Architectural Studies 126 - Terrible Beauty: Early Modern European Art and Architecture
TU/TH | 2:35 PM - 3:50 PM
(Offered as ARHA 126, ARCH 126, and EUST 126) In this course, we will explore the environments, materials, and representations of the early modern European world. Taking an expansive view, we will look at a wide range of European objects and sites including maps, frescos, oil paintings, tapestries, coffee pots, prints, churches, grottoes, and studios. We will consider how these artworks and monuments were products of cultural exchange and imperial entanglements with Africa, the Americas, South and East Asia, and the Ottoman Empire. While we study objects of luxury, we will learn about the territorial expansion, extraction of resources, and exploitation of human beings that allowed the arts to flourish in Europe during these tumultuous and formative centuries. The course will follow a roughly chronological arc, from Columbus’s invasion of the Americas in 1492 to the French and Haitian Revolutions in the 1790s. Lectures will be thematic, covering topics like changing conceptions of artistic labor, how portraiture shaped gender, the material cultures of coffee and tea, and imperialist landscapes. In addition to lectures, we will study objects in person in local collections, experiment with making, and build research and writing skills. Throughout the course we will grapple with how art shaped history, interrogate how those histories shape the present, and ask ourselves if it is possible to reconcile the terrible and the beautiful.
Limited to 25 students. Fall 2025: Assistant Professor Dostal.
How to handle overenrollment: If significant demand would consider adding a discussion section.
Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: Build skills in visual analysis, critical reading, and argumentative writing; engage in independent research, group work, and creative thinking; class will include field trips and collections-based assignments; students will be assessed on participation, two short papers, one group project, and a cumulative reflection.