An introduction to both the technical and conceptual aspects of drawing as a primary tool for visual expression and analysis. Art historical contexts as well as the dialogue between the arts and other disciplines will be considered. Emphasis is placed on learning to see, and to think visually.

The seminar investigates likenesses of women from ancient Greece and Rome. Facial features, body language, hair and clothing will be studied with reference to contemporary social customs, theories of character and beauty, medical treatises, beliefs in deity and in the afterlife. Special attention will go to original objects in the Mount Holyoke Art Museum, including marble portraits and coins depicting classical queens and empresses.

Buried in the volcanic eruption of 79 CE, Pompeii provides an astounding level of preservation for fresco, sculpture, and luxury arts in addition to temples, baths, houses, shops, theaters, and streets. The rediscovery of the ancient site since the eighteenth century had a significant impact upon European art and literature. The course examines the surviving environment and artifacts created in the late republic and early empire and considers the history of archaeological and art historical methods and the romantic visions of Pompeii in art, theatre, and film up to the present.

Through investigation of major works produced in the Muslim world between the seventh and seventeenth centuries from Spain to India, this course explores the ways in which art and architecture were used to embody the faith, accommodate its particular needs, and express the power of its rulers. Topics include the calligraphy of the Qur'an, illustrated literature, the architecture of the mosque, and the aristocratic palace.

The multicultural course will survey architecture, sculpture, painting, and other arts of India from the earliest times to the twenty-first century. Students will explore the various arts as material expressions of a relationship between religious beliefs, geography and cultural conditions of the subcontinent of India in different historical periods. Class sessions will also provide opportunities for an examination of cross-cultural issues relating to the study of non-Western art in a Western academic discipline.

This course examines the great ruptures in European art that today we call modernist. It relates aspects of that art to the equally great transformations in European society: revolutionary ferment, the rise and consolidation of industrial capitalism, colonization and its discontents, and world war. Among the major figures to be studied are Duchamp, Matisse, Malevich, Picasso, Seurat, and van Gogh.

This survey outlines the arts in Italy from the late thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, a time of major cultural transformation. To trace these developments, we will take a geographic approach, focusing on cities and societies in order to understand the diverse social networks that linked artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo with their publics.

A survey of architecture as a functional and expressive medium from the ancient world to the present. Accommodating domestic life, religious ritual, political, commercial, and leisure activities, architecture both shapes and reflects the natural environment, technology, social values and visions. While the history of Western architecture constitutes the primary focus, the course will include buildings from around the world.

This seminar will explore innovations in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women's verse. By investigating experiments with narrative, genre, stanza form, meter, and figurative language, we will contemplate what political, social, and ideological problems women writers attempted to present and perhaps solve through linguistic creativity. Larger questions include how to define 'feminist poetics' and what potential such a project might afford poets and thinkers today.

This course will examine the films of Alfred Hitchcock and the afterlife of Hitchcock in contemporary U.S. culture. We will interpret Hitchcock films in a variety of theoretical frames, including feminist and queer theories, and in shifting historical contexts, including the Cold War. We will also devote substantial attention to the legacy of Hitchcock in remakes, imitations, and parodies.