Art History

The Art History Department studies the forms, functions, meanings, and theoretical underpinnings of the visual arts, broadly construed to encompass such activities as performance, construction, and installation as well as painting, sculpture, photography, and architecture. Our department considers works of art in historically and culturally specific ways, situating them within systems of belief, habits of visual literacy, practices of self-formation, social and political ideologies, patterns of sacred and secular discourse, assumptions about intentionality and authority, and currencies of global and transnational exchange. We comprise four collaborative faculty clusters: Ancient Mediterranean and American; Medieval/Renaissance/Baroque; Modern/Contemporary European, American, and African; and Architectural Studies. As a department we strive to introduce students to a rich variety of approaches to art and its study, to model for them analytical and critical thinking, and to encourage lucid writing and thoughtful response. At the graduate level, it is our mission to train students in the methods and practices of the field and to prepare them for advanced, artwork-based, interdisciplinary research with a respect for primary evidence and cultural contexts, past and present, so that they can successfully pursue careers in academic or museum work with benefit for the broader community.

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Concentrations

Faculty

Chair: Sarah McPhee
Director of Undergraduate Studies: Linda Merrill
Core: C.Jean Campbell Christina E Crawford Todd Cronan Susan Gagliardi Dana Haugaard Lisa Lee Sarah McPhee Walter Melion Linda Merrill Rune Nyord Megan O'Neil Elizabeth Pastan Renee Stein Eric Varner Bonna Wescoat

Courses

ARTHIST 100-Level Courses

Introduction to fundamental concepts of art history through 101 representative works of art and architecture produced in Egypt, the Near East, Europe, the Americas, and the Islamic world before 1600. Focus on the formal structure and historical contexts in which the works were made and understood.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Introduction to the fundamental concepts of art history through 102 representative works of art and architecture produced in Europe, Africa, and the U.S. between 1600 and the present day. Focus on the works' formal structure as well as the historical contexts in which they were made and understood.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

An introduction to architecture considering the built environment we experience daily as well as historical buildings and practices. We will study architecture as a process of design, negotiation, construction, and reception and explore critical and social issues of representation and meaning.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Great buildings stand as icons to their cultures: the pyramids, Parthenon, St. Peter's, Center Pompidou. In this course, we explore these and other monuments asking why and how they have driven the development of western architecture from antiquity to contemporary America.

Credit Hours: 4
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Limited to freshmen and introductory in nature, these seminars may feature discussion, readings, museum visits, and presentations.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: FS
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

ARTHIST 200-Level Courses

This hands-on design studio introduces basic architectural concepts and techniques through making. Regular design presentations and feedback on drawing and modeling projects will teach students rigorous design methodology and how it leads to meaningful contributions to the built environment.

Credit Hours: 4
GER: XA
Requisites: ARTHIST 103 and (ARTHIST 104 or ART_OX 104) or equivalent transfer credit as prerequisite.
Cross-Listed: None

An introduction to drafting, modeling, rendering and animation in which students explore the potential of the computer as an active analytical and design instrument. We take a hands-on approach, focusing on two projects selected according to students' own disciplinary interests.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: None
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

This course introduces students to digital humanities as a way of approaching art history and architecture. DH methods enable new ways of engaging with historical and cultural materials. Students will learn about these techniques by working with digital tools and exploring existing digital projects.

Credit Hours: 2
GER: None
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

An introduction to the art of ancient Egypt from the late Predynastic Period through the Old and Middle Kingdoms to the end of the Second Intermediate Period.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

An introduction to the art of ancient Egypt from the beginning of the New Kingdom to the conquest of Egypt by Rome.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Studies East Asian calligraphy in artistic, cultural, and historical contexts, starting with the immediate aspects of calligraphy as a traditional art form, and then reaching beyond the classically defined discipline to examine its aesthetic values, intellectual metaphors, and moral criteria.

Credit Hours

GER

HAP

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

EAS 216
CHN 216
ANT 217

Credit Hours

GER

HAPW

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

EAS 216W
CHN 216W
ANT 217W

The material culture of the Greek Bronze Age architecture. ceramic, glyptic, sculpture, and metalwork; an investigation of the human activities surrounding these artifacts, the cultural systems in which they operated, the conditions and methods of production use and exchange.

Credit Hours

GER

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

CL 220

An investigation of ancient Greek art and architecture from its Iron Age beginnings through the legacy of Alexander the Great, concentrating on the creation of monumental stone sculpture and ordered buildings, visual interpretation of Greek mythology, and the interaction of art, ritual and politics.

Credit Hours

GER

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

CL 221

The Roman genius for cultural assimilation and innovative techniques transformed the art of the ancient Mediterranean. The course investigates major achievements in sculpture, painting, and architecture and their resonances with Roman politics, society, and religion.

Credit Hours

GER

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

CL 222

Introduction to the art and architecture of ancient Mesoamerica (lower Mexico and upper Central America), particularly the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec cultures. Includes artworks in jade, ceramic, stone, obsidian, and bone from the Carlos Museum.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Introduction to the art and architecture of ancient Central and South America (Northern and Central Andes) with emphasis on Costa Rica and Peru. Art of various media in the Carlos Museum collection will be featured.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Explores of the world of late antiquity including the Roman mystery cults, arts of the Jews and early Christians. From these diverse beginnings, we will examine the rise of major new cultural centers in Ravenna, Byzantium, the British Isles, and Damascus.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Arts of the Romanesque and Gothic period, including architecture, sculpture, stained glass, and manuscript illumination. Major topics include the revival of monumental sculpture, the cult of relics, the rise of urban centers, and the development of a stone-vaulted architecture.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Medieval architecture revolutionized the building techniques and aesthetic principles employed in the ancient world. These spaces served new practices, worshipers and pilgrims. This course examines how and why these soaring cathedrals, Byzantine churches and Islamic mosques came about.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Innovations in painting and sculpture of Germany and the Low Countries between 1400 and 1600; emphasis on methods of verisimilar imitation, on art as an instrument of soul formation, on the rise of new pictorial genres.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

An introduction to the art and architecture of Italy from the late thirteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth, featuring such artists as Giotto, Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Titian.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

A lecture/laboratory course on how artists accomplish their work in the face of changes in values, government mandates, and the economy. .

Credit Hours

GER

HSC

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

THEA 243
DANC 243
MUS 243

An introduction to the masters who transformed the visual arts in Europe between 1400 and 1600, from the age of Jan van Eyck to that of Michelangelo and his followers.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Painting in Italy, Spain, France, Flanders, Holland, and England to the time of the French Revolution. Emphasis on the production of such artists as Caravaggio, Rubens, Poussin, El Greco, Velasquez, Hals, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Vermeer, Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher, and Greuze.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

The cultural context of selected traditions of European art and architecture, from ancient Mediterranean to eighteenth century, exploring the interplay of culture with historical circumstances. May be repeated when topic changes.

Credit Hours: 1 - 4
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Credit Hours: 1 - 5
GER: HAPW
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Focused survey of European art from around 1851 to 1900, including works by the Realists, Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and Symbolists. Integrates art with the political, philosophical, and cultural currents of the time and examines the evolution of modernism.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Focused survey of modern art in Europe with an emphasis on aesthetic, social, and historical dimensions of modernist practices. Movements include Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Constructivism, and Surrealism. Writings by artists and critics will be considered in relation to the art.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Credit Hours: 4
GER: HAW
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Focused survey of avant-garde developments in the visual arts from 1945 to the present, ranging from painting and sculpture to performance and installation. Emphasis will be placed on the critical concepts and the aesthetic, social, and historical implications of these cultural activities.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

American painting, sculpture, and architecture of the Colonial, Federal and early Victorian periods. Topics include the work of John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Latrobe, A. J. Downing, William Sidney Mount, and Winslow Homer.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

American painting, sculpture, and architecture of the later Victorian and modern periods. Topics include the work of John Singer Sargent, J. A. M. Whistler, Thomas Eakins, H. H. Richardson, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Georgia O'Keeffe.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

A survey of U.S. painting and its context from the colonial period to within two decades of the present. Artists considered include Copley, Peale, Church, Eakins, Whistler, Ryder, O'Keeffe, Hopper, Pollock, Rauschenberg, Rothko, and others.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

An introduction to the history and interpretation of major developments in architectural theory and practice in Europe and the United States from the late nineteenth century to World War II.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Introduces students to the ideas and forms of the built environment from WWII to the present, investigating how buildings and urban spaces of the late 20th - early 21st century were conceived and realized to affect local, and increasingly global, debates about the role of spatial design in society.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

The purpose of this course is to examine African American art and some of the historical and cultural considerations that affected the nature of its developments.

Credit Hours

GER

HAE

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

AAS 279

This course focuses on arts linked to the African continent as well as operations of museums. It examines how objects enter museum collections and what information accompanies objects when they arrive at museums. The course does not require previous study of Africa, African arts, or museums.

Credit Hours

GER

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

AFS 282

Focuses on one of several diverse, non-European art historical traditions, such as ancient Egypt, pre-Hispanic Americas, medieval Islam, Oceania, and sub-Saharan Africa. May be repeated for credit when topic changes.

Credit Hours: 1 - 4
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Credit Hours: 1 - 5
GER: HAPW
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Art and architecture studied on site, in locations other than Atlanta, in Europe, the Americas, Asia, or the African continent. May be repeated for credit when topic varies.

Credit Hours: 4
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

ARTHIST 300-Level Courses

Topics could include the treasures of Tutankhamun; images of women in Egyptian art; and the art of New Kingdom Egypt. May be repeated for credit when topic changes, up to a maximum of twelve hours.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Topics could include ancient sanctuaries; early Greece: real and imagined and religious festivals; myth and art in ancient Greece; and Greek architecture. May be repeated for credit when topic changes, up to a maximum of twelve hours.

Credit Hours: 1 - 4
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Credit Hours: 1 - 5
GER: HAPW
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Topics include textiles of the Americas; sculpture and museology; Aztec and Inka art; art and shamanism. May be repeated for credit when topic changes, up to a maximum of twelve hours.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Topics include: Medieval Monumental Stained Glass, Hagiography,and Manuscript Illumination. May be repeated for credit when topic changes, up to a maximum of twelve hours.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

The cathedral is a symbol of the Heavenly Jerusalem, masterpiece of structural engineering, reflection of Scholastic ideals, visual Bible for the illiterate, and house of worship. This course will explore all these aspects in the earliest French monuments that gave birth to Gothic architecture.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

An introduction to the early formative period of Islamic art in the sixth through the thirteenth centuries, drawing upon architecture, ceramics, textiles, metalwork, and manuscript illumination.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Topics in Italian or Northern art, ranging from Giotto to Pieter Bruegel. From artistic centers such as Florence, Rome, and Venice, to Bruges, Antwerp, and Haarlem. May be repeated for credit when topic changes up to a maximum of twelve hours.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Credit Hours: 4
GER: HAPW
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Traditional genres of African art with a focus on masks and figure sculpture in West and Central African city-states and chiefdoms from 1500 to European colonization. May be repeated for credit when topic changes, up to a maximum of twelve hours.

Credit Hours

GER

HAP

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

AAS 355
AFS 355

Topics could include problems in the study of Rubens; poetics and painting; the Carraci reform of art and its consequences; and problems in the study of Rembrandt. May be repeated for credit when topic changes, up to a maximum of twelve hours.

Credit Hours: 4
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Examines definitions of fundamental concepts such as innovation, individuality, genius, authorship, copying in Chinese history, but also draws on other cultures as points of comparison. Includes hands-on studies of manuscripts and artifacts from the collections of the Rose Library and Carlos Museum.

Credit Hours

GER

HAP

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

CHN 361

Credit Hours

GER

HAPW

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

CHN 361W

This course studies Chinese cultural history through the lens of artifacts, including paintings, calligraphies, porcelains, bronzewares, costumes. Methods in archeology, anthropology and literary criticism will be applied to illustrate ideas, tastes and technologies that shape Chinese social life.

Credit Hours

GER

HAP

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

CHN 362

Credit Hours

GER

HAPW

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

CHN 362W

An exploration of the complex interactions between written texts and the visual arts in Japan from the classical era to the present. Discussion will include prose, poetry, printing, picture scrolls, calligraphy, woodblock prints, and film.

Credit Hours

GER

HAP

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

JPN 363
EAS 363

Credit Hours

GER

HAPW

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

JPN 363W
EAS 363W

Treatment of the major issues raised by the new genres of art that have resulted from the African experience of European colonization.

Credit Hours

GER

HAPE

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

AFS 386

Developments in African American art in the United States in the twentieth century considering the key artists/movement/moments and larger themes in African American society and culture. May be repeated for credit when topic changes, up to a maximum of twelve hours.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Possible topics include Post-Impressionism and its consequences; Matisse & Picasso; Art and Politics between the Wars; Dada and Surrealism; the Avant-Garde; Abstract Art; What is Art?; Theories of Modernism. May be repeated for credit when topic changes, up to a maximum of twelve hours.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Credit Hours: 4
GER: HAPW
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Knowledge of Russian is not required. Introduction to interdisciplinary study of 20th-century Russian literature and the visual arts, with focus on issues of art and politics, time, space and identity in symbolist, supermatist, constructivist, socialist realist and post-Soviet "vision". In English.

Credit Hours

GER

HSC

Requisites

None

Cross-Listed

RUSS 373
FILM 375

This course focuses on American art created in the decades surrounding the Civil War (1861-1865), exploring the ways American artists responded to that turbulent era through paintings, sculpture, photography, and popular prints.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Credit Hours: 4
GER: HAPW
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Topics could include romanticism in England and the United States, issues in American painting; African diaspora ritual arts; and African American painting and sculpture. May be repeated for credit when topic changes, up to a maximum of twelve hours.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Special topics in Art History. May be repeated for credit when topic varies.

Credit Hours: 1 - 3
GER: None
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Special topics in Art History. May be repeated for credit when topic varies.

Credit Hours: 1 - 4
GER: CW
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Students will explore the principle issues surrounding the care and preservation of art and cultural property, considering materials, deterioration, object history, and treatment.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: XA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Through technical investigation of museum objects, students will explore material choice, working process, authenticity, provenance, and restoration history.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: XA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Topics could include African art and architecture; colonial and contemporary African art; and arts of ancient Africa. May be repeated for credit when topic changes, up to a maximum of twelve hours.

Credit Hours: 3
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Advanced seminars dealing with various specialized problems in the history of art from antiquity to modern times, such as individual artists, genres (e.g. portraiture, landscape); themes (e.g. theory, iconography); artistic movements and museum studies. May be repeated for credit when topic varies.

Credit Hours: 4
GER: HAP
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Supervised participation in museum, gallery, or other art-related activity. Requires approval by the ARTHIST Internship Coordinator. May be repeated, with permission, for up to 12 credit hours. Credit ranges from one (for 50 hrs., or 4 hrs./week) to four (200 hrs., or 14 hrs./week).

Credit Hours: 1 - 4
GER: XA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None

Reading and research projects decided upon between the student and a member of the faculty, with final approval from the chair. May be repeated for credit.

Credit Hours: 1 - 12
GER: XA
Requisites: None
Cross-Listed: None