ARTH - Art History & Archaeology
ARTH169 Special Topics in Study Abroad I (1-6 Credits)
Special topics course taken as part of an approved study abroad program.
Repeatable to: 15 credits if content differs.
ARTH200 Art and Society in Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (3 Credits)
Examines the material culture and visual expressions of Mediterranean and European societies from early times until ca. 1300 CE, emphasizing the political, social, and religious context of the works studied, the relationships of the works to the societies that created them, and the interrelationship of these societies.
ARTH201 Art and Society in the West from the Renaissance to the Present (3 Credits)
Examines representative European and American works of art from the later Middle Ages to the present, highlighting the dynamic exchange between artistic and cultural traditions both within periods and across time.
ARTH230 Symbolic Images: The Theory and Practice of Iconography in European Art, 1400-1850 (3 Credits)
Iconographic interpretation of visual narratives, signs and symbols has long been a topic of art-historical inquiry. In early modern European art, images were often conceived with the deliberate intent of posing a 'puzzle' or 'problem' for the beholder to solve; yet in most cases we have little or no evidence of how contemporary beholders solved such enigmas. Provides students with the opportunity to take command of these research methods and source materials, addressing a genuine iconographic problem, researching the relevant literature, identifying the essential primary source evidence, making contextually appropriate assumptions, and producing a valid result.
ARTH240 Humanists on the Move (3 Credits)
Introduces students to the practices of a field that is only about twenty years old: the Digital Humanities. We will explore how humanities scholars can reexamine their materials, configuring them as "data" that can be gathered and visualized in order to ask new questions about the past. Using traditional humanities source materials from this different perspective, students will produce entirely new data; using new digital platforms, they will create visualizations of that data; and using humanistic methods, they will interpret those visualizations. Focusing on the original Humanists from the Renaissance period, this course will teach students to engage closely with the most traditional materials of the humanities - primary texts produced in an historical period - and with the newest tools to work with humanities data. Students will complete two major projects by collecting data on the same humanist figures: mapping their travels, and tracing their networks. We will also consider how texts can be treated as data.
ARTH255 Art and Society in the Modern American World (3 Credits)
Explores the origins and evolution of art in the modern American world, from the late colonial era to the present, comparing major artistic movements and their historical contexts. Considers the diversity of art across Latin America and the United States, and the ways in which artworks mediate social, ethnic, political, and national identities.
ARTH260 Art and Activism (3 Credits)
Can art effect social change? How may we use the history of radical and avant-garde art to inform present-day movements and models of artistic and creative activism? This course explores the modern and contemporary history of political art and arts activism on local, national, and global scales.
ARTH261 Monuments, Monumentality, and the Art of Memorial (3 Credits)
Why do societies create monuments? And why do they preserve and destroy, change and remove them? How do monuments embody cultural values, shape historical narratives, and become sites of mourning and memory? This course investigates the political and cultural work of monuments across time and space, from the ancient world to European empires to the contemporary United States. The issues we consider include intercultural exchange and religious contexts, race and representation, and appropriation and iconoclasm.
ARTH262 Public Art (3 Credits)
How does public art function on a university campus, in major cities, and across the United States? This course invites students to empirically study the modern history and civic values of public art spanning sculpture, painting, mixed-media, and installation. We consider the nature of public space, the politics of representation and community, and the civic and memorial functions of art. The course is built around a semester-long project in which students will commission a work of public art for our College Park campus.
ARTH263 Art and Difference (3 Credits)
A comparative and thematic approach to studying the representation of otherness in art and visual culture from the eighteenth century to the present. Students will work to expand the definition of otherness, and consider the roles that ethnicity, nationality, and politics play in representations of otherness across various continents and chronologies.
ARTH265 How (and Why) to Look at Art in the Era of Climate Change (3 Credits)
How can art help us build the mindset necessary for fashioning a sustainable civilization? Paintings, photographs, films, novels, songs, and other creative works as they shape beliefs related to sustainability and justice.
Credit Only Granted for: ARTH265 or ARTH465.
Formerly: ARTH465.
ARTH269 Special Topics in Study Abroad II (1-6 Credits)
Special topics course taken as part of an approved study abroad program.
Repeatable to: 15 credits if content differs.
Additional Information: No more than 3 credits total of ARTH 269 or ARTH 289 can be used to satisfy the art history major requirement.
ARTH289 Special Topics in Art History and Archaeology (3 Credits)
Selected topics in the visual arts to introduce students to the history of various modes of visual expression and communication.
Repeatable to: 6 credits if content differs.
Additional Information: No more than 3 credits total of ARTH269 or ARTH289 can be used to satisfy the art history major requirement.
ARTH290 Art and Society in Asia (3 Credits)
A comparative, interrelational study of the different visual arts and material cultures produced by societies in Asia. An examination of the historical traditions and forms in political, social, and religious contexts.
ARTH292 Discovering Japan: How the Arts Shaped a Nation (3 Credits)
Explores the origins and creation of Japan from ancient to contemporary times through East Asian and European exchange. Acquaints students with painting, sculpture, architecture, ceramics, gardens, and other art forms in relation to the various cultural contexts within which they were produced and used.
ARTH300 Egyptian Art and Archaeology (3 Credits)
Sites and monuments of painting, sculpture, architecture, and the minor arts of ancient Egypt from earliest times through the Roman conquest. Emphasis on the pharaonic period.
ARTH301 Aegean Art and Archaeology (3 Credits)
Sites and monuments of painting, sculpture, architecture, and the minor arts of Crete, the Cycladic islands, and the Greek mainland from the earliest times to the downfall of the Mycenaean empire.
ARTH302 Greek Art and Archaeology (3 Credits)
Sites and monuments of painting, sculpture, architecture, and the minor arts from the Geometric through the Hellenistic period with emphasis on mainland Greece in the Archaic and Classical periods.
ARTH303 Roman Art and Archaeology (3 Credits)
Sites and monuments of painting, sculpture, architecture, and the minor arts from the earliest times through the third century A.D. with emphasis on the Italian peninsula from the Etruscan period through that of Imperial Rome.
ARTH305 Archaeological Methods and Practice (3 Credits)
A team-taught, interdisciplinary course discussing theories, methods, and ethical issues in the practice of archaeology.
Prerequisite: ANTH240, ARTH200, or CLAS180.
Cross-listed with: ANTH305, CLAS305, JWST319Y.
Credit Only Granted for: ANTH305, ARTH305, CLAS305, or JWST319Y.
ARTH313 Medieval Art: Cultural Exchanges in the Byzantine World (3 Credits)
Focuses on the art and architecture from the eastern Mediterranean, specifically, the Byzantine empire. Our broad focus will be on the formation and evolution of the visual arts in Byzantium as a result of exchanges with various cultural, ethnic, and religious entities and traditions. In this context, we will be looking at the legacy of the Graeco-Roman past, contacts with Islamic world, as well as with people and cultures along the periphery of Byzantium: from the Balkan peninsula, to Sicily and Russia.
ARTH320 Fourteenth and Fifteenth-Century Northern European Art (3 Credits)
The art of northern Europe with an emphasis on painting in the Netherlands and France.
ARTH321 Northern European Art of the 16th Century: Art in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation (3 Credits)
Painting in France, Germany, England, and the Low Countries during the Renaissance and Reformation.
ARTH322 Van Eyck to Bruegel: The Renaissance in Northern Europe (3 Credits)
The tradition of pictorial art in the Netherlands from its flowering in the courts and cities of the early 15th century to the cataclysmic moment of iconoclasm in 1566. It will feature works by famous masters like Jan van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Durer, and Pieter Bruegel, but also objects created by lesser-known and anonymous makers. It will treat artworks -- illuminated books, tapestries, paintings, and printed images -- as complexly embedded in the great economic, social, and religious upheavals of this period, particularly considering the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the Reformation, and the sense of "discovery" of new worlds.
ARTH323 Fifteenth-Century Italian Renaissance Art (3 Credits)
Painting, sculpture, architecture, and the decorative arts of the fifteenth century in Italy.
ARTH324 Leonardo's World: Art and Experience in Renaissance Italy (3 Credits)
Painting, sculpture, architecture, and the decorative arts of the sixteenth century in Italy.
ARTH330 Seventeenth-Century European Art (3 Credits)
Painting, sculpture and architecture concentrating on Italy, Spain, France, and England.
ARTH335 Seventeenth-Century Art in the Netherlands (3 Credits)
Painting, sculpture and architecture in seventeenth-century Netherlands.
ARTH337 Cities and the Arts (3 Credits)
Cities and the Arts, as taught by different faculty members in the Department of Art History and Archaeology, will investigate the urban environment and visual culture(s) of one or several major centers. The class will consider how a large city's culture absorbs, transforms, and utilizes multiple external sources in developing a particular local brand defined as its "identity." It examines the visualization of ideals of local coherence as well as the arts of fragmentation and competing internal cultures. Cities and the Arts considers how a large city's interface with an expanding external world, even a global one, allows for appropriations and the rise of discrimi-nations; it examines how exclusions form within the city itself, and how social groups visually articulate identities that may run counter to the larger urban mythology.
ARTH346 Nineteenth-Century European Art from 1850 (3 Credits)
Major trends from Realism and Impressionism to Symbolism, exploring the historical context, in which concepts of gender, class, and race are integral to the transformation of Western art.
ARTH350 Twentieth-Century Art to 1945 (3 Credits)
Painting, sculpture, and architecture in Europe and America from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War II.
Prerequisite: ARTH201.
ARTH351 Picturing Contemporary Life: Art Since 1945 (3 Credits)
Visual art since 1945, with an emphasis on North America and Europe.
ARTH357 History of Photography (3 Credits)
An exploration of the historical, social, aesthetic, and technological developments of the photographic medium and its relationship to other modes of visual representation in the creation of the modern world.
Credit Only Granted for: ARTH357 or ARTH457.
ARTH359 Film as Art (3 Credits)
The study of film as a visual art, from theoretical, cultural and aesthetic perspectives. Content varies by semester.
Repeatable to: 6 credits if content differs.
ARTH360 History of American Art to 1876 (3 Credits)
Painting, sculpture, architecture, and decorative arts in North America from the colonial period to 1876.
ARTH361 American Art from Civil War to Civil Rights (3 Credits)
Explores diverse artistic movements and makers in the United States, beginning at the end of the Civil War in 1865 and concluding with the art of Civil Rights era in the 20th century. We will ask how the visual arts construct and challenge formations of race, class, gender, and citizenship in the context of political transformations and social movements over a century of US history. This course emphasizes the practice of close looking as we encounter works art across a range of media--photography, painting, sculpture, film, material culture, performance art and public art.
ARTH362 Presently Black: Contemporary African American Art (3 Credits)
Looks critically at African-American and African diaspora art, focusing particularly on works made in the 20th and 21st centuries. Organized chronologically, this class will provide students with a more thorough understanding of this period of art, as well as the overall connection of visual material to the social, the political, and the aesthetic frames of its production. We will study the ways in which African-American visual production has been shaped by larger discourses about American art, but has also responded to the very real circumstances of racial exclusion in both the mainstream art world and larger society. Students will also have a chance to interact directly with the collection of the David C. Driskell Center throughout the semester.
ARTH369 Special Topics in Study Abroad III (1-6 Credits)
Special topics course taken as part of an approved study abroad program.
Repeatable to: 15 credits if content differs.
Additional Information: No more than 6 credits of ARTH 369 can be used to satisfy the art history major requirements.
ARTH370 Latin American Art and Archaeology before 1500 (3 Credits)
Pre-Hispanic painting, sculpture, and architecture, with a focus on the major archaeological monuments of Mexico.
ARTH372 Modern Latin American Art to 1945 (3 Credits)
Painting and sculpture in Latin America, with an emphasis on avant-garde movements in Mexico City, Havana, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro.
ARTH376 Living Art of Africa (3 Credits)
Art styles among the segmentary, centralized, and nomadic people of Africa. The iconography and function of their art and its relationship to their various societies, cults and ceremonies.
ARTH377 Global African Art (3 Credits)
A survey of the African-inflected arts around the world, focusing on such countries as Brazil, Haiti, Cuba and the United States
ARTH378 Special Topics for Honors Students (3 Credits)
Writing of a research paper. With an instructor's permission work may be done in conjunction with a graduate colloquium or seminar.
Prerequisite: Must be admitted to art history honors; and permission of ARHU-Art History & Archaeology department.
Restriction: Must be in Art History program.
Repeatable to: 6 credits.
ARTH383 Art of Japan after 1500 (3 Credits)
Thematically-focused topics in the painting, sculpture, architecture, gardens and decorative arts of early modern, modern and contemporary Japan, from 1500 to present.
ARTH385 Art of China (3 Credits)
A chronological survey of Chinese painting, sculpture, and the applied arts.
ARTH386 Experiential Learning (3-6 Credits)
Supervised internship experience in diverse areas of art historical, archaeological, and museological work.
Prerequisite: Permission of ARHU-Art History & Archaeology department.
Restriction: Junior standing or higher.
ARTH389 Special Topics in Art History and Archaeology (3 Credits)
Repeatable to: 6 credits if content differs.
ARTH391 Transnational Chinese Cinema (3 Credits)
Chinese cinema has made a big impact on contemporary world film culture. This course will introduce students to the films directed by some of the most representative filmmakers working in different geopolitical locations (mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong) and the Chinese diaspora. The films of these directors, in a spectrum of genres, themes, and styles, have inspired global scholarship, not only in visual culture and cinema, but also in the study of women's issues, gender and ethnic studies, as well as the fields of adaptation and intermedia studies. Students will explore these films in their socio-historical and artistic contexts, considering the influences and innovations that have shaped them and analyzing their reception by audiences and critics. After reading about the films they view, and participating in class discussions, students will be ready to complete their analytical written assignments, for which they will critically examine the films by applying key concepts such as gender, sexuality, race, gaze, style, representation, power, diaspora, etc.
Cross-listed with: CINE335.
ARTH392 Contemporary Chinese Art and Film (3 Credits)
Contemporary Chinese art and film are arguably the most vibrant of all national arts at the turn of the millennium and have become the face - both figuratively and literally - of contemporary China, a complex society with historic overlays of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Communism, Post-socialism, and state capitalism. Students will consider a wide range of art forms (painting, photography, video, installation, web-based media, and film) in four broad themes (uses of the past; critiques of power; representations of race, gender, and sexuality; socially engaged art) and explore the complex intertwining of the political, historical, and aesthetic aspects in Chinese contemporary art and film, as well as the multiple contexts in which these artworks are created and circulated.
Cross-listed with: CINE337.
Credit Only Granted for: ARTH392, FILM329L or CINE337.
Formerly: FILM329L.
ARTH418 Special Problems in Italian Renaissance Art (3 Credits)
Focus upon aspects of painting, sculpture, and architecture of Renaissance.
Repeatable to: 6 credits if content differs.
ARTH426 Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture in Northern Europe (3 Credits)
Sculpture in France, Germany, England, and the Low Countries from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century.
ARTH472 Ecuador: Andean Spaces-Traversing the Colonial City and the Natural World (3 Credits)
Introduces students to the history and cultures of Ecuador from the colonial period to the beginning of the 19th century. By studying the socio-spatial configuration of the colonial city as exemplified by Quito, students will be immersed in the art, architecture, and other rich cultural legacies of Ecuador. Quito, a World Heritage site, offers students visually stunning churches, monasteries, colonial squares, a famed tradition of Baroque painting and sculptures, and vibrant indigenous and mestizo communities. As a contrast, students will explore also travel narratives that represent the natural Andean world while visiting Quito's surrounding areas. This course will interrogate the European influence on urban design and representations of the landscape of the Americas. Understanding this colonial past enhances the understanding of the modern history of the Andean region and Latin America as a whole. The students will gain a full appreciation of the European and Indigenous living heritage that composes the region today. Taught in English.
Cross-listed with: SPAN435.
Credit Only Granted for: SPAN435, SPAN448E, ARTH472 or ARTH369E.
Formerly: SPAN448E and ARTH369E.
ARTH484 Modern Chinese Film and Visual Culture (3 Credits)
Modern Chinese culture, society, and history studied through examples of art, film, and visual culture.
Cross-listed with: CINE426.
Credit Only Granted for: ARTH484, CINE426 or FILM426.
Formerly: FILM426.
ARTH488 Colloquium in Art History (3 Credits)
Colloquium to investigate a specific topic in depth.
Prerequisite: Permission of ARHU-Art History & Archaeology department.
Repeatable to: 9 credits if content differs.
ARTH489 Special Topics in Art History (3 Credits)
Prerequisite: Permission of ARHU-Art History & Archaeology department.
Repeatable to: 9 credits if content differs.
ARTH496 Methods of Art History and Archaeology (3 Credits)
Methods of research and criticism applied to typical art-historical/ archaeological problems, familiarizing the student with bibliography and other research tools. Introduction to the historiography of art history and archaeology, surveying the principal theories, encouraging methodological debates within the discipline. Course for majors who intend to go on to graduate school.
Prerequisite: Permission of ARHU-Art History & Archaeology department.
Restriction: Must be in Art History program.
ARTH498 Directed Studies in Art History I (2-3 Credits)
Prerequisite: Permission of ARHU-Art History & Archaeology department.
Restriction: Junior standing or higher.
Repeatable to: 99 credits if content differs.
ARTH499 Honors Thesis (1-6 Credits)
Prerequisite: Permission of ARHU-Art History & Archaeology department.
Repeatable to: 6 credits if content differs.