Summer 2025 Course Offerings

History of Art 2001 - Western Art I: Ancient and Medieval Worlds

8 WK SESSION 1 | May 6 - June 27,  2025 | Class #13342

This course examines the history of Western Art (architecture, painting and sculpture) from the third millennium BCE through the fifteenth century CE. Rather than a complete “survey” of that period, the course will concentrate its attention on a select group of representative monuments. We will examine not only the monuments themselves, but also the historical context in which they were produced in order to explore their purpose and the way that they functioned. There will be a strong emphasis on visual analysis and understanding how visual forms convey meaning and relate to the viewer. Our goal is to impart not only a body of knowledge but also a set of critical tools, which you should be able to apply to even material not specifically covered in this course.

Image: Hagia Sophia

GEN foundations: Literary, Visual and Performing Arts (LVPA) and Historical and Cultural Studies 

History of Art 2901 ONLINE - Introduction to World Cinema

8 WK SESSION 1 | May 6 - June 27,  2025 | Class #18308

This course will introduce students to the history of film as an artistic medium and a global art form. We will track technological, aesthetic, and formal developments in its evolution from photographic and proto-cinematic technologies to digital cinema by studying particular masterpieces, and focusing on the role of the director or auteur. We will pay close attention to the medium’s complex relationship to time, its changing materiality, and its fraught relationship to truth and reality. Students will engage in a historical and formal study of international cinema through a chronological survey of its major forms, techniques, and its relationship to the broader history of art, as well as social and political history. We will sample its major and “minor” forms, from Hollywood productions to art gallery experiments and cinema from the developing world. Students will be introduced to the grammar of film through a historical account of its formal evolution and the stylistic analysis of the visual and narrative structures of individual films.

GEN Foundations: Literary, Visual and Performing Arts (LVPA) 

History of Art 2002 - Western Art II: Renaissance to Modern

8 WK SESSION 1 | June 2 - July 25,  2025 | Class #17311

This course examines the art of Europe and the United States from about 1400 to the present, with an emphasis on developments in painting. Rather than a traditional survey of that period, the course will concentrate on a select group of representative works that shaped—and were shaped by — Western social, political, economic, and intellectual history. There will be a strong emphasis, too, on questions of analysis and interpretation —including, in some cases, the changing history of the artworks’ reception. The goal will be to impart not only a body of knowledge but also a set of critical tools, including visual literacy, that students will be able to apply to a wide range of material not specifically covered in the course.

GEN Foundations: Literary, Visual and Performing Arts (LVPA) and Historical and Cultural Studies

History of Art 3010 - Gender and Sexuality in European Art

8 WK SESSION 1 | June 2 - July 25,  2025 | Class #18309

This course offers an introduction to the intersectional study of European Art, exploring the intertwining ideologies of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity from the Ancient Mediterranean World to the present. We will see that the ways artworks impact and construct ideas and stereotypes about gender, race, and sexuality in the modern world are deeply influenced by their development in premodern history. Topics to be explored include the ways in which ideas about gender roles and identities are shaped by artworks; the gendered contexts of artistic production; gendered practices of viewing works of art; the changing status of female and non-white artists and patrons in Europe; the way people of color were depicted in premodern European art; and queer and transgender artists and artworks. We will investigate the ways in which works of art enforced particular codes of behavior for people of different genders and races, but also how works of art served as sites of resistance to such roles and stereotypes, and as a place where individual identities were negotiated and portrayed. We will explore both famous works of European art and also lesser-known paintings, sculptures, buildings, and objects of visual culture. 

GEN Foundations: Literary, Visual, and Performing Arts (LVPA) and Race, Ethnicity, and Gender Diversity (REGD)

History of Art 3901 - World Cinema Today

8 WK SESSION 1 | June 2 - July 25,  2025 | Class #17854

HistArt3901 examines feature films from around the globe that illustrate a range of forms and topics in recent cinema. Though this is a multi-national survey, we will consider films not only as representative examples of national cinema traditions but also as expressions of regional, ethnic, devotional, sexual, gendered and globalist identities. Rather than focusing on what particular films mean, we will study how filmmakers shape meaning, how viewers construct interpretations, why certain aesthetic choices can promote ideological perspectives and reveal underlying values.

GEN Foundations: Literary, Visual, and Performing Arts (LVPA)