Expand the sections below to explore our Spring 2021 course descriptions.
Undergraduate Courses
AH 112 – Introduction to Art History II: Renaissance to Today
Major monuments and artists. Sequential development, from the Renaissance to the modern period, of major styles in architecture, sculpture, painting, graphic arts, and photography. Relationship of visual art to social and cultural trends.
Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
BU Hub areas as of Fall 2018: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
T, R 11:00 – 12:15 plus Discussion Section Zell/Ribner
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.
Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
BU Hub areas as of Fall 2019: Aesthetic Exploration, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
T, R 12:30 – 1:45 Becker
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.
BU Hub areas as of Fall 2018: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
M,W, F 10:10 – 11:00 Feng
AH 240 – Medieval Art in Europe
Focuses on architecture, manuscript illumination, metalwork and ivory carving, wall-painting, textiles and monumental architectural sculpture. Topics include iconoclasm, monasticism, women in medieval art, patronage, materials and techniques, iconography, representation and model books and regional and international styles and trends.
BU Hub areas as of Fall 2018: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
M, W, F 2:30 – 3:20 Kahn
AH 333 – Arts of Classical Greece
Examines architecture, sculpture, painting, and other arts of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. Topics include: the concept of classicism, how art was made, the “Greek revolution” and consequences of naturalism, the artist as individual.
BU Hub areas as of Fall 2018: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
M, W, F 9:05 – 9:55 Martin
AH 386 – Modern American Art
This class explores the diverse and contested field of modern art in the United States, examining the broad range of artists and art practices that laid claim to aesthetic modernism in the years between 1890 and 1945.
BU Hub areas as of Fall 2018: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
M, W, F 1:25 – 2:15 Barrett
AH 387 – Boston Architecture and Urbanism
This class presents a history of Boston from the seventeenth through twenty- first centuries, as seen through the region’s architectural and urban history. Major buildings, architects, and urban planning schemes are examined in terms of economic, political, social, and institutional histories.
BU Hub areas as of Spring 2020: Social Inquiry I, Oral and/or Signed Communication, Teamwork/Collaboration.
M, W 2:30 – 5:15 Abramson
AH 392 – Twentieth Century Art from 1940 to 1980
Explores major currents in European and American art made between 1940 and 1980. Examines the following movements and media in relation to postwar culture and politics: abstract expressionism, pop art, minimalism, conceptual art, earthworks, performance, and video.
BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
M,W,F 11:15 – 12:05 Matyczyk
AH 395 – History of Photography
An introduction to the study of photographs. The history of the medium in Europe and America from its invention in 1839 to the present. After lectures on photographic theory and methodology, photographs are studied both as art objects and as historical artifacts.
BU Hub areas as of Fall 2018: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking
T, R 11:00 – 12:15 Sichel
AH – 398 Twentieth-Century Architecture
This course provides an introduction to the major developments in architecture and urban planning from ca. 1900 to the present. It traces the proliferation of modernist thought through key projects but also to everyday buildings and landscapes.
BU Hub areas as of Fall 2018: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy.
T, R 2:00 – 3:15 Bozdoǧan
AH 399 – History and Theory of Landscape Architecture
Explores man’s relationship with nature by a study of selected built environments from antiquity to the present. Focus on both the private garden and the public park—here considered as works of art—and their changing forms, meaning, and interpretations.
BU Hub areas as of Spring 2021: Writing- Intensive Course, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Aesthetic Exploration.
T, R 9:30 – 10:45 Haenraets
AH 404 – Museum Practice Today
May be repeated for credit as topics change. Considers and uses the methods and tools of curators and other museum professionals in gallery arrangement and exhibition- making. Taught around specific projects, with visits to museums and meetings with practitioners as can be arranged.
AH 486 – Architecture Capstone
This course guides 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.
BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Ethical Reasoning
T 12:30 – 3:15 Abramson
500 Level Seminars for Undergraduate & Graduate Students
AH 500 – Twentieth-Century Architecture Seminar
Topic for Spring 2020: Shaping Boston’s Public Realm: From Commons, to Parks, to Playgrounds, to Greenway
This seminar will examine the design and politics of Boston’s park movement. Drawing on primary sources, public debates, and scholarly accounts of park history, the class will explore the ways that changing ideas of public health, cultivation, and citizenship were embodied in landscape. The seminar will include class lecture and discussion sessions as well as site visits.
M 2:30 – 5:15 Bluestone
AH 521 – Curatorial Seminar
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.”
W 11:15 – 2:00 Cooney
AH 527 B1 – The Bayeux Tapestry in Context
The Bayeux Tapestry – an eleventh century textile over 230 feet long – depicts the conquest of Anglo-Saxon England by the Normans in 1066. The historical and performative aspects of the work will be considered as will contemporary castles, monasteries and cathedrals. The significance of the work down the ages – as was most recently indicated by President Macron’s promise of the loan of the textile to the British nation in 2022 – will be considered.
M 11:15-2:00 Kahn
AH 533 – Greek Art and Architecture Seminar
This course will explore visual art and texts related to the life cycle of the earth and its peoples from cosmogony/creation to destruction/death. Throughout the term we will juxtapose maps and works of art with textual accounts to work toward a deeper understanding of how Greeks perceived of their environment and how they understood themselves and others in physical, behavioral, and ideological terms. This semester we will make special address to these topics as they relate to prejudice: in Greek antiquity, in scholarship, and in popular reception of Greek art. Students from all fields and backgrounds are welcome.
F 11:15 – 2:00 Martin
AH 563 – Global Baroque: Art and Power in the Seventeenth Century
Investigates the interaction between art and structures of power in 17th- century Europe, with particular attention to its global dimensions. Focus on Rubens, Rembrandt, Velazquez, and Bernini but also other forms of cultural production that circulated through global trade.
W 2:30 – 5:15 Zell
AH 589 – Impressionism Through Symbolism
This seminar addresses the period that saw the Impressionist commitment to the visual facts of contemporary society and landscape transformed by new structural and emotional demands (in the work of Seurat, Cézanne, and Van Gogh), and eclipsed by the preoccupation of the Symbolists (e.g. Gauguin, Munch, and Rodin) with elusive and mysterious aspects of sexual, spiritual, and artistic experience. In addition to providing an opportunity to produce a professionally sound oral report and paper based on specialized research, the course offers a broad foundation in major European artistic currents of the second half of the nineteenth century. There is weekly discussion of readings from the art-historical literature, both current and classic.
W 8:00-10:45 Ribner
AH 591 – Documentary Photography
A study of changing uses, definitions, and archives of documentary photography from 1839 to the present. Topics will include urban photography, war imagery, topographical and survey landscapes, architectural records, social reform photography, New Deal imagery, and digital documents. We will concentrate on the rich archival resources available in the museums, university archives, and historical societies in the greater Boston area.
T 3:30 – 6:15 Sichel
Graduate Courses
Graduate Courses
AH 820 – Japan on Display
This seminar explores the various ways that Japan – as a national entity, cultural entity, and artistic entity- has been presented, reformed, and received in the last 150 years. We will investigate Japan’s participation in major world’s fairs, with attention to some domestic fairs, design exhibitions, and the Olympics hosted in Japan. In studying the architecture and visual culture of national display, the course seeks to understand the conditions surrounding, and motivations for, the creation of national narratives and nationalist ideologies- intertwined with concepts of race, gender, and cultural authenticity- in an era of intensifying international encounters.
M 10:10 – 11:55 Tseng
AH 822 – Photography in Africa
Photographs of Africa between 1890 and the 1930s are typically understood as a part of colonial discourse, reflecting European stereotypes and enacting imperialistic political agendas. This course considers the role images play in determining how the world views Africa. It also examines images created and published by contemporary African photographers in order to address how people in Africa have played an active role in confronting colonialism and manipulating their own self-image.
T 3:30 – 5:15 Becker
AH 887 American Art and the Ocean
This seminar explores the wide body of American art made on, around, and about the ocean during the long nineteenth century. Focusing on artistic imaginings of the Atlantic, we will consider seascapes, ship portraits, representations of the slave trade, figureheads, expeditionary images of polar ice, paintings of shipwrecks and naval battles, and many other cultural productions, while taking up critical approaches from environmental history and the blue humanities.
W 10:10-11:55 Barrett
Click here to view a gallery page of our Spring 2021 course offering posters. (not mobile-friendly)
Spring 2021 Registration Dates
Registration for Spring 2021 courses opens based on your academic class standing as follows:
| Academic Class Year: | Start Date: | Start Time: |
| Graduate Students in COM, LAW, MET, SAR, SHA, SPH, SSW and STH | Sat, Nov 21 | 9:00 a.m. |
| Graduate Students in CFA, EGS, ENG, GRS, MED, QST, SOM and SEO | Sun, Nov 22 | 9:00 a.m. |
| MET Evening Undergraduate Degree Students | Sat, Nov 28 | 9:00 a.m. |
| Seniors* | Sat, Nov 28 | 9:00 a.m. |
| Juniors* | Sat, Nov 28 | 12:00 p.m. |
| Sophomores* | Sun, Nov 29 | 7:00 a.m. |
| Freshmen* | Sun, Nov 29 | 12:30 p.m. |
| Non-Degree Students | Tue, Nov 1 | 9:00 a.m. |