Art History
Program of Study
The study of art history encompasses the visual arts and material culture of a wide range of regions and historical periods. Art history courses develop students' skills in visual analysis, interpretation of images and texts, use of historical sources, and engagement with scholarly debates. Within the department, survey classes provide a chronological overview of an extended period in Western or non-Western art, while Art in Context courses focus on a particular artist or artists, medium or theme, artistic problem, movement, or period. Upper-level classes may be similarly focused but at a more advanced level, or may deal with theoretical questions. After taking an introduction to art historical methods in their third year, fourth-year students who are majoring in art history conduct independent research on a topic of their own devising, producing a BA paper with the guidance of a faculty member and a graduate preceptor. The major in art history thus introduces students to a variety of cultures and approaches while providing analytical skills to enable students to focus their attention productively on specific questions in the study of art. In combination with a broad general education, art history provides excellent preparation for professions as well as graduate school in art history and careers in the arts.
Nonmajors may take any 10000-level course to meet general education requirements or as an elective; ARTH 10100 Introduction to Art is designed specifically to introduce these students to skills in thinking and writing about art of different cultures and periods. Nonmajors may also take more advanced courses with the instructor's consent.
Courses for Nonmajors
ARTH 10100 Introduction to Art develops basic skills in the analysis and critical enjoyment of a wide range of visual materials. Issues and problems in the making, exhibition, and understanding of images and objects are explored through classroom discussion of key works, critical reading of fundamental texts, visits to local museums, and writing.
Survey Courses
ARTH 14000 through 16999 - discuss major monuments of world art and architecture in the context of broad chronological and geographic categories and in relation to broad questions concerning the role art plays in individual, societal, and institutional settings.
ARTH 14000 through 14999 - address Western art in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.
ARTH 15000 through 15999 - address Western art from the early modern period to the present day.
ARTH 16000 through 16999 - address the art of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and/or the Middle East.
Art in Context Courses
ARTH 17000 through 18999 - introduce students to a well-defined issue, topic, or period of art in depth; at the same time, these courses explore issues of creativity, communication, and value in a series of concrete case studies.
Any of these 10000-level courses is an appropriate choice to meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts. None presuppose prior training in art.
Students who have taken at least one course in art history or studio art, or who have equivalent nonacademic experience, may elect to take an advanced lecture course, numbered from 20100 to 28999. The prerequisite is consent of instructor or any 10000-level course in art history or visual arts. The 20000-level art history courses investigate the arts of specific periods and places from a variety of perspectives. Some courses embrace large bodies of material defined by national culture; others follow developments in style, iconography, and patronage as they affect works in selected media.
Program Requirements
The BA in art history is intended to furnish students with a broad knowledge of Western and non-Western art. It also provides an opportunity for the complementary, intensive study of an area of special interest. It is recommended for students who wish to develop their abilities in visual analysis and criticism; to acquire some sense of the major developments in the arts from ancient times to the present; and to understand the visual arts as aspects of social, cultural, and intellectual history. So conceived, the study of art is an element of a general, liberal arts education; the skills of analytical thinking, logical argument, and clear verbal expression necessary to the program are basic to most fields. Thus, the major in art history can be viewed as training for a wide range of professions. The program in art history also prepares interested students for advanced study at the graduate level and, eventually, for work in academia, museums, galleries, and other organizations.
General Requirements for Art History Majors
Students register for an approved drama, music, ARTV, or Creative Writing course to meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts; art history majors may not use art history courses to meet general education requirements.
Students register for a total of four Survey Courses (see definition under Courses for Nonmajors above): one course at the 14000 level, one course at the 15000 level, one course at the 16000 level, and a fourth Survey Course of the student's choosing.
Art history majors take the department's two undergraduate seminars. In Winter Quarter of their third year, they register for the ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History. Students who wish to study abroad during that quarter are strongly urged to enroll in ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History in the Winter Quarter of their second year and must meet with the Director of Undergraduate Studies to discuss their program in the major before they go abroad. In Autumn Quarter of their fourth year, they register for the BA paper writing seminar (ARTH 29800 Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop) (see following section).
Students in art history write at least two research papers that are ten to fifteen pages in length before starting their fourth year, typically in the context of 20000-level courses in art history. Alternatives include 40000-level graduate seminars, reading courses, or, more rarely, Art in Context courses. It is the student's responsibility to initiate arrangements with an instructor and obtain his or her signature on an approval form when the paper is completed. To obtain an approval form, visit arthistory.uchicago.edu/files/undergraduate-research-approval-form.pdf.
A research paper should address a topic chosen by the student in consultation with the instructor. The student should draw on scholarship and evidence to shape and support a thesis or argument of the student's own devising. Formal analyses of works of art and analytic papers on materials assembled for a class by the instructor do not qualify. However, students may ask the instructor to allow a substitution of a research paper or they may write a research paper in addition to basic course requirements.
Students develop a special field of interest (see below).
Within this field, students write a BA paper (see below).
Double Majors and the BA Thesis: Whether or not a single BA thesis can satisfy the requirements for a double major in art history and another program is decided by the department on a case by case basis. The criteria on which the decision is based include: A student who wishes to write a single BA thesis for a double major in Art History and another program must write a letter (a page) explaining his or her request for the department's approval. The letter should be addressed to the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
the degree to which the resulting thesis is likely to speak from and to art history, even as it necessarily speaks from and to another field;
the feasibility of the proposed advising arrangements for the proposed joint thesis; and
the department's estimation of the student's track record for independent work that bodes well for writing a successful thesis while navigating between two majors
Students may apply to transfer up to four courses in art history to fulfill their major requirements. Preference will be given to courses that fall into the survey course category or, in the case of students in Track II (see below), into the category of special field courses taken in disciplines/departments outside art history. Approval is required from the Director of Undergraduate Studies, who will review each course individually. Students who wish to receive credit in the major or minor for courses taken elsewhere should read carefully the following information. These guidelines apply not only to courses taught at other institutions and in study abroad programs but also to courses that are affiliated with the University but not taught by University faculty. Students should meet with the Director of Undergraduate Studies well in advance to discuss a course they wish to take. After completing the course, students should petition the Director of Undergraduate Studies in writing for credit for the major. The petition must include a cover letter with the title and description of the course, as well as the name and location of the institution. To the cover letter should be attached a syllabus and a written record of the work the student did for the course.
The Office of the Dean of Students in the College must approve the transfer of all courses taken at institutions other than those in which students are enrolled as part of a study abroad program that is sponsored by the University of Chicago. Please note that it may be possible use such a course to meet requirements in the College but not in the major. For more information, visit college.uchicago.edu/policies-regulations/course-registration-policies/transfer-credit.
Recommendations for Art History Majors
Students are encouraged to take graduate seminars with prior consent of instructor. (These seminars are also open to nonmajors with the same proviso.)
Students are urged to also pursue upper-level language courses. If a language course is relevant to a student's special field, the student may petition the Director of Undergraduate Studies to count it toward electives.
Those planning to continue their study of art history at the graduate level are advised to achieve language competency equal to at least two years of college study in French or German, or in Italian for those with primary interest in the art of Italy.
Two Tracks
In structuring their programs, students may choose one of two orientations ("tracks"): one offering a broad coverage of the history of art, and the other offering a close cross-disciplinary study of a specific area or topic.
Track I
In addition to the four Survey Courses, the ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History, and the ARTH 29800 Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop, Track I students take six upper-level courses within the department. Up to two Art in Context courses (see definition under Courses for Nonmajors above) may be substituted for upper-level courses with prior approval of the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Within the six departmental courses, students must develop a special field consisting of three courses with a relevance to one another that is clearly established. The field may be defined by chronological period, medium, national culture, genre, theme, or methodological concerns. Because they reflect the interests of individual students, such fields range widely in topic, approach, and scope. Reading courses with art history faculty may be used to pursue specific questions within a field. Students are encouraged to distribute the remaining three departmental courses widely throughout Western and non-Western art. Within their six upper-level courses, students must take at least one course in Western art before 1400, one course in Western art after 1400, and one course in non-Western art.
Track II
In addition to the four Survey Courses, the ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History, and the ARTH 29800 Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop, Track II students take six courses: three upper-level courses inside and two courses outside the Department of Art History that make up the special field, and one additional upper-level course in art history, the subject of which is the student's choice. In order to encourage breadth of expertise, the elective course may not be in the student's special field. Occasionally, Art in Context courses (see definition under Courses for Nonmajors above) may be substituted for upper-level courses with prior approval of the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
In Track II, the special field may take many different forms. It may be civilization defined by chronological period, nation-state, or cultural institution. Extradepartmental courses in history and literature are particularly relevant to such a program. Another special field might be conceptual in character (e.g., art and the history of science, urban history, geography) and draw upon a variety of extradepartmental courses in the Humanities Collegiate Division and the Social Sciences Collegiate Division. A field could combine historical, critical, and theoretical perspectives (e.g., visual arts in the twentieth century) and include courses in art history, drama, music, film, and popular culture. Finally, art history and studio courses (e.g., Visual Arts) may be combined in special fields exploring their interrelations (e.g., abstraction and conceptualism in modern art).
The Special Field
The topic for the BA paper normally develops from the special field and allows for further study of the area through independent research and writing.
Whether a student is following Track I or Track II, the declaration form for the special field must be received and approved by the Director of Undergraduate Studies no later than the end of a student's third year. Students should obtain the form at arthistory.uchicago.edu/files/SpecialFieldDeclaration.pdf and discuss the proposed special field with the Director of Undergraduate Studies. It is strongly recommended that students complete at least two courses in their special field by the end of their third year.
Undergraduate Seminars and the BA Paper
The ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History is designed to introduce the methods of art historical research. It also requires students to develop a BA paper topic and identify potential faculty advisers. Students who wish to study abroad during Winter Quarter of their third year are strongly urged to take ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History in the Winter Quarter of the second year and must meet with the Director of Undergraduate Studies to discuss their program in the major before they go abroad.
By the end of their third year, it is the student's responsibility to find a member of the faculty who agrees to act as the faculty research adviser for the BA paper. The research paper or project used to meet this requirement may not be used to meet the BA paper requirement in another major without the approval of both majors.
ARTH 29800 Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop is a workshop course designed to assist students in writing and researching their BA papers. Students typically take the seminar in Autumn Quarter before graduating in Spring Quarter; students graduating in Autumn or Winter Quarter should take this course in the previous academic year. In the closing sessions of the seminar, students present their work in progress for the BA paper. They continue their research on the paper during the following quarters, meeting at intervals with their faculty research adviser. Students may elect to take ARTH 29900 Preparation for the Senior Paper in Autumn or Winter Quarter to afford additional time for research or writing. NOTE: This course may not count toward the twelve courses required in the major. A polished draft of the paper is due by Friday of ninth week of the quarter preceding graduation; the final version is due Monday of second week of the quarter of graduation. Both are to be submitted in duplicate: one copy to the research adviser and the second to the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Because individual projects vary, no specific requirements for the senior paper have been set. Essays range in length from twenty to forty pages, but there is no minimum or maximum.
Summary of Requirements
GENERAL EDUCATION
Introductory drama, music, ARTV, or Creative Writing course 100
Total Units 100
MAJOR: TRACK I
14000s Survey Course 100
15000s Survey Course 100
16000s Survey Course 100
Survey Course of student's choice 100
3 upper-level ARTH courses in special field * 300
3 upper-level ARTH courses (The six upper-level courses must include, altogether, one course each in Western art before 1400, Western art after 1400, and non-Western art.) * 300
ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History 100
ARTH 29800 Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop 100
BA paper
Total Units 1200
MAJOR: TRACK II
14000s Survey Course 100
15000s Survey Course 100
16000s Survey Course 100
Survey Course of student's choice 100
5 upper-level ARTH courses in special field (three departmental and two extradepartmental) * 500
1 upper-level ARTH elective (not special field) 100
ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History 100
ARTH 29800 Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop 100
BA paper
Total Units 1200
*
With prior approval, up to two Art in Context courses may be used toward this requirement.
Advising
Art history majors should see the Director of Undergraduate Studies no less than once a year for consultation and guidance in planning a special field, in selecting courses, and in choosing a topic for the BA paper, as well as for help with any academic problems within the major. When choosing courses, students should refer to the worksheet available at arthistory.uchicago.edu/files/MajorWorksheet-form.pdf. This form helps each student and the Undergraduate Program Chair monitor the student's progress in the program.
Grading
Art history majors must receive quality grades in art history courses taken for the major. ARTH 29900 Preparation for the Senior Paper is open for P/F grading with consent of instructor, but this course may not count toward the twelve courses required in the major. Art history courses elected beyond program requirements may be taken for P/F grading with consent of instructor. Students taking art history courses to meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts must receive quality grades. Nonmajors may select the P/F grading option with consent of instructor if they are taking an art history class that is not satisfying a general education requirement. A Pass grade is given only for work of C- quality or higher.
Honors
Students who complete their course work and their BA papers with great distinction are considered for honors. Candidates also must have a 3.3 or higher overall GPA and a 3.5 or higher GPA for art history course work.
Standards will inevitably differ from adviser to adviser, but in general students are expected to write a BA paper that is of A quality. This typically means that the paper involves substantial research; makes an argument that is supported with evidence; and is well crafted, inventive, and, often, intellectually passionate.
The faculty adviser of a student who wishes to be considered for honors must submit a detailed letter of nomination. Students are not responsible for requesting the letter, but they should plan to work closely with their adviser to make sure they understand the standards that they are expected to meet.
Travel Fellowships
The department offers a limited number of Visiting Committee Travel Fellowships to fund travel related to research on the BA paper during the summer between a College student's third and fourth years. Applications must be submitted to the Director of Undergraduate Studies by Thursday of the second week of Spring Quarter. Details on the fellowships and the application process are available on the Department of Art History's CHALK site for majors and minors.
Minor Program in Art History
The minor in art history requires a total of seven courses: three survey courses (one from the 14000 series, one from the 15000 series, and one from the 16000 series), and four courses at the 20000 level or above. With the permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies, students may substitute up to two Art in Context courses (17000 and 18000 series) for 20000-level courses. Students also write one research paper of about ten to fifteen pages on a topic chosen with and guided by the instructor, by individual arrangement at the start of one of the 20000-level courses. As one of their 20000-level courses, minors may elect to take ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History with the majors; if they do, they will research and write an essay on a topic of their choice instead of preparing a BA paper proposal. Students with a minor in art history may use art history courses to meet general education requirements.
Students who elect the minor program in art history must meet with the Director of Undergraduate Studies before the end of Spring Quarter of their third year to declare their intention to complete the minor. Students choose courses in consultation with the Director of Undergraduate Studies. The Director's approval for the minor program should be submitted to a student's College adviser by the deadline above on a form available at arthistory.uchicago.edu/files/MinorProgramApplicationForm.pdf.
Courses in the minor (1) may not be double counted with the student's major(s) or with other minors; and (2) may not be counted toward general education requirements. If students have already taken one of the survey courses to fulfill the general education requirement, they may substitute an additional 20000-level course to complete their seven-course program. Courses in the minor must be taken for quality grades, and more than half of the requirements for the minor must be met by registering for courses bearing University of Chicago course numbers.
The following group of courses would comprise a minor in art history:
Sample Minor Program
ARTH 14000–14999 e.g., The Ancient World, The Medieval World, or Renaissance Art
ARTH 15000–15999 e.g., Nineteenth-Century Art, or Twentieth-Century Art
ARTH 16000–16999 e.g., Art of Asia: China, or Arts of Japan
ARTH 20000 series, e.g., ARTH 28804 American Art Since 1960; or ARTH 27304
Photo/Modernism/Esthetic; or ARTH 28300 Chinese Scroll Painting; or ARTH 22204 Medieval Chinese Visual Cult; or ARTH 26504 Revolution and 20th Century Mexican Culture
Courses
ARTH 10100. Introduction to Art. 100 Units.
This course seeks to develop skills in perception, comprehension, and appreciation when dealing with a variety of visual art forms. It encourages the close analysis of visual materials, explores the range of questions and methods appropriate to the explication of a given work of art, and examines the intellectual structures basic to the systematic study of art. Most importantly, the course encourages the understanding of art as a visual language and aims to foster in students the ability to translate this understanding into verbal expression, both oral and written. Examples draw on local collections.
Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, this course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 14000 through 16999. Art Surveys.
May be taken in sequence or individually. Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts. The major monuments and masterpieces of world painting, sculpture, and architecture are studied as examples of humankind’s achievements in the visual arts. Individual objects are analyzed in detail and interpreted in light of society’s varied needs. While changes in form, style, and function are emphasized, an attempt is also made to understand the development of unique and continuous traditions of visual imagery throughout world civilization. Courses focus on broad regional and chronological categories.
ARTH 17000 through 18999. Art in Context.
May be taken in sequence or individually. Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 17000 through 18999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts. Courses in this series investigate basic methods of art historical analysis and apply them to significant works of art studied within definite contexts. Works of art are placed in their intellectual, historical, cultural, or more purely artistic settings in an effort to indicate the origins of their specific achievements. An informed appreciation of the particular solutions offered by single works and the careers of individual artists emerges from the detailed study of classic problems within Western and non-Western art.
For nonmajors, these courses meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts. Art History majors/minors who wish to take these courses for departmental credit should see the instructor about additional assignments and requirements.
ARTH 14107. Greek Art and Archaeology. 100 Units.
This course will survey the art and archaeology of ancient Greece from ca. 1000 BCE–ca. 200 BCE. Participants will see the Greeks emerge from poverty and anarchy to form a distinctive political and social system based on city-states—and they will see that system grow unstable and collapse. They will see the emergence of distinctive forms of sculpture, architecture, pottery, and urban design—many of which are still in use today. Along with these facts, they will acquire a conceptual toolkit for looking at works of art and for thinking about the relation of art to social life. The big question is: How can we make sense of the past by means of artifacts?
Instructor(s): R. Neer Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 21807
ARTH 14115. Roman Art I: Republican and Early Imperial Art and Architecture. 100 Units.
This course offers an introductory survey of the art and architecture of the Roman world from the legendary founding of Rome in the eighth century BC up through the beginning of the second century AD, when the Empire reached its point of greatest expansion. Students will witness the transformation of Rome from a humble village of huts surrounded by marshland in central Italy into the centripetal force of a powerful Empire that spanned mind-bogglingly distant reaches of space and time. Throughout the course, we will consider how the built environments and artifacts produced by an incredible diversity of peoples and places can make visible larger trends of historical, political, and cultural change. What, we will begin and end by asking, is Roman about Roman art?
Instructor(s): P. Crowley Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 24115
ARTH 14211. Introduction to African Art. 100 Units.
This course is an introduction to the arts of Africa and its diaspora. It surveys selected monuments of African expressive culture from a variety of places and times. Lectures, readings and discussions explore the relationship between art and leadership, religion, and society on the continent and in African diasporic communities in the Americas. Class meetings and assignments make use of local collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Field Museum.
Instructor(s): C. Fromont Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): tudents must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 14215. Roman Art II: Late Antique and Early Christian Art and Architecture. 100 Units.
This course offers an introductory survey of the art and architecture of the Roman world starting from the beginning of the second century AD, when the Empire reached its point of greatest expansion. It then proceeds through a period of relative peace and prosperity before witnessing the effects of a political, social, and economic “crisis” of the third century AD, the adoption of Christianity as the state religion, and the tremendous consequences of moving the capital from Rome to Constantinople. Throughout the course, we will consider how the built environments and artifacts produced by an incredible diversity of peoples and places can make visible larger trends of historical, political, and cultural change. What, we will begin and end by asking, is Roman about Roman art?
Instructor(s): P. Crowley Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 24215
ARTH 14700. Building Renaissance Italy: A Survey of the Built Environment. 100 Units.
This introductory course surveys the major patrons, architects, and building programs that defined the spatial contexts of the Renaissance in Italy. Between the 15th and 16th centuries, the political aspirations of governments, popes, princes, and merchants demanded a more articulated architectural environment that would facilitate increasingly complex modes of public and private life. They were aided in this endeavor by the emergence of a newly professionalized class of architects, who turned their eyes towards both a systematic study of the classical past and a critical assessment of their contemporary world. Renaissance urban palaces—both civic and private—and rural villas provided the stages upon which a new art of living could be performed. New inventions in military engineering responded to rapidly advancing technologies of warfare. Urban planning techniques created new topographies of spiritual and political triumph and reform, while treatises on ideal cities laid the foundations for the modern integrated multi-functional city. Between Venice, Florence, Rome, and their rural surroundings, this course will focus on a range of important patrons such as Roman popes, Venetian doges, princely courts, and private merchants, and will explore what made the works of such architects as Filippo Brunelleschi, Giuliano da Sangallo, Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco di Giorgio, Michelangelo, Jacopo Sansovino, and Andrea Palladio so creative, innovative, and influential well into our own contemporary architectural landscape.
Instructor(s): N. Atkinson Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 15600. Twentieth-Century Art. 100 Units.
Focusing on the interrelationships between avant-garde culture and the emerging mass cultural formations of industrializing societies in Europe, North America, Asia, and South America, our survey will address a wide range of historical and methodological questions: the impact of new technologies of production, the utopian projects of the Euro-American avant-gardes, the transformation of modernist conceptions of artistic autonomy, the changing roles of cultural institutions, the construction of social Others, the formation of new audiences, and the rise of “contemporary art.” Prior knowledge of art history not required.
Instructor(s): TBD Terms Offered: TBD
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 16100. Art of Asia: China. 100 Units.
This course is an introduction to the arts of China focusing on major monuments and artworks produced in imperial, aristocratic, literati, religious, and public milieus. Lectures will reconstruct the functions and the meanings of objects, to better understand Chinese culture through the objects it produced.
Instructor(s): Wu Hung Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 16100
ARTH 16800. Arts of Japan. 100 Units.
This course surveys the arts of the Japanese archipelago through the study of selected major sites and artifacts. We will consider objects in their original contexts and in the course of transmission and reinterpretation across space and time. How did Japanese visual culture develop in the interaction with objects and ideas from China, Korea, and the West? Prehistoric artifacts, the Buddhist temple, imperial court culture, the narrative handscroll, the tea ceremony, folding screens, and woodblock prints are among the topics covered.
Instructor(s): C. Foxwell Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 16806
ARTH 16809. Islamic Art and Architecture, 1500–1900. 100 Units.
This course surveys the art and architecture of the Islamic world from 1500–1900. This was the period of the three great Islamic empires: the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals. Each of these multi-religious, multi-linguistic, multi-ethnic empires developed styles of art and architecture that expressed their own complex identities. Further, they expressed their complex relations with each other through art and architecture. The various ways in which contact with regions beyond the Islamic world throughout this period impacted the arts will also be considered.
Instructor(s): P. Berlekamp Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): NEAA 10631
ARTH 17015. Blood, Sweat, and Tears: The Sacred Image in Byzantium. 100 Units.
During the Middle Ages, icons—sacred images—played a pivotal role in the devotional practice of Byzantium, the eastern Christian empire that had its capital in Constantinople from 324 to 1453. “Windows to heaven,” sacred images provided access to the divine. Despite their spiritual function, icons also drew attention to their materiality by erupting into life—bleeding, weeping, and attacking foes. In this course, we will combine the study of Byzantine images with Byzantine primary sources (in translation) to explore a range of topics related to the icon, including medieval image theory, iconoclasm, visuality, enshrinement, the copy, and materiality. Our investigation of Byzantine images will be enhanced through comparison with responses to the image in Islam, Judaism, and the Christian west.
Instructor(s): H. Badamo Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 17310. Between the Agora and the Shopping Mall: The Social Construction of the City Square. 100 Units.
Centrally located open urban spaces have been dominant architectural and social features of western cities. By focusing on these urban gathering sites, this course explores a range of key historical moments in which different formations of the city square emerge (political, communal, royal, imperial, colonial, modernist, privatized, etc.). Its goal is to define a set of criteria for analyzing what constitutes a city square, how “public space” also has a history, how public monuments function over time, and how understanding the urban environment is always dependent on the intimate relationship between physical structures and spatial performances. It will consider, therefore, both the design morphology and the social configurations that infuse such spaces with meaning in any given context. Several site visits in the Chicago area will be scheduled.
Instructor(s): N. Atkinson Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 17400. University of Chicago Campus. 100 Units.
An introduction to architecture and planning, this course examines the changes in thinking about the University campus from its origins in the 1890s to the present. Many of the University’s choices epitomize those shaping American architecture generally and some of our architects are of national significance. The course develops skill in analyzing architecture and urban form in order to interpret: how the University images itself in masonry, metal, and lawn; how it works with architects; the role of buildings in social and intellectual programs and values; the effects of campus plans and the siting of individual buildings; and the impact of technological change. Includes many sessions around campus and study of archival documents.
Instructor(s): K. Taylor Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): tudents must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 17410. Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago and Beyond. 100 Units.
This course looks at Wright's work from multiple angles. We examine his architecture, urbanism, and relationship to the built environment, as well as the socio-cultural context of his lifetime and legend. We take advantage of the Robie House on campus and of the rich legacy of Wright's early work in Chicago; we also think about his later Usonian houses for middle-income clients and the urban framework he imagined for his work (Broadacre City), as well as his Wisconsin headquarters (Taliesin), and spectacular works like the Johnson Wax Factory (a field trip, if funds permit), Fallingwater, and the Guggenheim Museum. By examining one architect's work in context, students gain experience analyzing buildings and their siting, and interpreting them in light of their complex ingredients and circumstances. The overall goal is to provide an introduction to thinking about architecture and urbanism.
Instructor(s): K. Taylor Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 20502
ARTH 17612. The Art of Michelangelo. 100 Units.
The central focus of this course will be Michelangelo’s prolific production in sculpture, painting, and architecture while making substantial use of his writings, both poetry and letters, and his extensive extant body of preparatory drawings to help us understand more about his artistic personality, creative processes, theories of art, and his intellectual and spiritual biography, including his changing attitudes towards Neoplatonism, Christianity, and politics. Our structure will be roughly chronological starting with his highly precocious juvenilia of the 1490s in Florence at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent through his death in Rome in 1564 as an old man who was simultaneously already the deity of art and a lonely, troubled, repentant Christian, producing some of his most moving works in a highly personal style. Beyond close examination of the works themselves, among the themes that will receive considerable attention for the ways they bear upon his art are Michelangelo’s fraught relationship with patrons such as the Medici and a succession of popes; his complex devotion to and rivalry with ancient classical art and his living rivalry with Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Bramante, and others; his changing attitude towards religion, especially his engagement with the Catholic Reform and some of its key personalities such as Vittoria Colonna; his sexuality and how it might bear on the representation of gender in his art and poetry; his “official” biographies created by the devotees Giorgio Vasari (1550, 1568) and Ascanio Condivii (1553) during Michelangelo’s lifetime and some of the most influential moments in the artist’s complex, sometimes ambivalent, reception over the centuries; new approaches and ideas about Michelangelo that have emerged in recent decades from the unabated torrent of scholarship and, especially, the restoration and scientific imaging of many of his works. Through the concentrated art-historical material studied, the course will take seriously the attempt to introduce students with little or no background in art or art history to some of the major avenues for interpretation in this field, including formal, stylistic, iconographical, psychological, social, feminist, theoretical, and reception. Readings are chosen with this diversity of approach in mind.
Instructor(s): C. Cohen Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 21411
ARTH 17700. 19th Century Art in the Art Institute. 100 Units.
In this course, we will closely examine 19th century paintings and sculptures in the Art Institute of Chicago and seek to understand how and why art changed during this period. Topics to be considered include the meaning of stylistic innovation in the 19th century, the development and dissolution of the genres as landscape and portraiture, and varying conceptions of realism and abstraction. Most class sessions will be devoted to looking at works in the galleries of the Art Institute. Because attendance is mandatory, students should consider whether their schedules will allow time for traveling to and from the museum for class meetings. Assignments include three papers and a variety of written homework exercises.
Instructor(s): M. Ward Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
The following courses do not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 21202. From Idea to Aesthetic Object. Drawing Foundations in Early Modern Europe. 100 Units.
This course addresses the foundations of humanist drawing in early modern Europe from the perspectives of disegno, as the conceptual and formal “foundation" of art, and from the critical art historical junctures in which drawing achieves both an intellectual and an autonomous status. By looking at the works of such important artists as Michelangelo, Leonardo, the Carracci, Rubens, and Watteau, drawing will be analyzed in the context of its increasingly central place in the creative process, as a place of intellectual freedom, as a study tool to explore the past and the natural world, and as an autonomous work of art. By examining early “moments” of the humanist practice of drawing and artistic training from the standpoints of theory, practice, content, and the art market, this course aims to further problematize the nature, evolution, and stakes of early modern drawing as a cognitive and aesthetic process, and, by extension, the relationship between drawing and other more “finished” works such as painting. Students will gain familiarity with drawing as an artistic medium related to major questions about art and society.
Instructor(s): S. Caviglia-Brunel Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 31202
ARTH 21415. Gender and Sexuality in Roman Art. 100 Units.
In the remote, but omnipresent past of classical antiquity, what kinds of experiences and practices fell under the umbrella of terms and concepts that we moderns call “gender” and “sexuality”? This course explores the fundamentally visual aspect of this question by drawing attention first and foremost to works of Roman art, but also to topics such as the erotics of vision, the senses of shame and modesty, and bodily comportment. While the robust corpus of ancient and modern literature on these topics will constitute an important part of our discussions, we will likewise consider the ways in which ancient art provides forms of evidence that are analogous, but never coextensive, with that of ancient texts. Finally, taking a cue from Tom Stoppard’s play The Invention of Love (1997), in which A. E. Housman declares that the “barbarity” of homosexuality is that it’s “half Greek and half Latin,” we will attend to the ways in which the dynamics of gender and sexuality took shape in a historical continuum in which the lines between what was “Greek” and what was “Roman” became increasingly blurred.
Instructor(s): P. Crowley Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 31415,CLCV 21415,CLAS 31415
ARTH 22550. Histories of Cairo. 100 Units.
This course examines the urban planning and architectural development of the city from the late antique era to the present. By studying urban planning and the main architectural types in different periods—churches, mosques, synagogues, palaces, defensive works, mausoleums, and houses—this course considers the role of architecture in shaping society. It combines study of monuments and primary sources with work on urban spaces from relevant disciplines, and addresses themes such as the temporalities of monuments, minorities within the Islamic city, orientalism, modernization, contemporary practices of preservation and accommodation, and the recent role of public spaces in politics.
Instructor(s): H. Badamo Terms Offered: Autumn
ARTH 23113. Computer Art. 100 Units.
This course will consider the history and evolution of computer art beginning from the earliest computer graphics in the 1960s and continuing through computer and technology-based new media practices of the twenty-first century. Computer art has been marginal at best to canonical modern and contemporary art history. Yet the issues we will explore in this course, including the relationship between politics and art, art and technology, the role of the artist in society, changing models of collaboration and authorship, and problematizing display and exhibition in a museum setting, are critical to broader narratives of postwar art.
Instructor(s): V. Salinger Terms Offered: Winter
ARTH 23400. Art, Architecture, and Identity in the Ottoman Empire. 100 Units.
Though they did not compose a “multi-cultural society” in the modern sense, the ruling elite and subjects of the vast Ottoman Empire came from a wide variety of regional, ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds. The dynamics of the Empire’s internal cultural diversity, as well as of its external relations with contemporary courts in Iran, Italy, and elsewhere, were continuously negotiated and renegotiated in its art and architecture. This course examines classical Ottoman architecture, arts of the book, ceramics, and textiles. Particular attention is paid to the urban transformation of Byzantine Constantinople into Ottoman Istanbul after 1453, and to the political, technical, and economic factors leading to the formation of a distinctively Ottoman visual idiom disseminated through multiple media in the sixteenth century.
Instructor(s): P. Berlekamp Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 33400,NEAA 20801,NEAA 30801
ARTH 23603. Grace, Love, and Pleasure. Painting in Eighteenth Century France. 100 Units.
The easing of political life and the relaxation of private morals which came to characterize the long reign of Louis XV (1715–1774) was mirrored by the development of a new conception of art, an art more intimate, decorative, generally amorous, and often erotic. It is these last two related dimensions which are the basis of a new visual aesthetic which constitutes the subject matter of this course. Through the exploration of contemporary novels and theater, as well as contemporary critical and philosophical writings, we will demonstrate how both the sensual and the erotic become essential components of the century’s cultural ethos. Artistic subjects, the mechanisms to represent them, their metaphorical stakes, and their phenomenological effects on the beholder will therefore be considered as the expression of a particular historical and ideological context. It is in this context that love became the symbol of a king who privileged peace against war, and where emotional pleasure triumphed over moralizing values and asserted itself as a new aesthetic category.
Instructor(s): S. Caviglia-Brunel Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students who take this course for French credit must do the readings and assignments in French.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 33603,FREN 26303,FREN 36303
ARTH 24812. Museums and Art. 100 Units.
This course considers how the rise of the art museum in the 19th and 20th centuries affected the making of modern art and the viewing of past art. It is not designed to be a survey course, but rather a historical investigation of certain issues and developments. We will concentrate on the following: what has been said to happen to objects when they are uprooted and moved into the museum; how and why museums have changed display practices so as to get viewers to look at art in new ways; what artists have understood museums to represent and how they have responded to that understanding in their work and their display preferences. Though reference will be made to the contemporary art world, the focus will be on materials and case studies drawn from the French Revolution through the 1960s. French, German, English and American museums will be featured.
Instructor(s): M. Ward Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 34812
ARTH 26301. Art, Ecology, and Politics. 100 Units.
This course studies earthworks, land art, installation, performance, and “social practice” art that is motivated by ecological concerns, exploring how artists and activists have adapted strategies to environmental issues over the past 50 years. Themes to be addressed may include sustainability, materiality, “thingness,” and recycling; human ecologies and political struggles in relation to gender, race, poverty, territory, and indigeneity; utopia and dystopia; and information, affect, and crisis. Readings may include fiction and journalism as well as art historical scholarship and critical theory. The class may involve some film screenings and/or field trips within the Midwest outside of class hours.
Instructor(s): R. Zorach Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 36301
ARTH 26400. History of Photography in the U.S., 1835 to Present. 100 Units.
The invention of the photographic system as a confluence of art practice and technology is studied in detail. The aesthetic history of photography is traced from 1839 through the present. Special emphasis is placed on the critical writing of P. H. Emerson, Erwin Panofsky, Alfred Stieglitz, Lewis Mumford, Susan Sontag, and Michael Fried.
Instructor(s): J. Snyder Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 36400
ARTH 26803. Enlightenment and 19th Century Architectural Theory and Practice. 100 Units.
This course examines influential new ideas about architectural design from the Enlightenment and nineteenth century in terms of writings and related buildings in Europe and the United States. This experimental period generated theoretical writing that continues to matter to architects today; we will study it in terms of its initial contexts and application. Major themes are: (1) the relationship of a building’s structure to its decoration (or body to clothing, as it was sometimes put); (2) the rise of historical interest in older buildings from divergent stylistic traditions (e.g., classical and Gothic) and its impact on new design; (3) the development of aesthetic theory suited to mass as well as elite audiences (e.g., the sublime and the picturesque); and (4) the idea that architect and building could and should be ethical or socially reformative.
Instructor(s): K. Taylor Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Prior course in art history or permission of the instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 36803
ARTH 27215. Public Sculpture. 100 Units.
This class examines sculpture made for public spaces since World War II. We will read foundational texts on postwar sculpture; test the relevance of theories of the public; consider the role of commemoration, site-specificity, context, architecture, and photography; and examine questions of censorship, vandalism, and conservation. Significant portions of the class will involve on-site case studies, including Henry Moore’s Nuclear Energy, Wolf Vostell’s Concrete Traffic, Giuseppe Penone’s Ideas of Stone, Jean Dubuffet’s Monument with Standing Beast, Arturo Herrara’s Night Before Last, Sol LeWitt’s Lines in Four Directions, Louise Bourgeois’s Untitled, and the sculptures in Millennium Park. Depending on interest, students may work on a campus public sculpture app or website, and/or an exhibition surrounding Wolf Vostell’s Concrete Traffic.
Instructor(s): C. Mehring Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 37215
ARTH 27304. Photo/Modernism/Esthetic. 100 Units.
The course presents the history of photographic practices in the United States, beginning in the late 19th century and extending into the 1980s, aimed at gaining an audience for photographs within museums of art. The issues under study include the contention over claims about medium specificity, notions of photographic objectivity, a peculiarly photographic esthetics, the division of photography into two categories—art vs. documentary—and the role of tradition and canon formation in the attempted definition of the photographic medium.
Instructor(s): J. Snyder Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 37304
ARTH 28204. Liquid Intelligence: Thinking the Fluid Image in the Long Eighteenth Century. 100 Units.
Instructor(s): M. Hunter Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 38204
ARTH 29600. Junior Seminar: Doing Art History. 100 Units.
The aim of this seminar is to deepen an understanding of art history as a discipline and of the range of analytic strategies art history affords to students beginning to plan their own BA papers or, in the case of students who are minoring in art history, writing research papers in art history courses. Students read essays that have shaped and represent the discipline, and test their wider applicability and limitations. Through this process, they develop a keener sense of the kinds of questions that most interest them in the history and criticism of art and visual culture. Students develop a formal topic proposal in a brief essay, and write a final paper analyzing one or two works of relevant, significant scholarship for their topics. This seminar is followed by a workshop in Autumn Quarter focusing on research and writing issues for fourth-year students who are majoring in art history, which is designed to help writers of BA papers advance their projects.
Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Required of third-year students who are majoring in art history; open to nonmajors with consent of instructor. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 29700. Reading Course. 100 Units.
This course is primarily intended for students who are majoring in art history and who can best meet program requirements by study under a faculty member's individual supervision. The subject, course of study, and requirements are arranged with the instructor.
Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of Instructor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. Must be taken for a quality grade. With adviser's approval, students who are majoring in art history may use this course to satisfy requirements for the major, a special field, or electives. This course is also open to nonmajors with advanced standing. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 29704. The Objects of East Asian History. 100 Units.
The collections of Japanese and Chinese objects in the Field Museum will be examined as a case study in museum and collection research. Assembled in the 1950s by Commander Gilbert and Katherine Boone, the Boone Collection includes over three thousand Japanese objects. Individual objects will be examined, not only for religious, aesthetic, cultural, and historical issues, but also for what they tell us of the collections and of museum and collections studies in general. The course is also timed to coincide with the reinstallation of the museum's Chinese galleries. The course will be co-taught by Chelsea Foxwell from Art History and James Ketelaar from History, and will include methods and texts from both disciplines. Several study trips will be made to the storage rooms of the Field Museum during class time.
Instructor(s): C. Foxwell, J. Ketelaar Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 39704,EALC 29704,EALC 39704,HIST 24603,HIST 34603
ARTH 29800. Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop. 100 Units.
This workshop is designed to assist students in researching and writing their senior papers, for which they have already developed a topic in the Junior Seminar. Weekly meetings target different aspects of the process; students benefit from the guidance of the workshop instructors, but also are expected to consult with their individual faculty advisers. At the end of this course, students are expected to complete a first draft of the senior paper and to make an oral presentation of the project for the seminar.
Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Required of fourth-year students who are majoring in art history. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 29900. Preparation for the Senior Paper. 100 Units.
This course provides guided research on the topic of the senior paper. Students arrange their program of study and a schedule of meetings with their senior paper adviser.
Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and Undergraduate Program Chair
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. May be taken for P/F grading with consent of instructor. This course may not count toward the twelve courses required in the major. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
The study of art history encompasses the visual arts and material culture of a wide range of regions and historical periods. Art history courses develop students' skills in visual analysis, interpretation of images and texts, use of historical sources, and engagement with scholarly debates. Within the department, survey classes provide a chronological overview of an extended period in Western or non-Western art, while Art in Context courses focus on a particular artist or artists, medium or theme, artistic problem, movement, or period. Upper-level classes may be similarly focused but at a more advanced level, or may deal with theoretical questions. After taking an introduction to art historical methods in their third year, fourth-year students who are majoring in art history conduct independent research on a topic of their own devising, producing a BA paper with the guidance of a faculty member and a graduate preceptor. The major in art history thus introduces students to a variety of cultures and approaches while providing analytical skills to enable students to focus their attention productively on specific questions in the study of art. In combination with a broad general education, art history provides excellent preparation for professions as well as graduate school in art history and careers in the arts.
Nonmajors may take any 10000-level course to meet general education requirements or as an elective; ARTH 10100 Introduction to Art is designed specifically to introduce these students to skills in thinking and writing about art of different cultures and periods. Nonmajors may also take more advanced courses with the instructor's consent.
Courses for Nonmajors
ARTH 10100 Introduction to Art develops basic skills in the analysis and critical enjoyment of a wide range of visual materials. Issues and problems in the making, exhibition, and understanding of images and objects are explored through classroom discussion of key works, critical reading of fundamental texts, visits to local museums, and writing.
Survey Courses
ARTH 14000 through 16999 - discuss major monuments of world art and architecture in the context of broad chronological and geographic categories and in relation to broad questions concerning the role art plays in individual, societal, and institutional settings.
ARTH 14000 through 14999 - address Western art in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.
ARTH 15000 through 15999 - address Western art from the early modern period to the present day.
ARTH 16000 through 16999 - address the art of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and/or the Middle East.
Art in Context Courses
ARTH 17000 through 18999 - introduce students to a well-defined issue, topic, or period of art in depth; at the same time, these courses explore issues of creativity, communication, and value in a series of concrete case studies.
Any of these 10000-level courses is an appropriate choice to meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts. None presuppose prior training in art.
Students who have taken at least one course in art history or studio art, or who have equivalent nonacademic experience, may elect to take an advanced lecture course, numbered from 20100 to 28999. The prerequisite is consent of instructor or any 10000-level course in art history or visual arts. The 20000-level art history courses investigate the arts of specific periods and places from a variety of perspectives. Some courses embrace large bodies of material defined by national culture; others follow developments in style, iconography, and patronage as they affect works in selected media.
Program Requirements
The BA in art history is intended to furnish students with a broad knowledge of Western and non-Western art. It also provides an opportunity for the complementary, intensive study of an area of special interest. It is recommended for students who wish to develop their abilities in visual analysis and criticism; to acquire some sense of the major developments in the arts from ancient times to the present; and to understand the visual arts as aspects of social, cultural, and intellectual history. So conceived, the study of art is an element of a general, liberal arts education; the skills of analytical thinking, logical argument, and clear verbal expression necessary to the program are basic to most fields. Thus, the major in art history can be viewed as training for a wide range of professions. The program in art history also prepares interested students for advanced study at the graduate level and, eventually, for work in academia, museums, galleries, and other organizations.
General Requirements for Art History Majors
Students register for an approved drama, music, ARTV, or Creative Writing course to meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts; art history majors may not use art history courses to meet general education requirements.
Students register for a total of four Survey Courses (see definition under Courses for Nonmajors above): one course at the 14000 level, one course at the 15000 level, one course at the 16000 level, and a fourth Survey Course of the student's choosing.
Art history majors take the department's two undergraduate seminars. In Winter Quarter of their third year, they register for the ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History. Students who wish to study abroad during that quarter are strongly urged to enroll in ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History in the Winter Quarter of their second year and must meet with the Director of Undergraduate Studies to discuss their program in the major before they go abroad. In Autumn Quarter of their fourth year, they register for the BA paper writing seminar (ARTH 29800 Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop) (see following section).
Students in art history write at least two research papers that are ten to fifteen pages in length before starting their fourth year, typically in the context of 20000-level courses in art history. Alternatives include 40000-level graduate seminars, reading courses, or, more rarely, Art in Context courses. It is the student's responsibility to initiate arrangements with an instructor and obtain his or her signature on an approval form when the paper is completed. To obtain an approval form, visit arthistory.uchicago.edu/files/undergraduate-research-approval-form.pdf.
A research paper should address a topic chosen by the student in consultation with the instructor. The student should draw on scholarship and evidence to shape and support a thesis or argument of the student's own devising. Formal analyses of works of art and analytic papers on materials assembled for a class by the instructor do not qualify. However, students may ask the instructor to allow a substitution of a research paper or they may write a research paper in addition to basic course requirements.
Students develop a special field of interest (see below).
Within this field, students write a BA paper (see below).
Double Majors and the BA Thesis: Whether or not a single BA thesis can satisfy the requirements for a double major in art history and another program is decided by the department on a case by case basis. The criteria on which the decision is based include: A student who wishes to write a single BA thesis for a double major in Art History and another program must write a letter (a page) explaining his or her request for the department's approval. The letter should be addressed to the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
the degree to which the resulting thesis is likely to speak from and to art history, even as it necessarily speaks from and to another field;
the feasibility of the proposed advising arrangements for the proposed joint thesis; and
the department's estimation of the student's track record for independent work that bodes well for writing a successful thesis while navigating between two majors
Students may apply to transfer up to four courses in art history to fulfill their major requirements. Preference will be given to courses that fall into the survey course category or, in the case of students in Track II (see below), into the category of special field courses taken in disciplines/departments outside art history. Approval is required from the Director of Undergraduate Studies, who will review each course individually. Students who wish to receive credit in the major or minor for courses taken elsewhere should read carefully the following information. These guidelines apply not only to courses taught at other institutions and in study abroad programs but also to courses that are affiliated with the University but not taught by University faculty. Students should meet with the Director of Undergraduate Studies well in advance to discuss a course they wish to take. After completing the course, students should petition the Director of Undergraduate Studies in writing for credit for the major. The petition must include a cover letter with the title and description of the course, as well as the name and location of the institution. To the cover letter should be attached a syllabus and a written record of the work the student did for the course.
The Office of the Dean of Students in the College must approve the transfer of all courses taken at institutions other than those in which students are enrolled as part of a study abroad program that is sponsored by the University of Chicago. Please note that it may be possible use such a course to meet requirements in the College but not in the major. For more information, visit college.uchicago.edu/policies-regulations/course-registration-policies/transfer-credit.
Recommendations for Art History Majors
Students are encouraged to take graduate seminars with prior consent of instructor. (These seminars are also open to nonmajors with the same proviso.)
Students are urged to also pursue upper-level language courses. If a language course is relevant to a student's special field, the student may petition the Director of Undergraduate Studies to count it toward electives.
Those planning to continue their study of art history at the graduate level are advised to achieve language competency equal to at least two years of college study in French or German, or in Italian for those with primary interest in the art of Italy.
Two Tracks
In structuring their programs, students may choose one of two orientations ("tracks"): one offering a broad coverage of the history of art, and the other offering a close cross-disciplinary study of a specific area or topic.
Track I
In addition to the four Survey Courses, the ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History, and the ARTH 29800 Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop, Track I students take six upper-level courses within the department. Up to two Art in Context courses (see definition under Courses for Nonmajors above) may be substituted for upper-level courses with prior approval of the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Within the six departmental courses, students must develop a special field consisting of three courses with a relevance to one another that is clearly established. The field may be defined by chronological period, medium, national culture, genre, theme, or methodological concerns. Because they reflect the interests of individual students, such fields range widely in topic, approach, and scope. Reading courses with art history faculty may be used to pursue specific questions within a field. Students are encouraged to distribute the remaining three departmental courses widely throughout Western and non-Western art. Within their six upper-level courses, students must take at least one course in Western art before 1400, one course in Western art after 1400, and one course in non-Western art.
Track II
In addition to the four Survey Courses, the ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History, and the ARTH 29800 Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop, Track II students take six courses: three upper-level courses inside and two courses outside the Department of Art History that make up the special field, and one additional upper-level course in art history, the subject of which is the student's choice. In order to encourage breadth of expertise, the elective course may not be in the student's special field. Occasionally, Art in Context courses (see definition under Courses for Nonmajors above) may be substituted for upper-level courses with prior approval of the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
In Track II, the special field may take many different forms. It may be civilization defined by chronological period, nation-state, or cultural institution. Extradepartmental courses in history and literature are particularly relevant to such a program. Another special field might be conceptual in character (e.g., art and the history of science, urban history, geography) and draw upon a variety of extradepartmental courses in the Humanities Collegiate Division and the Social Sciences Collegiate Division. A field could combine historical, critical, and theoretical perspectives (e.g., visual arts in the twentieth century) and include courses in art history, drama, music, film, and popular culture. Finally, art history and studio courses (e.g., Visual Arts) may be combined in special fields exploring their interrelations (e.g., abstraction and conceptualism in modern art).
The Special Field
The topic for the BA paper normally develops from the special field and allows for further study of the area through independent research and writing.
Whether a student is following Track I or Track II, the declaration form for the special field must be received and approved by the Director of Undergraduate Studies no later than the end of a student's third year. Students should obtain the form at arthistory.uchicago.edu/files/SpecialFieldDeclaration.pdf and discuss the proposed special field with the Director of Undergraduate Studies. It is strongly recommended that students complete at least two courses in their special field by the end of their third year.
Undergraduate Seminars and the BA Paper
The ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History is designed to introduce the methods of art historical research. It also requires students to develop a BA paper topic and identify potential faculty advisers. Students who wish to study abroad during Winter Quarter of their third year are strongly urged to take ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History in the Winter Quarter of the second year and must meet with the Director of Undergraduate Studies to discuss their program in the major before they go abroad.
By the end of their third year, it is the student's responsibility to find a member of the faculty who agrees to act as the faculty research adviser for the BA paper. The research paper or project used to meet this requirement may not be used to meet the BA paper requirement in another major without the approval of both majors.
ARTH 29800 Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop is a workshop course designed to assist students in writing and researching their BA papers. Students typically take the seminar in Autumn Quarter before graduating in Spring Quarter; students graduating in Autumn or Winter Quarter should take this course in the previous academic year. In the closing sessions of the seminar, students present their work in progress for the BA paper. They continue their research on the paper during the following quarters, meeting at intervals with their faculty research adviser. Students may elect to take ARTH 29900 Preparation for the Senior Paper in Autumn or Winter Quarter to afford additional time for research or writing. NOTE: This course may not count toward the twelve courses required in the major. A polished draft of the paper is due by Friday of ninth week of the quarter preceding graduation; the final version is due Monday of second week of the quarter of graduation. Both are to be submitted in duplicate: one copy to the research adviser and the second to the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Because individual projects vary, no specific requirements for the senior paper have been set. Essays range in length from twenty to forty pages, but there is no minimum or maximum.
Summary of Requirements
GENERAL EDUCATION
Introductory drama, music, ARTV, or Creative Writing course 100
Total Units 100
MAJOR: TRACK I
14000s Survey Course 100
15000s Survey Course 100
16000s Survey Course 100
Survey Course of student's choice 100
3 upper-level ARTH courses in special field * 300
3 upper-level ARTH courses (The six upper-level courses must include, altogether, one course each in Western art before 1400, Western art after 1400, and non-Western art.) * 300
ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History 100
ARTH 29800 Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop 100
BA paper
Total Units 1200
MAJOR: TRACK II
14000s Survey Course 100
15000s Survey Course 100
16000s Survey Course 100
Survey Course of student's choice 100
5 upper-level ARTH courses in special field (three departmental and two extradepartmental) * 500
1 upper-level ARTH elective (not special field) 100
ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History 100
ARTH 29800 Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop 100
BA paper
Total Units 1200
*
With prior approval, up to two Art in Context courses may be used toward this requirement.
Advising
Art history majors should see the Director of Undergraduate Studies no less than once a year for consultation and guidance in planning a special field, in selecting courses, and in choosing a topic for the BA paper, as well as for help with any academic problems within the major. When choosing courses, students should refer to the worksheet available at arthistory.uchicago.edu/files/MajorWorksheet-form.pdf. This form helps each student and the Undergraduate Program Chair monitor the student's progress in the program.
Grading
Art history majors must receive quality grades in art history courses taken for the major. ARTH 29900 Preparation for the Senior Paper is open for P/F grading with consent of instructor, but this course may not count toward the twelve courses required in the major. Art history courses elected beyond program requirements may be taken for P/F grading with consent of instructor. Students taking art history courses to meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts must receive quality grades. Nonmajors may select the P/F grading option with consent of instructor if they are taking an art history class that is not satisfying a general education requirement. A Pass grade is given only for work of C- quality or higher.
Honors
Students who complete their course work and their BA papers with great distinction are considered for honors. Candidates also must have a 3.3 or higher overall GPA and a 3.5 or higher GPA for art history course work.
Standards will inevitably differ from adviser to adviser, but in general students are expected to write a BA paper that is of A quality. This typically means that the paper involves substantial research; makes an argument that is supported with evidence; and is well crafted, inventive, and, often, intellectually passionate.
The faculty adviser of a student who wishes to be considered for honors must submit a detailed letter of nomination. Students are not responsible for requesting the letter, but they should plan to work closely with their adviser to make sure they understand the standards that they are expected to meet.
Travel Fellowships
The department offers a limited number of Visiting Committee Travel Fellowships to fund travel related to research on the BA paper during the summer between a College student's third and fourth years. Applications must be submitted to the Director of Undergraduate Studies by Thursday of the second week of Spring Quarter. Details on the fellowships and the application process are available on the Department of Art History's CHALK site for majors and minors.
Minor Program in Art History
The minor in art history requires a total of seven courses: three survey courses (one from the 14000 series, one from the 15000 series, and one from the 16000 series), and four courses at the 20000 level or above. With the permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies, students may substitute up to two Art in Context courses (17000 and 18000 series) for 20000-level courses. Students also write one research paper of about ten to fifteen pages on a topic chosen with and guided by the instructor, by individual arrangement at the start of one of the 20000-level courses. As one of their 20000-level courses, minors may elect to take ARTH 29600 Junior Seminar: Doing Art History with the majors; if they do, they will research and write an essay on a topic of their choice instead of preparing a BA paper proposal. Students with a minor in art history may use art history courses to meet general education requirements.
Students who elect the minor program in art history must meet with the Director of Undergraduate Studies before the end of Spring Quarter of their third year to declare their intention to complete the minor. Students choose courses in consultation with the Director of Undergraduate Studies. The Director's approval for the minor program should be submitted to a student's College adviser by the deadline above on a form available at arthistory.uchicago.edu/files/MinorProgramApplicationForm.pdf.
Courses in the minor (1) may not be double counted with the student's major(s) or with other minors; and (2) may not be counted toward general education requirements. If students have already taken one of the survey courses to fulfill the general education requirement, they may substitute an additional 20000-level course to complete their seven-course program. Courses in the minor must be taken for quality grades, and more than half of the requirements for the minor must be met by registering for courses bearing University of Chicago course numbers.
The following group of courses would comprise a minor in art history:
Sample Minor Program
ARTH 14000–14999 e.g., The Ancient World, The Medieval World, or Renaissance Art
ARTH 15000–15999 e.g., Nineteenth-Century Art, or Twentieth-Century Art
ARTH 16000–16999 e.g., Art of Asia: China, or Arts of Japan
ARTH 20000 series, e.g., ARTH 28804 American Art Since 1960; or ARTH 27304
Photo/Modernism/Esthetic; or ARTH 28300 Chinese Scroll Painting; or ARTH 22204 Medieval Chinese Visual Cult; or ARTH 26504 Revolution and 20th Century Mexican Culture
Courses
ARTH 10100. Introduction to Art. 100 Units.
This course seeks to develop skills in perception, comprehension, and appreciation when dealing with a variety of visual art forms. It encourages the close analysis of visual materials, explores the range of questions and methods appropriate to the explication of a given work of art, and examines the intellectual structures basic to the systematic study of art. Most importantly, the course encourages the understanding of art as a visual language and aims to foster in students the ability to translate this understanding into verbal expression, both oral and written. Examples draw on local collections.
Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, this course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 14000 through 16999. Art Surveys.
May be taken in sequence or individually. Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts. The major monuments and masterpieces of world painting, sculpture, and architecture are studied as examples of humankind’s achievements in the visual arts. Individual objects are analyzed in detail and interpreted in light of society’s varied needs. While changes in form, style, and function are emphasized, an attempt is also made to understand the development of unique and continuous traditions of visual imagery throughout world civilization. Courses focus on broad regional and chronological categories.
ARTH 17000 through 18999. Art in Context.
May be taken in sequence or individually. Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 17000 through 18999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts. Courses in this series investigate basic methods of art historical analysis and apply them to significant works of art studied within definite contexts. Works of art are placed in their intellectual, historical, cultural, or more purely artistic settings in an effort to indicate the origins of their specific achievements. An informed appreciation of the particular solutions offered by single works and the careers of individual artists emerges from the detailed study of classic problems within Western and non-Western art.
For nonmajors, these courses meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts. Art History majors/minors who wish to take these courses for departmental credit should see the instructor about additional assignments and requirements.
ARTH 14107. Greek Art and Archaeology. 100 Units.
This course will survey the art and archaeology of ancient Greece from ca. 1000 BCE–ca. 200 BCE. Participants will see the Greeks emerge from poverty and anarchy to form a distinctive political and social system based on city-states—and they will see that system grow unstable and collapse. They will see the emergence of distinctive forms of sculpture, architecture, pottery, and urban design—many of which are still in use today. Along with these facts, they will acquire a conceptual toolkit for looking at works of art and for thinking about the relation of art to social life. The big question is: How can we make sense of the past by means of artifacts?
Instructor(s): R. Neer Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 21807
ARTH 14115. Roman Art I: Republican and Early Imperial Art and Architecture. 100 Units.
This course offers an introductory survey of the art and architecture of the Roman world from the legendary founding of Rome in the eighth century BC up through the beginning of the second century AD, when the Empire reached its point of greatest expansion. Students will witness the transformation of Rome from a humble village of huts surrounded by marshland in central Italy into the centripetal force of a powerful Empire that spanned mind-bogglingly distant reaches of space and time. Throughout the course, we will consider how the built environments and artifacts produced by an incredible diversity of peoples and places can make visible larger trends of historical, political, and cultural change. What, we will begin and end by asking, is Roman about Roman art?
Instructor(s): P. Crowley Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 24115
ARTH 14211. Introduction to African Art. 100 Units.
This course is an introduction to the arts of Africa and its diaspora. It surveys selected monuments of African expressive culture from a variety of places and times. Lectures, readings and discussions explore the relationship between art and leadership, religion, and society on the continent and in African diasporic communities in the Americas. Class meetings and assignments make use of local collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Field Museum.
Instructor(s): C. Fromont Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): tudents must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 14215. Roman Art II: Late Antique and Early Christian Art and Architecture. 100 Units.
This course offers an introductory survey of the art and architecture of the Roman world starting from the beginning of the second century AD, when the Empire reached its point of greatest expansion. It then proceeds through a period of relative peace and prosperity before witnessing the effects of a political, social, and economic “crisis” of the third century AD, the adoption of Christianity as the state religion, and the tremendous consequences of moving the capital from Rome to Constantinople. Throughout the course, we will consider how the built environments and artifacts produced by an incredible diversity of peoples and places can make visible larger trends of historical, political, and cultural change. What, we will begin and end by asking, is Roman about Roman art?
Instructor(s): P. Crowley Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 24215
ARTH 14700. Building Renaissance Italy: A Survey of the Built Environment. 100 Units.
This introductory course surveys the major patrons, architects, and building programs that defined the spatial contexts of the Renaissance in Italy. Between the 15th and 16th centuries, the political aspirations of governments, popes, princes, and merchants demanded a more articulated architectural environment that would facilitate increasingly complex modes of public and private life. They were aided in this endeavor by the emergence of a newly professionalized class of architects, who turned their eyes towards both a systematic study of the classical past and a critical assessment of their contemporary world. Renaissance urban palaces—both civic and private—and rural villas provided the stages upon which a new art of living could be performed. New inventions in military engineering responded to rapidly advancing technologies of warfare. Urban planning techniques created new topographies of spiritual and political triumph and reform, while treatises on ideal cities laid the foundations for the modern integrated multi-functional city. Between Venice, Florence, Rome, and their rural surroundings, this course will focus on a range of important patrons such as Roman popes, Venetian doges, princely courts, and private merchants, and will explore what made the works of such architects as Filippo Brunelleschi, Giuliano da Sangallo, Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco di Giorgio, Michelangelo, Jacopo Sansovino, and Andrea Palladio so creative, innovative, and influential well into our own contemporary architectural landscape.
Instructor(s): N. Atkinson Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 15600. Twentieth-Century Art. 100 Units.
Focusing on the interrelationships between avant-garde culture and the emerging mass cultural formations of industrializing societies in Europe, North America, Asia, and South America, our survey will address a wide range of historical and methodological questions: the impact of new technologies of production, the utopian projects of the Euro-American avant-gardes, the transformation of modernist conceptions of artistic autonomy, the changing roles of cultural institutions, the construction of social Others, the formation of new audiences, and the rise of “contemporary art.” Prior knowledge of art history not required.
Instructor(s): TBD Terms Offered: TBD
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 16100. Art of Asia: China. 100 Units.
This course is an introduction to the arts of China focusing on major monuments and artworks produced in imperial, aristocratic, literati, religious, and public milieus. Lectures will reconstruct the functions and the meanings of objects, to better understand Chinese culture through the objects it produced.
Instructor(s): Wu Hung Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 16100
ARTH 16800. Arts of Japan. 100 Units.
This course surveys the arts of the Japanese archipelago through the study of selected major sites and artifacts. We will consider objects in their original contexts and in the course of transmission and reinterpretation across space and time. How did Japanese visual culture develop in the interaction with objects and ideas from China, Korea, and the West? Prehistoric artifacts, the Buddhist temple, imperial court culture, the narrative handscroll, the tea ceremony, folding screens, and woodblock prints are among the topics covered.
Instructor(s): C. Foxwell Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 16806
ARTH 16809. Islamic Art and Architecture, 1500–1900. 100 Units.
This course surveys the art and architecture of the Islamic world from 1500–1900. This was the period of the three great Islamic empires: the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals. Each of these multi-religious, multi-linguistic, multi-ethnic empires developed styles of art and architecture that expressed their own complex identities. Further, they expressed their complex relations with each other through art and architecture. The various ways in which contact with regions beyond the Islamic world throughout this period impacted the arts will also be considered.
Instructor(s): P. Berlekamp Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): NEAA 10631
ARTH 17015. Blood, Sweat, and Tears: The Sacred Image in Byzantium. 100 Units.
During the Middle Ages, icons—sacred images—played a pivotal role in the devotional practice of Byzantium, the eastern Christian empire that had its capital in Constantinople from 324 to 1453. “Windows to heaven,” sacred images provided access to the divine. Despite their spiritual function, icons also drew attention to their materiality by erupting into life—bleeding, weeping, and attacking foes. In this course, we will combine the study of Byzantine images with Byzantine primary sources (in translation) to explore a range of topics related to the icon, including medieval image theory, iconoclasm, visuality, enshrinement, the copy, and materiality. Our investigation of Byzantine images will be enhanced through comparison with responses to the image in Islam, Judaism, and the Christian west.
Instructor(s): H. Badamo Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 17310. Between the Agora and the Shopping Mall: The Social Construction of the City Square. 100 Units.
Centrally located open urban spaces have been dominant architectural and social features of western cities. By focusing on these urban gathering sites, this course explores a range of key historical moments in which different formations of the city square emerge (political, communal, royal, imperial, colonial, modernist, privatized, etc.). Its goal is to define a set of criteria for analyzing what constitutes a city square, how “public space” also has a history, how public monuments function over time, and how understanding the urban environment is always dependent on the intimate relationship between physical structures and spatial performances. It will consider, therefore, both the design morphology and the social configurations that infuse such spaces with meaning in any given context. Several site visits in the Chicago area will be scheduled.
Instructor(s): N. Atkinson Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 17400. University of Chicago Campus. 100 Units.
An introduction to architecture and planning, this course examines the changes in thinking about the University campus from its origins in the 1890s to the present. Many of the University’s choices epitomize those shaping American architecture generally and some of our architects are of national significance. The course develops skill in analyzing architecture and urban form in order to interpret: how the University images itself in masonry, metal, and lawn; how it works with architects; the role of buildings in social and intellectual programs and values; the effects of campus plans and the siting of individual buildings; and the impact of technological change. Includes many sessions around campus and study of archival documents.
Instructor(s): K. Taylor Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): tudents must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 17410. Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago and Beyond. 100 Units.
This course looks at Wright's work from multiple angles. We examine his architecture, urbanism, and relationship to the built environment, as well as the socio-cultural context of his lifetime and legend. We take advantage of the Robie House on campus and of the rich legacy of Wright's early work in Chicago; we also think about his later Usonian houses for middle-income clients and the urban framework he imagined for his work (Broadacre City), as well as his Wisconsin headquarters (Taliesin), and spectacular works like the Johnson Wax Factory (a field trip, if funds permit), Fallingwater, and the Guggenheim Museum. By examining one architect's work in context, students gain experience analyzing buildings and their siting, and interpreting them in light of their complex ingredients and circumstances. The overall goal is to provide an introduction to thinking about architecture and urbanism.
Instructor(s): K. Taylor Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 20502
ARTH 17612. The Art of Michelangelo. 100 Units.
The central focus of this course will be Michelangelo’s prolific production in sculpture, painting, and architecture while making substantial use of his writings, both poetry and letters, and his extensive extant body of preparatory drawings to help us understand more about his artistic personality, creative processes, theories of art, and his intellectual and spiritual biography, including his changing attitudes towards Neoplatonism, Christianity, and politics. Our structure will be roughly chronological starting with his highly precocious juvenilia of the 1490s in Florence at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent through his death in Rome in 1564 as an old man who was simultaneously already the deity of art and a lonely, troubled, repentant Christian, producing some of his most moving works in a highly personal style. Beyond close examination of the works themselves, among the themes that will receive considerable attention for the ways they bear upon his art are Michelangelo’s fraught relationship with patrons such as the Medici and a succession of popes; his complex devotion to and rivalry with ancient classical art and his living rivalry with Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Bramante, and others; his changing attitude towards religion, especially his engagement with the Catholic Reform and some of its key personalities such as Vittoria Colonna; his sexuality and how it might bear on the representation of gender in his art and poetry; his “official” biographies created by the devotees Giorgio Vasari (1550, 1568) and Ascanio Condivii (1553) during Michelangelo’s lifetime and some of the most influential moments in the artist’s complex, sometimes ambivalent, reception over the centuries; new approaches and ideas about Michelangelo that have emerged in recent decades from the unabated torrent of scholarship and, especially, the restoration and scientific imaging of many of his works. Through the concentrated art-historical material studied, the course will take seriously the attempt to introduce students with little or no background in art or art history to some of the major avenues for interpretation in this field, including formal, stylistic, iconographical, psychological, social, feminist, theoretical, and reception. Readings are chosen with this diversity of approach in mind.
Instructor(s): C. Cohen Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 21411
ARTH 17700. 19th Century Art in the Art Institute. 100 Units.
In this course, we will closely examine 19th century paintings and sculptures in the Art Institute of Chicago and seek to understand how and why art changed during this period. Topics to be considered include the meaning of stylistic innovation in the 19th century, the development and dissolution of the genres as landscape and portraiture, and varying conceptions of realism and abstraction. Most class sessions will be devoted to looking at works in the galleries of the Art Institute. Because attendance is mandatory, students should consider whether their schedules will allow time for traveling to and from the museum for class meetings. Assignments include three papers and a variety of written homework exercises.
Instructor(s): M. Ward Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
The following courses do not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 21202. From Idea to Aesthetic Object. Drawing Foundations in Early Modern Europe. 100 Units.
This course addresses the foundations of humanist drawing in early modern Europe from the perspectives of disegno, as the conceptual and formal “foundation" of art, and from the critical art historical junctures in which drawing achieves both an intellectual and an autonomous status. By looking at the works of such important artists as Michelangelo, Leonardo, the Carracci, Rubens, and Watteau, drawing will be analyzed in the context of its increasingly central place in the creative process, as a place of intellectual freedom, as a study tool to explore the past and the natural world, and as an autonomous work of art. By examining early “moments” of the humanist practice of drawing and artistic training from the standpoints of theory, practice, content, and the art market, this course aims to further problematize the nature, evolution, and stakes of early modern drawing as a cognitive and aesthetic process, and, by extension, the relationship between drawing and other more “finished” works such as painting. Students will gain familiarity with drawing as an artistic medium related to major questions about art and society.
Instructor(s): S. Caviglia-Brunel Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 31202
ARTH 21415. Gender and Sexuality in Roman Art. 100 Units.
In the remote, but omnipresent past of classical antiquity, what kinds of experiences and practices fell under the umbrella of terms and concepts that we moderns call “gender” and “sexuality”? This course explores the fundamentally visual aspect of this question by drawing attention first and foremost to works of Roman art, but also to topics such as the erotics of vision, the senses of shame and modesty, and bodily comportment. While the robust corpus of ancient and modern literature on these topics will constitute an important part of our discussions, we will likewise consider the ways in which ancient art provides forms of evidence that are analogous, but never coextensive, with that of ancient texts. Finally, taking a cue from Tom Stoppard’s play The Invention of Love (1997), in which A. E. Housman declares that the “barbarity” of homosexuality is that it’s “half Greek and half Latin,” we will attend to the ways in which the dynamics of gender and sexuality took shape in a historical continuum in which the lines between what was “Greek” and what was “Roman” became increasingly blurred.
Instructor(s): P. Crowley Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 31415,CLCV 21415,CLAS 31415
ARTH 22550. Histories of Cairo. 100 Units.
This course examines the urban planning and architectural development of the city from the late antique era to the present. By studying urban planning and the main architectural types in different periods—churches, mosques, synagogues, palaces, defensive works, mausoleums, and houses—this course considers the role of architecture in shaping society. It combines study of monuments and primary sources with work on urban spaces from relevant disciplines, and addresses themes such as the temporalities of monuments, minorities within the Islamic city, orientalism, modernization, contemporary practices of preservation and accommodation, and the recent role of public spaces in politics.
Instructor(s): H. Badamo Terms Offered: Autumn
ARTH 23113. Computer Art. 100 Units.
This course will consider the history and evolution of computer art beginning from the earliest computer graphics in the 1960s and continuing through computer and technology-based new media practices of the twenty-first century. Computer art has been marginal at best to canonical modern and contemporary art history. Yet the issues we will explore in this course, including the relationship between politics and art, art and technology, the role of the artist in society, changing models of collaboration and authorship, and problematizing display and exhibition in a museum setting, are critical to broader narratives of postwar art.
Instructor(s): V. Salinger Terms Offered: Winter
ARTH 23400. Art, Architecture, and Identity in the Ottoman Empire. 100 Units.
Though they did not compose a “multi-cultural society” in the modern sense, the ruling elite and subjects of the vast Ottoman Empire came from a wide variety of regional, ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds. The dynamics of the Empire’s internal cultural diversity, as well as of its external relations with contemporary courts in Iran, Italy, and elsewhere, were continuously negotiated and renegotiated in its art and architecture. This course examines classical Ottoman architecture, arts of the book, ceramics, and textiles. Particular attention is paid to the urban transformation of Byzantine Constantinople into Ottoman Istanbul after 1453, and to the political, technical, and economic factors leading to the formation of a distinctively Ottoman visual idiom disseminated through multiple media in the sixteenth century.
Instructor(s): P. Berlekamp Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 33400,NEAA 20801,NEAA 30801
ARTH 23603. Grace, Love, and Pleasure. Painting in Eighteenth Century France. 100 Units.
The easing of political life and the relaxation of private morals which came to characterize the long reign of Louis XV (1715–1774) was mirrored by the development of a new conception of art, an art more intimate, decorative, generally amorous, and often erotic. It is these last two related dimensions which are the basis of a new visual aesthetic which constitutes the subject matter of this course. Through the exploration of contemporary novels and theater, as well as contemporary critical and philosophical writings, we will demonstrate how both the sensual and the erotic become essential components of the century’s cultural ethos. Artistic subjects, the mechanisms to represent them, their metaphorical stakes, and their phenomenological effects on the beholder will therefore be considered as the expression of a particular historical and ideological context. It is in this context that love became the symbol of a king who privileged peace against war, and where emotional pleasure triumphed over moralizing values and asserted itself as a new aesthetic category.
Instructor(s): S. Caviglia-Brunel Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students who take this course for French credit must do the readings and assignments in French.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 33603,FREN 26303,FREN 36303
ARTH 24812. Museums and Art. 100 Units.
This course considers how the rise of the art museum in the 19th and 20th centuries affected the making of modern art and the viewing of past art. It is not designed to be a survey course, but rather a historical investigation of certain issues and developments. We will concentrate on the following: what has been said to happen to objects when they are uprooted and moved into the museum; how and why museums have changed display practices so as to get viewers to look at art in new ways; what artists have understood museums to represent and how they have responded to that understanding in their work and their display preferences. Though reference will be made to the contemporary art world, the focus will be on materials and case studies drawn from the French Revolution through the 1960s. French, German, English and American museums will be featured.
Instructor(s): M. Ward Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 34812
ARTH 26301. Art, Ecology, and Politics. 100 Units.
This course studies earthworks, land art, installation, performance, and “social practice” art that is motivated by ecological concerns, exploring how artists and activists have adapted strategies to environmental issues over the past 50 years. Themes to be addressed may include sustainability, materiality, “thingness,” and recycling; human ecologies and political struggles in relation to gender, race, poverty, territory, and indigeneity; utopia and dystopia; and information, affect, and crisis. Readings may include fiction and journalism as well as art historical scholarship and critical theory. The class may involve some film screenings and/or field trips within the Midwest outside of class hours.
Instructor(s): R. Zorach Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 36301
ARTH 26400. History of Photography in the U.S., 1835 to Present. 100 Units.
The invention of the photographic system as a confluence of art practice and technology is studied in detail. The aesthetic history of photography is traced from 1839 through the present. Special emphasis is placed on the critical writing of P. H. Emerson, Erwin Panofsky, Alfred Stieglitz, Lewis Mumford, Susan Sontag, and Michael Fried.
Instructor(s): J. Snyder Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 36400
ARTH 26803. Enlightenment and 19th Century Architectural Theory and Practice. 100 Units.
This course examines influential new ideas about architectural design from the Enlightenment and nineteenth century in terms of writings and related buildings in Europe and the United States. This experimental period generated theoretical writing that continues to matter to architects today; we will study it in terms of its initial contexts and application. Major themes are: (1) the relationship of a building’s structure to its decoration (or body to clothing, as it was sometimes put); (2) the rise of historical interest in older buildings from divergent stylistic traditions (e.g., classical and Gothic) and its impact on new design; (3) the development of aesthetic theory suited to mass as well as elite audiences (e.g., the sublime and the picturesque); and (4) the idea that architect and building could and should be ethical or socially reformative.
Instructor(s): K. Taylor Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Prior course in art history or permission of the instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 36803
ARTH 27215. Public Sculpture. 100 Units.
This class examines sculpture made for public spaces since World War II. We will read foundational texts on postwar sculpture; test the relevance of theories of the public; consider the role of commemoration, site-specificity, context, architecture, and photography; and examine questions of censorship, vandalism, and conservation. Significant portions of the class will involve on-site case studies, including Henry Moore’s Nuclear Energy, Wolf Vostell’s Concrete Traffic, Giuseppe Penone’s Ideas of Stone, Jean Dubuffet’s Monument with Standing Beast, Arturo Herrara’s Night Before Last, Sol LeWitt’s Lines in Four Directions, Louise Bourgeois’s Untitled, and the sculptures in Millennium Park. Depending on interest, students may work on a campus public sculpture app or website, and/or an exhibition surrounding Wolf Vostell’s Concrete Traffic.
Instructor(s): C. Mehring Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 37215
ARTH 27304. Photo/Modernism/Esthetic. 100 Units.
The course presents the history of photographic practices in the United States, beginning in the late 19th century and extending into the 1980s, aimed at gaining an audience for photographs within museums of art. The issues under study include the contention over claims about medium specificity, notions of photographic objectivity, a peculiarly photographic esthetics, the division of photography into two categories—art vs. documentary—and the role of tradition and canon formation in the attempted definition of the photographic medium.
Instructor(s): J. Snyder Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 37304
ARTH 28204. Liquid Intelligence: Thinking the Fluid Image in the Long Eighteenth Century. 100 Units.
Instructor(s): M. Hunter Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 38204
ARTH 29600. Junior Seminar: Doing Art History. 100 Units.
The aim of this seminar is to deepen an understanding of art history as a discipline and of the range of analytic strategies art history affords to students beginning to plan their own BA papers or, in the case of students who are minoring in art history, writing research papers in art history courses. Students read essays that have shaped and represent the discipline, and test their wider applicability and limitations. Through this process, they develop a keener sense of the kinds of questions that most interest them in the history and criticism of art and visual culture. Students develop a formal topic proposal in a brief essay, and write a final paper analyzing one or two works of relevant, significant scholarship for their topics. This seminar is followed by a workshop in Autumn Quarter focusing on research and writing issues for fourth-year students who are majoring in art history, which is designed to help writers of BA papers advance their projects.
Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Required of third-year students who are majoring in art history; open to nonmajors with consent of instructor. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 29700. Reading Course. 100 Units.
This course is primarily intended for students who are majoring in art history and who can best meet program requirements by study under a faculty member's individual supervision. The subject, course of study, and requirements are arranged with the instructor.
Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of Instructor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. Must be taken for a quality grade. With adviser's approval, students who are majoring in art history may use this course to satisfy requirements for the major, a special field, or electives. This course is also open to nonmajors with advanced standing. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 29704. The Objects of East Asian History. 100 Units.
The collections of Japanese and Chinese objects in the Field Museum will be examined as a case study in museum and collection research. Assembled in the 1950s by Commander Gilbert and Katherine Boone, the Boone Collection includes over three thousand Japanese objects. Individual objects will be examined, not only for religious, aesthetic, cultural, and historical issues, but also for what they tell us of the collections and of museum and collections studies in general. The course is also timed to coincide with the reinstallation of the museum's Chinese galleries. The course will be co-taught by Chelsea Foxwell from Art History and James Ketelaar from History, and will include methods and texts from both disciplines. Several study trips will be made to the storage rooms of the Field Museum during class time.
Instructor(s): C. Foxwell, J. Ketelaar Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 39704,EALC 29704,EALC 39704,HIST 24603,HIST 34603
ARTH 29800. Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop. 100 Units.
This workshop is designed to assist students in researching and writing their senior papers, for which they have already developed a topic in the Junior Seminar. Weekly meetings target different aspects of the process; students benefit from the guidance of the workshop instructors, but also are expected to consult with their individual faculty advisers. At the end of this course, students are expected to complete a first draft of the senior paper and to make an oral presentation of the project for the seminar.
Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Required of fourth-year students who are majoring in art history. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
ARTH 29900. Preparation for the Senior Paper. 100 Units.
This course provides guided research on the topic of the senior paper. Students arrange their program of study and a schedule of meetings with their senior paper adviser.
Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and Undergraduate Program Chair
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. May be taken for P/F grading with consent of instructor. This course may not count toward the twelve courses required in the major. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
