MW 10–11 + Discussion Section
Astrid Runggaldier

MW 9–10 + Discussion Section
Mode of Instruction: Internet
Douglas Cushing

Art is a language: how do we decode its meaning and its extraordinary effect on us, the viewers? How does art reflect the era, location, and culture of both its maker and its patron? Through a blend of online lectures, quizzes, and tests, as well as TA-led visits to UT’s Blanton Museum of Art, students will learn that art is a prism—often beautiful, always challenging—through which we can view the human experience, both past and present. Throughout the semester, students will increase their visual literacy and critical thinking skills by looking at a global array of works from many eras and locations. The only prerequisites are open eyes and open minds! We will concentrate on the familiar media of painting, sculpture, and architecture, but we will also examine drawings, prints, photography, garden planning, ceramics, textiles, earthworks, installation art, and other forms of visual culture, both through live online lectures and through in-person visits to UT’s collections of art.

Fulfills → VAPA

MW 11–12 + Discussion Section
Stephennie Mulder

TTH 5–6:30
Instructor TBA

This course discusses art from the prehistoric period to the Early Renaissance (ca. 1300) in Europe, the Middle East and the ancient Americas, with emphasis on style and social and cultural context. The focus on arts-architecture and city planning, sculpture, painting, metalwork, and ceramics—is global with special attention lavished on ancient Near East, Egypt, Africa, Greece, Rome, Islam, Mesoamerica, India, and the European Middle Ages. The control of the viewer’s experience, the political and religious use of art, the meaning of style, the functions of art in public and private life, and the role of art in expressing cultural values will be among the major themes considered. This is also an introduction to the discipline of art history and archaeology, training students in basic vocabulary and techniques of close looking and analytical thinking about visual material.

Fulfills → VAPA

MW 11–12 + Discussion Section
Jessica Maratsos

TTH 5–6:30
Instructor TBA

As a class, we will explore an extraordinary array of art and architecture from across the globe, including art of Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Cultures. Our course begins c. 1300, in the late Global Middle Ages, and concludes with international artistic trends of the early 21st century. While we will concentrate on the familiar media of painting, sculpture, and architecture, we will also be looking at drawings, prints, photography, the decorative arts, garden planning, ceramics, textiles, interior design, earthworks, installation art, and digital media.

Fulfills → VAPA

TTH 2–3:30
Katherine Taronas

In AD 921, a learned courtier from the most elegant city in the 10th century world, the glittering capital of Baghdad, set off on a journey into the uncharted land of the Vikings as secretary to the embassy of the Abbasid caliph. A couple of centuries later, in 1130, a Christian king would conquer the Italian island of Sicily from the Muslims and then begin to create a kingdom that merged the Islamic and Christian cultural traditions. Just a few decades later, around 1160, a young Crusader would journey to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and find a Christian Kingdom that had all the hallmarks of an Islamic Sultanate. This course will explore the art and culture of the global Middle Ages, and will look closely at recent films, popular and academic publications and works of art and architecture that show the interconnected character of the European and the Islamic worlds.

Fulfills → VAPA

Cross-listings → RS 361

Art History Majors  
Download this guide to view the qualifying Time Periods and Geographical Locations for this course.

MW 9:30–11
Ann Johns

In this course, we focus on the rich artistic and architectural history of late medieval Italy (1200-1350), an era closely associated with the great poet Dante and the artistic achievements of the age’s most famous artist, Giotto. Geographically, we explore the art of late medieval Rome, Pisa, Assisi, Siena, Florence, and the imperial court of Frederick II in southern Italy. Artistically, we examine the work of artists as diverse as Arnolfo di Cambio, Giovanni Pisano, Pietro Cavallini, and the prodigiously talented Lorenzetti brothers, as well as the anonymous creators of frescoes at sites as varied as Assisi, Palermo, and Sant’Angelo in Formis.

Through lectures, discussions, and group work, we learn that the art of the era is inextricably linked to the tumult of this pivotal moment in Italian history, much of which is chronicled in Dante’s encyclopedic account. While we as a class focus on the extraordinary artistic output of the later middle ages in Italy, the continuing battles between church and state, the rise of the wealthy bourgeois merchants, and the devastating plague of 1348 ensures that we also delve into social, economic, and cultural issues of the era, punctuated by weekly readings (in English) from Dante.

Fulfills → VAPA

Cross-listings → EUS 347.49

Art History Majors  
Download this guide to view the qualifying Time Periods and Geographical Locations for this course.

MW 1–2:30
Ann Johns

The focus of this upper division course will be the rising status of the artist and architect in 15th century Italy. We will begin in Florence, the canonical site of Renaissance artistic innovation, with a close examination of the various competitions involving Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Luca della Robbia, and others. We’ll examine workshop practices, artistic handbooks, and other training resources available to artists in the early 15th century. We will also read from the many artistic biographies and early art historical accounts, including those of Ghiberti, Manetti, and Vasari.

We’ll then move to other artistic centers within Italy. Florentine artists such as Masaccio, Masolino, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Fra Angelico undertook important projects outside of Florence, including the cities of Rome, Naples, Padua, and Siena. We’ll also examine how prominent non-Florentine artists such as Mantegna, Sassetta, Melozzo da Forli, and Piero della Francesca reacted to the prevailing artistic developments of Florentine artist and patrons.

Throughout, we’ll examine the rising independence and opportunities of both artists and architects.

Fulfills → VAPA

Cross-listings → CTI 352D / EUS 337F

Art History Majors  
Download this guide to view the qualifying Time Periods and Geographical Locations for this course.

TTH 11–12:30
Douglas Cushing

This course surveys the major movements, ideas, and social contexts of visual modernism in Europe (and related movements in the Americas) from the late nineteenth century through the Second World War.

Fulfills → VAPA

Cross-listings → EUS 347.46

Art History Majors  
Download this guide to view the qualifying Time Periods and Geographical Locations for this course.

W 12–3
Ann Reynolds

This course has a number of overlapping goals: to engage with the work of the performance, film, video, and installation artist, Joan Jonas; to use Jonas’ work as a case study for developing ways of writing about time-based media, and to consider a wide variety of approaches both within and beyond art history that might provide tools for doing so. You will be assigned weekly readings and several screenings and 2-3 page bi-weekly reading response papers based on these readings and screenings. You will also be expected to create an archive related to a specific work by Joan Jonas. Periodically, you will be asked to present aspects of your archival practice to the class. These contributions and your work on your archive will result in an in-class presentation, a written narrative of your practical and conceptual research process and a working outline of a larger project that it might become.

Fulfills → VAPA

Art History Majors  
Download this guide to view the qualifying Time Periods and Geographical Locations for this course.

T 11–2
Susan Rather

Many U.S. medical schools partner with museum educators on art-centered courses meant to sharpen powers of observation, build empathy, foster teamwork, deepen cultural sensitivity, and promote wellness in future doctors. ARH 339R introduces students of diverse majors to such programs and explores how fundamental practices of art history enhance those same capabilities, important life tools for anyone.

Weekly meetings take two primary formats: (1) classroom-based lecture/discussion consideration of historical Euro-American artworks relating to allopathic (“Western”) medicine, and (2) on-site, project-oriented meetings in the Blanton Museum, in which students work individually, collectively, and with professional art educators and curators in a process of systematically deepening powers of observation, description, analysis, interpretation, and communication. Class members are expected to complete regular short reading and writing assignments, to make oral presentations, and to engage productively with classmates, the instructor, and invited guests. No exams and no book purchases necessary.

Open to all majors, without prerequisite or prior experience of art history.

Fulfills → VAPA

Art History Majors  
Download this guide to view the qualifying Time Periods and Geographical Locations for this course.

TTH 2–3:30
George Flaherty

This course looks closely at Mexican art and visual culture from the late nineteenth century through the 1950s, a period characterized by rapid modernization but also violence and glaring social and political injustices. With the Mexican Revolution, the first major social upheaval of the twentieth-century, the country became a beacon for politically committed art throughout the Americas and beyond. Our focus will be the emergence of cosmopolitan avant-garde artists and their relationship to state and market. Mixing native and international influences, these artists, writers, and intellectuals contributed to notions of national identity that still resonate today.

Fulfills → VAPA

Cross-listings → LAS 327.2

Art History Majors  
Download this guide to view the qualifying Time Periods and Geographical Locations for this course.

MW 9:30–11
Katherine Schumann

This class examines the art and architecture of the ancient Maya and their neighbors. Special attention will be given to the way that art, architecture, and both physical and imagined space worked together to foster a uniquely Mesoamerican view of the world. We will focus heavily on the cultural and artistic relationships between Mesomerican civilizations that shaped Maya art and ideology from the early Preclassic period until the arrival of Europeans in the late 1400s CE. Additional attention will be given to the interplay between painted environments and lived experience that cultivated Maya and broader Mesoamerican perspectives of reality.

Fulfills → VAPA

Cross-listings → ANT 323V / GRG 322M / LAS 327.5

Art History Majors  
Download this guide to view the qualifying Time Periods and Geographical Locations for this course.

TTH 3:30–5
Katherine Schumann

This course surveys the art, architecture, and visual culture of the Aztec (Mexica) civilization, focusing particularly on the fourteenth century and on into the early colonial period. Students will be instructed on ways to view Aztec art and architecture contextually, and care will be taken to situate central Mexican material culture within the larger political, economic, and mythological landscape within which it was created, known, and remembered.

Fulfills → VAPA

Cross-listings → LAS 327.11

Art History Majors  
Download this guide to view the qualifying Time Periods and Geographical Locations for this course.