ARHA109 Introduction to Western Art I: Ancient to Medieval

This course introduces the art and architecture of the Western world during the ancient and medieval periods. The artistic traditions of the Near East, Europe, and the wider Mediterranean will be surveyed from the prehistoric era to ca. 1400 CE. Questions of style, content, function, and cultural and historical context will be examined alongside such perennial concerns as religion, rulership, social class, luxury, and the definition of art within its ancient and medieval milieus.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: MDST131
Prereq: None

ARHA110 Introduction to Western Art II: Renaissance to Modern

This course surveys the development of European art from the Renaissance through the modern period. We will examine art's changing status within specific social and artistic contexts: from the Church and court of the Renaissance, through the formation of art academies in the late 16th century, to the development of an increasingly individualized artistic practice that led to the formation of an avant-garde. Classes will be organized chronologically and touch upon the following themes and ideas: politics, religion, and patronage; perception and experience; artistic identity and originality; relationships between artistic media; and the rise of a public sphere for art.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA127 Venice and the Renaissance

Venice -- a city built almost impossibly on a forest of stilts sunk into the mud of the lagoon and buttressed by powerful myths of divine origins, permanence, and prosperity - produced some of the most spectacular works of Renaissance art and architecture. This introductory-level course on the art and culture of Venice's "golden age" considers the works of artists such as Carpaccio, Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, and architects such as Codussi, Sansovino, and Palladio in the context of the city's unique setting, social and governmental structure, cultural and political milieu, and larger geopolitical significance. It also positions Venice's artistic production within the broader framework of early modern Europe, exploring its connections with Byzantium and the Islamic world. The course also introduces students to key issues and methods of art history.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: RL&L217
Prereq: None

ARHA140F Van Gogh and the Myth of Genius (FYS)

This seminar will investigate in depth the career of this immensely popular and influential artist. Van Gogh has been the subject of much myth-making--both in his time and today--in which he appears as the quintessential mad genius whose passionate and tormented emotions become the stuff of art. We will both investigate the formation of this myth and view it critically, balancing it against the artist's own account of his career in his paintings and prodigious correspondence. Van Gogh's extensive, insightful, and fascinating writing begs the question of how one should treat an artist's statements when interpreting his works. We will also examine the role of biography in art. Finally, rather than viewing the artist as an isolated creator, we will situate his work within the artistic landscape of late 19th-century Europe, and especially France, where he spent his most productive years as an artist, 1886--1890.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: RL&L140F
Prereq: None

ARHA141 Van Gogh: Modernity, Utopia, and Nineteenth-Century Art

This course will investigate in-depth the career of this immensely popular and influential artist. Van Gogh has been the subject of much myth making--both in his time and today--in which he appears as the quintessential mad genius whose passionate and tormented emotions become the stuff of art. This class goes beyond the media image of the artist and looks hard at his paintings, drawings, and letters, placing them in their respective artistic, literary, and historical contexts. Van Gogh engaged with social issues, above all the plight of peasants, artisans, the poor, and the marginalized--the most vulnerable members of society. He sought to give form to their experience in ways that were mediated by Dutch and French landscape painting and French naturalist literature. Upon moving to Paris, van Gogh absorbed the lessons of Impressionist, Neo-impressionist, and Symbolist painters before moving to the south of France, where he created his most memorable works of sun-drenched fields, bar and café interiors, and common workers. Toward the end of his life, he increasingly conceived of art as a site for utopian projections and emotional solace. We shall study the work of this immensely productive artist and along the way develop art historical skills, including visual and textual analysis, historical and contextual interpretation, how to evaluate an artist's personal correspondence in relationship to his painted oeuvre, and independent research.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: RL&L141
Prereq: None

ARHA151 European Architecture and Urbanism to 1750

This course is an introduction to architecture and related visual art as an expression of premodern Western European civilizations, from ancient Greece through the early 18th century, including Roman, Early Christian, Byzantine, early medieval, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque architecture, landscapes, and cities. The focus is on analysis of form in architecture and the allied arts. Emphasis is on relationships between style and patronage. In each era, how does architecture help to constitute its society's identity? What is the relationship between style and ideology? How do architects respond to the works of earlier architects, either innovatively or imitatively? How do patrons respond to the works of their predecessors, either locally or distantly? How are works of architecture positioned within those structures of power that the works, in turn, help to define? How do monuments celebrate selected aspects of history and suppress others? How were the major buildings configured, spatially and materially? Emphasis will be on continuities and distinctions between works across time, seeing Western traditions as a totality over centuries. Lectures and readings convey different historiographic approaches to these issues.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: MDST151
Prereq: None

ARHA161 Objects of Authority: Arts of African Royal Courts

This course will focus on African arts produced in courtly contexts between the eleventh and twentieth centuries. We will study domestic art objects that were integral to the exercise of power and authority in several African court traditions such as Benin, Ife, Kuba, Ashanti, Igbo, and others. Students will learn about formal qualities and thematic concerns that locate certain artworks exclusively within the royal lineage and monarchy. They will also come to understand how such artworks were deployed within chieftaincy circles to wield great spiritual and mystical power. Class readings and discussions will help us navigate questions of hierarchy and authority to transcend elitist narratives of power regarding African arts.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA162 History of African Art and Material Culture

This course offers an introduction to the rich and varied visual arts of Africa. By examining certain visual practices that evoke a distorted understanding of the continent, the course confronts stereotypes about the African continent. There will be an examination of compelling objects that represent a variety of African visual cultures, both historical and contemporary. The course offers evidence of a continent with a history to counter the idea that Africa is "frozen in time" and that African "traditions" never change. Weekly readings aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the art of diverse ethnicities to counter the notion that "Africa is a country" and "a continent in isolation."
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA172 Memory Image: Introduction to Art (as) History

One premise of art history is that works of art necessarily register or encode the time and place of their making. Some art practices, though, operate historically in more than an artifactual sense, whether by revisiting the art historical past through citation, or by actively responding to the socioeconomic, technological, or cultural conditions of their present. Works that comprise the focus of this class engage directly in the project of historical representation and research, recasting these activities through painting, photography, installation, and performance. Spanning a series of case studies from the 1960s through the present, this course provides an introduction to the practice of art history by way of recent works of art that have made the resources (and limitations) of historical methodology a subject of investigation. What is the role of art as a form of historical memory in an increasingly image-soaked world?
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA172F Memory Image: Introduction to Art (as) History (FYS)

One premise of art history is that works of art necessarily register or encode the time and place of their making. Some art practices, though, operate historically in more than an artifactual sense, whether by revisiting the art historical past through citation, or by actively responding to the socioeconomic, technological, or cultural conditions of their present. Works that comprise the focus of this class engage directly in the project of historical representation and research, recasting these activities through painting, photography, installation, and performance (from experiments in abstraction to queered archives and restaged mass protests). Spanning a series of case studies from post-Holocaust New York School painting to post-Katrina site-specificity, this course provides an introduction to the practice of art history by way of recent works of art that have made the resources (and limitations) of historical methodologies a subject of investigation. What is the role of art as historical memory in an increasingly image-soaked world?
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA175 Japanese Narrative Painting

The narrative handscroll (emaki) has been a major form of Japanese pictorial art from its origins in the eighth century. Characterized by a long, horizontal format designed to be unrolled and viewed in shoulder-width sections, the narrative handscroll combines text and image in a linear progression of time and space. This course will cover the historical evolution of the handscroll format, its inter-relation with the written word, as well as its artistic roots and subsequent impact. Special attention will be paid to the translation of the handscroll's narrative modes and imagery to large-scale painting formats, such as six-panel folding screens (byobu) and hanging scrolls (kakejiku). Among the questions to be considered are: What are the representational and narrative strategies that painters of narrative scrolls employ to tell their stories? How do we define the relationships between written text and visual image, and what roles do they play? What were the viewing practices for narrative scrolls, and in what contexts were they viewed and read? Through an investigation of a dozen masterworks, including the "Illustrated Scrolls of the Tale of Genji," "Illustrated Legends of Mount Shigi," and "Life of Saint Ippen," the course will familiarize students with the major modes--literary, hagiographic, historical, didactic--of Japanese narrative painting from the 12th through 18th century, as well as the major interpretive methods used by art historians to search for "meaning" in the visual arts--authorship, connoisseurship, formalism, iconography/iconology, semiotics, feminism, and social art history.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA181F Mughal India: Introduction to the Practice of Art History (FYS)

Founded in northern India in the early 1500s, the Mughal empire was one of the largest centralized states in the history of the early modern world. During the two centuries of their effective rule over most of the Indian subcontinent, the Mughal emperors and their subordinates were prolific patrons of the arts, overseeing the production of lavishly illustrated books and picture albums and commissioning such architectural masterpieces as the Taj Mahal. This course offers an introduction not only to the art and culture of Mughal India but also to the practice of art history itself, through a sequence of six thematic units exploring and applying different methods that are central to the discipline. Each unit begins with critical reading and discussion of one or two key theoretical or methodological statements, then continues through application to case studies drawn from Mughal India. The units include (1) techniques of visual description and formal analysis, (2) the concept of style and stylistic analysis, (3) the analysis of meaning in visual images (iconography and iconology), (4) models of time and the historical explanation of change, (5) architectural and historical analysis of buildings and their sites, and (6) historiographic assessment of debates and changing interpretations within art history. Each unit culminates in a writing exercise designed to provide students with structured experience in some of the various modes of art historical writing. The course is appropriate as an introduction both to art history and to Mughal art.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: GSAS181F
Prereq: None

ARHA201 Pyramids and Funeral Pyres: Death and the Afterlife in Greece and Egypt

This course explores the archaeology of death and burial in Egypt and Greece, from the royal burials in the pyramids at Giza, to the cremated remains of warriors in Lefkandi, Greece, to the humble burials of infants under house floors. Drawing upon a blend of archaeological, art historical, and mythological evidence, we will examine how the funerary practices and the very notions of the soul, the body, and the afterlife compare in these two societies. We will also explore how social class, gender, and ethnicity influenced those ideas. The course will also provide an introduction to archaeological theory and the interpretive strategies employed by archaeologists, art historians, and historians in the reconstruction of ancient societies.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CLST
Identical With: CLST244, ARCP244
Prereq: None

ARHA202 Art and Archaeology of the Bronze Age Mediterranean

This course is an introduction to the history, art, and archaeology of the Bronze Age Mediterranean. Throughout the semester we will explore the development of civilization and high society in the Aegean world (mainland Greece, the islands, Cyprus, and Crete), the rise of Minoan and Mycenaean palace power, the origin of the biblical Philistines, and, of course, the historical evidence for the Trojan War. We also look at the contemporary Near Eastern cultures with which these societies interacted, exploring the reciprocal exchange between the Aegean world and Egypt, Syria, and the Hittite kingdoms. For each period we will survey the major archaeological sites (civic and cultic), examine archaeological questions, and study the development of sculpture, painting, ceramics, and architectural trends in light of political and social changes.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CLST, SBS-CLST
Identical With: CLST201, ARCP201
Prereq: None

ARHA203 Survey of Greek Archaeology and Art

This course introduces the art and archaeology of Greek civilization from Mycenaean palaces of the Bronze Age, to tombs of warriors and battlefields of Marathon, through the theatrical and political centers of democratic Athens. Throughout the semester we will survey the major archaeological sites (civic and cultic) for each period and study development of sculpture, painting, ceramics, and architectural trends in light of political (propaganda!) and social changes. More than a tour of monuments and mosaics, however, this course will show students how to interpret and apply literature, material science, anthropology, and art history to address archaeological questions, and to consider the relationship (ancient and modern) between social trends and material evidence.



This course counts toward the archaeology/archaeology science track.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CLST
Identical With: CLST214, ARCP214
Prereq: None

ARHA204 Off with its Pedestal! The Greek Vase as Art and Artifact

This course explores the dual role of the Greek vase--as objét d'art and as material culture. The first half of the course will trace the origins and development of Greek vase painting from Mycenaean pictorial vases to the masters of Attic Red Figure, examining the painters, the themes, and (often titillating!) subject matter in its social and historical context. The second half will focus on the vase as an artifact and tool for reconstructing social values and economic trends throughout the Mediterranean. We will look at rip-offs, knock-offs, and how much Attic pottery was really worth, and evaluate the use of pottery as an indicator of immigration or cultural imitation. The course will include work with 3D scanning and digital optimization, as well as the construction of a virtual museum exhibit.



The course falls under the Archaeology/Archaeological Science track of the Classics/CCIV Major requirements.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CLST
Identical With: CLST283, ARCP285
Prereq: None

ARHA205 Visualizing the Classical

This project-based learning course integrates archaeology, classical texts, and the technologies of virtual construction to rebuild the material remains of the ancient world. Student teams will draw upon theories of urban design, engineering, and performance theory to create a material or virtual reconstruction of a classical built environment or object. Through the reconstruction of such spaces, we will explore how the ancient builders and craftsmen--through landscape, sound, light, functionality/monumentality, and spatial relationships--shaped the experience of the ancient viewer.



The course is divided into three modules. The first module will use case studies to survey the principles of archaeological reconstruction and explore the concepts and language of design and planning used by archaeologists and design specialists. These case studies will range from Greek and Roman temples, to city blocks and houses, to public spaces for entertainment or governance. In the second module, a series of technology workshops and in-class projects will give students hands-on training in the analytical mapping, modeling, interpretive, and reconstructive approaches such as ArcGIS, CAD, Sketchup and 3D printing. This practical training will form the foundation for the third module, during which student teams will apply these technologies to collaborate on the reconstruction of an ancient built environment or object. During this section of the course, students will discuss and collectively troubleshoot the problems of design and reconstruction they encounter as they go. Students will present their work at the end of the course, and discussion will focus on the insight that the process of reconstruction has offered into principles of ancient design and the values of ancient communities.



This seminar will be of interest to students with experience in classical studies, archaeology, studio arts, and digital design.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CLST
Identical With: CLST341, ARCP341
Prereq: None

ARHA206 Art and Society in Ancient Pompeii

This seminar surveys the art, architecture, and material remains of the cities buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. Through readings, class discussions, and student research presentations, we will explore the ways in which this material can be used to study the social and political life of a small Roman city and examine the unique evidence for reconstructing the private life of Roman citizens, from their participation in local politics and government, to their religious beliefs and lives, to the interior decoration of their homes and their burial customs.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CLST
Identical With: CLST234, ARCP234
Prereq: None

ARHA207 Survey of Roman Archaeology and Art

This course begins with the art, archaeology, and culture of the Etruscans and their important contributions to the early history of Rome. After a brief examination of the influences of Hellenistic culture on Rome, the course surveys the archaeological evidence illustrating the principal architectural and artistic achievements of the Romans down to the reign of Constantine the Great.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: CLST223, ARCP223
Prereq: None

ARHA208 ¿Convivencia o conflicto?: Las tres culturas de la España medieval a través del arte (CLAC.50)

For eight centuries, Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived side by side as neighbors on the Iberian Peninsula in a carefully negotiated state of coexistence known as "convivencia." While much of the written record is full of enmity, religious polemic, and mutual suspicion, the artistic record tells another version, of lives lived in close proximity giving rise to shared cultural practices, artistic tastes, and long interludes of mutual wellbeing. This Spanish-language section complements the ARHA 310 curriculum, by exploring the resonance between medieval experiences of identity, pluralism, appropriation, and exchange and our own uneasy attempts at building a multiethnic, multicultural society. This class will be conducted in Spanish. ARHA 208 is open to intermediate and advanced Spanish learners (SPAN 113 and above), bilingual students, and heritage speakers. Enrollment in ARHA 310 is optional but encouraged.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: None
Identical With: CGST208
Prereq: None

ARHA209 Mosque and Cathedral: Islam and the West, c. 600-1500

This course examines the interaction between the Islamic world and medieval Europe from the perspective of art and architecture, from late antiquity and the rise of Islam through the end of the Middle Ages. Our approach will seek out both intersections and comparisons: while attending to the borders, crossings, and overlaps that existed between medieval Christendom and the Islamic world, this course will also stage comparisons of key themes specific to these traditions, chief among them the picturing of divinity, the status of a sacred text, the organization of sacred space, and the practice of luxury. We will survey a series of historical encounters, including Byzantine Iconoclasm, the Crusades, and trade and diplomacy in general, before culminating in Renaissance Italy. Special emphasis will be reserved for key geographies of exchange, including Spain, Sicily, North Africa, and the Holy Land. Consideration will be given to the media of architecture, mosaic, painting, relief sculpture, decorated books, ivory, metalwork, and textiles. Questions of geography, ethnicity, the other, the idol, cultural translation, and the status of text vs. image will be threaded throughout.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: MDST209
Prereq: None

ARHA210 Romanesque and Gothic Art and Architecture

This course introduces the art and architecture of Romanesque and Gothic Europe, that is, later medieval Europe ca. 1100-1400, focusing especially on Germany, France, Italy, England, and Spain, as well as the wider Mediterranean. Architecture, painting, sculpture, and the luxury arts (e.g., metalwork, ivory, and textiles) will be our focus, supplemented by primary-source texts and secondary literature. Key themes will include sacred spaces, such as cathedrals and monasteries; sacred images and devotion; gender; pilgrimage and the relic; geography; the Other; the monstrous and the miraculous; courtly love and chivalry; the relationship between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; and premodern definitions of art, the artist, the donor, craftsmanship, and value.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: MDST210, RL&L210
Prereq: None

ARHA210Z Romanesque and Gothic Art and Architecture

This course introduces the art and architecture of Romanesque and Gothic Europe, that is, later medieval Europe ca. 1100-1400, focusing especially on Germany, France, Italy, England, and Spain, as well as the wider Mediterranean. Architecture, painting, sculpture, and the luxury arts (e.g., metalwork, ivory, and textiles) will be our focus, supplemented by primary-source texts and secondary literature. Key themes will include sacred spaces, such as cathedrals and monasteries; sacred images and devotion; gender; pilgrimage and the relic; geography; the Other; the monstrous and the miraculous; courtly love and chivalry; the relationship between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; and premodern definitions of art, the artist, the donor, craftsmanship, and value.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: MDST210Z, RL&L210Z
Prereq: None

ARHA213 Cross, Book, Bone: Early Medieval Art, ca. 300-1100

This class surveys the art and architecture of early medieval Europe, beginning with the multicultural world of Late Antiquity, the decline of the Roman Empire, and the spread of Christianity, and then continuing through the glory of Byzantium, the rise of Islam, and the development of Germanic kingdoms in Northern Europe. Style, content, function, and historical context shall be examined across monuments of architecture, sculpture, mosaic, manuscripts, painting, and the luxury arts. Questions of religious practice, political messaging, and cross-cultural translation shall be threaded throughout, for example: Could one picture God? How might divinity be conceptualized and accessed? How might one best picture a ruler? How did early medieval Europe define both art and the figure of the artist? How might we see dialogue, overlap, and/or competition between the art and architecture of Islam and Christianity, among other religious traditions? The art historical periods considered will include Late Antique, Byzantine, Umayyad, Abbasid, Migration, Insular, Carolingian, Mozarabic, Ottonian, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking art.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: MDST213
Prereq: None

ARHA215 Art Criticism

As a young critic, the art historian Hal Foster wrote; "I do not demystify the work which I discuss so much as I am demystified by it." Beyond criticism's primary object -- the artwork to be judged, rejuvenated, revealed -- what does it let slip about its own function as a cultural practice? This course will introduce students to art criticism while also attempting to understand the rapidly changing social and economic conditions that make it possible (or not). Students will be assigned to write six works of criticism on different media -- sculpture, photography, painting, print, video, and performance -- with each assignment modeled on a different genre of art writing (e.g., the exhibition review, the catalogue essay, the "critic's pick," the retrospective, the single artwork study, and the "hybrid" review-essay). The course will give students a chance to work closely with Wesleyan's Davison Art Collection and the Zilkha Gallery, as well as artists and critics who will visit from New York.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-WRCT
Identical With: WRCT214, COL211
Prereq: None

ARHA220 Northern Renaissance Art

The Northern Renaissance, roughly ca. 1400-1600, was a period of thrilling transition in Europe and profound change for the Western tradition of art and architecture. For art history, the period's many paradigm shifts include the rise of oil painting, the spread of the printing press and print media, the growth of middle-class patronage, the Protestant Reformation, radical developments in the practice of portraiture, an increasingly global worldview and mentality, the foundations of what might be referred to as an art market, and a fundamental revision of the purpose and definition of both art and the artist. This course explores these and other histories as they played out within panel painting, book painting, the sumptuous arts (e.g., tapestries and metalwork), printing, sculpture, and architecture, focusing mainly on France, the Low Countries, Germany, and England. We will begin within the late medieval world of Burgundy, Prague, and Germany before progressing through such key artistic personalities as Sluter, Broederlam, the Limbourgs, Campin, van Eyck, van der Weyden, Fouquet, Riemenschneider, Lucas van Leyden, Bosch, Dürer, Grünewald, Altdorfer, Cranach, Holbein, and Bruegel. Such a narrative will be equally enriched with less familiar and less canonical works. Threaded throughout are questions of mimesis, realism, skill, medium, and the growing cult of genius, as well as the relationship with the Italian Renaissance, the Mediterranean, and the expanding globe.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: MDST219
Prereq: None

ARHA221 Early Renaissance Art and Architecture in Italy

This course surveys key monuments of Italian art and architecture produced between ca. 1300 and 1500. Focusing on major centers such as Florence, Milan, Rome, and Venice, as well as smaller courts such as Urbino and Mantua, it considers the works and careers of the most important artists and architects of the period, among them Giotto, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Giovanni Bellini, Botticelli, and Leonardo da Vinci. Monuments are studied in their broader intellectual, political, and religious context, with particular attention paid to issues of patronage, devotion, gender, and spectatorship. Class discussions will be based on close readings of primary sources and scholarly texts on a wide range of topics.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: MDST222, RL&L212
Prereq: None

ARHA222 Art and Architecture of Renaissance Florence

How did Florence rebound from calamitous plague to become the self-styled locus of the Renaissance? This survey of the art and architecture of Florence evaluates its cultural achievements against the improbabilities of their success. The city had negligible Roman history but championed the revival of classical antiquity; it was repressive but pushed the boundaries of representing gender and sexuality; its government slid from a republic to an absolute monarchy but fostered creative latitude; it spawned one of Italy's most popular religious zealots and popularized secular ideals; it had no empire but became a hub of global trade and knowledge transmission. To understand how this happened, we will study famous artists like Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo alongside their lesser-known and even nameless contemporaries. Painting, sculpture, architecture, drawing, and printmaking will come alive in lectures and by discussing related texts in translation, recreating artistic techniques, and examining original Renaissance artworks in person.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ITAL218, RL&L218
Prereq: None

ARHA224 Italian Art and Architecture of the 16th Century

In addition to key monuments of 16th-century Italian art and architecture, this course seeks to introduce students to some of the most important figures of the period: artists and architects--such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bronzino, Titian, and Palladio; their princely and ecclesiastical patrons--such as Cosimo I de' Medici and Pope Julius II; and their critics and biographers--such as Giorgio Vasari and Ludovico Dolce. Our aim will be to understand the complex artistic and architectural landscape of the period against the backdrop of shifting intellectual and religious trends, including the Counter-Reformation. Class discussions will be based on close readings of primary sources and scholarly texts on a wide range of topics.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: RL&L251
Prereq: None

ARHA226 Global Rome: Art and Architecture in Early Modernity

Rome has long called itself the "head of the world," but in the early fifteenth century, it was a backwater. This course surveys the art and architecture of Rome as it reclaimed the papal seat, grew its population, witnessed their deaths amid an infamous sack, and then amassed singular power through the transoceanic expansion of Catholicism. The local particulars of Rome will be considered alongside its global history, situating the accomplishments of Raphael, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Bernini, and others in relation to Rome's ties to Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Particular attention will be given to Rome's relationship to its ancient empire, as well as the roles of female artists and patrons in a city whose population skewed increasingly male. Students will study architecture, painting, sculpture, drawing, print, tapestry, arms and armor, jewelry, clothing, and ephemeral design, as well as period texts in translation.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ITAL219, RL&L219
Prereq: None

ARHA233 Art and Culture of the Italian Baroque

This introduction to the arts and architecture of 17th-century Italy addresses one of the core paradoxes of the period: that startling innovation and creativity were not inconsistent with serving the purposes of patrons and ideologies that at first appear rigid and authoritarian. Supported by popes, cardinals, new religious orders, and private collectors, artists and architects such as Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Pietro da Cortona, Gianlorenzo Bernini, and Francesco Borromini depicted saintly bodies in moments of divine rapture, opened up painted ceilings to elaborate illusionistic visions, and subjected the classical language of architecture to unprecedented levels of movement. Through lectures and discussions of key primary and secondary sources, we will explore the emotive and ideological power of Baroque art, considering the multitude of ways in which it shaped the visual, political, and religious worlds of its day.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: RL&L243
Prereq: None

ARHA239 Van Gogh: Modernity, Utopia, and Nineteenth-Century Art

This course will investigate in-depth the career of this immensely popular and influential artist. Van Gogh has been the subject of much myth making--both in his time and today--in which he appears as the quintessential mad genius whose passionate and tormented emotions become the stuff of art. This class goes beyond the media image of the artist and looks hard at his paintings, drawings, and letters, placing them in their respective artistic, literary, and historical contexts. Van Gogh engaged with social issues, above all the plight of peasants, artisans, the poor, and the marginalized--the most vulnerable members of society. He sought to give form to their experience in ways that were mediated by Dutch and French landscape painting and French naturalist literature. Upon moving to Paris, van Gogh absorbed the lessons of impressionist, neo-impressionist, and symbolist painters before moving to the South of France, where he created his most memorable works of sun-drenched fields, bar and café interiors, and common workers. Toward the end of his life, he increasingly conceived of art as a site for utopian projections and emotional solace. We shall study the work of this immensely productive artist and along the way develop art historical skills, including visual and textual analysis, historical and contextual interpretation, how to evaluate an artist's personal correspondence in relationship to his painted oeuvre, and independent research.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: RL&L239
Prereq: None

ARHA240 Revolutionary France and the Birth of Modern Art, 1789-1900

This course examines the birth of modern art in the wake of the French Revolution and traces the evolution of modern art throughout what would prove to be an extraordinary century of social transformation and formal experimentation, ending in the Dreyfus Affair and Post-Impressionism. Themes this class explores include the advent of a public sphere for art-making and the relationship between artistic advance and appeals to an ever-widening public; painting and revolution in France and its colonies; the redefinition of history painting in light of the abolition of slavery and the Declaration of the Rights of Man; the expansion of France's colonial empire and the representation of racial difference; the rise of feminism and attempts on the part of women artists to find their own voice in a masculine practice; the destabilization of classicism in light of scientific discoveries and ideas of "primitivism"; and the conflict between the unabashed pursuit of artistic individualism and the need to define collective values and experience. Although these developments took place two centuries ago, they continue to define the field of modern art today.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: RL&L240
Prereq: None

ARHA241 Introduction to European Avant-Garde, 1880-1940

This course introduces students to the major avant-garde art movements from the first half of the 20th century as they took root in France, Germany, Italy, Holland, and Russia. Our focus will be on painting, but we will also look at attempts to go beyond painting in an attempt to gain greater immediacy or social relevance for art. Topics that will receive special emphasis include the relationship between abstraction and figuration, the impact of primitivism and contact with non-Western arts, modernism's relationship to mass culture, war and revolution, gender and representation, art and dictatorship, and the utopian impulse to have the arts redesign society as a whole.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: RL&L241, GRST241
Prereq: None

ARHA243 American Modernisms, 1900-1945

Focusing on three case studies -- the Stieglitz Circle, the Harlem Renaissance, and Mexican Muralism -- this course examines the specifically pluralistic and diverse contributions of American artists to the development of modernism from 1900 through the Second World War. During this period, the United States began to be a terrain on which artists with roots in Europe, Africa, and the Americas developed advanced language in the visual arts and experimented with new mediums and formats for art. Topics we will explore include the relationship between art and industry in painting, sculpture, film, and photography; relationships between cosmopolitan and indigenous cultures; primitivism and its appropriation; interrelationships between the visual arts, music, and poetry; constructions of gender and the emergence of the female artist; racial pluralism; and the articulation of hybrid American (and Pan-American) modernisms.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: AMST253
Prereq: None

ARHA244 European Architecture and Urbanism, 1750-1910

This course considers the history and theory of architecture and urbanism in Western Europe from the mid-18th to the early 20th century. A central theme is the relationship between historicism and modernity through the period. Topics include neoclassicism, the picturesque landscape, the Gothic Revival, the Arts and Crafts Movement, the École des Beaux-Arts, the German Rundbogenstil, international expositions, and Art Nouveau. We will focus on specific sites in major cities, including Paris, London, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Milan, Rome, Brussels, and Barcelona, among others. New or transformed building types include museums, railway stations, apartment blocks, department stores, and theaters. Urban forms include residential squares, boulevards, arcades, and public parks. Architectural culture will be discussed as a response to changing political, economic, technical, and ideological conditions in newly modernizing societies. Urbanism includes the transformation of early modern cities due to industrialization, housing for different social classes, new towns, suburbs, utopian communities, the Garden City, and colonial centers such as Bombay (Mumbai), Algiers, and Hanoi.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: RL&L244
Prereq: None

ARHA246 American Architecture and Urbanism, 1770-1914

This course considers the development of architecture and urbanism in the United States from the late 18th through the early 20th century. Major themes include the relationship of American to European architectures; the varied symbolic functions of architecture in American political, social, and cultural history; and the emergence of American traditions in the design of landscapes and planning for modern cities, especially Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The course considers houses for different sites and social classes, government buildings, churches and synagogues, colleges, and commercial architecture of different kinds includes the origins of the skyscraper. Urban environments include cemeteries, public parks, streets, and civic centers. Discussion will be informed by recent historiography on race and the American built environment. Movements studied include neoclassicism, the Gothic and Romanesque revivals, the Chicago School, the Arts and Crafts movement, and the City Beautiful movement. Major figures studied include Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Latrobe, Frederick Law Olmsted, Frank Furness, Henry Hobson Richardson, Louis Sullivan, the early work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Greene and Greene, Bernard Maybeck, Julia Morgan, and McKim, Mead and White.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: AMST232
Prereq: None

ARHA249 "Public Freehold": Collective Strategies and the Commons in Art Since 1960

Art since 1960 has forged a contradictory alliance between the legal field of intellectual property and the expanded tradition of poststructural thought. Taking its title from conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner, this course navigates that contradiction via four units, each corresponding to a specific artistic strategy: appropriation, scoring, collaboration, and participation. Testing the limits of the signable, saleable, and stealable, such techniques have thrown traditional concepts of originality and possessive individualism into arrears while giving rise, quite paradoxically, to some of the most celebrated careers and widely reported lawsuits involving allegations of creative property theft. Do such maneuvers amount to specious self-aggrandizement? Or do they indicate a renewed search to locate, foment, and protect sources of creative invention? The ever-expanding horizon of collaborative media access and increased pressures to enclose this new electronic commons have made such questions all the more urgent today.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CHUM
Prereq: None

ARHA250 Unsettling American Art, 1600-1900

This course examines developments in American art from roughly 1600 to 1900. Core objects in this class will range widely: quilts; maps; baskets; paintings across genres of portraiture, landscape, and still life; engravings; public monuments; daguerreotypes; and more. We will seek to understand the particular concerns and traditions animating objects across this heterogeneous span of materials, forms, and techniques. In so doing, we will also ask how artists and makers--including those whose names were never recorded--variously internalized, articulated, or examined the historical contradictions of their time, including the consolidation of settler colonialism and racial capitalism; rebellion, revolution, abolition, and civil war; industrialization and its ever-expanding and often violently lopsided acceleration of communication networks, labor relations, travel, and exchange; and the contested aim of defining a distinctively American aesthetic tradition in a land born of migration, encounter, forcible displacement, and polyphonic hybridization. Visits to area museums and collections will complement in-class work.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: AMST272
Prereq: None

ARHA251 Artists Design Exhibitions

This course explores the history and theory of exhibition-making as an artistic form. We examine key episodes in the history of artist-designed exhibitions, focusing on major works since the 1960s with an eye to foundational case studies in the early- to mid-20th century. Our discussions will generate a working typology of the form's various modes and functions, tracking how artist-designed exhibitions have variously served as spaces of public debate and agitation, propaganda spectacles, didactic displays, activist interventions, and sites of aesthetic experimentation. Exhibition design's material supports and conditions have been just as disparate: room-scale interiors, polyform spatial sequences, distributed multiples, and outdoor installations on city streets. Across each of these divergent formats, exhibitions are distinguished by their shared potential to create what Walter Benjamin once described as "simultaneous collective reception." As Benjamin's phrase suggests, exhibitions constitute publics, and in this course special attention will be paid to the types of publics--and the types of subjects--that specific exhibitions and exhibition strategies presuppose.



What can the history of exhibition design show us about the new "curatorial condition" of everyday life, in which data specialists now curate information, an artisan cheese shop curates its merchandise, and anyone with a social media account curates a presentation of self? Artists central to this history, and to which this course attends, include: El Lissitzky, Marcel Duchamp, Charles and Ray Eames, the Rosario Group, the Independent Group, Hélio Oiticica, Marcel Broodthaers, Louise Lawler, Group Material, Fred Wilson, Philippe Parreno, Mark Leckey, and Camille Henrot.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA252 Contemporary Art Since 1980

This historically-rooted introduction to contemporary art sets an anchor around 1980 and moves through the major debates of the last 35 years. This period gave rise to a bracing range of historical transformations: a post-communist Europe; an economically prominent China; queer and antiracist activism; increasingly molecular degrees of technological mediation in everyday life; assymetrical consolidations of a globalized network of travel, communication, and capital; climate and refugee crises; and a state of seemingly perpetual war, to name only a few. This course attends to the changing vocabulary of approaches by which artists intervened in these conditions and positioned their work in relation to a longer view of the history of art. Far from a comprehensive survey, the course acknowledges the inherently recursive and unstable condition of contemporary art history, a field of research and inquiry defined as a work in progress. The course is nonetheless structured in a loosely chronological fashion, sequenced according to formal techniques that emerged as timely responses to specific historical moments (photographic appropriation, moving image projection, social practice, painting, institutional critique, web-based art, etc.). Our work throughout will attend to theoretical frameworks that have remained influential in recent practice (postcolonial, feminist, poststructural, etc.).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: AMST287
Prereq: None

ARHA253 Art After 1945

This course examines artistic production in the United States between 1945 and 1980, with a primary focus on the United States. The historical conflicts of that tumultuous period presented new challenges for artists as they attempted, in their work, to respond to the "caesura of civilization" brought about by the Holocaust and World War II, to contend with the consolidation of postwar consumer capitalism and mass culture, and to situate their work in relation to the far-reaching social upheavals of the 1960s and '70s. Practices linked to the historical avant-gardes (such as abstraction, the readymade, Dada, and surrealism) echoed in these years as attention shifted from the canvas and studio to greatly expanded contexts of reception and public experience. The boundaries of the art object transformed in turn as artists developed new models of spectatorship to confront a world that had placed enormous pressure on traditional concepts of humanist subjectivity. Topics include New York School painting, pop art, minimalism, process art, conceptual art, performance, institutional critique, and site-specificity.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: AMST249
Prereq: None

ARHA254 Architecture of the 20th Century

The course considers influential works in architecture, its theory and criticism, and ideas for urbanism, mostly in Europe and the United States, from about 1900 to the present. Early parts of the semester focus on the origin and development of the modern movement in Europe to 1940, with attention given to selected American developments before World War II. Later parts of the course deal with Western architecture from 1945 to the present, including later modernist, postmodernist, and deconstructivist work, urbanism and housing, computer-aided design, green buildings, and postwar architecture in Latin America and Japan and in postcolonial India and Africa. Major movements and architects considered include the Viennese Secession, the Bauhaus, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, and Louis Kahn, among many others.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ENVS254
Prereq: None

ARHA256 New York City: Architecture and Urbanism

This course considers the history of architecture and urban development in New York City from colonial times to the present. Emphasis is on major landmarks of each historic period, with attention to related planning, parks, land and water transportation, housing trends, and urban infrastructure. Conditions of settlement, growth, decline, and renewal will be examined from a political, economic, and social perspective in varied neighborhoods. Contemporary topics include neo-liberal policies for urban development, green buildings, gentrification, and planning for the city's future in the era of impending climate change. While the focus will be on architecture, every effort will be made to see built environs as points of intersection between competing ideals and interests that shape the city we see.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: AMST266
Prereq: None

ARHA257 Just Cities: Architectures of Public Encounter

What is "the public," and how has it been conceived, relative to notions of the urban--to the web of ideas, forms, and fantasies constituting "the city"? Can art and architecture play a role in defining the public, or does the public's political and social construction place it outside the scope of specifically aesthetic concerns? This course addresses these and other related questions, positioning art and architecture in their broader cultural and historical contexts. It explores a range of socially charged, experiential, and participatory aesthetic and political practices, characterized by their distinctly public character and decidedly architectural and urban settings. At its core, it is concerned with issues of social justice as they relate to the material spaces of the modern city, and the manner in which those spaces are identified, codified, and made operative in the service of aesthetic, social, and political experience.



This course will be taught by M. Surry Schlabs, Yale School of Architecture.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-ALLB
Identical With: CSPL332
Prereq: None

ARHA258 Contemporary World Architecture

This course is a study of architecture and urban design throughout the world from the 1990s to the present. American topics include public and private development in the "neoliberal" city in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and post-Katrina New Orleans; contemporary museum architecture; sprawl and New Urbanism; and affordable housing. Major American architects considered include Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, Daniel Libeskind, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. In Europe, the focus is on contemporary public architecture in Berlin, London, Oslo, Hamburg, Paris, Valencia, Lisbon, Rome, and Athens, with attention to major works of Sir Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, Santiago Calatrava, Rem Koolhaas, and Renzo Piano, among others. In China we will study state monuments of the Communist Party in Beijing and issues of preservation and urban development there and in Shanghai. In Japan the recent work of Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, and Shigeru Ban is a focus, as are selected projects by other architects in Tokyo, Yokohama, and Osaka. Additional lectures will treat airport architecture in Asia, and sites in India, Jerusalem, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Guinea, South Africa, Nigeria, Rio di Janeiro, Chile, and Quito, Ecuador. The last quarter of the course focuses on green or sustainable architecture, including passive and active solar heating, photovoltaics, energy-efficient cooling and ventilation, timber and rammed-earth techniques, LEED certification, wind and geo-exchange energy, green skyscrapers, vertical farming, and zero-carbon cities.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA259 Currents of Post/Minimalism, 1960-1979

This course examines visual production made in North America between the 1960s and the 1970s with attention to Minimalism and its antecedents. Since its inception, Minimalism has been a measure and benchmark for twentieth century artistic practice. A primary focus will be artistic interpretation of form and to the challenges posed to its political exigency during a period marked by global warfare, new technologies, fierce protest, and economic shift. Each lecture will be anchored by a discussion of an artist whose practice will be the basis for course themes--energy, distance, education for example. With artists as our guides, we will revisit the development of the aesthetic boundaries, (sculpture, film, performance, institutional critique) which were asserted as well as challenged by attuning to exhibition histories and interdisciplinary practices. As this moment of artistic contribution is actively under consideration by curators of contemporary art, this course will also feature practical insight into the methodology and concerns of contemporary exhibitions dedicated to this period.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: AMST220
Prereq: None

ARHA261 Performing Property: Legal Experimentation and Activism in Contemporary Art

Who owns works of art-artists, buyers, museums, or the public? Who is granted the privileged status of author? Do artworks comprise a special category of things? Such questions underlie attitudes concerning art and cultural artifacts, and they also inform intellectual property laws. Since the 1960s, conceptual and performance artists have taken up these queries to investigate the nature of authorship and ownership generally, experimenting with aesthetic strategies as well as legal tools like contracts to ask: How do social and visual cues communicate boundaries, shape territories, and perform property into being? What happens when materiality and ownership are contingent? Can artists model alternate property relations through their work? How might art expose fissures and failures in law? Recent calls for decolonization and the restitution of looted objects have also pushed museums and archives to reconsider whether they are the outright owners of cultural artifacts, or stewards responsible for their care. Furthermore, as surveillance technologies increasingly pervade daily life, and digitalization leads licensing to supplant ownership, the future of privacy and property norms is unclear. These developments render contemporary art fertile ground for attending to the ways in which property structures are conceived, take shape, are reproduced, and how they might be reformed, calling upon us to pay attention to intent, consent, and the needs of others.



Seminar readings will be drawn from the burgeoning subfield of Art and Legal Studies with texts by key scholars including Joan Kee and Martha Buskirk, complemented by legal theorists such as Sarah Keenan and Cheryl I. Harris whose work has influenced artists. Alongside, we will closely examine the work of artists who challenge traditional ownership relations to problematize law, such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jill Magid, and Cameron Rowland. Class meetings will be complemented by screenings and visits to local collections, as is feasible. Assignments include a brief paper on an artwork, as well as a final research paper or digital exhibition requiring students to examine a particular theme or artist in-depth.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CHUM
Identical With: CHUM313, AMST214, CSPL313
Prereq: None

ARHA262 Censorship, Culture Wars, and Controversy in Art

Art history is marked by various forms of state, community, or institutional censorship. Such events can be flash points in culture wars, as in the United States in 1989, when four artists--most of them queer--were denied funding from the National Endowment for the Arts after their work was deemed "obscene." Sometimes art that unearths sensitive cultural histories can lead to calls for destruction, as in Sam Durant's 2012 work Scaffold, which referenced state violence against the Dakota people, leading tribe members to protest what they felt was Durant's insensitive handling of the subject. Events like these raise key questions within art and broader society: Who should have the authority to decide which art should be exhibited, and to what audiences? What constitutes censorship? When might censorship, or the curtailing of speech, be justified?

This course will examine these questions focusing on the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States, but also global contemporary art. We will consider such issues in the wake of a recent spate of museum exhibitions canceled due to controversial content, the dismantling of monuments to colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade, as well as today's culture wars as conservative book bans make headlines and hate speech abounds. We will also explore new channels for arts funding, exhibition, and publishing that emerge in response to censorship. In addition to important texts by art historians including Sarah Parsons, Aruna D'Souza, and Rosalyn Deutsche, among others, we will also read interdisciplinary legal scholars like Sonya Katyal and Amy Adler who write from the perspective of law and policy. We will also read the landmark Supreme Court case NEA v. Finley. Assignments include an in-depth case study of a canceled exhibition.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CHUM
Identical With: CHUM375, CSPL374
Prereq: None

ARHA263 Curatorial Workshop: Images of the Floating World

This course will provide students with practical training in the design and development of a gallery installation in the Davison Art Center (DAC). The theme for this semester is Japanese woodblock prints. We will carry out the many and diverse components involved in creating a gallery installation, from conception to execution, including concept development, catalog and label entries, accessibility, layout, and design. The course will culminate with an installation at the DAC, which will include an accompanying publication as well as permanent online catalog entries for individual prints on the DAC's website.



Images of the floating world, or ukiyo-e, refers to a genre of Japanese art that emerged in the 17th century to depict the pleasures of life of that period--beautiful women, famous kabuki actors, views of famous places, and erotic pictures, among other subject matter. In most cases, these are woodblock prints, images produced by craftsmen from woodcuts based on originals painted by artists. Because they could be produced quickly, cheaply, and in large numbers, woodblock prints were exceptionally well-suited for the representation of the latest fashions or politics. Ukiyo-e prints made their way to Europe in the 19th century and remain the most popular form of East Asian art in the West. The Davison Art Center has around 600 Japanese woodblock prints in its collection, ranging in date from the 17th to 20th centuries and including works from all the major artists of the Edo period (1615-1868).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA263A Curatorial Workshop: Images of the Floating World

This course will provide students with practical training in the design and development of a gallery installation in the Davison Art Center (DAC). The theme for this semester is Japanese woodblock prints. We will carry out the many and diverse components involved in creating a gallery installation, from conception to execution, including concept development, catalog and label entries, accessibility, layout, and design. The course will culminate with an installation at the DAC. Images of the floating world, or ukiyo-e, refers to a genre of Japanese art that emerged in the 17th century to depict the pleasures of life of that period--beautiful women, famous kabuki actors, views of famous places, and erotic pictures, among other subject matter. In most cases, these are woodblock prints, images produced by craftsmen from woodcuts based on originals painted by artists. Because they could be produced quickly, cheaply, and in large numbers, woodblock prints were exceptionally well-suited for the representation of the latest fashions or politics. Ukiyo-e prints made their way to Europe in the 19th century and remain the most popular form of East Asian art in the West. The Davison Art Center has around 600 Japanese woodblock prints in its collection, ranging in date from the 17th to 20th centuries and including works from all the major artists of the Edo period (1615-1868).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: CEAS236A
Prereq: None

ARHA263B Curatorial Workshop: Art and the Ecological Imagination, 1840-1870

This course examines the emergence of an "ecological consciousness" in art during the mid-19th century through readings, discussion, and firsthand study of works in the Davison Art Center print collection. Although the term "ecology" was first coined in 1866, 19th-century thinkers had long been concerned with the interrelationship of organisms, including humans' place and impact on nature. This class examines how visual artists before Impressionism contributed to the 19th century's "ecological imagination" through their representations of landscapes. Known as the "Barbizon School," this group of artists left the metropolis of Paris to immerse themselves in the wild and rugged terrain of the Fontainebleau Forest while also embarking on journeys to remote regions of France. These members of the first artists' colony seceded from the French Academy of Fine Arts and pursued strategies of independence that were allied at the time with radical politics. In their works they experimented with new materials and approaches to composition that included but no longer prioritized humans, in order to foreground processes of transformation internal to nature itself. The consciousness that artists forged through painting and printmaking led them to become among the world's first conservationists; they successfully petitioned the French government to protect parts of the Forest of Fontainebleau some 20 years before the creation of the first National Park in the United States.



The first half of the course will be devoted to reading and discussion; the second half will center on the study of works in the Davison Art Collection, which includes a superb collection of original and experimental prints by Barbizon School artists. The final project will be the curation of a temporary exhibition of works from the collection, including a selection and arrangement of works, explanatory texts, and a public gallery talk.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ENVS263B, RL&L235B
Prereq: None

ARHA263C Curatorial Workshop: The Northern Renaissance Print

The flourishing of the print medium in Northern Europe during the later 15th and 16th centuries is one of the defining hallmarks of the Northern Renaissance, as well as one of the most significant turns in the Western tradition in general. The rise of this medium rested upon the ca. 1450 development and spread of the printing press, which helped spark numerous episodes of historical consequence, including the Protestant Reformation, the spread of Italian humanism, and the continued rise of an increasingly literate, and increasingly image-hungry, middle class. Many of the most influential artistic personalities of the era, including Schongauer, Dürer, van Leyden, Altdorfer, Holbein, Cranach, and Bruegel, pushed this exciting new technology in multiple directions, many of which altered and impacted fundamental concepts of art, the artist, authenticity, and value. Wesleyan is fortunate to possess one of the foremost collections of print media in the country in the collections of the Davison Art Center. This Curatorial Workshop is structured around the study and first-hand examination of the DAC collection, and it will include a class-generated exhibition of Northern Renaissance prints.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA264 Photography and Law: Mugshots, Privacy and Publicity, Obscenity, Copyright, and Evidence

This seminar is designed as an introduction to the major developments in the legal history of photography in transatlantic (US-UK especially) society from the first law cases involving photography in 1840 through to contemporary legal debates about such topics as cameras in the courtroom, sexting, surveillance, photographing police, dash cam and body cam videos, admissibility of photographs as evidence, obscenity and moral boundaries of subject matter, and copyright. A range of secondary historical and theoretical writings will anchor the discussions, but the course will focus primarily on student analysis and interpretation of primary and archival sources (texts of legal cases, law reviews and dissertation, news articles, and documentary and video footage). Students will gain knowledge of how legal history has shaped the history of photography, and new perspectives on the historical origins of contemporary issues in photography and digital imaging. This course should be of interest especially to history majors and non-majors who are interested in law, photography, and culture and will also contribute to the "Visual and Material Studies" module in History.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST286
Prereq: None

ARHA266 History and Core Ideas in African Photography: 1850s to the Present

This course explores the history of photography on the African continent from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. It focuses on the colonial experience, anti-colonial struggles, decolonial imagination, the materiality of the medium, gender, and the nature of modernist expressions provoked by the medium since the twentieth century. These themes are explored through a study of specific photographers, archives, concepts, and exhibitions.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA267 Memorials, African Art, and the Burden of Remembering

Throughout history, Africans have preserved the memory of their loved ones through words chanted in songs such as Yoruba Oriki; images rendered in wood, concrete, and metal; and other means. This course explores the multitude of ways in which Africans have memorialized their dead from the 9th century BCE to the present. In Western commemorative paradigms individuals have written poems, books, or essays, produced paintings and sculptures, taken photographs, and recorded videos. In Africa, comparable modes of preserving the memory of the dead have included sculpted ancestral figures, memorial effigies, and potent power objects. For instance, the memory of the 98th king of the Kuba people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (who was believed to have reigned during the solar eclipse of 1680) was preserved in the sculpture of Shamba Bolongongo, while a mask named mwaash a mbooy memorialized the son of Woot, the iconic ancestor who married his sister, Ngaady a mwaash and founded the ruling Kuba dynasty. In Luba society, visual memory devices such as lukasa have been deployed to trigger memories of past heroes and their exploits during a ritual ceremony known as Mbudye. In Yoruba society, Ibeji figures have preserved the memory of the late twins, while Dogon sculptures have been used to embody the soul of the deceased. Through weekly readings and lectures, this course will examine these commemorative objects by focusing on their formal qualities and thematic usage in African art over the centuries. The course is divided into two segments. The first segment deals with pre-colonial modes of preserving the memory of the dead, such as sculpted ancestral figures, memorial effigies, masks and masquerades, and potent power objects. The second segment deals with contemporary forms of memorialization through museums, monuments, commemorative art, among others, in Africa from the 19th century to the present. Through weekly readings and lectures, the course will examine these commemorative objects by focusing on their formal and thematic qualities, as well as the larger political questions surrounding their production, usage, and survival in Africa over the centuries.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA268 African Avant-Garde: Contemporary African Art in a Global Dialogue, 1900 to the Present

This course provides an introduction to modern and contemporary art produced by Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. Africa is famous for its dynamic wood and metal sculptures that played a vital role in launching the modern era in Western art. While Pablo Picasso, George Braque, and Henri Matisse were studying African masks and figurative sculpture, African artists such as Aina Onabolu, Gerard Sekoto, and Kofi Antubam, among others, were beginning to experiment with new idioms of visual expression introduced from Europe. Professional schools of fine art were established in urban centers across the continent as part of the colonial project. Thus, an African avant-garde was born. African artists have been contributing to global visual dialogues in contemporary art; they participate in major biennials, and some have become superstars in the international art world. The work of artists such as Julie Mehretu, Yinka Shonibare, Ibrahim Mahama, and El Anatsui is collected by museums all over the world. This course traces the development of African art during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, exploring the lives of artists as well as the national and global contexts in which they have worked and in which their art circulates. Class meetings will include lectures and discussions organized around reading assignments and video screenings.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA269 History of African American Art

This course will introduce students to a history of African American artistic production from the late 18th century to the present, in a range of media and styles. While we will focus primarily on the visual arts--looking at sculpture, painting, photography, collage, film, performance, and installation--we will also consider the deeply interdisciplinary nature of Black cultural production, highlighting the important role of music, poetry, dance, and theater.



We will explore how African American artists, both individually and collectively, have negotiated the terms made available to them by cultural institutions, whether by struggling for inclusion, acknowledgement, and validation; actively protesting racist and exclusionary policies; or by forming alternative institutions, communities, and spaces in which to work and share support. From the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement and "post-Black" exhibitions, art works will serve as a primary source to ask, is there such a thing as a "Black aesthetic" and if so, how would one define it? Why might an African American artist reject such an idea? Other key questions will include: What is the role of visual representation in political struggle? How have artists mobilized portraiture as a tool of liberation? What does it mean to turn away from figuration, toward abstraction or opacity? How have artists grappled with questions of nationhood, belonging, and diaspora?



Together, we will trace how artistic forms, techniques, and motifs have served both as sites of collective history and as speculative propositions to envision new futures, articulating what Robin D.G. Kelley calls "freedom dreams."
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: AFAM208, AMST248
Prereq: None

ARHA276 Eccentricity, Gender, and Occidentalism in Edo-Period Art (1615-1868)

The course will explore the history and artistic production of Japan's Edo period (1615-1868). This was a time of unprecedented peace, a time of social, economic, and political change that brought new modes and manners of visual expression and a sharpened focus on the individual artist. New trends in artistic identity emerged during this period, particularly those related to eccentricity, gender, and Sinophilia (love of Chinese culture). We will study the major artists and artistic movements of the Edo period, considering how these new trends found expression in the works of art produced during this time. Formal examination of the material and expressive qualities of works of art will be followed by a consideration of how other factors such as location, social background, education, and the religious faith of the artist are visible in the works they produced. The interplay between historical and artistic movements will be examined through discussion of issues such as materiality and medium, patronage and individuality, and traditionalism and poetic expression. Students will become familiar with the various media employed by Japanese artists, the techniques of painting and printing, and the sources and theories that inspired the innovative objects under investigation. More broadly, this course aims to teach students how to "read" Japanese art, how to look at a work of Japanese art and understand what it is they are seeing.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: CEAS246
Prereq: None

ARHA279 Arts of China and Japan: From Shang Bronzes to Erotic Woodblock Prints

The course will introduce students to the visual arts of China and Japan, focusing on painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts from the Bronze Age through the early modern period. We will study key moments in the history of Chinese and Japanese art and the major works that distinguish these moments. The works will include Shang Dynasty bronze vessels, Buddhist art, early calligraphy and figure painting, narrative handscrolls, landscape painting, and popular art. We will apply different critical and analytical methodologies to our study and will pay close attention to social, political, religious, and cultural contexts of artistic production.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA281 Modern Japanese Art

This class is an introduction to the history of Japanese art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. In this chronological study we will encounter a range of forms--woodblock prints, painting, photography, sculpture, performance, and new media--and we will consider how Japanese artists responded to major societal, political, and economic changes over the last two centuries, including industrialization and modernization, major natural disasters, war, questions of cultural/national identity, and debates centering on what "tradition" meant to artistic practice in the modern and contemporary eras. Using visual analysis as our core skillset, this course will also rely on readings from secondary scholarship, as well as those by Japanese artists and art critics from each time period to help us better understand the historical contexts surrounding each artist, artwork, or art movement.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: CEAS281
Prereq: None

ARHA284 Buddhist Art and Architecture

Visual imagery plays a central role in the Buddhist faith. As the religion developed and spread throughout Asia it took many forms. This class will first examine the appearance of the earliest aniconic traditions in ancient India, the development of the Buddha image, and early monastic centers. It will then trace the dissemination and transformation of Buddhist art as the religion moved north and then east through Central Asia, China, Korea, and Japan. In each region indigenous cultural practices and artistic traditions influenced Buddhist art. The class will address topics including the nature of the Buddha image, the expansion of the Buddhist pantheon, the function and reception of Buddhist images, the political uses of Buddhist art, and the importance of pilgrimage, both in the past and the present. Over the course of our study, we will consider four important movements in Buddhist practice: Mahayana, Pure Land, Esoteric, and Zen.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: CEAS284
Prereq: None

ARHA285 Art and Archaeology of Ancient India

This course is an introduction to the art and material culture of ancient India, from prehistory through the formation of the classical tradition in the fourth century CE. The broad swath of human experience covered necessitates a thematic approach, focusing on key moments, cultures, object types, and methodological approaches, arranged in a roughly chronological fashion. Thematic units may vary somewhat from year to year, but are likely to include: the meaning and use of the carved stone seals of the Indus Valley civilization; the impact of the Vedic Aryas on the development of Indian ritual and imagery; how to read the iconographic language of the "plant and animal style" in decorative sculpture; the meaning and significance of the Asokan pillars; and the architecture and ritual of Buddhist monastic life in the cave monasteries of western India.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARCP260, GSAS284
Prereq: None

ARHA286 Empire and Erotica: Twenty-three Masterworks of Indian Painting

The history of later Indian painting (16th--19th centuries) is dominated by two distinct stylistic traditions, one flourishing at the court of the Mughal empire, the other at the courts of the various Rajput dynasties that held sway in regions along the periphery of the Mughal domain. The course introduces these two traditions through in-depth consideration of twenty-three representative masterworks, paintings that demand sustained close examination to fully unpack their content, their aesthetic dimensions, and the historical milieu in which they were produced and received. The first half of each session is devoted to a collective "close looking" at one of the key paintings (in the form of a high-resolution digital image), which then leads into broader discussion of related works and larger interpretive themes. Topics to be considered include the historical connections between the Mughal and Rajput schools; the relationships between painting, poetry, and music; the concerns of natural history painting; and the manner in which both Mughal and Rajput artists appropriated formal conventions from 16th century European prints and paintings. No previous knowledge of Indian art or the methods of art history is assumed or needed to succeed in this course.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: GSAS286
Prereq: None

ARHA287 Islamic Art and Architecture

From merchant mosques in China to paintings of lovers exchanged in the urban squares of Iran, Islamic visual culture encompasses a vast geographic and cultural span. What holds this large and diverse corpus--elite and common, religious and secular--together in this class is an interest in how works of art interact with their communities. This course is an introduction to the art, architecture, and material culture of the Islamic world, from its beginnings in the seventh century, with an emphasis on the premodern periods. Our thematic approach will cover questions of interfaith exchange, race and slavery, and gender and sexuality. We will study manuscript paintings, calligraphy, mosques, palaces, pottery, lacquer, and metalwork.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA289 Art, Wit, and Might in Islamic Courts

How do artists, patrons, and audiences negotiate power and aesthetic pleasure? This course examines the art produced for courtly elites between 1300-1800 in the Islamic world. In recent years, scholars have increasingly relied on the term "Persianate culture" to describe a set of literary texts, bodily practices, and codes of conduct shared in courts across the Islamic world. Our focus will be this shared courtly culture, supplemented with comparative cases from other parts of the world. We will study luxury objects, poetry, architecture, illustrated manuscripts, customs of dining, princely collections, and objects of sensory pleasure to understand how courtiers fashioned identities, and how the arts shaped courtly societies. Readings include primary sources and influential secondary texts from art history, literature, and the social sciences.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

ARHA290 Mahabharata and Ramayana: The Sanskrit Epics and Indian Visual Culture

This course explores the complex interface between literary texts, painted illustrations, and visual performance traditions in South Asia, taking as our primary focus the two great Sanskrit epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana. Both epics will be read in abridged translation to provide familiarity with the overall narrative structure and thematic concerns of the two texts, and a number of excerpts from unabridged translations will be studied in detail to arrive at a fuller understanding of the contents of key episodes and of the style and texture of the two works. The first part of the course addresses a series of questions pertaining to the literary versions of the two epics: What is epic as a genre, and what are its social roles? Do the Mahabharata and Ramayana manifest similarities that permit us to identify a distinctive Indian epic type? What are the connections between these epics and the early history of India? Why, and how, did the written texts we have today come to be redacted from bodies of oral tradition? In the second part of the course, we will consider the visual manifestations of the Sanskrit epics in the form of painted manuscript illustrations, classical Sanskrit plays (known literally as "visual poetry"), later performance traditions such as Kutiyattam, and, finally, selected films of the Hindi- and regional-language cinemas. This course requires no prior knowledge of Indian literature, history, or art and may serve as an effective introduction to the culture and civilization of South Asia.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: WLIT271, GSAS290
Prereq: None

ARHA292 Archaeology of Food, Trade, and Power in South India

This course examines patterns of life in premodern South India, focusing on the millennium from about AD 600 to 1600. It explores the persistent practices and institutions that structured social life--agricultural regimes of food production, patterns of local and long-distance trade, and elite discourses of power and authority--as well as historical events and processes that brought change to those patterns. The course capitalizes on South India's rich array of archaeological evidence, from surface remains and excavated finds to standing architectural monuments, donative inscriptions on stone and copper plates, and various forms of coinage and coin hoards informing on economic life. Specific topics investigated include the articulation of cultural space and landscapes; food, subsistence, and modes of agricultural production; domestic architecture and habitation; trade, markets, and monetary systems; and the roles of religion and ritual in legitimating political power. There is an explicit emphasis on methods and their application, including those of epigraphy (the analysis of inscriptions), numismatics (the materially based study of coinage and monetary systems), surface archaeology (survey, documentation, and analysis of exposed surface remains), and the archaeology of buildings. Many class sessions will be devoted to active discussion and analysis of data.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART, SBS-ART
Identical With: ARCP292, ENVS262
Prereq: None

ARHA293 Numismatics and the Archaeology of Money

In many parts of the world, lost coins numbering in the millions lie buried in the ground. Periodically, some of these coins come to light in the course of plowing, digging to repair a water main, or prospecting with metal detectors. These "treasure-trove" finds--also known as coin hoards--provide the archaeologist of money with rich evidence of how money was actually used in pre-modern times. Which coins occur together in a hoard, the numbers in which they occur, and the spatial patterning of their findspots: all speak volumes about pre-modern economies, circulation patterns, and beliefs about money and value.



In this hands-on course, we explore the evidence of coins and coin hoards, studying them from numismatic perspectives (the images and legends on a given coin type, metals used, weights, fabric), metrological and denominational perspectives (what coins reveal about systems of weights and denominational structures), and statistical approaches (for example, studying patterns of weight loss as indicators of the velocity of circulation and degree of monetization in a given society).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARCP293
Prereq: None

ARHA294 Art and Revolution in Modern and Contemporary Middle East

This course examines the intersection of art and politics in the Middle East from the late nineteenth century to present day. From the fall of empires to the rise of nation states, the modern period left a particular legacy in the Middle East. Artists in the Middle East have responded to the complex dynamics of Westernization and Orientalism, created avant-garde movements, and negotiated the tensions between the traditional and the new. For their part, governments -- whether democratic and authoritarian -- have sought to create or erase a national image, whether in the Republican Ankara, post-Islamic Revolution Tehran, or in the West Bank. Focusing on painting, sculpture, architecture, and mass media, this course offers students critical tools to analyze art¿s relationship to identity, war, gender, and museology.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA295 Critical Race and Art History: Theories and Methods

How does the study of art shift if we begin with questions of race, power, and colonialism, rather than treating them as secondary? Concepts such as mastery, familiarity, strangeness, taste, and beauty are formed by conditions of domination and subjugation. Moreover, the histories of material production and cultural expression are fundamentally entwined with the circuits of enslavement, forced migration, and the extraction of resources, people, goods, and "styles."



For the bulk of the semester, we will focus on a series of case studies drawn from the 15th to 20th centuries, a period of intense European contact and conquest in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Americas. Topics will include: representations of Africans in Renaissance Germany; African depictions of the Portuguese circa 1492; the appearance of parrots, kraak (Chinese) porcelain, and other goods from "exotic" locales in 17th-century Dutch still lifes; the taxonomies of racial difference in Spanish casta paintings; debates about sculptural polychromy and the "whiteness" of marble; the relationship between expansionism, empire, and the genre of landscape; "primitivism" and European artists' "discovery" of African artistic forms; the critical interest in "racial art" in the interwar U.S.; and contemporary conversations about museums and restitution, among others.



Throughout, works of art are primary sources with which to study the specificities of periods, places, and their social arrangements. While we will emphasize difference and historical contingency, our longue durée approach will enable us to draw connections about art's role in processes of primitive accumulation, dispossession, and racial capitalism.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: AFAM263, AMST239
Prereq: None

ARHA301 Making Rome: Monuments of Life in Ancient Rome

The Colosseum, the Circus Maximus, and the Forum are just the most famous monuments to adorn the ancient city of Rome: its streets and temples were cluttered with honorific statues, dedications, and inscriptions; monumental fountains marked the terminus of the great aqueducts supplying the city and its public baths; shops and markets jostled with shrines and workshops in the public plazas; and public works like harbors and warehouses ensured a steady flow of food, wine, and materials into the city. Through in-depth research into the literary and archaeological record of Rome students will examine these monuments in the context of their original urban spaces and reconstruct them digitally or through other visual and written media.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CLST, SBS-CLST
Identical With: CLST390, ARCP390
Prereq: None

ARHA310 Muslims, Jews, and Christians: Convivencia in Medieval Iberia

For eight centuries, Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived side by side as neighbors on the Iberian Peninsula in a carefully negotiated state of coexistence known as "convivencia." While much of the written record is full of enmity, religious polemic, and mutual suspicion, the artistic record tells another version, of lives lived in close proximity giving rise to shared cultural practices, artistic tastes, and long interludes of mutual well-being.



This seminar will explore the works produced by the pluralistic societies of medieval Iberia from the perspectives of art, architecture, history, archaeology, literature, and music. As we study renowned monuments such as the synagogues of Toledo, the Alhambra, and the Way of St. James, we will learn to decode elements such as dress and home decor, food and hygiene, and gardening and agriculture, to expand our picture of culture and lived experience. Finally, we will ask why "convivencia" ultimately failed, and how the medieval Iberian experience can enlighten our own uneasy attempts at building a multicultural, multi-confessional society.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: MDST310
Prereq: None

ARHA311 The Body in Medieval Art

Medieval thinkers theorized the body in ways vastly different from how human bodies are conceptualized and defined today in the twenty-first-century West. Indeed, the "medieval body" was not at all a stable or monolithic entity, but rather a shifting constellation of ideas and practices that waxed, waned, and coexisted throughout the European Middle Ages, c. 400-1400. The diversity of medieval attitudes toward the body helped inform its representation in art, which, simultaneously, was also dependent upon conventions of craft, medium, artistry, preciousness, and style. "Body" signals not only earthly bodies--sexed, fleshly, corruptible, and soon to decay--but also the soul (equally fragile), as well as heavenly, angelic, and divine bodies, including that of Christ. This course analyzes medieval strategies of representing these bodies while situating them in their respective intellectual and cultural environments. Primary-source materials will be contextualized by secondary literature, and our inquiries will remain cognizant of gender-, sexuality-, race-, and performance-critical methods. The bodies examined will include, and are not limited to, saintly, gendered, racialized, clerical, monstrous, virginal, heretical, sickly, healthy, courtly, resurrected, and uncircumscribable bodies.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: MDST311
Prereq: None

ARHA312 Medieval Manuscripts

Medieval manuscripts were dense, considered gatherings of text and image, and they are among the richest of artifacts bequeathed to us by the Middle Ages. Manuscripts both crystallized and intervened in many of the key intellectual, religious, and aesthetic foundations of medieval Europe. To step into a luxurious medieval manuscript--into its script, its miniatures, its marginal decoration, its scribbles, its little monsters and unexpected grotesques, its tears and signs of use--is to probe a particular artform, distinct to pre-modernity, in which the definition of painted image and written word differed markedly from later centuries of the Western tradition. Throughout, basic questions of the relationship between text and image, and the linguistic and the pictorial, repeatedly beg attention. How were these books made, who used them (if they were used at all), how did the reading process unfold in the medieval period, and how did pictorial decoration assist in revealing--or, perhaps, obscuring--truth? These questions, and more, will inform this seminar's systematic inquiry of the making, function, and layout of the medieval book, from its Late Antique origins to the 15th century advent of printing.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: MDST313
Prereq: None

ARHA325 Eloquent Forms: Topics in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture

Early modern Italy was a site of vibrant and wide-ranging innovations in the field of plastic arts. Fueled by fierce competition, financed by extravagant expenditures, and created for a range of religious, commemorative, and decorative functions in both public and private realms, the sculptural medium reached a pinnacle of creative expression, material experimentation, and theoretical engagement in this period. From monumental urban commissions such as fountains to small-scale precious objects sought out by the wealthy collectors, sculptural works profoundly shaped the visual worlds of early modern Italy. This seminar on the making and meaning of sculpture in the Renaissance and Baroque periods will engage students with the works and careers of several key artists of the era, including Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, Andrea del Verrocchio, Niccolò dell'Arca, Francesco Laurana, Properzia de'Rossi, Michelangelo, Benvenuto Cellini, Giambologna, Leone Leoni, Gianlorenzo Bernini, and Alessandro Algardi, among others. Seminar readings and discussions will be structured around broad themes such as: making and viewing of early modern sculpture; rhetoric of sculptural materials; verisimilitude and sculptural animation; sculpture and the senses; fragmentation and the "non-finito"; touch, desire, and the nude; representations of force and violence; antiquarianism and sculpture collecting; tombs and sculptural commemoration; and monsters and monstrosity in garden sculpture.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: RL&L325
Prereq: None

ARHA335 Art and Society in Ancient Pompeii

This seminar surveys the art, architecture, and material remains of the cities buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. Through readings, class discussions, and student research presentations, we will explore the ways in which this material can be used to study the social and political life of a small Roman city and examine the unique evidence for reconstructing the private life of Roman citizens, from their participation in local politics and government, to their religious beliefs and lives, to the interior decoration of their homes and their burial customs.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CLST
Identical With: CLST335, ARCP335
Prereq: None

ARHA338 Bauhaus: Art, Craft, Design

This seminar examines the theory and practice of the Bauhaus, the most influential art school of the 20th century. The Bauhaus proposed a radical concept: to reconstruct the material world of war-torn Europe to reflect principles of unity in the arts and within all world cultures. In the 15 years of its existence, from 1919 until 1933, the Bauhaus underwent many changes, including moves from Weimar to Dessau and Dessau to Berlin, as well as the reorientation of its curriculum away from craft and towards industrial production. Throughout, its activity was defined by a series of tensions, between fine and applied arts and between form and function. Attracting men and women from Western and Eastern Europe, the Americas, and East Asia, the Bauhaus adopted an international and gender-inclusive orientation from the beginning, even as gender inequalities persisted. After the school's forced closure in 1933 by the National Socialists, many of its teachers and students left Germany to found art schools throughout the globe, and its core principles continue to shape art pedagogy and practice today, above all its a commitment to experimental learning in de-hierarchized workshops. This course will examine the origins, core products and theories, and afterlife of the Bauhaus.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: GRST238
Prereq: None

ARHA339 Modernism and the Total Work of Art

The term "total work of art" refers to the German concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, which took on new urgency in the 19th century amid social upheaval and revolution. Understood as the intention to reunite the arts into one integrated work, the total work of art was tied from the beginning to the desire to recover and renew the public function of art. While there exist many approaches to totality in the modern era, this course focuses on modernist theories and practices that simultaneously critiqued existing society and posited a utopian alternative. We will begin by studying formulations of totality in response to a cultural crisis initiated by the 1789 French Revolution. From there, we turn to German idealism and to an analysis of composer Richard Wagner's ideas and compositions that made the idea of the synthesis of the arts a central focus for European modernism. Yet if Wagner's works and writings provided the dominant reference for subsequent developments from the 1880s onward, these most often consisted of a search for alternatives to his own theory and practice, particularly in the visual arts. We will examine attempts to envision totality after Wagner in Impressionist painting and German Expressionism. Ideas of totality and utopia continued to carry positive associations for modern artists until the 1930s, when they became co-opted by totalitarian governments. The course concludes by examining the perversion of modernist dreams in Nazi festivals and art exhibitions.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: GRST239, GELT239, RL&L339
Prereq: None

ARHA352 Energy and Modern Architecture, 1850-2020

This seminar explores the evolution of mechanical systems for heating, ventilating, and cooling in modern architecture from the mid-19th century to the present. The aim is to show how architects, engineers, fabricators, and urban governments worked to develop modern systems of environmental controls, including lighting, as means of improving both the habitability of buildings and health of their occupants. The course will trace the adaptation of technical innovations in these fields to the built environment and how those responsible for it sought to manage energy and other resources, such as funds and labor, to create optimal solutions for different building types, such as factories, theaters, assembly halls, office buildings, laboratories, art museums, libraries, and housing of various kinds, including apartment buildings for higher- and lower-income residents. An important theme will be the relationship of energy systems for individual buildings and urban infrastructure, including water systems, electrical, and other utilities. The last part of the course focuses on contemporary green, or sustainable, architecture, including passive and active solar heating, photovoltaics, energy-efficient cooling, LEED certification, wind and geo-exchange energy, green skyscrapers, net-zero energy buildings, vertical farming, and zero-carbon cities in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ENVS352
Prereq: None

ARHA355 Concepts in Contemporary Art

In this interdisciplinary seminar and studio course, we explore key concepts in contemporary discourse across a range of forms, genres, and disciplines. How do works of art respond to and reframe central debates in the wider culture? In what ways do the theory and practice of art supplement or contradict each other? How does research function within the context of art historical study and contemporary artistic practice?



To contend with these questions, students develop a series of projects over the course of the term in response to specific conceptual prompts. These investigations may take the form of studio-based work or written scholarship depending on student interest and will culminate either in a final research paper (for those registering for Art History credit) or a final project in any medium (for those registering for Art Studio credit). Along the way, we study artworks, literary texts, works of social theory, art historical scholarship, films, popular culture, and other objects to ground our research. Parallel activities may include conversations with artists and art historians, methodological workshops, site-visits, trips to museums, and archival research.



Since the course's aim is to cultivate unexpected collaborations, cross-disciplinary encounters, and new ways of conjugating the history, theory, and practice of art, the final portion of the semester will focus on the organization of a collective exhibition, event series, symposium, publication, or other expanded curatorial endeavor. The course meets Fridays 12:30 pm-5:30 pm, with a break during that interval. Class time may on occasion include individual meetings and independent work.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARST355
Prereq: None

ARHA360 Art and Political Ecology

How have artists confronted ecological destruction and climate emergency? This course examines a series of contextualized case studies set in relation to the growing environmental movement and the ever-expanding crisis within which it formed. Projects of activist immediacy will be considered alongside works of more distanced aesthetic experimentation, across a range of modalities including lens-based media, performance, painting, site-specificity, and sculpture.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ENVS360
Prereq: None

ARHA361 Thresholds of Art and Activism Since the 1960s

Since the 1960s, a period marked by war and social upheaval, artists have navigated the contested boundaries of art and activism by turning to the street and inventing new strategies of performance, distribution, and collaboration. Exploding the familiar protocols of agitprop, they advanced a politics of representation as much as a representation of politics. Philosophical texts (e.g., Adorno, Benjamin, Debord, Habermas, Ranciere, etc.) support our engagement with recent debates in art historical scholarship (e.g., Bishop, Bryan-Wilson, Lambert-Beatty, McKee, etc.) as we consider contexts as diverse as the social movements of the 1960s, queer liberation, eco-critical activism, and Occupy Wall Street. Extending the 20th-century avant-garde's project to break down the division between art and life, our case studies (focused primarily but not exclusively on the Unites States.: Emory Douglas, the Art Workers Coalition, Gran Fury, Women on Waves, etc.) provoke this seminar's central questions: Where is the line between art and activism? What value might that boundary continue to hold, and why? How must we assess the efficacy, ethics, and aesthetics of such practices? And what historical conditions have made them timely for artists?
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-AMST
Identical With: AMST361
Prereq: None

ARHA364 Architecture: Historiography, Theory, Criticism; Traditional and Contemporary Approaches

This seminar--intended primarily for majors in history of art and architecture, for studio majors concentrating in architecture, and students interested in urban studies--surveys different methods of studying architecture and its history. Emphasis throughout is on comparison of general theories of interpretation in art history and other disciplines and their application to specific works of art and architecture. Topics include monumentality and collective memory, stylistic analysis, philosophical aesthetics, iconography and semiotics, patronage and ideological expression, structural technology and building process, material culture and consumption, vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes, spatial form, urban landscapes, sociology, and affordable housing. Along with colonial, postcolonial, and decolonial studies of architecture, the seminar incorporates feminist architectural history and theory, energy studies, race and histories of modern architecture, and questions of canon formation and canonicity.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA367 African Modernism and the African American Diaspora

This seminar will examine the relationship between African art and the Black diaspora, especially in the United States. We will look at the crosscurrents of artistic ideas and the impact of artists' ongoing travels between Africa and the United States during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The seminar will investigate how these exchanges gave birth to a robust intellectual movement and artistic pan-Africanism in the United States and beyond. By juxtaposing the works of a range of artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Aaron Douglas, Ben Enwonwu, Skunder Boghossian, and others, the course will propose an alternative reading of the transnational, transatlantic aesthetic sensibilities that informed these artists' works during the post-WWII period and their wider impact on African modernism.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARHA379 Visionary Journeys through Sacred Landscapes: Japanese Art of Pilgrimage

This course examines the ways in which religious paintings were used and viewed in medieval Japan. Emphasis will be laid on images of sacred landscapes and the visionary journeys they inspired. Though primarily conceived as fundraising tools and advertisements aimed at inspiring viewers to undertake a physical journey to the illustrated site, these images became sacred in their own right and were approached by worshipers as one would approach the enshrined deity of the represented site. They also allowed spiritual travel through the images, providing virtual pilgrims with the karmic benefits of actual pilgrimage without the hardships of travel.



Each week we will immerse ourselves in a sacred site, reading about its history, deities, religious practices, and unique benefits. We will then look at how these were given visual form and the artistic language developed to endow these visual representations with the power to inspire and move contemporary audiences.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: CEAS379, MDST378
Prereq: None

ARHA381 Relic and Image: The Archaeology and Social History of Indian Buddhism

This course investigates the social history and material culture of Indian Buddhism from the fifth century BCE through the period of the Kushan empire (first to third century CE). The course begins with the examination of the basic teachings of Buddhism as presented in canonical texts, then turns to consideration of the organization and functioning of the early Buddhist community, or sangha. The focus then shifts to the popular practice of Buddhism in early India and the varied forms of interaction between lay and monastic populations. Although canonical texts will be examined, primary emphasis in this segment of the course is given to the archaeology and material culture of Buddhist sites and their associated historical inscriptions. Specific topics to be covered include the cult of the Buddha's relics, the rise and spread of image worship, and the Buddhist appropriation and reinterpretation of folk religious practices. Key archaeological sites to be studied include the monastic complex at Sanchi, the pilgrimage center at Bodh Gaya (site of the Buddha's enlightenment), the city of Taxila (capital of the Indo-Greek kings and a major educational center), and the rock-cut cave monasteries along the trade routes of western India.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: CEAS381, ARCP380, RELI375, GSAS381, ARCP380, CEAS381, RELI375
Prereq: None

ARHA382 Numismatics and the Archaeology of Money

In many parts of the world, lost coins numbering in the millions lie buried in the ground. Periodically, some of these coins come to light in the course of plowing, digging to repair a water main, or prospecting with metal detectors. These "treasure-trove" finds-also known as coin hoards-provide the archaeologist of money with rich evidence of how money was actually used in pre-modern times. Which coins occur together in a hoard; the numbers in which they occur, and the spatial patterning of their findspots all speak volumes about pre-modern economies, circulation patterns, and beliefs about money and value. In this seminar, we explore the evidence of coins and coin hoards, studying them from numismatic perspectives (the images and legends on a given coin type, metals used, weights, fabric), metrological and denominational perspectives (what coins reveal about systems of weights and denominational structures), and statistical approaches (for example, studying patterns of weight loss as indicators of the velocity of circulation and degree of monetization in a given society).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART, SBS-ART
Identical With: ARCP382, GSAS382
Prereq: None

ARHA385 The Indian Temple

The temple (devalaya, "house of god") was the unparalleled building type in South Asia from the fourth through fourteenth centuries, and it is still of great importance today. This seminar examines the type from an interdisciplinary perspective, considering theological and ritual dimensions, matters of design and style, programs of decorative sculpture and painting, and the economic and political functions these buildings and institutions carried. Sessions will be arranged thematically, but we will also be concerned with processes of temporal change. No prior knowledge of temple architecture or Indian history and religion is assumed.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARCP385
Prereq: None

ARHA401 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARHA402 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARHA403 Department/Program Project or Essay

Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

ARHA404 Department/Program Project or Essay

Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

ARHA407 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)

Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

ARHA408 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)

Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

ARHA409 Senior Thesis Tutorial

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARHA410 Senior Thesis Tutorial

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARHA411 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARHA412 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARHA465 Education in the Field, Undergraduate

Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARHA466 Education in the Field, Undergraduate

Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARHA467 Independent Study, Undergraduate

Credit may be earned for an independent study during a summer or authorized leave of absence provided that (1) plans have been approved in advance, and (2) all specified requirements have been satisfied.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

ARHA470 Independent Study, Undergraduate

Credit may be earned for an independent study during a summer or authorized leave of absence provided that (1) plans have been approved in advance, and (2) all specified requirements have been satisfied.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

ARHA491 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial

The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARHA492 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial

The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARST131 Drawing I

This introduction to drawing gives special attention to the articulation of line, shape, volume, light, gesture, and composition. A variety of media and subjects will be used, including the live model. This course is suitable for both beginners and students with some experience. Individual progress is an important factor in grading. The graded option is recommended. Full classroom attendance is expected.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST171 Design Lab

Design Lab is an introduction to design representation and production methods, focused on the integration of design software, model-making, and portfolio instruction with the introductory design studios. This course is to be taken concurrently with ARST 220, ARST235, or ARST270.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST190 Digital Foundations

This course introduces the foundations of digital art through contemporary artistic practice. Students will research the history of digital art and examine relationships of digital media and contemporary art. The class has a theoretical focus on machine use within the process of art making while building foundational digital skills. Projects will focus on four key areas including: Digital Imaging, 3D Modeling and Virtual Design, Time Based Media, and Digital Fabrication. Building on these four areas the course will culminate in an individualized research based final project and presentation. Through experimentation, critical analysis, critique and peer review; students will generate a unique portfolio of digital art works.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: IDEA190
Prereq: None

ARST190Z Digital Foundations

This introduction to the digital studio engages software and electronic media as an expanded field of creative production in contemporary art and design. Through a sequence of workshops, exercises, and hands-on digital projects, students will develop their critical and creative toolkits and learn to conceive, refine, and present original work. Open to all skill levels, this course prioritizes sustained and rigorous engagement with digital practice as well as conceptual and formal problem-solving.



Workshops in image manipulation, compositing, motion graphics, and visual communication will be led synchronously online by the instructor. This will be complemented with weekly online studio sessions, discussions, screenings, and reviews. Students will be provided access to all course materials using Google Drive and other digital platforms. Access to Adobe Creative Cloud software will be provided by Wesleyan, but individual licensing is also encouraged. Course assistants will offer peer mentoring and technical support in person through the DDS and online through Zoom.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: IDEA190Z
Prereq: None

ARST220 Ecological Design I: Being at Home in the World

Being at Home in the World is an introduction to the skills and thinking involved in the ecologically responsible creation of objects. This course is intended to provide a foundational understanding of the language of design, sources of materials, and energy systems. The studio encourages students to develop a rigorous, iterative working method to deeply analyze the nature of land and resources, explore options, and test ideas. This process of making is complemented and supported by an introduction to the history and theory of design, training with techniques and equipment, and active practice in keeping a sketchbook. Early exercises and projects in the course build familiarity and confidence with analytical drawing, making, and modeling techniques, which build toward the creation of a novel piece of design work presented at the final review.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ENVS232, IDEA120
Prereq: None

ARST221 A Thousand Years of Iteration: Design for an Uncertain Future

The climate emergency is a product of design. Centuries worth of aesthetic and industrial innovation have created extractive infrastructure, efficient machines, and disposable products that make it increasingly easy to consume energy and resources on a global scale. As new conversations about just transitions, a circular economy, and a Green New Deal have begun to proliferate among designers, the discipline's troubled relationship to notions of "progress" remains largely unquestioned.



This reading- and research-intensive studio asks students to examine this history of technology and to critically evaluate shifting theoretical perspectives on nature and human development as they relate to design. Topics will include the lifespan of buildings and products, relationships with and obligations to materials and resources, and strategies for de-growth in indigenous and vernacular design precedents. These will be studied through assigned readings and in-class discussion, a series of design exercises, and the production of a final project from materials immediately at hand in Middletown.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: IDEA221, ENVS227
Prereq: None

ARST229 Community-Based Public Art: Mosaics on Main

In this course, students will have the opportunity to work directly with an ongoing major community art project in Middletown called "Mosaics on Main/Tunnel Vision." The course will include an overview of this project as well as research into other public art installations. Technical skills introduced in the course will include mold making, mosaic tile setting, and design strategies for large scale works. There will be field trips to local public art installations as well as Middletown City Hall to meet with members of the Middletown Commission on the Arts. Students will learn about finding funding sources and will review existing grants and grant opportunities. This is a hands-on course that will involve working with members of the Middletown community.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST233 Studies in Computer-based Modelling and Digital Fabrication

This course operates at the intersection of design and production, introducing students to digital tools critical to contemporary architecture and design. Throughout the semester, students will develop a series of projects that fluidly transition between design, representation, and fabrication with an emphasis on understanding how conceptual design interfaces with material properties. The course will offer a platform for students to research, experiment, and, ultimately, leverage the potential of digital tools toward a wide array of fields and disciplines. Students will be expected to utilize the Digital Design Studio's resources, including 3D printers, laser cutter, and 4-Axis CNC mill, as well a selection of fabrication equipment housed in the school's metal and wood shops to represent, model, and realize a series of design projects.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: IDEA233
Prereq: None

ARST234 Xerox Dreams

This course will explore the histories and methods of making zines, investigating the strategies of quantity and dispersion. Students will learn about the processes of making a democratic multiple through processes such as silkscreen and digital printing. To spark inspiration and develop artistic values, we will learn about contemporary and historical independent presses, artists, and communities who use zines as an essential mode of expression. We will examine the ways the form of the multiple has allowed artists and activists to share ideas with fewer overhead costs and without permission, bypassing institutional gatekeeping, surveillance, and censorship. Later in the semester, we will challenge our understanding of form, function, and artistic authorship by making wearables and working collaboratively.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST235 Architecture I

This course is a synthesis of fundamentals of design principles and introduction to design vocabulary, process methodologies, and craft. Emphasis is placed on developing students' ability to examine the relationship between production (the process of creating things) and expression (the conveying of ideas and meaning) involved in the making of architecture. The intent of the course is to develop students' awareness and understanding of the built environment as a result of the investigations, observations, and inquiries generated in the studio.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: IDEA234
Prereq: None

ARST236 Fast & Furious

Fast and Furious is a class which explores the power of the multiple through the production of zines, posters, t-shirts, tote bags, pins and more. Beginning in the 1930s, the production of zines mainly in the sci-fi fan world became popular after the advent of the mimeograph--the first widely available duplicating machine. This way of making content was able to circumvent mainstream and institutional publishing models creating channels for more creatives to distribute their work. Today, there are even more technologies that can be used in the production of zeitgeist material. In this class, we will learn how to create with a Xerox machine, silkscreen, letterpress, polymer, and more. In each assignment we will contend with the power of quantity. What does it mean to make five of something? Ten? Fifty? One hundred? We will also experiment with format. How can a message be told through a wearable garment? How does the narrative change when it's a tote bag? And finally, we will explore the poetics of distribution. What are the artistic possibilities of a zine when it can be sent through the mail or left in a pile for the public?
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: IDEA236
Prereq: None

ARST237 Printmaking I

This course is an introduction to the practice and art of printmaking. Through technical instruction and personal exploration, students learn the rudiments of relief and intaglio printmaking media. Students learn to develop a print through a series of proofs with critical consideration as an important input in this progression from idea sketch to final edition.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: ARST131

ARST238 Print Culture 101

Print Culture 101 is an introductory course about the vast medium of printmaking: its techniques, its traditions, and its possibilities. Throughout the semester, students will learn how to use each area of the printshop, and the fundamentals of relief, recessed, planographic, stencil, and photographic processes of printmaking. Additionally, students will gain some elemental skills in working with paper, ink, and adhesives. These skills will also equip students with useful knowledge to experiment with unconventional materials.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: ARST131

ARST239 Painting I

This introductory-level course in painting (oils) emphasizes work from observation and stresses the fundamentals of formal structure: color, paint manipulation, composition, and scale towards artistic expression. Students will address conceptual problems that will allow them to begin developing an understanding of the power of visual images to convey ideas and expressions. The course will include lectures and individual and group critiques.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: ARST131

ARST242 Typography

The fundamentals of fonts, letter forms, typographic design, elements of the book, and an introduction to contemporary graphic design are considered through a progression of theoretical exercises. Once working knowledge of the typeshop and InDesign (software for book design) is acquired, each student conceives, designs, and prints: first, a broadside, then a book. Use is made of the collection in the Davison Rare Book Room at Olin Library. While NOT a required sequence, this course is strongly recommended before taking ARST243.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST243 Introduction to Graphic Design

This course will open your mind to the world of graphic design, both past and present. You will learn how to analyze and critique design in addition to how to present your work and convey your ideas to others. You'll explore various tools available to a designer including hand skills and computer software. Computers will simply be a possible tool to help complete each project - this is not a software class.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: IDEA243
Prereq: None

ARST245 Sculpture I

An introduction to seeing, thinking, and working in three dimensions, the class will examine three-dimensional space, form, materials, and the associations they elicit. Through the sculptural processes of casting, carving, and construction in a variety of media, students will develop and communicate a personal vision in response to class assignments.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST246 Graphic Design: Website as Portfolio

Students will focus on the creation of an online portfolio of work as both an extension of their own practice and calling card for the world at large. Emphasis will be placed on the deployment of the site as a space for both interactive and graphic design and the development of writing about/documenting work and projects. Hard coding skills not necessary; focus will be on familiarization with user friendly sketching platforms, research organization systems, and out-of-the-box CMS for website development. Visiting artist talks will also be arranged.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: IDEA246
Prereq: None

ARST251 Photography I

This is a comprehensive introductory course to the methods and aesthetics of film-based and digital photography. The topics of study will include evaluating negatives and darkroom prints, developing film, Lightroom and Photoshop software, inkjet printing, reading light, visualization, photographic design, and history of photography.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST252 Photography I

This class is only intended for first year students. This is an introductory course to the methods and aesthetics of film-based and digital photography. The class is designed for students with no prior formal experience in photography, though it will still challenge those that are already versed in film and digital. The first few weeks of class will be devoted to comprehensive technical instruction including exposure, film processing, and darkroom enlargement. Subsequently, class time will be split between weekly critiques and lectures covering topics including visualization, reading and evaluating light, and photographic history. The shooting assignments are open ended and conceived to push each student to define their own visual interests as they continue to immerse themselves in the language of the medium. After fall break, we will switch to working digitally. Software instruction will include Lightroom and Photoshop, with significant time devoted to inkjet printing. The course will culminate in a final portfolio that will reflect the formal, technical, and conceptual experimentation that the students will engage in throughout the course.



***Please note that this is an intensive course with a significant work load. Students should expect to spend at least 15 hours outside of class on weekly shooting and production. Please feel free to reach out to the instructor at arudensky@wesleyan.edu if you have any questions.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST253 Digital Photography I

This course is an extensive examination into the methods and aesthetics of digital photography. The topics of study will include DSLR camera operation, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Bridge, and printing as well as, most importantly, a focus on photography as a fine art through both a historical and contemporary viewpoint.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST260 Introduction to Sumi-e Painting

We will learn basic technique and composition of traditional Japanese sumi-e painting. Sumi-e is a style of black-and-white calligraphic ink painting that originated in China and was introduced into Japan by Zen monks around 1333. We will concentrate on the four basic compositions of sumi-e: bamboo, chrysanthemum, orchid, and plum blossom. We will also study the works of the more famous schools, such as Kano. Students will create a portfolio of class exercises and their own creative pieces.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: CEAS460
Prereq: None

ARST261 Alternative Printmaking: Beginning Japanese Woodblock Technique

Students are taught traditional Japanese techniques for conceptualizing a design in terms of woodcut, carving the blocks, and printing them, first in trial proofs and editions. After understanding how both of these methods were originally used and then seeing how contemporary artists have adapted them to their own purposes, both for themselves and in collaboration with printers, students will use them to fulfill their own artistic vision. Considerable use is made of the Davison Art Center collection of traditional and contemporary Japanese prints as well as many European and American woodcuts.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: CEAS461
Prereq: ARST131

ARST265 Action: Art, Politics, Counterpublics

In this interdisciplinary studio course, we explore action as a category of art practice. What does it mean to take action, either individually or collectively? What does it mean to refuse to take action? Through a series of projects, assignments, and discussions, we work through various possibilities, drawing on methods from public interventions, performance, institutional critique, social practice, experimental film, and work by non-art practitioners. The course is organized around the production of student projects and research, culminating in a self-directed capstone work. In the initial stages, students will be asked to work through three distinct modalities (performance, site-specific intervention, and collaborative practice) while developing their ideas. Time will be devoted to discussion of historic and contemporary examples, including European avant-gardes (Dada, Productivism), feminist film and performance, Happenings, Indigenous performance art, and work connected to political organizing, such as the Black Panther Party, United Farm Workers, Young Lords, ACT-UP, Art Workers' Coalition, and EZLN, among others. Students will be exposed to a variety of techniques and will gain access a range of facilities, including the woodshop, digital technologies through the Digital Design Studio, etc. Depending on Covid restrictions, trips to contemporary exhibitions will provide a theoretical framework. Work in this class can be created individually or collaboratively. Depending on interest, we may also organize an end-of-semester exhibit.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: CSPL275
Prereq: None

ARST270 Product Design I

In this introductory product design course, students will experience basic design processes such as problem identification and possible resolutions; the use of design development and communication skills via design observation and research; iterative process and prototyping; and representation and presentation in two and three-dimensional forms. Students will explore how design can play a role in our community and how it can impact our society. Students will work both individually and collaboratively in a studio environment. Field trips to New York City fabricators, galleries, and workshops may be expected as part of this course.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: IDEA160
Prereq: None

ARST271 Biodegradable Design: Soft and Hairy

In this part seminar, part studio course, students will go on field trips and read extensively to develop an understanding of mycelium and how it is explored in design. We will explore temporality in design with particular focus on how biodegradable materials such as mycelium can form our experience of an object. We will study how mycelium can be utilized as a living material to form a built ecology. In particular, we will study how to design for impermanence -- sometimes using waste materials -- and develop an understanding for material recovery. Students will work both individually and collaboratively in a studio environment. Field trips to New York City museums, fabricators, and galleries, as well as around CT may be expected as part of this course.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: IDEA271, ENVS271
Prereq: ARST131 OR IDEA110 OR IDEA180

ARST286 Introduction to Time-Based Media

This course will serve as a comprehensive introduction to time-based media in the expanded field. We will explore the ways video can transform our relationship with ourselves, others, and the material world. Through regular technical exercises, readings, and group discussions, students will gain technical facility and a critical eye for time-based art and culture. What sorts of videos do we consider "art"? In an era of selfies, live-streaming, and state-sanctioned violence (and its digital record), how might we use video as a tool of empathy and accountability? We will pursue answers to these questions through the act of making. Students will be introduced to camera operation, sound recording, and lighting, as well as video and sound editing. Screenings of historical and contemporary video art will contextualize each assignment. We will also investigate vernacular applications of video, and the medium's role beyond the studio.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: DDC286, IDEA286
Prereq: None

ARST308 Composition in the Arts

Composition, the manner in which elements are combined or related to form a whole in space and time, is a basic practice in all the arts. This course brings together practitioners from diverse art forms and traditions to address the basic issue of composition.



In this seminar, we will explore the compositional process through assignments that address the interacting concepts of site and information. By "site," we mean a semantic field extending through corporeal, environmental, and social dimensions. By "information," we mean representations abstracted from sites, "meaningless" when independent of any specific semantic interpretation. Participants will compose individual and collaborative interventions in a wide range of sites--public, private, physical, and electronic--in response to the problems posed.



This course is permission-of-instructor, and is intended for upper-level majors in Art, Dance, Film, Music, and Theatre, and others with sustained compositional practices suitable to the course.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: MUSC308, THEA308
Prereq: None

ARST320 Ecological Design II: Worn Out/Broken In

This course will function as a design studio that examines the afterlife of material production. While designers have traditionally focused their attention on the creation, distribution, and consumption of new products, this course asks students to carefully consider everything that follows those acts. By scrutinizing the use, care, maintenance, repair, and eventual demise of designed objects, students come to understand the intended and unintended consequences of making. Rigorous observation and research lead to the creation of analytic drawings and models for presentation at project reviews.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: IDEA320, ENVS321
Prereq: ARST270 OR ARST235 OR ARST220

ARST321 Wood: Building with the Forest

This studio introduces students to full-scale design and construction through the production of a single, collaborative project over the course of the semester. Working from land-based research and precedent analysis, students develop a detailed design for a structure on a specific site in Middletown, then build it together in the field. Materials will be sourced from the northern hardwood forest and the design crafted to suit its ecosystem.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ENVS324, IDEA321
Prereq: ARST270 OR ARST235 OR ARST220

ARST323 Topics in Studio Art: Information

Artists in all media have historically responded to common, formal, and ideological motivations. These motivations encompass the very fabric of a liberal arts education. This course is intended to develop such a conversation among the various studio art disciplines as the foundation for making art. The course centers on a topic determined by the instructor. The class will function as a study group (of painters, sculptors, photographers, drawers, printmakers, architects and so on) that tackles the topic through the act of art-making. The topic will be introduced through readings and visual precedents, and through discussion we will determine means to respond as artists, each student in his or her own medium. These individual responses will then be analyzed in group critiques. Later in the semester, students will expand their investigations to include studio disciplines other than their own.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: ARST131 OR ARST235 OR ARST244 OR ARST245 OR ARST251 OR ARST253 OR ARST260 OR ARST285 OR ARST190 OR ARST233 OR ARST237 OR ARST239 OR ARST243 OR ARST261

ARST332 Drawing II

This class builds upon the course content covered in Drawing I (ARST131). As we continue to draw from observation, topics will include an in-depth exploration of the human figure, various approaches to pictorial space, and an introduction to color. This course also introduces a concept-based approach to drawing that explores narrative and content. Brainstorming exercises and ideation techniques widen the scope a of "what is a drawing," and we will experiment with various methodologies in pursuit of developing personal style and studio practice. Drawing II serves as an essential bridge between introductory-level courses and the individualized pursuit of the ARST senior thesis.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: ARST131

ARST336 Architecture II

This course is a second-level architecture studio whose focus will be a single, intensive research and design project. As the semester progresses, additional design, representation, and production tools will be introduced and used for developing work for the project, from graphics software to the laser cutter. Additional information about the architecture studio at Wesleyan and its past projects may be found at: http://www.facebook.com/wesnorthstudio
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: IDEA336
Prereq: ARST235

ARST337 Codex Unbound

Codex Unbound is a course that investigates the art of the book. It asks: What is a book? And what are the expansive possibilities of this form? Students will explore these large questions through the process of making books in a variety of binding and printing techniques that range in cultural and historical origin. In learning such techniques, students will also be tasked with intervening with forms and creating their own innovations, which can incorporate their own intellectual interests.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: ARST131

ARST338 Printmaking II

This upper-level printmaking course focuses on the application of various printmaking methods in response to conceptual prompts. There will be instructional units on lithography, the Vandercook letterpress, and digital technologies. In addition to learning these new techniques, students are expected to build on previous printmaking experience to hone their skills and sharpen their creative vision. Routine print assignments and a final substantial project will task students with the development and presentation of professional, finished work.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: ARST237 OR ARST261 OR ARST361

ARST339 Surface Tension

Bumpy, smooth, fuzzy, and sharp. These are all surfaces we are familiar with through our experience of the world. In art, the surface of an object, whether it is a sculpture or painting or anything else, is a port of entry into the experience, subject, and appreciation of the work. Tension in visual art can be thought of as the push and pull form has to provoke and/or engage the viewer. These points of strain could appear at the intersection of opposing marks, contrasting color, disharmonious imagery and much, much more. "Surface tension" refers to qualities in visual art related to the superficial veneer of an art object which can support the expression of content more deeply. In printmaking, surface tension can be literally created or optically suggested through a variety of techniques. In this class, we will learn advanced methodologies in intaglio, lithography, relief, letterpress, digital printing and more. Each assignment will task students to combine these mediums in surprising ways that encourage contrast, opposition, and traction. We will explore the possibilities of mixing water and oil based printing techniques, utilize digital medium in tandem with analog processes, apply dry and wet techniques together, and learn to gild metals on a variety of substrates. This class is open to any advanced student of art who wants to experiment with their practice in the arena of printmaking.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: ARST261 OR ARST337 OR ARST238 OR ARST361

ARST340 Painting II

In this class, students will develop an artistic vision and studio practice while exploring open-ended prompts and engaging in conversations that unpack approaches and methods toward achieving artistic goals. Each individual will work uniquely in both approach and technique in order to become fluent and make conceptual and aesthetic choices that will best convey their singular creative concerns. All prompts and concerns addressed in this course allow for any formal, conceptual, or stylistic method of expression to solve them. The knowledge and skills gained in ARST239 will serve as the foundation for a deeper inquiry into how formal decisions about process inevitably impact expression and the reading of artworks. While analyzing differing approaches to solving the same problem, students will discover how their own practice can transform their relationship with others and the world. Lectures and discussions will provide information and feedback on historical and contemporary issues, project proposals, goals for the work with respect to identifying an ideal audience, and the development of an artist's vision and statement.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: (ARST131 AND ARST239)

ARST341 Developing a Studio Practice Based in Painting

This course is intended for students with a solid foundation in painting or a related media concentration.



In this class, students will develop an artistic vision and studio practice while exploring open-ended prompts and engaging in conversations that unpack approaches and methods toward achieving artistic goals. Each individual will work uniquely in both concept and technique in order to become fluent and make conceptual and aesthetic choices that best convey their singular creative concerns. The knowledge and skills gained in ARST239 and/or other studio art courses will serve as the foundation for a deeper inquiry into how formal decisions about process inevitably impact expression and the reading of artworks. While analyzing differing approaches to solving the same problem, students will discover how their own practice can transform their relationship with others and the world.



Lectures and discussions will provide information and feedback on historical and contemporary issues, project proposals, goals for the work with respect to identifying an ideal audience, and the development of an artist's vision and statement.



Prerequisite: You must have taken any second level Art Studio course in any concentration.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST345 FAN FICTIONS: Alternative Universes, Gender Swaps, Ship-ping

In the vernacular, a "fan fiction" is a type of writing that reimagines a piece of popular media such as a book, TV show, or movie. This happens without consent and is used to explore alternative narratives or taboos.



Artists such as Kara Walker have reimagined the Antebellum south as an erotic horror, Mike Kelly created installations based on the cities of Krypton from the comic book Superman.



In our class we will utilize printmaking methodologies to explore strategies of fan fiction, by creating artworks that reconfigure both historical and fictional canons that have historically been entrenched in ideas of authenticity and devotional labor. Students will create etchings, silk screens, and zines.



Students should have print media experience though the class is not strictly restricted to printmaking.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: ARST131

ARST346 Sculpture II

This is an intermediate-level course. Projects focus on the associative nature of three-dimensional form--how issues intrinsic to sculpture reflect concerns extrinsic to the art form. The class will emphasize the development of personal expressions of students' visions in response to class assignments.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: ARST245 OR [ARST235 or IDEA234]

ARST349 Junior Studio

Junior Studio is an interdisciplinary studio based course designed for advanced Art Studio majors. This course focuses primarily on the idea of "practice" and offers students a supportive and critical environment to question the frameworks and processes they've adopted to approach art making. The class is structured to think through two main questions: What ideas, routines, and processes do you already practice in your life naturally? How can your individual artistic practices be structured to cater to those ideas, routines, and processes? This class plays in the grey areas between the ideas and mediums at our disposal. The goal is not to create proficient technicians of any one medium over the course of the semester but rather to help students feel more at home within the ways they approach their own work focusing on ideas, how we arrive at those ideas, and how those ideas can then be actualized and communicated. Junior studio aims to "open the medium" as Darby English has spoken about -- intentionally stretching, challenging, and muddying the boundaries around the mediums. This takes place through a range of assignments, readings, and projects pushing students to develop more intimate relationships between their practices and their output. To balance that introspection, the course will welcome a wide array of contemporary practitioners through presentation and in-class visits to expose students to different models of working within and outside of art.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST350 Senior Seminar

This is an interdisciplinary critique-based course designed for advanced Art Studio majors. Our primary aim is to provide a structure for the development of each student's thesis work, research, and thinking as it evolves over the course of the semester. Through extensive in-class discussions and reviews, we devote a substantial portion of time to the presentation and discussion of student work. We devote time to the discussion of installation strategies, readings in contemporary criticism, visiting artist lectures and presentations, and, if possible, visits to contemporary exhibitions in the area. The course is also an interdisciplinary workshop, an opportunity to share your work with your fellow students, and to participate in a structured response to one another's work across different types of media. Participation in the class will include leading discussions of readings, attending visiting department lectures, sharing work in class, and responding to/giving feedback to classmates' work. The course is designed as a complement to the Art Studio Senior Thesis process and is an elective for Art Studio majors.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

ARST352 Photography II

This is an intensive course intended for students with a solid foundation in photography. Students can choose to work in either film-based or digital media while developing their own unique voice. Topics will include medium-format film cameras, fiber paper, virtual drum scanning, large-format digital printing, and editing and sequencing images. The second part of the course will be devoted to developing a body of work that will result in a photo book project. Lectures and class discussions will provide a historical context, while presentations by visiting artists will introduce students to contemporary work in the medium. Emphasis will be placed on the weekly discussion of students' work.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST353 Photography III - Documentary Practices

This is an intensive course that will provide students with a historical, theoretical, and ethical overview associated with documentary photographic practice. It is intended for advanced students that have taken Photography I (ARST 251) or Photography II (ARST 352). Assignments, readings, and discussions will be geared toward the development of a cohesive body of work with focus on research and development of a concept, editing and sequencing of photographs, and fine printing. This course will serve as preparation for thesis work undertaken during the senior year and is recommended for prospective or current majors.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: ARST251 OR ARST352

ARST355 Concepts in Contemporary Art

In this interdisciplinary seminar and studio course, we explore key concepts in contemporary discourse across a range of forms, genres, and disciplines. How do works of art respond to and reframe central debates in the wider culture? In what ways do the theory and practice of art supplement or contradict each other? How does research function within the context of art historical study and contemporary artistic practice?



To contend with these questions, students develop a series of projects over the course of the term in response to specific conceptual prompts. These investigations may take the form of studio-based work or written scholarship depending on student interest and will culminate either in a final research paper (for those registering for Art History credit) or a final project in any medium (for those registering for Art Studio credit). Along the way, we study artworks, literary texts, works of social theory, art historical scholarship, films, popular culture, and other objects to ground our research. Parallel activities may include conversations with artists and art historians, methodological workshops, site-visits, trips to museums, and archival research.



Since the course's aim is to cultivate unexpected collaborations, cross-disciplinary encounters, and new ways of conjugating the history, theory, and practice of art, the final portion of the semester will focus on the organization of a collective exhibition, event series, symposium, publication, or other expanded curatorial endeavor. The course meets Fridays 12:30 pm-5:30 pm, with a break during that interval. Class time may on occasion include individual meetings and independent work.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA355
Prereq: None

ARST358 Video in Context

We live in a world where screens are often taken for granted. How has the omnipresence of video transformed visual perception? This course will focus on video installation and the ways video can shift our relationship to objects, space, and each other. Students will experiment with lighting and environment building, paying particular attention to how surfaces are transformed by the lens. We will explore projection mapping, live-streaming, installation, and the peculiarities of the screen. We will look at works by artists who have emphasized the physicality or immateriality of video through installation and web-based art. We will read a variety of texts, charting the shifting role video has played in contemporary society. Through weekly exercises and regular group critiques, we will begin to unpack how the videos we make contact with daily shift our relationship with both our own bodies and the material world.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST361 Monotype Printmaking

The monotype print is a free form of printmaking more akin to painting or drawing than to traditional printmaking. It is also a process in which the artist encounters fewer technical difficulties than in other traditional printmaking methods. Students in this course will create images using various mediums and methods. We are going to use different material like wood, plexiglass, paper, and textiles. Also, we may use laser cutting or digital printing, to combine with drawing or painting.



The goal of this course is not perfection of technique, but rather students experimenting with material and technique, to produce their own visual images.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: ARST131 OR ARST190 OR ARST233 OR ARST235 OR ARST237 OR ARST242 OR ARST243 OR ARST244 OR ARST245 OR ARST251 OR ARST253 OR ARST260 OR ARST261

ARST362 Sumi-e Painting II

Sumi-e Painting II is an advanced class for which Introduction to Sumi-e Painting (ARST 260) is a prerequisite. In this course, foundation techniques will be expanded upon. We will re-examine traditional techniques and composition, and there will be exploration of new contemporary techniques. There will also be experimentation with tools beyond the brush. This course will introduce a concept based approach to narrative and content. Students will be encouraged to develop a personal style and method.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: CEAS362
Prereq: ARST260

ARST370 Beyond Product: Regenerative Design

This course builds on the exploration and knowledge learned in Product Design I to discover opportunities for systems thinking in design. Students will study challenges and opportunities related to aging, education, food, and mobility to investigate potential opportunities through the lens of regenerative design. The course will support students in developing digital modeling skills as well as rapid prototyping and fabrication techniques. Students will work both individually and collaboratively in a studio environment. Field trips to New York City design ateliers, fabricators, and workshops may be expected as part of this course.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: IDEA370
Prereq: ARST270 OR ARST235 OR ARST220

ARST380 Interdisciplinary Studio: Politics of Land and Place

Notions of "place" are particularly fraught in North America, where legacies of development and dispossession have etched enduring power relationships onto the land. Contemporary spatial experience is marked by what Mindy Fullilove has called root shock: the reverberating effects of losing one's place and the collective struggle to reclaim it. In this interdisciplinary studio course, we develop artistic responses to the ways in which power shapes the natural and built environment. We look at a range of sites--the home, the city, the border, the wilderness, the commons--as spaces of memory and belonging, sociality and resistance. We explore the ways in which people have engaged with place through a range of forms, including roadside monuments, site-specific sculptures, landscape films, community-based performances, situationist dérives, plein air painting, collective rituals, and political protests. Over the course of the term, students will identify a site in the Lower Connecticut River Valley and develop their own aesthetic language in response to it. These works may take the shape of installations, performances, digital media, or texts, and will draw on our discussions of land art, institutional critique, social practice, and experimental film. While the course is geared primarily toward the development of student projects, our work will be informed by a series of site visits, readings, screenings, and discussions of contemporary land struggles, anticolonial movements, and feminist and indigenous geographies.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST381 Intermediate Public Practice

What are the possibilities and challenges of making work in the public domain? This intermediate studio course provides students with the framework, conceptual language, and technical means to develop ambitious projects in public space. Over the course of the semester, students will be introduced to a range of working methods, including new genre public art, research-based practices, site-specific projects, and collaborative practices. While the course focuses on contemporary issues and debates, it situates these topics within a set of broader global and historical traditions. Through group discussions, critiques, site visits, and presentations, the course will assist students in developing a series of works that build towards a self-directed final project. We look thematically at a range of sites as spaces of memory and belonging, sociality and resistance. We explore the manifold ways in which people have engaged with place through a range of forms, including roadside monuments, site-specific sculptures, landscape films, community-based performances, architectural interventions, collective rituals, and political protests. Attention will be placed on sites around Middletown in order to situate our research and practice. These may include Harbor Park, Middlesex Historical Society, Beman Triangle, Connecticut Valley Hospital, Colt Armory, Portland Brownstone Quarries, among others. Support will be provided to students along the way in negotiating relationships with local institutions and stakeholders. Supplementary readings will introduce students to questions related to spatial theory and practice, agonism and democracy, monuments and counter-monuments. Successful completion of the course will prepare students for advanced work in the public domain. Course is open to all students. Preference given to students who have taken ARST131 and ARST235 or ARST238 or ARST239 or ARST245 or ARST 251 or ARST286 or other course in a related discipline.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: CSPL381
Prereq: None

ARST382 Intermediate New Genres

In this interdisciplinary studio course, we make work that traverses traditional disciplinary boundaries in order to develop a methodology that prioritizes questions of context, material, and theme. Building on the history of experimental and avant-garde practices of the 20th and 21st centuries, work in this course may take the form of installations, performances, videos, texts, participatory and collaborative projects, site- and context-specific works, and other as-yet undefined forms.



Our work will not be defined by adherence to any specific discipline or genre. In this way, the course serves as a springboard for each student to develop a relationship to contemporary interdisciplinary practice as well as an opportunity to explore, collectively and individually, pivotal theoretical frameworks that have shaped the field. Successful completion of the course will provide students with a solid foundation for experimentation in the expanded field of contemporary artistic practice.



Prerequisite: Students must have successfully completed an Introductory- or Intermediate-level Studio Arts course.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST384 Special Topic: Between Forms: Intermedia Arts Workshop

This advanced project-based workshop is for poets and artists interested in interdisciplinary practices crossing over between poetry, visual art, and performance. It is taught in conversation with the Fall 2021 exhibition, The Language in Common, in Zilkha Gallery including the work of Cecilia Vicuña, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Julien Creuzet, Jasper Marsalis, and Alice Notley.



Facilitated by Professors Benjamin Chaffee and Danielle Vogel, with modules taught by visiting artists from across the arts, this workshop is designed for students interested in working outside of--or between--their primary mediums. Professors will guide students as they choose "companion mediums" to work in for the semester while employing interdisciplinary approaches to writing and art-making in order to discover their own unique and hybrid forms.



We will divide our time between intensive laboratory-like spaces for composing work, conversations with visiting artists, student presentations and workshops, and studying the works of artists working between forms, all in an attempt to root ourselves more dynamically in our individual practices. The course will culminate in a reflective essay or artist statement, as well as an exhibit of poems, objects, installations, and performances created during our time together.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ENGL
Identical With: ENGL384
Prereq: None

ARST385 Introduction to Social Practice

This studio seminar will serve as an introduction to contemporary issues in socially engaged art practice, with the goal to familiarize students with the history, theory, and practice of socially and politically engaged art. This course is intended for students with significant prior experience in studio art or related coursework in other disciplines. Interviews for the course will be held during the first class meeting.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: ARST131 OR ARST190 OR ARST237 OR ARST239 OR ARST242 OR ARST243 OR ARST245 OR ARST253 OR ARST260 OR ARST261 OR ARST285 OR ARST352 OR ARST353 OR ARST361

ARST386 Intermediate Time-Based Media

In this interdisciplinary studio course, we make work that traverses traditional disciplinary boundaries in order to develop a methodology that prioritizes questions of context, material, and theme. Building on the history of experimental and avant-garde practices of the 20th and 21st centuries, work in this course may take the form of installations, performances, videos, texts, participatory and collaborative projects, site- and context-specific works, and other as-yet undefined forms.



Our work will not be defined by adherence to any specific discipline or genre. In this way, the course serves as a springboard for each student to develop a relationship to contemporary interdisciplinary practice as well as an opportunity to explore, collectively and individually, pivotal theoretical frameworks that have shaped the field. Successful completion of the course will provide students with a solid foundation for experimentation in the expanded field of contemporary artistic practice.



Prerequisite: Students must have successfully completed an Introductory or Intermediate level Studio Arts course.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST387 Virtual Production: The Music Video

This intensive studio course will explore the breadth and depth of the music video genre. Students will learn advanced post-production, motion capture, and video recording techniques. Class sessions will include technical demonstrations, group discussions, and conversations with practitioners in the field. Readings and screenings will examine the relationship between music videos, technology, contemporary art, and popular culture. Students will learn how to use the 3D motion capture studio and record live musical performances. Software will include Adobe AfterEffects, Blender, and DaVinci Resolve. Through weekly exercises and a final independent project, students will learn to work collaboratively and develop a distinct creative voice. The course will culminate with a final music video project, to be screened at the end of the semester. Previous experience in Adobe Premiere Pro software is required. Preference will be given to students who have successfully completed ARST 286, ARST 386, DDC 108, or DDC 448. All students must be concurrently enrolled in the virtual production lab which meets Fridays 1:20 p.m. - 3:20 p.m. in DDC.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: DDC387, IDEA387
Prereq: None

ARST401 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARST402 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARST403 Department/Program Project or Essay

Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

ARST404 Department/Program Project or Essay

Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

ARST407 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)

Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

ARST408 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)

Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

ARST409 Senior Thesis Tutorial

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

ARST410 Senior Thesis Tutorial

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

ARST411 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARST412 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARST419 Student Forum

Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U

ARST420 Student Forum

Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U

ARST430 Architecture Senior Thesis Studio

This course fulfills the fall semester requirement of the Senior Thesis Project in Studio Art for Architecture majors. Structured as a Studio, the goal of this course is to develop a collaborative intellectual environment (studio culture) for senior majors to work through the theoretical, methodological, and practical concerns connected with their individual thesis projects under the guidance of an Art Studio faculty advisor. Topics to be examined will be based on students' research and studio practice, and participants are expected to engage critically, yet generously, with the projects of their peers.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Prereq: None

ARST465 Education in the Field, Undergraduate

Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARST466 Education in the Field, Undergraduate

Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARST467 Independent Study, Undergraduate

Credit may be earned for an independent study during a summer or authorized leave of absence provided that (1) plans have been approved in advance, and (2) all specified requirements have been satisfied.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARST468 Independent Study, Undergraduate

Credit may be earned for an independent study during a summer or authorized leave of absence provided that (1) plans have been approved in advance, and (2) all specified requirements have been satisfied.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARST469 Education in the Field, Undergraduate

Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

ARST470 Independent Study, Undergraduate

Credit may be earned for an independent study during a summer or authorized leave of absence provided that (1) plans have been approved in advance, and (2) all specified requirements have been satisfied.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

ARST484 Data, Art, and Visual Communication

This course looks at the ways the digital arts--broadly defined--can be used to explore the intersections of research, data, design, and art. Following a creative software "bootcamp," students will execute projects intended to help them generate, manipulate, and remix data for the purposes of visual communication and art. Students will use Adobe Creative Suite and Processing, an open source programming language, and integrated development environment (IDE) built for electronic arts, new media, and visual design. In addition to working in the studio, seminars, readings, and student presentations will explore the role of data visualization, "big data," and the web in culture and society today. No prior software knowledge or coding skills are required. Students working in STEM, humanities, and social sciences are encouraged to enroll.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: CIS284
Prereq: None

ARST491 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial

The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARST492 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial

The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARST495 Research Apprentice, Undergraduate

Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ARST496 Research Apprentice, Undergraduate

Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U