becker / Reyes
plus a discussion section – see the academic planner on MyBU for section times
CAS AH201: 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.
T|R 2:00-3:15 Abramson
CAS AH210: Learning to See
Strengthening your ability to analyze and describe art and the visual world, AH210 and its lab foster active engagement with works in museums and with images on the internet. Topics range from visual fundamentals such as color and composition to the design of advertisements, logos, propaganda, and the built environment. The course is designed to meet the needs of students without prior background in art history. It is of particular value to students in STEM fields, as well as communication, management, health science, and hospitality.
This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, and Critical Thinking.
M|W|F 9:05-9:55 Ribner
CAS AH284: 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 the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
M|W|F 9:05-9:55 Barrett
CAS AH311: Arab Cities: Architecture, Politics, Religion
Presents a historical overview of Arab cities through architecture, politics, and religion. The course critically examins concepts and labels, such as the Arab city, the Islamic city, and the Middle East, disentangling colonial and Orientalist constructs from the perspectives of those who inhabit the region. It considers the destruction and cultural devastation of Arab cities and, on the other hand, Arab cities as sites of radical struggle, where resistance, revolution, informality, and tradition become modes for imagining alternative futures.
M|W|F 10:10-11:00 Alnajada
CAS AH323: Topics in Latin American Art
This course will focus on the art of the Caribbean, particularly during the twentieth century. We will begin by thinking through the Caribbean as a space and place that includes parts of Central and South America, as well as the significant diasporas in North America and Europe. We will then turn to looking at specific practice that demonstrate major themes in the cultural production of the region.
T|R 11:00-12:15 Smythe-Johnson
CAS AH327: Arts of China
Explores major works of Chinese art, from bronze vessels, Buddhist caves, ink painting, to contemporary performance. Addresses constructions of monumentality, cultural exchange, displays of power, feminine space, and quests for modernization.
Effective Fall 2020, fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Aesthetic Exploration, Research and Information Literacy.
Meets with CAS AH 727.
M|W|F 10:10-11:00 Feng
CAS AH352: 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 the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation.
T|R 11:00-12:15 Cranston
CAS AH365: Baroque Arts: Northern Europe
Explores the vibrant artistic culture of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the northern (Dutch) and southern (Flemish) Netherlands. Emphasis on major artists such as Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Vermeer, and on viewing this art in global perspective.
T|R 11:00-12:15 Zell
CAS AH367: Material Culture: Materializing Indigenous History
From wikhikon (birchbark maps) and petroglyphs to contemporary beadwork, studying Native American material culture provides a critical lens into histories of settler colonialism and Indigenous activism. This course traces histories of Native American material culture as tools of communication, expressive culture, and resistance, interrogating the creation, collection, and preservation of objects across Turtle Island.
Also offered as CAS AM 367
T|R 2:00-3:15 LaForge
CAS AH385: American Buildings and Landscapes
This class provides an introductory analytic survey of American buildings and landscapes within their historical and cultural contexts. Students examine forces which have shaped the American built environment. Topics range from Indian mounds to commercial strips; Spanish missions to skyscrapers.
Also offered as CAS AM 385
T|R 12:30-1:45 Moore
CAS AH391: Twentieth – Century Art to 1940
A study of the key tendencies in European art between the 1880s and World War II. The work of van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Dali, and their contemporaries is examined in relation to major issues in European culture and politics.
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.
M|W|F 1:25-2:15 Brown
CAS AH393 B1: Contemporary Art: 1980 to Now
Explores the terms of debate, key figures, and primary sites for the production and reception of contemporary art on a global scale since 1980. Painting, installation art, new media, performance, art criticism, and curatorial practice are discussed.
Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
T|R 3:30-4:45 Ruoppo
Seminars for Undergraduate & Graduate Students
CAS AH500 A1: Methods of Inquiry in Architecture Studies
This seminar draws from different methods across the humanities and social sciences to explore the range of research methods that can be used in architecture studies and architectural history. As we work through the semester, students will do assigned readings that provide an overview of intellectual debates and methodological approaches for architectural research, including archival, forensic, photographic, mapping, ethnographic, oral historical, urban, and non-human. Throughout, students will work on a set of exercises specifically created to expose them to different kinds of methods. This course fulfills the methods requirement.
F 11:15-2:00 Alnajada
CAS AH507: Digital Curation: Towards National Parks: Art and Nature, Nature and Nation
Before national parks, wild locations attracted artists, photographers, and poets. Their works made these areas known to tourist-viewers. Prepare a digital exhibition and map artist- advocates as they explored mountains, forests, and waterfalls.
Course fulfills a single unit in the following Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation.
T 12:30-3:15 Hall
CAS AH520: The Museum and the 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.
R 12:30-3:15 Hall
CAS AH527 A1: The Mount Auburn Cemetery
An exploration of remembrance, and the invention, appropriation, and development of imagery and landscape for commemorative monuments. Much of this seminar takes place on site in the Mount Auburn Cemetery and in regional early Burying Grounds. Many outdoor site visits during class time are required.
W 2:30-5:15 Kahn
CAS AH530: American Art in the City
This course will examine the art forms, popular pictorial media, visual entertainments, and structures of looking that developed in American cities in the years between 1790 and 1917.
F 11:15-2:00 Barrett
CAS AH533: Greek Art in Boston Area Museums
We will investigate Greek art in the Boston area to understand and critique its display; compare local collections to others in the United States, Europe, west Asia, and Egypt; and learn about collections management using BU’s Gabel Museum of Archaeology. Fulfill Hub units in Oral Communication, Writing Intensive, and Research and Information Literacy. 4 credits. Undergraduate prerequisites: 1) first-year writing seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120) or equivalent; 2) either AH111, AH233, AH331, AH333 or permission of instructor.
R 3:30-6:15 Martin
CAS AH546: Places of Memory: Historic Preservation and Practice
Covers key aspects of the history, theory, and practice of historic preservation. The interdisciplinary practice of preservation is discussed in the context of cultural history and the changing relationship between buildings and landscapes and attitudes toward history, memory, and place.
Also offered as CAS AM 546 and CAS HI 546.
T 3:30-6:15 White
CAS AH548: Global Heritage Conservation
Examining 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, and reconstruction.
R 3:30-6:15 Haenraets
CAS AH554: Boston Architectural and Community History Workshop
Focusing on a single neighborhood in Greater Boston, this course explores ways to assess and narrate architectural and urban development. Emphasis is on primary sources—land deeds and plans, building permits, historic maps, etc. —coupled with field trips and classroom discussion.
F 11:15-2:00 Stevenson
CAS AH557: High Renaissance and Mannerist Art in Italy
The seminar will consider Italian Renaissance art theory and its role in shaping and responding to the interests and concerns of artists. Texts take a variety of literary forms such as commentaries, dialogues, poems, and courtly handbooks.
T 8:00-10:45 Cranston
CAS AH571: African American Art
After at least three decades of “African Diaspora” gaining currency as a concept and field of study— with several major texts on the theme published, and university departments and museums taking the name— there is still a great deal of debate about what the African Diaspora is and how we might study it. The seminar challenges students to think diasporically through a careful examination of the potential and difficulties diaspora introduces to artistic and scholarly practice. It also introduces students to the sub-field of African Diaspora Art History asking them to think through a series of key debates that have shaped and continue to animate the field.
Also offered as CAS AA 571
F 11:15-2:00 Smythe-Johnson
CAS AH574: Exhibiting Africa
This course examines the collection and display of the arts of Africa and the Diaspora from the colonial period to the present. The course will also consider seminal exhibitions of modern and contemporary African art, asking how these practices have shifted perceptions of African art in the twenty first century.
T 3:30-6:15 Cooney
CAS AH589: The Age of Impressionism
European art, 1848-1900, is examined in light of contemporary developments in politics, literature, and the history of ideas. Class discussion of readings, both recent and classic, is followed by an oral report and a final paper on a research topic.
R 12:30-3:15 Ribner
CAS AH596: Contemporary Exhibition Practices
This seminar explores how, over the past forty years, artists, curators, critics, and architects have played various roles in the expansion of large-scale exhibitions and the emergence of new museums of contemporary art around the world.
W 2:30-5:15 Williams
Graduate Courses
GRS AH727: Colloquium in Chinese Art
This graduate-level colloquium will critically examine issues of Chinese art covered in AH327 Arts of China. Special attention will be given to recent scholarship that engages with Chinese art in a greater socio-cultural context.
Students registered for this course must attend both the weekly colloquium meeting and AH327 class sessions.
W 12:20-2:05 Feng
GRS AH863: Baroque Art and Architecture
Explores the so-called “Golden Age” of Dutch art from the perspectives of the recent global and material turns in art history. Classes are conducted at the MFA and focus partly on the exhibition “Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art.”
R 3:30-5:15 Zell
GRS AH867: 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. Explores contemporary scholarship from a range of disciplines.
Also offered as CAS AM 867.
T 3:30-6:15 Moore
GRS AH895 A1: Contemporary Commemorative Art in Latin America
This seminar studies symbolic reparations within the Inter-American human rights system and relates it to commemorative artistic practices. It raises questions about the values and limitations of art for social healing in contexts of gross violations of human rights.
F 2:30-4:15 Reyes
Fall 2025 Registration Dates
Registration for Fall 2025 opens based on your academic class standing.
Details about specific registration dates and times can be found at https://www.bu.edu/reg/calendars/registration/