This cross-disciplinary studio course involves two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and time-based approaches. Students are introduced to a range of conceptual and practical frameworks for making and thinking about art. This course is strongly recommended for students considering the art major. By emphasizing visual thinking, risk-taking, and critical reflection, this course also has relevance for other disciplines. A required fee of $25 to cover supplied materials is charged at the time of registration. Enrollment limited to 15. Priority given to first-year students. (E)

An introduction to the use of digital media in the context of contemporary art practice. Students explore content development and design principles through a series of projects involving text, still image and moving image. This class involves critical discussions of studio projects in relation to contemporary art and theory. A required fee of $25 to cover group-supplied materials is charged at the time of registration. Enrollment limited to 14.

Topics course In the 18th century, European aristocrats and others undertook journeys, often several years in length, to develop and hone their appreciation of history, culture and the visual arts. While sojourning here and there, tourists sought printed images that recorded the buildings, paintings and sculptures they had encountered, and printmakers in Rome and elsewhere strove to turn this demand to lucrative account.

The meanings we ascribe to art works of any culture or time period are a direct result of our own preoccupations and methods. This colloquium gives a broad overview of contemporary debates in the history of art and locate these methods within art history's own intellectual history. Among the topics we consider: technologies of vision, histories of interpreting art across cultural boundaries, colonialism and the history of art and globalism.

Topics course. Students may take up to four semesters of ARH 280 Art Historical Studies, as long as the topics are different. Kodak's 2012 declaration of bankruptcy, and the OED's announcement of "selfie" as its 2013 Word of the Year, are historical events that signal a transformative moment in vernacular photography: when analog practices have been eclipsed by digital, dematerialized operations. This course reflects back on the material objects that we refer to variously as snapshot, amateur and vernacular-photographs.

This course spans the history of European architecture, focusing on urban development and design from the French Revolution to WWII. What did it mean to ascend the first immense iron structures, or to wipe ornament from the surface of that deemed modern? How was the Gothic made newly relevant, and why did handicraft reemerge during the industrial revolution? We study the period's most important developments (Historicism, Bauhaus, etc., to iconoclastic measures undertaken during war and revolution) in relation to socio-cultural debates about space and utility.

This course investigates how New World explorations were translated into visual and material culture. Focusing upon geographies, `anthropologies,' material objects, and pictorial and written records, we analyze how travel to and through the Americas reshaped the lives of consumers and thinkers-from food and finery (corn, chocolate, red dye, gold and silver) to published narratives and collections of objects made in the colonial Americas. Case studies are drawn from Canada, Mexico, Peru, the Great Plains of the United States and the Hawai'ian Islands.

Post Counter-Reformation Italy and the reconsideration of art theory and design at the Academy of the Carracci in Bologna beginning about 1580, the emergence of a new artistic interpretation brought about by Caravaggio and his followers (first in Rome and then across Europe), and the subsequent change in styles to meet various political and regional needs are examined through painting and sculpture in Italy: with such artists as Annibale and Ludovico Carracci, Caravaggio, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Pietro da Cortona and Guido Reni; in France: Simon Vouet, Poussin, Claude and Georges de La Tour; and

This course surveys Islamic visual art and architecture from the spread of Islam in the seventh-century until the present day, covering the Dome of the Rock and Persian miniatures to French Orientalism and Arab Spring graffiti. Attention is focused upon the relationships between Islamic visual idioms and localized religious, political and socioeconomic circumstances. In particular, lectures and readings examine the vital roles played by theology, royal patronage, gift exchange, trade and workshop practices in the formulation of visual traditions.

This course explores how art and architecture have profoundly shaped visual experiences and shifting understandings of past and present. While featuring different case studies, each section includes work with original objects, site visits and writings about art.