Topics course. During the reigns of the five Spanish Habsburg kings: Charles V (who was also Western Europe's Holy Roman Emperor), Philip II, Philip III, Philip IV, and Charles II (who died in 1700), Spain experienced a great flowering in the arts, producing some of the finest painters in Europe. Of major importance is also the work of the great Venetian masters, especially that of Titian. This course will focus on the paintings of Titian, El Greco, Zurbaran, Ribera, Velazquez, Murillo, Carre?o, Coello.

Topics course. The first emperor Augustus claimed to have found Rome a city of mud brick and left it clothed in marble. This seminar will focus on the transformation of the city into a world capital considering the archaeological evidence for its building complexes and the representation of the Rome in the literature of the time. This historical analysis of the Augustan city and its polyvalent meanings will also consider the perspectives offered by contemporary urban theory, mapping, and virtual reality modeling.

Topics course. A major artistic genre, portraiture invites us to examine historically changing notions of identity, personal and collective, private and public. Within a broad time span (antiquity to contemporary practices), the main focus is on Western paintings created between 1400 and 1900.

This course is a survey of contemporary art since 1950 that examines the dissolution of high art as a concept, and how media, from ceramics and textiles to photography, video and media art, came to contest that notion even as they aspired to it. In light of the convergence of discipline-specific histories and other cultural histories with modernism, this course also considers counter modernisms and the deconstruction and revision of Western art history.

Topics course. Since the beginning of cinema, the decadence of the ancient Romans has been a subject of fascination. Starting with HBO's Rome (2005-2007) and Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000), we'll explore the multiple sources of the visual tropes used to construct this universe and seek to analyze it in aesthetic, historical, and ideological terms.

This course considers the use of art and architecture as an expression of power in the Arab world, from the 7th century to the present. Beginning with the establishment of the caliphate and ending with the arts of revolution following the Arab Spring, we will investigate the shifting role of art and architecture in the quest for political dominance. With a particular focus on the arts of Cairo, Baghdad, Cordoba, Mecca, Jerusalem, Palermo, Damascus, and the modern Arabian Gulf, we will explore competing visions of power and sources of legitimacy, through the lens of artistic production. (E)

Topics course. By examining textile production (both hand weaving and industrial) and fashion (both streetwear and haute couture), this class investigates questions around cultural exchange, industrialization, and globalization. Students will gain knowledge about the flexibility of taxonomies of art, and they will learn basic analyses of textiles, dress, and fashion as they relate to African and African Diasporic cultures. Among the topics we study: Kente cloth and nationalism; waxprint cloth and globalization; Hip hop music and global fashion; and African fashion and haute couture.

Topics course. What did it mean to be Victorian in America? How was art defined during this period? Using material culture as a guide this course will explore how Americans shaped their homes, gardens, parks, and museums as expressions of their values and aspirations. Students will learn about the production and consumption of Victorian household furnishings and domestic technology. They will develop the skills and knowledge needed to explore how objects, people and meaning intersect.

A survey of the book -- as vehicle for the transmission of both text and image -- from the manuscripts of the Middle Ages to contemporary artists? books. The course will examine the principal techniques of book production -- calligraphy, illustration, papermaking, typography, bookbinding -- as well as various social and cultural aspects of book history, including questions of censorship, verbal and visual literacy, the role of the book trade, and the book as an agent of change. In addition, there will be labs in printing on the handpress and bookbinding.

Architectural, urban, and landscape design in western Europe, from the central Italian communes of the fourteenth century to the villas of Andrea Palladio. Focus on the mechanisms of patronage; the interest in Roman antiquity; principles of design; the symbolic import of articulated, decorated space; and the cultural implications of the ultramontane transmission (and transformation) of Italianate patterns in Spain, France, central Europe, and England.