Art History (ARTH)

ARTH 1010 Intro to Greek Art/Archaeology 3 Credits

This course offers both a chronological survey of ancient Greek material culture and an introduction to the methods of discovery and analysis employed by Classical (Greek and Roman) archaeologists. Most class meetings will focus on the major monuments, archaeological sites, art works, and other artifacts of the ancient Greek world from Bronze Age prehistory through to the Archaic (ca. 600-480 B.C.), Classical (ca. 480-323 B.C.), and Hellenistic (ca. 323-30 B.C.) periods. In addition to considering major sites such as Knossos, Mycenae, Athens, Delphi, and Olympia, we will trace the development of Greek architecture, sculpture, city planning, painting, and other art forms over time. We will also consider the nature of the archaeological evidence for the ancient Greeks and the relationship of Classical archaeology to other disciplines such as art history, history, and the classical languages. Midterm and final exams will be based upon slides seen in class and available through Powerpoint presentations; students will research and write two short papers.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 1110 What is Good Taste? 3 Credits

This course is an introduction to art historical ways of knowing, and to the humanities more broadly. It takes as its premise longstanding ideas of "art appreciation," connoisseurship, and aesthetic judgment, but asks students to consider where our ideas of taste come from. What counts as art? What counts as good art? Where does the "canon" come from and what are its limitations? Who is art made for and where is it meant to be encountered? Along the way, this course will consider art from around the world and, yes, refine your critical faculties. Ultimately students will develop tools to help think about not only how to think about art, but how and why they are doing so.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 1111 Art and the Body 3 Credits

Perception is more than just seeing. To experience art requires the use of our senses–sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. It can also enlist the “sixth sense” of proprioception, as well as kinesthesia, balance, and sentiment. Drawing on the fields of neuroarthistory, somaestheics, and the history of the senses, this course examines the relationship between art, science, and cognition across historical periods of visual and material culture. Our course aims to analyze the various ways that artists and spectators engaged with artworks through sensate data, stimulation, and responses. This course explores how the historical development of the “sensuous” played an integral part in the ways artists from the Medieval period to contemporary art consider the spectator’s senses central to the creative process. Students will survey topics such as: visuality, aurality, haptics, imagination and memory, pain and suffering, erotics and temptation, consumption and appetite, virtual and augmented reality, and kinesthesia through a wide variety of media. Cross-culturally, the senses are not limited to the traditional five Aristotelian categories, making sensory perception dynamic and variable within cultural and social groups and across time periods.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 1112 Denim: Past Future 3 Credits

The Global Design Project estimates that on any given day over half the world’s population is wearing jeans. This is a staggering statistic and raises the question: what is it about this one type of garment that resonates with so many wearers globally? This class will explore the history of jeans as a designed object and the materiality of denim as a textile. It will also examine the aesthetic, cultural, and social constructs that have made jeans the best selling garments of all time. Further topics covered will include the connection between jeans and myths of the American West, denim and sustainability, and denim and protest. The class will include hands-on textile workshops and museum visits.

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 1120 Storytelling in Asian Art 3 Credits

Storytelling is a vital part of the human experience. Stories both reflect and shape the societies in which they are created, holding up a lens to ourselves and others, articulating complex ideas and big questions as well as capturing our innermost thoughts and feelings. For these reasons, stories are also a particularly effective way to immerse ourselves in cultures and time periods other than our own. In this seminar, we will read and discuss great works of literature and analyze their adaptations in painting, print, sculpture, film, and digital media, including: The Tale of Genji, the courtly tale of a dashing prince widely considered the world’s first novel; the Mahabharata, an epic recounting the rivalry between two clans over competing claims to the throne; and the Gandhavyuha, which narrates the young boy Sudhana’s journey from teacher to teacher in his quest for enlightenment. All reading and other assignments will be completed within each class period; no outside work is expected. The longer than usual meeting time will give us the opportunity to slow down and read and analyze texts and images for enjoyment.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attributes: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul, SFS/CULP Humanities

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Equivalent to ARTH 2221

ARTH 1180 On Painting 3 Credits

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 1240 Ancient to Medieval 3 Credits

This lecture course surveys the art and architecture from the Paleolithic period through the Gothic period. Within a roughly chronological structure, we will explore the art of these periods in relation to their broader cultural, intellectual, and historical contexts. In addition to emphasizing the developments that define each historical period, we will consider the aesthetic advances made with the painting materials and methods available at the time. The course consists of slide lectures, class discussions, and visits to local museums and historic monuments.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Mutual exclusion: ARTH 01-, ARTH 201X

ARTH 1412 Global Catholic Imagination 3 Credits

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 1540 Art/Arch of Med/Early Ren Ital 3 Credits

This course is taught at Villa Le Balze, Georgetown's program in Florence, Italy. Fall.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attributes: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul, SFS/CULP Humanities

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 1541 Art in the Courts of Ren Italy 3 Credits

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 1542 Art/Patronage:16th-17thc Italy 3 Credits

The course, taught at Villa le Balze, is designed to complement the history course which covers a similar period and will begin by looking at artistic developments in later 15th century Florence as a prelude to the High Renaissance, the founding father of which is considered to be Leonardo da Vinci. Early Renaissance Florence was the "cradle" of the Renaissance, but the 16th century sees an artistic shift to Rome where the High Renaissance achievements of Michelangelo, Bramante and Raphael will be examined, as well as the situation in Florence with the work of Andrea del Sarto and in Parma with the work of Correggio. The High Renaissance in Venice represents a separate development represented by the Venetian artists' fascination with colour. The focus will be on Giovanni Bellini, Titian, and the architect, Palladio. The phenomenon of Mannerism will be examined which leads on to developments in Baroque art in Rome in the 17th century as exemplified by Carracci, Caravaggio, Bernini and Borromini. An inter-connecting theme will be patronage and the course will also show how artistic developments are affected by social, political and religious factors.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 1640 Renaissance to Modern 3 Credits

This course surveys major work and developments in European and American painting, sculpture, and (to a lesser extent) architecture from c. 1300 to the present. We focus on changing aims, means, and perceptions of art amid political, religious, social, economic, and other contexts. What have artists, patrons, institutions, and others wanted works of art to accomplish, and in what ways?
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Mutual exclusion: ARTH 01-, ARTH 201X

ARTH 1760 GU: Architecture History 3 Credits

This course will provide an in-depth look into Georgetown University’s architectural development over time. Beginning in the eighteenth century and moving to contemporary campus developments, students will explore iconic buildings and landscape changes. Among the many structures we will investigate are Dahlgren Chapel, Healy Hall, Isaac Hawkins Hall, the Car Barn, Observatory and Lauinger Library. Structures will be studied within their cultural context with issues relating to the country’s broader political environment, university leadership and slavery playing a role in our study. We will also note various unrealized campus building plans. Wider developments in American university architecture will be discussed. This course will provide students with outstanding practical research experience as our work will parallel the development of a Georgetown campus guidebook. This course requires no prior knowledge of architectural history and will introduce students to general building styles via university examples.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 1840 What is Modern Art? 3 Credits

This course charts artistic modernism and aesthetic responses to modernity from the 1840s to the 1960s. We will learn key theories of modernism in nineteenth and twentieth-century art criticism and discourse, including theories about how art and visual culture pictured, mediated, or affected modern politics, urbanization, technology, imperialism, postcolonialism, and globalization. In our explorations of these theories, we will engage with a wide range of visual culture and media, including painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, photography, performance, and film. This course is intended to be an introduction to art historical study and is suitable for those with no prior experience in art history.

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 1841 Art/Revolution in Europe 3 Credits

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 1910 What is contemporary art? 3 Credits

This class will explore what makes art “contemporary” and how, when, and why that determination is made. Through readings and group discussions, we will analyze historical moments when artists, writers, scholars, and the art market shifted the boundaries and definition of contemporary art. The goal of the class is to empower students to understand how contemporary art has been defined in the past and to bolster their agency in affecting how contemporary art is defined in the future.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2110 Islamic Art Architecture 3 Credits

This course examines the art and civilization of the Islamic world, from the birth of Islam in the 7th century CE through the 18th century. The vast geographic region significantly influenced by Islam or Islamic leadership stretches from southern Spain, across North Africa, into the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and all the way to Afghanistan and India. We will consider objects and monuments of various media, including architecture, textiles, metalwork, glass, ceramics, and the arts of the book, in the context of the religious, philosophical, economic, and sociopolitical factors surrounding their creation. This course is organized around the major dynasties under which Islamic art and architecture were produced. Textbooks: 1. Richard Ettinghausen, Islamic Art and Architecture 650-1250 (Yale University Press, 2003) 2. Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, The Art and Architecture of Islam, 1250-1800 (Yale University Press, 1996)

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2111 History of Prints 3 Credits

This course surveys the history of prints (mainly reproducible images on paper) in Europe and the United States c. 1400 – the present. Although they are sometimes treated as a secondary art, prints were absolutely central to the development of post-medieval western art and society. As relatively inexpensive, multiplied objects, they fundamentally reshaped ideas about what images could look like, mean, and accomplish. The role of prints in the cultivation and spread of new ideas, an international art market, propaganda, social commentary, and much more is immeasurable. The course will combine two main approaches: 1) the distinctive history of printmaking, including origins, evolution of techniques, and the political, religious, and cultural functions of prints; and 2) individual artistic developments with emphasis on the work of influential printmakers, changing iconography, and formal innovations. Among major artists to be addressed in some depth are Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya, Picasso, and Johns. We will make use of the extraordinary wealth of prints in Washington collections, including visits to the Print Study Room of the National Gallery of Art and Georgetown University’s Special Collections.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2112 History of Architecture I 3 Credits

This introductory level survey course investigates major works of architecture from a broad array of cultures and locales from the ancient era to 1750. Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque monuments will be analyzed within their cultural context. African and Asian case studies will also be incorporated within this global survey. Students will gain familiarity with the language of architecture and its diverse materials, function, styles, and meaning. Issues relating to patronage, cross-cultural diffusion, and urban planning will also be addressed. Included among the many structures we will investigate are the Near Eastern ziggurat, ancient Roman baths, the cathedrals of England and France, the Italian villas of Palladio, and the buildings of Versailles. Students will work both independently and in teams throughout the semester. No prior architecture knowledge is required or assumed.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2113 Women in the Arts 3 Credits

This course surveys women artists from the medieval to modern ages. Organized chronologically, we will discuss the artists and artworks in their cultural contexts. We will examine the conditions and spaces of production, the artists’ training, and the patronage and marketing of their works. The role of women as patrons will also be emphasized. In addition to addressing painting, sculpture, and printmaking, we will investigate the contributions of women in other areas of visual culture such as etching on glass with diamonds, embroidering, cutting intricate designs in paper with scissors, and more.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2120 Arts of China 3 Credits

This lecture course surveys the art and architecture of China from the prehistoric period to the present-day. The unfolding of various artistic and architectural traditions in China was marked by regional developments, the emergence of different religious and philosophical systems, as well as by interactions with China’s neighbors. The topics that we will study include: bronze ritual vessels, Buddhist cave shrines, landscape painting, ceramics for domestic use and international trade, gardens and literati or gentlemanly culture, the impact of the Jesuits upon Chinese court arts, and the response of modern artists to traditional artistic techniques as well as to the dramatic upheavals of 20th century China. Emphasis will be placed upon the interrelationship between the visual properties of art objects and their materials and techniques, as well as the historical, social, and cultural contexts of their production. No prior knowledge of Asian art is required or assumed.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2121 Arts of Japan 3 Credits

This course examines Japanese art from the prehistoric period to the 20th century. We will focus on Shinto shrines, Buddhist monasteries, narrative handscrolls, decorative folding screens, objects associated with the tea ceremony, woodblock prints of the “floating world,” and oil paintings. Emphasis will be placed upon the interrelationship between the visual properties of art objects and their materials and techniques, as well as the historical, social, and cultural contexts of their production. The issues that we will explore include interregional contacts and artistic exchange between the Japanese archipelago and the Asian continent, the functions of objects within religious contexts, the artistic patronage of members of the aristocracy and the military elite, and artistic encounters between Japan and Europe. Class visits and assignments focusing upon the collections of the National Museum of Asian Art will complement classroom learning and teach students how to engage with original artworks. No prior knowledge of Asian art is required or assumed for this course. For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu This class is not available to audit.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2122 East Asian Painting 3 Credits

This course examines premodern to contemporary paintings and prints from East Asia. Our focus will be primarily on works from China and Japan, with some discussion of paintings from Korea. Considered one of the “three perfections” along with poetry and calligraphy, painting has long been associated with the cultured elite in East Asia, characterized by scroll paintings executed on silk or paper. In addition to such works, we will also study stone carvings, mural paintings, and ceramics in order to understand strategies for visual representation on a variety of pictorial surfaces. Some of the issues that we will examine are the functions of paintings in mortuary and religious contexts, interregional influences and artistic exchange within East Asia, the self-conscious fashioning of the literati or gentleman painter, the relationship between woodblock prints and urban culture, and the encounter of Asian painting and painters with the west. No prior knowledge of Asian art is required or assumed. *for ARTH majors, fulfills the non-European Art distribution requirement **for ARTH minors, fulfills the pre-1600 distribution requirement ***fulfills the “Engaging Diversity” core curriculum requirement

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2123 South/Southeast Asia 3 Credits

This course will survey architectural sites and artworks primarily in South Asia with consideration of corresponding material in Southeast Asia. Much of our focus will be on the visual and material culture of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Islam, as well as visual and architectural expressions of royal authority. In addition to architecture, we will examine sculpture and mural and portable painting. Some of the issues to be considered are: the dialogue between the various religions of India and Southeast Asia and how this was reflected in the visual arts, interregional influences and artistic exchange between India and Southeast Asia, questions of local patronage and regional style, the premodern discourse on art and aesthetics, and the modern discovery of religious sites by colonial explorers. No prior knowledge of Asian art or religions is required or assumed.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2140 History of Prints 3 Credits

This course surveys the history of prints (mainly reproducible images on paper) in Europe and the United States c. 1400-present. Although they are sometimes treated as a secondary art, prints were absolutely central to the development of post-medieval western art and society. As relatively inexpensive, multiplied objects, they fundamentally reshaped ideas about what images could look like, mean, and accomplish. Prints played an immeasurable role in the development and spread of new visual ideas, an international art market, propaganda, social commentary, and much more. The course combines two main approaches: 1) the distinctive history of printmaking, including origins, evolution of techniques, and the political, religious, and cultural functions of prints; and 2) individual artistic developments with emphasis on the work of influential printmakers, changing iconography, and formal innovations. Among major artists to be addressed in some depth are Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya, and Johns. We will make use of the extraordinary abundance of prints in Washington collections, including two visits to the National Gallery of Art.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2150 Latin America I 3 Credits

This course examines the art of Mesoamerican before the Conquest (ca. 10th century BCE) and up to the period of independence (early 19th century CE). Organized chronologically, the course studies the art of Mesoamerica, early contact between Europeans and Indigenous Americans, the introduction of European art in Latin America, and the innovative transformation of both native and European art due to the Conquest. By analyzing various materials and topics that include architecture, paintings, sculptures, codices, and prints, the course places particular emphasis on the interaction between native traditions and imported ideas concerning religion, race, gender, politics, rituals, and daily life. While considering several relevant art movements, the course introduces students to the major theoretical issues regarding Latin American art and its interpretation.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2160 North Native America I 3 Credits

This course surveys ancient and historic Native American visual culture, as well as contemporary Native American art. It looks at what has inspired Native American artists working throughout the present-day United States and explores how those artists have responded to what they have considered the most important spiritual, cultural, aesthetic, or political issues of their times. To the greatest degree possible and through a variety of means, the class will go behind the scenes to hear directly from Native scholars, curators, and artist to examine individual expressions of visual culture and artworks. This course will also address the gulf that has long existed between Westerners and Native Americans regarding Native American visual culture and art, and examine the concepts of Indigenous aesthetics and Indigenous curation.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2180 History of Photography 3 Credits

This course introduces key methods, terms, and themes in the history of photography, charting a path from its origins in nineteenth-century European art, science, and industry, to the myriad artistic and cultural adaptations of digital photographic media in the global present. As an object of study, photography’s attraction is that there remains no aspect of modern life – from birth to death, from sex to war, from atoms to galaxies, from the cheapest commerce to the most valuable art works – that is not touched by it in one way or another. Photography is a class of images and a practice that thoroughly infiltrates and mediates the world around us. This ubiquity, or everywhere-ness, poses a unique problem for history, theory, and practice: how do we develop a coherent method of analysis for something so spread across (modern) time and space? How can we speak with equal sensitivity about the photograph as a product of optics, chemistry, software, and hardware, as well as what it claims to represent with such exacting fidelity? How can we identify the meaning of a photograph when that meaning is so heavily determined by its specific context, its movement through information cultures, as well as its use in social rites and rituals? Throughout the course, we will address these questions through a close study of photography’s history in relation to social and material conditions from 1839 to the present. To this end, you will be actively engaged in looking closely at images, in addition to reading scholarship, commentary, and criticism related to our most abundant technical image: the photograph. For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu This class is not available to audit.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2221 Buddhist Art 3 Credits

This course will survey the Buddhist art and architecture of Asia through selected case studies of artworks and sites in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Among the topics to be studied include: representations of the historical Buddha’s life, rock-cut architecture, monastic complexes, painted mandalas, Zen portraits, as well as the roles played by patronage, pilgrimage, and ritual. Our focus upon the Buddhist art and architecture of Asia will allow us to think through not only the historical development of the religion and its visual and architectural forms, but also issues of cross-cultural transmission. In the process, students will gain familiarity not only with the religious and historical context of the artworks and sites and with the basic iconography of Buddhist deities, but also with methods of visual analysis that form the basis of art historical methodology. No prior knowledge of Asian art or religions is required or assumed.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core: Theology

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2310 Byzantine Empire 3 Credits

Lasting for over 1100 years, the Byzantine Empire – or properly known as the Eastern Roman Empire, stood as one of the longest enduring kingdoms in history. This course explores the evolution of this empire from Constantine’s creation of a “new Rome” with his relocation to Byzantium in 330 CE, to its final years under Constantine IX Palaiologos as it fell to the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed II in 1453. As the Byzantine empire expanded, contracted, suffered civil wars, reconciled the Sack of Rome, and confronted the rise of both Abbasid and Umayyad caliphates, artists both at the court and beyond engaged in a rich dialogue of material culture (jewelry, ivories, enamels, textiles, manuscripts, sculptures, paintings, and architecture). Throughout this course, we will examine how the production and circulation of visual culture illustrates a variety of functions for each phase of the empire, be that promoting global influence, cultivating a recognizable and replicable style, or manufacturing propaganda to combat political defeats. Students will consider issues of trade and commerce, race and cultural migrations, gender and the role of the empress, theological debates during the era of iconoclasm, and the impact of crusades.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2311 Global Medieval 3 Credits

Artistic Capitals in Medieval Period coincide with rise and fall of global empires– from the First Golden Age of Byzantium under emperor Justinian (527 CE) to the final crusade and the Siege of Acre (1291 CE). While the popular idea of the Medieval Age as portrayed in television shows casts a “dark age” filled with war, plague, and rampant conflict, the visual and material culture reveals a wealth of activity. During this period the transportation of material goods, circulation of artistic practices, and mobility of ideas across geographies led to networks of connectivity between Constantinople and Cairo, Jerusalem to Rome, and Granada to Sicily. This course examines how art objects (painting, sculpture, textiles, manuscripts, ivories, enamels, and relics) and architecture allow us to recover and retrace the cross-cultural movements both within a European context and beyond. Students will consider issues of patronage, messaging and propaganda, race and cultural migration, trade routes and mechanisms of exchange, and the dynamic rise of artistic capitals.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2410 Exchange in the Medieval World 3 Credits

Globalization in the medieval period casts a long shadow across art history, spanning from the rise of the Byzantine emperor Justinian (527 CE) to the Sack of Constantinople (1204 CE) and the Siege of Acre (1291 CE). During this period the transportation of material goods, circulation of artistic practices, and mobility of ideas across geographies led to networks of connectivity between Constantinople and Rome, Jerusalem to Aachen, and Granada to Cairo. This course examines how art objects (painting, sculpture, textiles, manuscripts, ivories, enamels, and relics) and architecture allow us to recover and retrace cross-cultural movements both within a European context and beyond. Students will consider issues of patronage, messaging and propaganda, race and cultural migration, trade routes and mechanisms of exchange, and the dynamic rise of artistic capitals. For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2440 Art of Middle Ages 3 Credits

The powerful images and the creative architectural monuments made in western Europe during the Middle Ages provide the focus of this course. Often described as the “Age of Faith,” the era begins with the Early Christian period of the late Roman Empire and ends with the onset of the Italian Renaissance. We will consider the formation and evolution of a “medieval art,” its roots in classical sources, its major functions and forms, its tendency toward abstraction, its role in the lives of medieval men and women, and its extraordinary ability to persuade and inspire. Format: Primarily lecture, with readings and discussion. No prerequisites, but previous art history course (ARTH 101) or medieval studies courses are helpful.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2441 Medieval Sicily 3 Credits

Pilgrims, immigrants, saints, administrators, and knights made their way to the shores of Sicily, constantly transforming the cultural and social fabric of the island throughout the medieval period. This course begins with Emperor Justinian’s reconquest of Sicily from the Ostrogoths in 535 CE, tracing the complexity of the Muslim invasion in 827 CE, to the Norman reign from 999 – 1130 CE, ending with the Angevin dynasty’s shaky hold in 1266 and its deliverance to the House of Aragon in 1282. We will examine the overlapping influences of Greek, Latin, Roman, German, Muslim, Jewish, Norman, Angevin (France & England) and Aragon (Spain) cultures in the production of painting, architecture, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, textiles, and jewelry. Students will learn how Byzantine, Islamic, Gothic, and Romanesque art styles converged in this unique territory where soldiers, kings, caliphs, and popes wrestled to gain and keep control of “the island of fertility.”
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2540 Italian Renaissance 3 Credits

The course surveys painting and sculpture in Italy c. 1300-1550. Other important art forms, including architecture and prints, will be addressed among a few significant examples. We will emphasize major works and artists, especially in the leading centers of Florence, Rome, and Venice. While artistic style will be one of our interests (as it was to artists, patrons, and other observers in the period), we will spend more time on changing circumstances of the production, function, iconography, patronage, and commerce of art in the period. Why was art being made? How was it used and understood? One advantage of life on the Hilltop is easy access to one of the world’s premier collections of Renaissance art. We will schedule two class visits to the National Gallery of Art, and you will be encouraged to explore this and other collections further on your own.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2541 Renaissance Venice 3 Credits

This course surveys visual arts and architecture emerging in the late fourteenth century to the late sixteenth century. It will explore the history of art not only in Venice, but also the Venetian Republic’s other possessions: the domini di Terraferma, such as Padua. Rather than presuming a “Venetian” style defined in contrast to other centers of the Italian Renaissance, we will aim to understand regional and individual tendencies on their own terms. The course will present the canonical works of Venetian Renaissance painting, sculpture, and architecture, but it also aims to expand the scope of relevant items for art historical inquiry, covering material culture, manuscripts, and early printed books. The works themselves within a historic context will be the focus, including their means of production, the places for which these images were intended, the concerns of patrons and art collectors, and the expectations and responses of the works’ first viewers.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2542 Northern Renaissance 3 Credits

Northern Renaissance Art explores art made in the Netherlands, Germany, and France c. 1300-1575, which includes an amazing variety of work produced for courts, churches, civic bodies, and private individuals among growing middle classes in the cities. Who paid for art? How was it produced? What roles did it play in society, politics, religion, and daily life? Why did so many new kinds of subject matter emerge in European art of this period? With emphasis on the highly original and influential work of such leading figures as Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Dürer, Hieronymus Bosch, and Pieter Bruegel, we will consider functions, meanings, and markets of art in a period of dramatic change.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2640 Global Early Modern 3 Credits

This course considers the circulation of visual culture, material goods, artistic practices, and ideas across national borders during the early modern period (circa 1400 CE – 1700 CE). It takes as its point of departure the hypothesis that the period traditionally known as Renaissance/Baroque was marked by the mobility of artists, objects, philosophies, and a rich intellectual, material, and social culture across major international city centers. Within a framework that highlights the process of exchange, collaboration, and competition between cultures, the course examines how networks existed throughout the European courts of Italy, Spain, and France, and extended across the Levant, Latin America, Goa, Japan, and the Philippines. Students will challenge conventional ideas about center/periphery by evaluating case studies that highlight the role of humanism in patronage, diplomacy and gift exchange, missionary enterprises of the Counter Reformation, and the manufacturing of a Catholic imagination as part of the Age of Exploration and the rise of global empires.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2641 Baroque 3 Credits

Baroque Art introduces students to painting, prints, sculpture and architecture produced in the seventeenth century – the age of the Baroque. In this century of remarkably varied artistic production, regional distinctions arise in the context of explosive scientific discoveries, significant political changes, transformed religious beliefs, and wide reaching trade and exploration. We will examine selected works of art produced by artists such as Caravaggio, Velazquez, Poussin, Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer in Italy, Spain, France, Flanders and the Dutch Republic in the framework of the cultural, political, religious, and intellectual changes that make the art of this period so distinctive.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2642 Dutch Art/Age of Rembrandt 3 Credits

You have most likely heard of Johannes Vermeer and Rembrandt van Rijn whose paintings have been the focus of countless exhibitions, films, and novels. While we will study their careers and remarkable artworks in-depth, their paintings comprise only a tiny fraction of an estimated 5-10 million works of art produced in the 17th-century Dutch Republic (now the Netherlands) for a population of about the same as Philadelphia today. One scholar estimates that, at times, artists made up 5% of the male labor force in dutch towns. Our class will explore this explosion of art. In addition to surveying other artists and their paintings and prints, we will consider the broader context of the profusion of art: political independence, trade, and exploration, a unique art market, a wide range of buyers, and new methods of production. The seventeenth-century in The Dutch Republic was known for great prosperity, but also for an astonishing artistic explosion. Over the course of this semester, we will become familiar with the art, the artists, and the art market of the extraordinary century.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2643 Italian Baroque 3 Credits

This course investigates the extraordinary age of the Baroque in Italy, often associated with artists such as Caravaggio, Gentileschi, Bernini, and Borromini. Our journey begins in Rome, considered to be the birthplace of the Baroque and the workplace of these artists. From there, we will travel to Bologna, Florence, Venice, Sicily, and Malta. We will study the profusion of artists, and their artworks and ambitious architectural programs in relation to the religious, socio-political, and cultural contexts of these regions. We will pay particular attention to the rampant competition and rivalry among artists, the impact of powerful and wealthy patrons, and the widespread legacy of the Italian Baroque.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2660 U.S. to 1870 3 Credits

The United States has always been a nation of diverse people, and the growth and development of its arts have been shaped by the exchanges it fostered. This course will explore how the artistic traditions of northern and southern Europe, Native America, Asia and Africa converged in the United States and how circumstances of the country’s environment, culture, politics, and materials shaped artistic production from the colonial era through 1876. We will examine work by artists such as John Singleton Copley, Sarah Miriam Peale, Thomas Cole, David Drake, Robert Scott Duncanson, Albert Bierstadt, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Eakins—as well as distinctly American art forms such as pipe tomahawks, ledger book paintings, chinoiserie, New Mexican santos, and middle class vernacular art. Students will be expected to develop an understanding of the major artists, art movements, and art historical issues related to the visual arts produced in the United States. The course will include one Friday site visit to the National Gallery of Art.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2740 French 3 Credits

This survey course will concentrate on the fascinating currents in the visual arts that took place in France from the 18th century to the early 20th century. Starting in the late 17th century, we will trace the course of painting of the Baroque, Rococo, and Neo-Classic styles, which dominated the latter part of the century and study the influence of the Enlightenment movement on art and politics. The Romantic period of the early 19th century introduced innovative subject matter and new ways of experiencing the world. Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and fin de siècle aesthetics like Symbolism will lead us ultimately to the work of the Fauves and Henri Matisse, arguably the greatest French painter of the 20th century. In addition to an essentially chronological and contextual approach, we will also separately address such issues as exhibition practice, genre, landscape, style, politics, and gender. Over the course of the semester the class will explore such painters as Watteau, Fragonard, Chardin, Vigée-Lebrun, David, Géricault, Delacroix, Millet, Monet, Renoir, Seurat, and Cézanne. Looking assignments will take students to view the outstanding collections at the National Gallery of Art. No pre-requisites. This course is NOT RECOMMENDED for students who have taken Nineteenth-Century Art.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2742 German Art: Romantic to Weimar 3 Credits

This mid-level survey course explores the history of art in Germany-speaking countries from the late 18th-century to 1937. We begin with the Neo-Classic philosophy of Winckelmann and proceed to the Romanticism of Caspar David Friedrich and onward to the naturalist Adolph von Menzel, the Expressionist Brücke and Blaue Reiter groups, the Bauhaus collective, the Dadaists, Nazi architecture, and more. We will look at the birth of German film and modern theatre and will read Georg Kaiser’s Expressionist play Gas I. The class ends with an examination of the infamous “Degenerate Art” exhibition, organized in 1937 by the Nazis as an attack on modern art. In addition to serving as a corrective to Franco-centric art history, this class suggests important approaches to thinking about various social and political issues that continue to resonate with us today. (No knowledge of German required.)
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2743 European Modern 3 Credits

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2760 Modern Architecture: US and EU 3 Credits

This course surveys modern architecture from 1750-Present. Our analysis will focus primarily on movements and designers in Europe and the United States with some additional global examples. Characteristics of key architectural styles and the designs of leading architects will be discussed within the framework of their cultural context. We will address the skyscraper’s development, the Arts & Crafts movement, the International Style and later modern forms. Visionary urban plans, new technology and architectural ornament will be highlighted. Students will work both independently and in teams throughout the semester. Included among the many architects we will address are Jefferson, Ledoux, Labrouste, Wright, Hadid, Ando and Holl. No prior architecture knowledge is required or assumed.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2761 U.S. from 1870 3 Credits

This course provides an introduction to American art and visual culture in the years between the Civil War and the Cold War. We will situate the images, visual practices, and artistic styles of this period within their social, historical, and cultural contexts, paying particular attention to the role that artistic production and consumption played in constructing American social identities and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among the topics we will consider are art and nationalism, race and representation, urbanization and industrialization, representing war, art and technology, the rise of mass media, and the role of abstraction.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2762 Myths of American West 3 Credits

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2810 Stuff: Design/Everyday Objects 3 Credits

In 2010, scholar Daniel Miller published Stuff under the premise that “things make us, just as must as we make things.” Yet the designed objects that surround us everyday—from plates and chairs to clothes and tools—are regularly overlooked. This course examines design and craft as central, rather than marginal, to the history of art and the formation of everyday life. Focusing on designed objects, the class asks how categories such as “art,” “decorative art,” “craft,” and “design” have been defined, debated, and transformed across time and cultures. Particular attention is paid to the role of technology—both hand and machine—in shaping the aesthetics, materiality, function, and accessibility of objects within the built environment. Each class centers on a single case-study object, from furnishings and textiles to tools and domestic wares, using close visual and material analysis to situate these objects within broader social, economic, and cultural contexts. Moving across historical periods and global geographies, the course considers how the things that surround us both reflect and structure human experience, revealing design and craft as sites of innovation, power, labor, and meaning.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2811 Art from the Arab World 3 Credits

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2812 Modern I (1789- 1945) 3 Credits

This course charts artistic responses to modernity in Europe and the United States, from the late eighteenth century to World War I and its immediate aftermaths. This long period of rapid change pushed artists to visualize, and grapple with, the emergent contradictions of modern life. With close attention to a wide range of media, especially painting, we will explore how art and visual culture were entwined with modern politics, urbanization, technology, imperialism, and globalization. We will read and discuss primary sources such as art criticism and artists’ manifestos, and we will learn how to draw on these resources to interpret artworks. Students will also learn how to discuss artworks in depth through several visits to archives and museums. This course is intended to be an introduction to art historical study and is suitable for those with no prior experience in art history.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2820 Theorizing Art in Qatar 3 Credits

In this course, we will study a range of art forms that are available in Doha through prominent critical approaches to art history and theory. As an emergent global hub of arts and creative industries, Doha hosts a rich collection of materials created by artists from the Middle East, Indian Ocean world, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. As such, theorizing art in Doha will enable us to acquire a comprehensive understanding of the themes and methods of studying a diverse array of traditional, Islamic, Orientalist, modern, public, contemporary, and digital forms. In sum, we will aim to achieve two mutually supportive goals: (1) to offer an art history and theory course through the art works and forms available in Doha; (2) to theorize and historicize the available art works and forms in larger aesthetic and cultural contexts. Students enrolled in this course must be prepared to participate in field trips and classes that will take place in Qatar Museums.

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2850 Latin America II 3 Credits

The course provides an in-depth analysis of Latin America through the art of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo, Maria Izquierdo, Xul Solar, Antonio Berni, Wilfredo Lam, and Fernando Botero among others. By analyzing a wide variety of artistic production that includes painting, sculpture, performance, prints, manifestos, music, film, and ephemera, the course considers the diversity of Latin American cultural and artistic production, emphasizing artists’ relationship to religion, tradition, race, gender, justice, and politics. While considering Latin America’s enduring legacies and dynamic processes of change, it addresses several important art movements, such as modernism, surrealism, indigenism, social realism, muralism, and magical realism. Moreover, the course introduces students to the major artistic theoretical issues with an eye on the regional and global changes that defined, challenged, or helped shape Latin American art and culture.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 2910 Modern II (1945-Present) 3 Credits

This survey course provides a general introduction to global contemporary art. After providing a brief grounding in 20th-century modernism and socio-political events of recent decades, this course considers a broad thematic range: pop and conceptual art; the emergence of performance, installation, and new media; earth works and site specificity; identity-based and institution-critical art; relational aesthetics and new modes of spectacle and digital consumerism; and the emergence of the global biennial and gallery system. This course assumes no prior knowledge and introduces students to a constellation of artists from around the world—from Cindy Sherman to Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei, Lygia Clark to Kara Walker and Walid Raad, and many more.

Level: Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3079 Roman Painting 3 Credits

TBD

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3110 Intro to Museum Studies 3 Credits

This course will examine the theory and practice of museum work. It will consider theories of objects and collections, as well as specific problems in museums studies, such as repatriation, collection and display of non-western material, and accessibility. The course will also introduce students to the core museum functions, including education, development, administration, curating, and collections management. Our focus will be on history, art, and cultural museums, but topics in science and house museums will also be discussed. The class will take two Friday visits (recommended, but not required) to the National Museum of African American History and the National Museum of the American Indian’s Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, one required, in-class site visit to Dumbarton House, and at least one assigned out-of-class visit to an area museum. No prior knowledge of art history or museums is required.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3111 Special Topics in Art and Arch 3 Credits

Course topics in art and architectural history may vary by semester and by instructor.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3112 Art Writing 3 Credits

This course explores arts writing, criticism, and publishing in both theory and practice. Students will study the major movements within the discipline of arts writing and criticism, and build a portfolio of both short and long-form writing—achieved through the development of robust research, critical thinking, and visual analysis. Each week we will read key texts by leading critics, arts writers, and art historians; engage in a variety of writing exercises, workshops, and peer review; conduct occasional museum/gallery visits; and enjoy periodic course visits from leading arts writers, critics, and publishers in the field. We will read and analyze works by Roland Barthes, Maurice Berger, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Black, Claire Bishop, Aruna D’Souza, Denis Diderot, Douglas Crimp, Okwui Enwezor, Coco Fusco, Ernst Gombrich, bell hooks, Lucy Lippard, Kobena Mercer, Linda Nochlin, Legacy Russell, Susan Sontag, Hito Steyerl, Giorgio Vasari, Heinrich Wolfflin, among others.

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3120 Art of the Silk Routes 3 Credits

This course focuses on the cultural heritage of the overland and maritime silk routes. The silk routes served as a conduit for commercial trade and cultural exchange between China, Central Asia, India and Southeast Asia, and Europe. In addition to mural paintings in the Buddhist cave shrines of northwestern China, we will also study portable paintings, manuscripts, textiles, ceramics, and architecture. We will put these artifacts into context by imagining how they interfaced with the rulers, monks, traders, and nomads who traveled and lived along the silk routes.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3130 African-American Art Culture 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3131 Art and Power in Africa 3 Credits

Throughout African history, artworks have played an important role in the construction and contestation of state power. Our course examines this relationship by surveying the artistic programs of a diverse range of pre-colonial states and societies. Drawing from readings in political theory and African art history, students will learn to closely examine individual artworks—their formal details, their circumstances of production, their histories of use and re-use—and construct a picture of political relationships. Although a background in either African studies or art history is helpful, it is by no means required.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3140 History of Prints 3 Credits

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3150 Latin American Art I 3 Credits

The course examines the art of Mesoamerican before the Conquest (ca. 10th century BCE) and up to the period of independence (early 19th century CE). Organized chronologically, the course studies the art of Mesoamerica, early contact between Europeans and Indigenous Americans, the introduction of European art in Latin America, and the innovative transformation of both native and European art as a result of the conquest. By analyzing a variety of materials and topics that include architecture, paintings, sculptures, codices, and prints, the course places particular emphasis on the interaction between native traditions and imported ideas in relationship to religion, race, gender, politics, rituals, and daily life. While considering several important art movements, the course introduces students to the major theoretical issues regarding Latin American art and its interpretation.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3160 North Native America 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Course attribute:

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3250 Pre-Conquest 3 Credits

The course explores the art and architecture of Mesoamerica and the Andes up to the time of the European conquest. Organized chronologically, students analyze and discuss artworks associated with the major cultures of Mesoamerica and the Andes, including Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Chavín, Moche, Paracas, Nazca, Tiwanaku, Wari, and Inka. The course provides students with in-depth knowledge of the history, ritual traditions, and belief systems of ancient Mesoamericans, as displayed in their sculpture, painting, architecture, textiles, and writing systems. While placing particular emphasis on religion, race, gender, politics, and the performative aspects of rituals, the course introduces students to the major theoretical concepts regarding Pre-Conquest art and its interpretation.

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3452 The Work of Renaissance Art 3 Credits

What could seem more obvious – even natural – than to study Renaissance art in Florence? So much of the painting, sculpture, and architecture produced here in the 14th-16th centuries has long been central to a collective idea not only of this city, but also of the history of western art itself. The habit of regarding European art history as a sequence artists (Giotto, Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo…) and styles first crystallized in Renaissance Florence. But what was this art meant to do? Why was so much money spent on it, and by so many different kinds of individuals and institutions? How were projects commissioned? How were artists chosen for certain jobs? What kinds of messages or meanings were intended, and how were these shaped by patrons, artists, and others? What did it take to produce a fresco, a bronze sculpture, or a small panel painting? How were they used? In this class our focus is not on a familiar story of great innovators and evolving styles, but instead on the nuts and bolts of their jobs. This approach is useful not just as an introduction to the practical lives of art in a Renaissance city, but also as a prompt to think about the mechanisms and markets of art-making in other periods, including our own.

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3510 Picturing Death 3 Credits

This course explores many of the ways in which death has been represented, pondered, used, resisted, and embraced in the visual arts. Our main focus will not be on images of the dead and dying, but rather on Death itself—which cannot be fully captured by such terms as event, process, condition, or idea. Each week we will address an array of disparate artworks and readings brought together around one idea, such as time, memory, illness, disaster, and consequences. Most of our examples will be European and American art from the late middle ages to the present. This wide-ranging approach allows us to compare perceptions and uses of both art and death—which shape each other in countless ways. What do changing formulations of death, which is both universal and unknowable, tell us about the societies in which they appear? Why, for example, does death dance with the living in many late medieval images, loom silently from still life paintings in the 17th century, or explode into zombie hordes in the 21st? Class meetings are primarily discussion, with some lecture. Students’ main contributions include brief class presentations, short writing assignments, and a longer paper on a topic developed in collaboration with the professor. We will also make one or two class visits to area museums.
Prerequisite: at least one Georgetown Art History course (ARTH-) AND permission of instructor.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students in the Global Medieval Studies department.

ARTH 3541 The Intelligence of Matter 3 Credits

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3630 Africa Mediterranean World 3 Credits

This course relies on art, philosophy, and historical primary sources to explore longstanding connections between the people of present day Europe and Africa, from the Middle Ages to the present, with particular emphasis on the period of colonial entanglement during the 19th and 20th centuries. Methodologically, we will reconsider “area studies” approaches, and think about the ways in which ideas, materials, and people moved through regional networks to co-create a modern world routed through cosmopolitanism. Such interconnections are evidenced from paintings in the Uffizi Gallery to the front pages of Italian newspapers: the African presence in Europe is pronounced, and vice-versa. At the same time, the psychic space that animated countless imaginative or physical departures in the creative humanities is also essential to understanding how race, geography, and cultural meaning are all produced through relation rather than separateness.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3750 Latin American Art II 3 Credits

The course provides an in-depth analysis of Latin America through the art of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo, Maria Izquierdo, Xul Solar, Antonio Berni, Wilfredo Lam, and Fernando Botero among others. By analyzing a wide variety of artistic production that includes painting, sculpture, performance, prints, manifestos, music, film, and ephemera, the course considers the diversity of Latin American cultural and artistic production, emphasizing artists’ relationship to religion, tradition, race, gender, and politics. While considering Latin America’s enduring legacies and dynamic processes of change, it addresses several important art movements, such as modernism, surrealism, indigenism, social realism, muralism, and magical realism. Moreover, the course introduces students to the significant artistic, theoretical issues with an eye on the regional and global changes that defined, challenged, or helped shape Latin American art and culture.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3760 American Sublime 3 Credits

This lecture course examines the transmutation of 18th-century European philosophical and aesthetic notions of the Sublime, the Beautiful and the Picturesque into distinctly American art and literature. Through considering American 19th-century paintings by such artists as Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt, and literary selections from such poets and novelists as William Cullen Bryant and Herman Melville, we will explore ways in which nature became America’s version of the transcendental experience of the Sublime. Moreover, this focus on nature held serious implications for the formation of American character and national destiny, issues that have taken on particular urgency in our own times. Field trips will take us to the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3810 Postcolonial Modernisms 3 Credits

In this course, we will examine artworks created during and after the era of decolonization in the twentieth century. How did artists narrate struggles for independence? How did they forge national traditions that drew on both local and European aesthetics? And how were disputes about nationalism and more regional or global frameworks, such as Pan-Africanism, articulated visually? This course will cover several post-colonial artistic contexts, such as Cuba, Syria, India, Indonesia, Ghana, Algeria, Jamaica, and Zimbabwe. We will also discuss the rise of United States hegemony, histories of counterrevolution, and the ways in which these phenomena affected post-independence art.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3811 Modernism the Islamic World 3 Credits

This course focuses on artistic modernisms that emerged from the Islamic world starting around 1860, when globalizing markets, new technologies, and profound political upheaval stimulated widespread artistic transformations. Studying both artworks and the written works of artists and critics who lived and worked in North Africa, West Asia, and Southeast Asia from 1860-1990, this course will examine how artistic modernisms—from surrealism to ecocritical art—were explored and shaped by artists in the Islamic world. From proponents of the hurufiyya movement in Iraq who experimented with the expressive and globally translatable qualities of abstracted Arabic letter-forms, to Moroccan artists of the Casablanca School who found decolonizing tools in creating immersive experiences, artists from the Islamic world formulated artistic techniques and styles deeply responsive to their changing contexts. No prior knowledge of the history of Islamic cultures is required and students with interests in related subjects are encouraged to attend.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3812 Deconstructing Islamic Art 3 Credits

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3813 Art and Diplomacy 3 Credits

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3814 Fashion’s Global Capitals 3 Credits

Twice a year the global fashion industry descends on New York, London, Milan, and Paris for seasonal fashion weeks, during which established and emerging designers present their latest collections in highly publicized runway shows. This class will introduce students to the history of these four major “fashion capitals” and consider how they each cultivated an international reputation as hubs of style, taste, and creativity. The class will then trouble this global hierarchy as it explores fashion cities around the world including Lagos, São Paulo, Istanbul, Tokyo, Delhi, and Shanghai, among others. Central to the course are themes of the Global South, Euro-American bias in fashion, global taste, creativity, and cultural capital.

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3840 Radical Art Russia/East Europe 3 Credits

This course investigates the experimental art of Russia and Eastern Europe in the first decades of the 20th century in a comparative context. Our aim is to examine the commonalities among the diverse radical groups that identified themselves with “the avant-garde,” to consider how avant-garde artists defined their place in society and negotiated their relationship to politics, and to reflect on the position of experimental artists from this geographic region within broader European trends. We ask: what distinguishes the avant-garde from other modernist trends? Can we speak of a unified international movement known as “the avant-garde,” or are there many avant-gardes? What is the relationship of the avant-garde to nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and internationalism? Where does the avant-garde stand in relation to socialist revolution and leftist politics? We consider these and other questions by interrogating the avant-garde’s relationship to the past, history, and tradition, and by examining the techniques, media, and genres that were pervasive throughout its different factions. The media include: painting, poetry, artist’s books, performance, photomontage, film, architecture. Movements covered: Futurism, Dadaism, Constructivism, Surrealism & others. For the final students have the option to pursue a creative project that engages avant-garde techniques and strategies studied in the course.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3841 Art of Protest 3 Credits

TBD

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3842 Ottomans Orientalists 3 Credits

In this unit, we will study exchange and cultural contact between Europe and the Ottoman world from 1798 to 1910. This course will explore the historiography of orientalism from the binary articulations of east and west to more complex formulations of Ottoman orientalism, nesting and regional orientalisms, critical cosmopolitanism, and new analyses of modern Islamic visual culture. Our case studies will include architecture and city planning, the formation of collections of Islamic art, archaeology in Ottoman lands, infrastructure across the Ottoman Empire, changes in fashion and dress, and the representation of conflict and diplomacy in caricature, art, film, and the emergent illustrated press.

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3860 Queer Art Visual Culture 3 Credits

This course surveys the production of queer art and visual culture from the mid-20th century until the present. The course utilizes queer, queer-of-color critique, feminist, and Black feminist theories, as well as performance, cultural, and affect studies to ground the emergence and growth of an expressly queer, trans, non-binary, and non-conformist identity and aesthetic in art. The course considers traditional and non-traditional modes of art production, including painting, photography, video, sculpture, new media art, installation art, performance art, public art, etc. Students will closely study, analyze, theorize, and contextualize works of art and trends by LGBTQ artists within an American and a transnational context.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3861 DC: Architecture and City 3 Credits

This course addresses the evolution of Washington, D.C.’s built environment from L’Enfant’s 1791 plan to the modern era. The city’s development will be studied via a broad chronological perspective as well as individual case studies. Along with iconic monuments and government structures, we will explore the history of the city’s residential housing, park space, embassies, and commercial buildings. The development of areas such as Southwest, Anacostia, Capitol Hill, Sheridan Circle-Kalorama and Foggy Bottom will be addressed. Questions to be considered include: How has the cityscape changed over time and what have been the key transformation drivers? To what extent have international design and historical precedent influenced the capital’s development? How have politics and government regulations shaped Washington, D.C.’s evolution? In what ways have issues of race and class impacted the city’s built environment? Students will gain familiarity with architectural styles and the art ornamenting the city’s buildings will also play a role in our study. Current strategies for sustainable structures and development will be noted.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3910 How Art Moves 3 Credits

How do artworks move through the world? This class will incorporate readings and case studies to explore how art moves—from the artist’s mind, to the creative act of making, to exhibitions at galleries, sales to collectors, display at art fairs, inclusion in art auctions, and entry into museum permanent collections. This class will trace the provenance and journey of a variety of artworks, exploring the effect of cultural, political, and economic factors on art’s geographic migrations and contextual meanings.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 3920 Mod/Cont. Korean 3 Credits

This is a survey course designed to introduce significant Korean artistic practices during the 20th and 21st centuries. This course aims to identify the unique patterns of cultural and artistic construction throughout the modernization and globalization of Korea. During the 20th century, Koreans experienced traumatic events and drastic changes, including Japanese colonization, forced labor, the Korean War, ideological battles, and the division of the North and the South. Even after the Korean War, Koreans experienced military dictatorships, a rough process of democratization, and, after the 1988 Seoul Olympics, a breakneck pace of economic development and globalization that created many inequalities and side effects. These social and political changes result in accumulated “collective trauma” that has persisted through generations and has had lingering effects on contemporary Korean artists who strive for cultural healing. Topics covered in this course include constructing Korean ethnic nationalism, the vernacular modernism, performance art, conceptual art, feminism, dansaekhwa (Korean monochrome), minjung art (people’s art), pop Art, consumerism, Korean diaspora, postmodernism, and media art. No prior knowledge of Korean art is required.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4110 Art Historical Methods 3 Credits

This course will survey the methodologies that have shaped the field of art history both historically and more recently. We will cover iconography and iconology, Marxist theory and social art histories, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial theory, among other foundational approaches. We will also explore emergent methods that draw on these models, such as ecocritical art histories and theories of extraction, questions of “repair” and critique in the world of the visual, and art’s role in shaping and contesting newer forms of imperialism and globalization. Many of these themes and methods overlap, and students will be encouraged to make connections between methodologies in order to formulate their own approaches to the study of art history.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate or Undergraduate level students.

ARTH 4120 Earth, Art: China 3 Credits

This seminar examines earth as material, site, and concept for art-making in China from prehistoric times to the present day. Although Chinese ritual and connoisseurial texts privileged ritual objects made of bronze and works of painting and calligraphy made from ink and silk, the earliest extant artifacts in China are ceramic vessels made from clay. Furthermore, knowledge of how to work with clay and earth was critical to the production of objects and sites both miniscule and monumental in scale: from small terracotta figurines of the silk routes to the Great Wall of China. In this seminar, we will consider the artisanal knowledge that emerged from the very earth of China, as well as frameworks such as site-specificity, new materialism, and environmental humanities.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4121 The Body in Asian Art 3 Credits

It has often been assumed that representation of the human form did not play as significant a role in the development of East Asian art as it did in the Western tradition. In this seminar, we will address this issue by exploring various approaches to the issue of corporeality in the art of China and Japan that not only focus upon representation of the human body, but that also question the ways in which discourses about the body were related to larger questions about death and the afterlife, the sacred and the profane, the human and the artificial, and the articulation of national identity. Selected case studies for weekly topics may range from the famed terracotta warriors to Buddhist relics, along with an exploration of calligraphy, cyborgs, and dress. No prior knowledge of Asian art is required or assumed.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Art History, Art History, Art History or Art History.

ARTH 4122 Arts of Zen Buddhism 3 Credits

Zen Buddhism is one of the major traditions of Buddhism in East Asia and was moreover an instrumental force in shaping modern perceptions of Japan in the west. Over the course of the semester, we will analyze how the perceived distinctiveness of Zen Buddhism – as marked by concepts such as mind-to-mind transmission, master-disciple lineage, and sudden enlightenment – was constructed through the visual arts and how the arts in turn contributed to monk-patron relations and the cultural lives of monks outside the monastic walls. Among the weekly topics to be covered are: ink landscape paintings, portraits of Zen masters, the tea ceremony and ceramic tea wares, as well as Beat Zen and the impact of Buddhism upon postwar artists in the United States.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4123 Archaeology in China 3 Credits

From the "dragon bones" unearthed by farmers in the late 19th century to tombs uncovered during road-building projects today, archaeological discoveries continue to augment and rewrite our knowledge of Chinese history, art, religion, and society. This seminar will examine major archaeological sites in China from the Neolithic period (ca. 7000-1700 BCE) to the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) and analyze the insights that they offer into Chinese religion and cosmology, the conceptualization of death and the afterlife, premodern technologies and art-making techniques, and more. Each week, we will focus on a specific site as well as key figures and institutions in the rise of scientific archaeology in 20th century China. Moreover, we will pay special attention to the ongoing dialogue between archaeology and narratives of national and regional identity, and issues of cultural heritage protection.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Course attribute: XHIS name

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies or Art and Museum Studies.

ARTH 4124 Global Arts and Crafts 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4150 Spectacle in Latin America 3 Credits

The seminar seeks to develop new approaches to the visual and ephemeral material cultures of rituals, festivities, ceremonies, and processions that helped articulate pre-and post-conquest societies in Latin America. The course studies the evidence in codices, paintings, prints, music, dance, costume, ephemeral art, and ancient and modern rituals. Mesoamerican, Andean, and Viceregal’s understanding of existence exhibited a profound sense of the theatrical, which was inextricably linked to religious, political, and cultural spheres. By examining the evolution of spectacle in Latin America from ancient times to the present, the seminar considers definitions, source materials, and interpretative issues in the study of ritual and ceremony. The course explores how rituals create and maintain—or transform—a society’s cultural identity and social relations while investigating the inherent problems of ephemeral and often unscripted and unrecorded practices. Placing particular emphasis on social, historical, sensorial, cultural, economic, and political aspects, the course introduces students to major theoretical concepts of belonging, inclusion, and exclusion. Moreover, the seminar aims to understand identity construction while challenging the intersection of art, spectacle, memory, tradition, race, and class in Latin America.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4151 Latin American Myth Ritual 3 Credits

The seminar examines the arts of Mesoamerica and the Andes from the fourteenth century to the time of the European conquest. By studying codices (Mixtec, Maya, Aztec, and Inka), the course explores Mixtec mythological events and dynastic history; Maya ritual cycles concerned with religion and cosmogony; Aztec pantheism, historical events, conquests, and daily life; and Inka khipus, manuscripts and textiles. Placing particular emphasis on religion, race, gender, politics, and the performative aspects of rituals, the course introduces students to the major theoretical concepts regarding Mesoamerican and Andean art and its interpretation. Moreover, the seminar creates a parallel between the rites showcased in the codices and the rituals still performed throughout Mexico and Perú, opening new ways of understanding art from a multicultural perspective.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4160 Indigenous America 3 Credits

Level: Graduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4180 On Painting 3 Credits

On Painting: Idea, Object, Interpretation Description: This seminar wonders why and how arrangements of pigment on a surface have been woven so intimately—and often urgently—into human experience and thought since antiquity. Rather than concentrating on any single period or style, we will examine the very phenomenon of painting as an idea, a cultural force, a physical fact, and more. Our tendency to treat paintings as one strand of the much larger history of art allows us to regard them too easily as examples of one thing or another—a style, a theme, a cultural movement, and so on. By isolating painting (provisionally) from other media, we are able to ponder some of its distinctive dimensions as an activity and a thought process for makers and observers. A wide scope of readings will introduce critical angles that can animate our thoughts about interpretation and criticism both within and beyond the history of art. The aim is to pursue questions about the very nature of painting—if, in fact, there is such a thing. We will also consider the place and prospects of painting in our own time. Can it still have a serious future? Structure: Each week introduces a single broad angle of approach, which we will pursue with close analysis of individual paintings and a variety of readings. Since our questions are not limited by geography or historical period, students will be able to develop term-paper research topics within any number of areas that allow concentration on specific means and ends of painting. Though we will dwell mainly on European and American work since c. 1300, students may develop topics in other periods and traditions. Several of our meetings will be in Washington museums.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4181 Monuments and Memorials 3 Credits

Monuments and Memorials explores the unique politics of the nation’s commemorative artworks and spaces. Through an art historical perspective, students in this course will focus on the creation, display, and conceptualization of monuments and memorials that function as sites of civic engagement. The discussions in this course will treat sensitive subjects, including the Civil War, slavery, the Holocaust, and Native-American genocide to understand how they have been historically memorialized across the country. Students will engage in class discussions on the efficacy of these monuments and their controversial role in today’s climate when several confederate monuments, for instance, are being dismantled. Visits to the National Mall and guest lectures by experts in the field will complement the course and enrich student learning on the stakes of the nation’s memorial landscape. By the end of this course, students will gain the intellectual tools to critically interpret and engage with the memorial program of the United States.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4182 Icons and Iconoclasm 3 Credits

Christian icons have been a source of enthusiasm and contention from late Roman times on. Did the Bible really forbid sacred images? Did Christians believe that a presence animated the material icon? What made the sacred portrait such a powerful focus of devotion and the arts? This course will introduce students to the rise of the Christian icon as a new artistic mode of thought and life in the European Middle Ages. We will explore how and why Christians chose to adapt portraiture to their religious, social and personal lives. We will also examine iconoclasms throughout history, and articulate different understandings of how and why images, idols, and icons were destroyed. These discussions will enhance our comprehension of iconoclasms of the present-day.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4183 Critical Theory for Visual Art 3 Credits

This course is designed to familiarize upper-level students with key texts in philosophy, critical theory, and more recent modes of political address commonly seen in art and writing about art. On one hand, understanding such concepts is vital for success in the contemporary art world; on the other, they (and the analytic skills developed in the course) are widely applicable when making sense the current cultural landscape in the US and beyond.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4184 Abstraction 3 Credits

What is “abstraction” in art? How, when and why did it happen? What does it mean? Obviously all abstract pictures do not look alike. And each artist seeks something different through his or her unique abstract language. How can we know what a picture “means” when it has no discernible “subject”? Why do people fear and scorn abstract images? May abstract art be called “dehumanized,” as José Ortega y Gasset claimed in 1949? Did the CIA use abstract expressionist painting as a weapon against the Communists? These and many other questions comprise the subject of this seminar. Starting with nineteenth-century Symbolist art theory and continuing with Wassily Kandinsky’s famous 1911 tract “Concerning the Spiritual in Art,” we will proceed to consider Mondrian and Neo-Plasticism; Malevich and Suprematism; Abstract Expressionism and the New York School; and Minimalism. Time permitting, we will look at the state of abstract art today.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4540 Age of Van Eyck 3 Credits

Intensive exploration of major artists (especially van Eyck, Campin, van der Weyden), works, and interpretations of painting in the Netherlands c. 1400-1475. Particular attention to changing relationships among realism, symbolism, theology, and devotional practice, but with study also of early Netherlandish painting in light of historical context, material production, historiography, conservation, and more. Includes visits to the National Gallery of Art.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History or Art History.

ARTH 4541 Durer 3 Credits

The seminar explores the immensely original art of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and the incredible range of interpretation it has attracted. Our main focus will be on the works themselves and will include time spent together with prints, drawings, and paintings in the National Gallery of Art. One Dürer’s appeals for modern observers is the breadth of his engagement with many spheres, including religion, politics, local and foreign cultures, gender relations, study of nature, witchcraft, humanism, international travel, art markets, technical innovation, publishing, and radical reformulation of the very idea of the artist as a unique individual in society. We can also ask: what does it mean to study an “old master” in 2023? Questions about mastery are especially vivid with Dürer, who was more self-conscious about the concept than any other pre-modern artist. Can art from this period shed light on any of the urgent questions and concerns of our own time? Should it have to? Both questions can be answered with a tentative yes. But the more interesting question is how.
While one or more previous courses in art history provide useful grounding for this course, no specialized knowledge of Dürer or his period is required or assumed.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4542 Bosch, Bruegel, and Life 3 Credits

"About suffering they were never wrong, The old masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along." from W.H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts” (1938) Is it true? Did the old masters—or some of them—have special insight about suffering and other truths of daily life? What could their representations of such things have meant to their contemporaries? And what can they mean to us? This seminar investigates the work and careers of two of the most original and influential artists of the Renaissance: Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516) and Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-1569). Although they worked in different generations and cities in the Netherlands, they have often been regarded in light of each other; Bruegel was even referred to as the “second Bosch” in his own time. Both probed humanity, morality, faith, daily life, and the world itself with unprecedented energy and ingenuity. This seminar will focus especially on how Bosch and Bruegel developed new ways not merely to observe life, but also to ponder, challenge, and perhaps improve it. As we address the art itself and its colorful history of reception and interpretation, we will also consider the vitality of these paintings, prints, and drawings as instruments of reflection in our own time. Our exploration of their art and that of their contemporaries will include one or two class visits to the National Gallery of Art.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4543 Age of Van Eyck Reality Remade 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4610 The Global Baroque 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4640 Ideas of Realism 3 Credits

This seminar explores shifting means and ends of naturalistic representation, with an emphasis on work produced in Europe and the United States between the Renaissance and the present. Rises, falls, detours, and re-imaginings of "realism" across the centuries have been regarded in surprisingly few and often conventional ways. Through case studies of specific works and discussion of primary and secondary texts, we will try to recover some of the strange energies of an impulse whose ambitions and strategies (in art, literature, theater, film, etc.) are too often taken for granted. Our class will make at least two visits to local collections.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Museum Studies, Museum Studies, Museum Studies or Museum Studies.

ARTH 4650 Race Color in Latin America 3 Credits

The seminar examines the history of portraiture and casta paintings in Latin America from the late sixteenth through the early nineteenth century. The course primarily focuses on casta paintings—a unique pictorial genre that appropriated as its subject the issue of race and miscegenation. By studying casta paintings and portraits commissioned by the Spanish elite, the seminar analyses the pivotal role that art played in maintaining and exacerbating inequalities based on color, race, gender, and ethnicity. During Viceregal times, concepts of ethnicity, race, and identity were fundamental elements of social stratification based on physical characteristics, sumptuary rules, and statutory and customary laws that decreed the place of an individual in a certain casta based exclusively on the Spanish statute of limpieza de sangre (“purity of blood”). Placing particular emphasis on historical, social, cultural, economic, and political aspects, the course introduces students to major theoretical concepts of belonging, inclusion, and exclusion. Moreover, the seminar aims to understand the construction of racial identity in the viceroyalties and challenge the intersection of art, race, gender, and class in Latin America.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Course attribute: Core:HALC - Hum, Art, Lit, Cul

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4711 Queer Frontiers 3 Credits

In this course, we will investigate two frontiers in queer histories of art. The first is the discourse about queer historicism, which asks how we should discuss sexuality and gender in art histories that pre-date the gay liberation movement and the identitarian terms often used to discuss queerness today. How, in other words, can we study queer art history before the 1970s? Second, by incorporating queer theory’s groundbreaking approaches to questions of historicism, temporality, and the archive, we will also discuss how models of queerness might transform our understanding of cultural and economic exchange, as well as postcolonial theory. Given that both of these subjects—queer historicism and queer exchange—often hinge on what is visible or invisible, they are especially urgent to the field of art history. In this course, then, we will also use queer theory to think about art historical methodologies more broadly.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History or Art History.

ARTH 4740 Romanticism 3 Credits

What links Delacroix’s painting Raft of the Medusa with Wordsworth’s poem “Peele Castle,” with Schubert’s art song “Erlkönig?” They have all been described as “Romantic.” What is Romanticism? In 1846, the French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire observed, somewhat enigmatically, that, “Romanticism is precisely neither in the choice of subjects nor in exact truth, but in the manner of feeling…” What scholar Kenneth Clark called the “romantic rebellion” affected the visual arts, poetry, music, and philosophy in Europe and America from roughly 1798 to the 1850s. In this seminar, we will engage with this movement, which rejected the neo-classical artistic standards of “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" in favor of such preoccupations as individuality, subjectivity, emotion, identification with nature, ideas of the ”sublime,” mystery, and a fixation on nostalgia and the past. We will explore and compare examples of Romantic art in these varied media and in different social and political contexts in France, Britain, Germany, and America. There will be a guest speaker, and emphasis on the study of original objects through sessions at Georgetown’s Special Collections and at the National Gallery of Art
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4741 Art and Poetry 3 Credits

This seminar examines the complex relationship between art and a certain kind of poetry, called ekphrasis. Departing from the Roman poet Horace’s (65 B.C.E. to 8 B.C.E.) observation, “Ut Pictura Poesis,” (as is Painting so is Poetry), we will study ways in which poets have written about works of visual art that inspire them to respond in their own artistic medium of words. The class will investigate the history of this phenomenon, tracing how the established traditions or parameters of the relationship between painting and poetry have been accepted or rejected over time. We will also consider the 19th-century notion of “Ut pictura musica.” In addition to critical readings, discussions, guest appearances by poets, and a session with the curators from Special Collections to study original works of art, students will compose ekphrastic poems and create their own projects at the end of the semester.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4742 Post-Impressionism 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4743 Symbolism 3 Credits

Exoticism, decadence, and the occult penetrate the mysterious images of late nineteenth-century artists like Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, and Edvard Munch. Centering on France, this seminar will examine issues of the Symbolist movement through the study of Symbolist theory, paintings, poetry, prints, and primary documents. Among the problems to be addressed are: the attempt to define a Symbolist art; the distinction between Symbolism and art nouveau; the differences between symbol and allegory; the question of whether or not there was a Symbolist style; and strategies for creating Symbolist art. We will have a session at the Print and Drawings Study Room at the National Gallery of Art and possibly other field trips.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

ARTH 4760 GU: Architecture History 3 Credits

This seminar will provide an in-depth look into Georgetown University’s architectural development over time. Beginning in the eighteenth century and moving to contemporary campus developments, students will explore iconic buildings and landscape changes. Among the many structures we will investigate are Dahlgren Chapel, Healy Hall, Isaac Hawkins Hall, the Car Barn, Observatory and Lauinger Library. Structures will be studied within their cultural context with issues relating to the country’s broader political environment, university leadership and slavery playing an integral role in our study. We will also note various unrealized campus building plans. Wider developments in American university architecture will be discussed. This course will provide students with an outstanding practical research experience as our work will parallel the development of a Georgetown campus guidebook. This course requires no prior knowledge of architectural history and will introduce students to general building styles via university examples.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4761 The Sublime in America 3 Credits

This course examines the transformation of European philosophical and aesthetic notions of the sublime and the beautiful into a distinctly American aesthetic. By considering eighteenth-century philosophical writings on the Sublime, major American 19th-century paintings, and literary selections, we will explore ways in which Americans embraced Nature as a symbol of the Sublime (Divine), and the implications of this for American character and national destiny. If possible, there will be field trips to the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4762 The American Landscape 3 Credits

For over two-hundred years, American artists have used painting, prints, photography, and conceptual art to explore the relationship between humans and the environment. This course will examine aesthetic and cultural themes in American landscape from 1800 to the present, including the sublime, the picturesque, industrialism, nostalgia, Westward expansion, colonialism, the ‘end’ of landscape, environmentalism, abstraction, and conceptualism. The course will meet in the Barbara Ellis Jones Classroom in the Booth Family Center for Special Collections where we will look at landscapes in Georgetown’s art and rare book collections.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4780 Museum Architecture 3 Credits

Museum architecture shapes visitors’ experience of works of art and plays an integral role in the life of a city or region. In this course students will think critically about the architecture of the art museum. Questions to be considered include: How does architecture contribute to a museum’s visiting culture? What is architecture’s appropriate role – should buildings be at the forefront of a visitor’s experience or remain as a backdrop? How might a structure reflect the culture and art collection it presents? How have signature buildings impacted an area’s economic standing? Among others, the work of designers such as Renzo Piano, Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid and Snøhetta will be explored. Case studies addressing institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Louvre will be analyzed. Students will gain familiarity with field scholarship, visit multiple area museums, lead short discussions, and complete a longer research paper.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4810 Global Modernism 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4811 Art of the Black Atlantic 3 Credits

This course considers the ways in which blackness—in both a racial and chromatic sense—has operated in the history of visual culture and its critical-aesthetic discourses. On one hand, this means questions of “value” and symbolic meaning in the construction of “western art history,” and the myriad formulations of specific Black or Black Atlantic arts; on the other hand, we will consider the ways in which debates around identity and political collectivity effect forms of practice that challenge the boundaries of location, medium, memory, and cultural politics.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4820 Modern Art in Asia 3 Credits

This seminar course will analyze art in Asia from the late 19th century to the present-day in a variety of media including painting, print-making, photography, sculpture, installation, and performance art. Our explorations will take us throughout South Asia and East Asia, and we will also consider the work of Asian émigré artists. Among the artists, thinkers, and artistic movements we will analyze are: Okakura Kakuzo, Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray, Lu Xun, nihonga, Mavo, Socialist-Realism, the Progressive Artists’ Group, the ’85 Art Movement, and Xu Bing. Some of the questions we will ask are: how were artists in Asia exposed to new ideas and ways of making art? How did art-making engage with larger issues of political and social change? How was art transformed by debates regarding the value of traditional art styles and techniques? How did changes in art education and art patronage emerge? What was the nature of the dialogue not only between Asian artists and Western concepts of aesthetics and the arts, but also between artists and thinkers from different Asian nations? Do certain patterns emerge when engaging in a comparative study of modern art in various Asian nations? Lastly, was the development of modern art in Asia comparable to its development in Europe and the United States? Classroom discussions of readings and artworks will be supplemented by visits to local museums and film screenings. Familiarity with Asian art will be helpful, but not required or assumed, for this course.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4840 World War I and the Artists 3 Credits

On June 18, 1914, Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and his wife the Archduchess Sophie were assassinated during a visit to Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The event sparked a catastrophic “total war” that spread across the globe, bringing down four long-lived multinational empires, and reconfiguring the geopolitics of the world in ways that continue to affect us today. Goaded by compelling propaganda, youth of all belligerent nations eagerly volunteered to fight. But the realities of trench warfare, and such newly invented barbarities as poison gas, soon led to doubt, disillusionment, and despair, and the death and wounding of some 40 million people. The War occasioned an astonishing amount of visual and literary culture. Artists, poets, novelists, and ordinary people of every belligerent nation reacted to the conflict, struggling to identify artistic languages adequate to convey both the utter novelty and the horror of their experience. In this seminar, we will examine the creative legacy of the War in works by European and American artists in various media: original prints and paintings, propaganda posters, film, poetry, music, and novels. We will visit Georgetown’s own Special Collections and there may be guest lecturers.
Registration requires instructor approval.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History or Art History.

ARTH 4841 Expressionism Weimar Culture 3 Credits

Most everyone knows what was going on in the world of French art in the first half of the 20th century - Fauvism, Cubism, and so forth. But during the same period, German artists created a convention-shattering movement called Expressionism, which informed every aspect of the cultural life of the country. This seminar explores the new trend through the work of the two groups Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) that came to represent the avant-garde of the time, as well as contemporary architecture, film, and drama. We will then concentrate on exploring the daring, politicized milieu of the post-WWI Weimar Republic (1919-1933), looking at the Bauhaus collective, the Dadaists, and the fascist realism of the Nazi party. The seminar concludes with the terrifying landmark of the 1937 “Degenerate Art” exhibition. There will be a museum field trip to study Expressionist paintings and prints.
No knowledge of German is necessary.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies or Art and Museum Studies.

ARTH 4842 Modern Seminar 3 Credits

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate or Undergraduate level students.

ARTH 4843 Art Capitalism 3 Credits

Since the emergence of modern industrial capitalism in the eighteenth century, artists and art critics have grappled with its consequences. For some, art provided ways to visualize alternative modes of production or to critique existent ones. For others, art followed the logics of capitalism and industry with varied results. In this course, we will analyze modern art’s attempts to visualize, escape, or topple the capitalist world-system from the eighteenth century to the 1960s. In so doing, we will challenge ourselves to perceive modern art with fresh eyes, often from the critical, utopian, or cynical perspectives of modern artists and critics themselves. From the strictures of the art market to the barricades and the picket lines, how did artworks work in the long age of capital? Answering this question allows us to reflect on our approaches to writing art history, and to treat art not as the static reflection of politics but as an engine of historical change.

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate or Undergraduate level students.

ARTH 4860 Gender and Modern Art 3 Credits

This course surveys art produced primarily by European and American women artists throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Examined within the context of feminist scholarship on women artists, the course focuses on the broad historical, social, cultural, and political backgrounds of the artists under examination. We will study artists working in a range of media: painting, sculpture, photography, performance, installation, and mixed media art. Our consideration will integrate a number of important concepts and ideas, including: female agency, the gaze, feminism, power, race, age, media, craft, hierarchy, originality, and genius.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate or Undergraduate level students.

ARTH 4861 Seeing Photographically 3 Credits

This seminar asks the question: what does it mean to "see photographically?" It borrows from an essay by the modernist photographer Edward Weston, but seeks to theorize and research the ways in which the camera, lens, sensor, and other forms of technology have shaped culture and politics from the 1800s to the 2020s. Participants will read and present key texts, analyze works of photography, film, and video, and write a longer research paper on an area of interest. Recommended for upper-level students in ARTH, FMST, CULP, and CCT.

Level: Graduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4862 DC: Architecture and City 3 Credits

This course addresses the evolution of Washington, D.C.’s built environment from L’Enfant’s 1791 plan to the modern era. The city’s development will be studied via a broad chronological perspective as well as individual case studies. Along with iconic monuments and government structures, we will explore a selection of the city’s residential housing, park space, embassies, and commercial buildings. The development of areas such as Southwest, Anacostia, Capitol Hill, Sheridan Circle-Kalorama and Foggy Bottom will be addressed. Questions to be considered include: How has the cityscape changed over time and what have been the key transformation drivers? To what extent have international design and historical precedent influenced the capital’s development? How have politics and government regulations shaped Washington, D.C.’s evolution? In what ways have issues of race and class impacted the built environment? Students will gain familiarity with architectural styles and the art ornamenting the city’s buildings will also play a role in our study. Current strategies for sustainable structures and development will be noted. Structure Most weekly meetings will include a brief lecture, a discussion of readings and often a short student presentation. As a group, we will visit at least three area sites. Possible destinations include the Embassy of Finland, the Library of Congress, the National Building Museum, Department of the Interior and/or a residential neighborhood. In addition to discussion participation, brief presentations and reading assessments, each student will develop a research topic to culminate in a term paper. Texts A wide selection of readings will be provided through Canvas. Two to three more general books will be suggested for purchase.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4863 Asia/America 3 Credits

This seminar examines art and design produced by people of Asian descent in the Americas, broadly defined, from the mid-19th century to the present day through a transnational lens. We will foreground labor, capitalism, American imperialism, and war as defining characteristics of their lived experiences and artistic production. Previous histories of Asian-American art have focused either on narratives of exclusion due to the immigration bans of the late 19th to early 20th centuries, or on the cultural identity of the Asian diaspora. Instead, we will insist upon the primacy of the contributions made by artists, designers, and architects of Asian descent to American art and culture, acknowledging that the history of American art and design cannot be told without a full accounting of the work of Ruth Asawa, Manuel Ocampo, Tseng Kwong Chi, Maya Lin, and many others.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4864 Curating the Exhibition 3 Credits

This is a small seminar focused on the curation of a single exhibition at the GU galleries. Specifically, participants will collaborate with the instructor to put on an actual show at the Spagnuolo Gallery, which will go up in the Spring semester. In the process, we will discuss photography history, exhibition histories, key debates in curatorial studies, and what it means to design a show in specific cultural and institutional contexts. The exhibition will draw from the significant photo collections at GU, and be taught in conjunction with the Lauinger special collections team.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4910 Art and Crisis 3 Credits

This course interrogates the response of artists and arts institutions in times of man-made crisis or natural catastrophe, as well as how the human experience in times of crisis has been shaped by art. We will consider how art has the power to actively shape viewer engagement, rejecting the oft-cited notion of “the healing power of art.” We will further examine how art can provoke, demand things of us, and articulate responses to turbulent or difficult experiences. In Fall 2020, this course will focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and toggle between historical case studies and the present-day in a consideration of: religious responses and Buddhist material culture, the adaptive strategies of artists and arts institutions, and the art of protest. In their research projects, students are encouraged to foreground the global reach of the pandemic and its impact on diverse communities.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4911 Writing Cultural Criticism 3 Credits

This is an upper-level seminar for juniors and seniors in which each student will develop a portfolio of short writing or one longer paper. Each week we will read new and established critics writing about culture, and also practice various writing strategies while workshopping students' own projects. While this is an art-centered course, it includes visual culture, film, music, architecture, and digital media, and is thus a suitable colloquium for advanced humanities students across the university.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4930 South Africa: Art/Anthropocene 3 or 6 Credits

TBD

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4940 Art in the Digital Age 3 Credits

Last year, the artist known as “Beeple” sold a digital collage online at Christie’s auction house for almost $70 million dollars. With the image came an NFT, or non-fungible token, a digital certificate of authenticity to protect the buyer. Now Beeple is planning a museum of digital art in Charleston, SC, part of a trend of digital transformation in the “Metaverse” (loosely, “an embodied virtual-reality experience”). From its more industrial origins – gaming, fashion – the phenomenon of the Metaverse has now entered the cultural realm, with implications for museums, works of art, and the sales and marketing of virtual art objects via cryptocurrency in the Blockchain. The situation raises critical questions about the very nature of art in the Digital Age, how it is made, what it looks like, how it is bought, paid for, and viewed by collectors and investors. Is this trend just a fad and already a bust? Does digitizing art and selling rights to it democratize access to art, as has been claimed, or are baser intentions in play? With the participation of a digital artist, a business director for NFT projects at an auction house, a curator, and more, the class will explore these issues in depth.
For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu
This course is not available to audit.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4949 Art History: Directed Study 1-3 Credits

Level: Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4950 Museum Fieldwork:Dir Study 3 Credits

Students must have 9 credits in Art History and the advisor’s approval required. Only art history Junior and Senior majors or minor students.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History, Art History or Art History.

ARTH 4951 Art History Directed Study 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4952 ProtestArte 3 Credits

The seminar explores the relationship between art and protest in Latin America and specific areas of the United States. Central to this exploration is examining how artists utilize art to articulate their social, economic, and political experiences while advocating for civil rights and cultural empowerment. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, the course considers various artistic movements, mediums, and techniques in historical and contemporary contexts. By studying the art of the Taller de Gráfica Popular, Mexican Muralism, Chicana/o/x, and Photojournalism, among others, students discern how artists employ art to instigate social and political critique, resistance, and activism. The seminar highlights art as a vehicle for amplifying marginalized voices, advancing social justice, instigating societal change, and understanding the impact of art within its cultural and historical settings, thereby serving as a catalyst for activism. The course integrates a critical analysis of visual art, performance art, street art, and alternative forms of creative expression to enhance our comprehension of the intricate relationship between art, protest, activism, and social transformation.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 4998 Senior Thesis - Art History 3 Credits

By arrangement with a faculty adviser, majors may write a senior thesis on an art historical topic of their choosing. The thesis is optional but can serve as a capstone course that prepares students for future professional or graduate work.

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Art History, Art History, Art History or Art History.

ARTH 5112 Art Writing 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 5120 Art of the Silk Routes 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies or Art and Museum Studies.

ARTH 5510 Picturing Death 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies or Art and Museum Studies.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

ARTH 5541 The Intelligence of Matter 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Students cannot enroll who have a major in Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies or Art and Museum Studies.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

ARTH 5810 Postcolonial Modernisms 3 Credits

“In this course, we will examine artworks created during and after the era of decolonization in the twentieth century. How did artists narrate struggles for independence? How did they forge national traditions that drew on both local and European aesthetics? And how were disputes about nationalism and more regional or global frameworks, such as Pan-Africanism, articulated visually? This course will cover several post-colonial contexts, such as Cuba, Syria, India, Indonesia, Ghana, Algeria, Jamaica, and Zimbabwe. We will also discuss the rise of United States hegemony, histories of counterrevolution, and the ways in which these phenomena affected post-independence art. This interdisciplinary course will cover a range of material, from paintings and films to novels and postcolonial theory. A background in art history is not required.”

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students in the Art and Museum Studies department.

ARTH 5813 Art and Diplomacy 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies or Art and Museum Studies.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

ARTH 5814 Fashion’s Global Capitals 3 Credits

Level: Graduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies or Art and Museum Studies.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

ARTH 5842 Ottomans Orientalists 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

ARTH 5860 Queer Art Visual Culture 3 Credits

Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies, Art and Museum Studies or Art and Museum Studies.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

ARTH 7949 Art History Reading Tutorial 3 Credits

Graduate students interested in registering for Directed Study must contact the appropriate academic department.

Level: Graduate

Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)

Equivalent to ARTH 7979

Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

2026-2027 Edition

Art History (ARTH)

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