This graduate seminar will introduce students to the history of manuscript illumination as well as printed illustration at the end of the Middle Ages, a period that experienced radical changes in the technology, function, and dissemination of the book. A number of theoretical perspectives and methodologies will inform our investigations, the opportunity to experience manuscripts and early printed books first-hand will deepen our analyses, and consideration of what "the book" is as a medium will carry us to the digital environment in which medieval objects are, nowadays, so often experienced.

Survey of the art and architecture of Islamic peoples from the mid-13th century CE until the 19th century CE. Covers a wide variety of media from Morocco to India.

History of Islamic art from its origins in the Byzantine and Sasanian traditions of the Near East, to its development under the Arab Empire and under subsequent Turkish and Persian dynastic patrons through the 13th century. The Islamic world from Spain to India; emphasis on the central Islamic lands of the Near East. Media include architecture, painting, textiles, ivories, ceramics, glass and crystal, and others seldom encountered in the study of Western art. Background in either art history or Near Eastern history useful.

This lecture course examines the history of the modernist movement from 1914 to the present in relationship to the primary ideologies of the 20th and 21st centuries, socialism, capitalism, and globalism. It considers the work of the founding figures - Wright, Mies, Gropius and Le Corbusier - and significant themes such as the individual vs. the collective; European vs. American approaches; modernism beyond the West; and the impact of popular culture and new technologies.

Art in the United States from 1860 to 1940 with a concentration on painting and sculpture. As new technologies and ideologies transformed the political, economic, and social fabric of the United States after the Civil War, changes in the arts were equally rapid and as dramatic, culminating in the introduction of abstraction after 1900. Some artists sought strategies to connect their work to this new, fast-paced modern world; others held to traditions and resisted change.

Addresses the history of contemporary art since 1980 from a western perspective, but in a global context. Introduces students to major issues in contemporary art and criticism such as conceptualism, new media, earth art, postmodernism, neo-expressionism, institutional critique, identity politics, political interventions, installation art, ecology, globalization, relational aesthetics, and the role of consumerism and the art market.

This course explores European art and visual culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with an emphasis on painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, and photography. We begin with the festive yet decadent Rococo, which leaves its place to Neoclassicism's utopian search for a new world in the second half of the eighteenth century. We then investigate the emergence of Romanticism from a deep disappointment with Enlightenment ideals as it transforms into a fascination with the dark recesses of the human psyche.

Architecture, sculpture and painting from 1600-1750, especially in Rome; painting of the Bolognese school; spread of the Baroque style. Emphasis on Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci, Bernini, Borromini, and Pietro da Cortona. (Planned for Fall, alternate years)

The topic of looted art appears in the news on a weekly basis, with art historians, museums, archaeologists, economists and legal scholars all weighing in on the problem.