ARH 301
Introduction to the Visual Arts

Dr. Moyosore Okediji
MW 9–10:30
Fulfills →  VAPA / Global Cultures flag
Instruction Mode →  Internet

This course is an introduction to the appreciation, analysis, making and enjoyment of the visual arts. Students will investigate the lives and works of several artists who have made substantial contributions to the definition, history and interpretation of the visual arts. Students will develop skills in visual literacy and the ability to confidently discuss art objects from several cultures and in many mediums. The practicum aspect enables students to experience art as a process of thinking, making, and working with others.
 

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Dr. Douglas Cushing
TTH 1–2 + Discussion Section
Fulfills →  VAPA / Global Cultures flag

ARH 302
Survey of Ancient through Medieval Art

Dr. Penelope Davies
MW 9–10 + Discussion Section
Fulfills →  VAPA / Global Cultures flag

This course examines the interrelationship of art and political and social power in diverse cultures around the world, from prehistoric times to ca. 1400 CE. Lectures cover cave-paintings and megalithic architecture of the prehistoric era, and the ancient cultures of the Near East, with their ziggurats and early visual narratives; China, famed for its ritual bronze vessels, the Great Wall and terracotta soldiers; early Buddhist art and architecture of Japan; India, with its Buddhist Stupas and Hindu temples; the pyramids of Egypt; early African architecture and sculptures in bronze and terracotta; and the classical ages of Greece and Rome. The course ends by assessing Byzantine iconoclasm, the spread of Islamic mosque and palace architecture, and the construction of vast cathedrals in medieval Europe. Discussion sections focus on selected art historical issues related to the lectures.
 

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Instructor TBA
TTH 5–6:30
Fulfills →  VAPA / Global Cultures flag

ARH 303
Survey of Renaissance through Modern Art

Dr. Ann Johns
MW 11–12 + Discussion Section
Fulfills →  VAPA / Global Cultures flag

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.

One of the great advantages of studying art history at UT is the outstanding collection of art at UT’s Blanton Museum, Harry Ransom Center, and other collections across Campus. In addition to weekly classes and readings, you will have the opportunity in small, TA-led sections, to familiarize yourselves with these important collections of art, through group discussions and assignments.

Tests will be administered through Canvas; we will also have in-class pop quizzes. There will be no final exam.

Grade Distribution:

• Three on-line (Canvas) non-cumulative tests: 15% test I; 20% test II; 25% test III (60%)
• TA-led sections: 25% (attendance, short responses assignments, participation)
• In-class group pop quizzes: 15%
   

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Instructor TBA
TTH 5–6:30
Fulfills →  VAPA / Global Cultures flag

ARH 321
Problems in Art Historical Research

Dr. Eddie Chambers
MW 11:30–1
Fulfills →  Writing flag

How do we as art historians and emerging art historians create art history from fragments, or from that which has been marginalized, obscured, and rendered less than the hegemonic narratives that tend to dominate the canon of Art History? Art History has at its core a pronounced eurocentrism, within which is an inherently problematic framing of certain people—women, ethnic minorities and others—within the subaltern. What challenges do art historians face in their attempts to excavate wider art histories? How do we challenge the frankly racist practices that still lie at the heart of many institutions such as museums and sometimes, within academia itself? What methodologies might be employed? In sum, how do we create art history from that which is not immediately recognizable, accessible, or given status. The class will reflect on a wide range of texts, from Virginia Wolf’s A Room of One’s Own, through to Linda Nochlin’s “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” It will consider why artists primarily regarded by the dominant culture according to raced, or gendered constructs are and have been routinely and systemically marginalized within Art History. Students will each work towards a research project that reflects on, as well as seeks to overcome, problems of art historical research.

Restricted to Art History majors.
 

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Dr. Adele Nelson
TTH 11–12:30
Fulfills →  Writing flag

This semester we will focus on primary research: what it is, how it is done, and why it is a significant and foundational research practice for art historians. We will begin with a series of general practical and conceptual discussions of primary research and one of its central resources, the archive. The University of Texas campus is home to several of the world’s premier archival collections.

An archive is a physical place and a collection of images, texts, and objects. It is also a way of organizing or situating these things that conforms to a set of established conventions or suggests new ones. How does an institution or an individual collector of materials constitute an archive in these two senses? In turn, how do scholars constitute their own archives as they develop their research, and how do archives, both constituted and researched, shape the writing of art history?

Restricted to Art History majors.

ARH 327N
Art and Politics in Imperial Rome

Dr. Penelope Davies
MW 11:30–1
Fulfills →  VAPA / Global Cultures flag

This survey of the public art of the city of Rome begins with Augustus’ accession to power (27 BCE) and ends in the late antique period in the early fourth century CE. Lectures are concerned with state or imperial works of architecture and sculpture, assessed within their cultural, political and topographical contexts as vehicles for propaganda, commissioned and designed by the political elite, often as a means of retaining power and suppressing dissent. Politics and power changed the face of Rome through these monuments, which in turn provided sculptural, architectural and urbanistic models that influenced western cultures for centuries to come.

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

ARH 327R
Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans

Dr. John Clarke
MWF 12–1
Fulfills →  VAPA / Global Cultures flag

This course examines how study of visual representations allows us to enter into the mentality of ancient non-elite Romans. We will survey the art and architecture of Roman Italy between 100 B.C. and A.D. 315 to explore non-elite attitudes toward the practices of daily life: religion, work, theater, gladiatorial games, tavern-going, banqueting, sexuality, self-representation, death, and burial. In this way, we will learn how the Romans were—and were not—“just like us.”

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

ARH 328N
Arabs and Vikings: Art and Culture in the Global Middle Ages

Dr. Stephennie Mulder
TTH 9:30–11
Fulfills →  Global Cultures flag

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.

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

ARH 329T
Art in the Age of Dante and Giotto

Dr. Ann Johns
MW 1:30–3
Fulfills →  VAPA / Global Cultures flag

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.

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

ARH 341N
Other Modernities: Latin American Art

Dr. Adele Nelson
MW 9:30–11
Fulfills →  Global Cultures flag

This course examines the various currents of modern art that developed in Latin America from 1900 to 1945, with particular emphasis placed on the artists and art movements of South America and Mexico. Discussions will focus on understanding the distinct social, political, and historical contexts of artistic production in various Latin American centers and how artists conceived of their work in relationship to local and international debates about modernity, modernism, the avant-garde, nationalism, identity, and colonialism. To the extent possible during the pandemic, we will take advantage of the University’s rich collections of Latin American art, including those of the Benson Latin American Collection and Blanton Museum of Art.

Some questions we will consider: What strategies did visual artists develop to assert their modernity from/in a region their contemporaries often considered a cultural backward? How did artists represent racial difference and emerging national identities in their work? How did art challenge, examine, and/or relate to the epochal societal and political changes underfoot in the period we will study, including the aftermath of the abolition of slavery in the mid- and late nineteenth century, the Mexican Revolution and World War I in the first decade of the twentieth century, World War II, and the urban transformation and industrialization of the region into the middle of the twentieth century?

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

ARH 341R
Aperatures: Film/Photo Mexico

Dr. George Flaherty
TTH 2–3:30
Fulfills →  Global Cultures flag

Artists, intellectuals, and politicians have debated Mexico’s apertura since at least the early twentieth century. Apertura means “opening,” but also refers to the lens of a camera as well as the revelation of something hidden. This undergraduate course explores aesthetic and cultural exchanges and affinities between photographers and filmmakers working in Greater Mexico, which includes Chicanxs in the U.S. We will consider how Mexican life and history are represented, and how borders between Mexico and the world—and among media—are blurred or brought into sharper focus.

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

ARH 345L
Diaspora Visions

Dr. Moyosore Okediji
MW 12–1:30
Fulfills →  Global Cultures flag
Mode of Instruction →  Internet

Border crossing by cultures and groups from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean islands has generated the production of images by immigrants, exiles, and nomads in alien lands. With examples drawn from various continents, class investigates art across borders in the contexts of the cultural circumstances that produced the diasporas. Students will investigate the arts of voluntary, forced, colonial, distant, and recent diasporas. Illustrations will draw on images, music, and cinematography.

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

ARH 347K
Art and Archaeology of Ancient Peru

Dr. Astrid Runggaldier
TTH 11–12:30
Fulfills →  VAPA / Global Cultures flag

This course provides an overview of the cultures that occupied the Andean coast and highlands prior to and in contact with the Spaniards who occupied the area in the 16th century. Given the lack of written historical documentation prior to the Spanish arrival, investigations of the ancient Andean visual arts—the elaborate textiles, fine ceramic vessels, carved stone sculptures, and monumental architecture—have advanced through multidisciplinary approaches. Students examine various culture groups by engaging both the iconography and archaeology of the regional traditions, focusing primarily on the Nasca, Moche, and Chimu cultures, as these are featured prominently in the UT Art and Art History Collection (AAHC). In this course, we address pertinent environmental and ecological factors, evidence of ritual practices, such as human sacrifice and water management, techniques and materials of manufacture of art and architecture, and issues in looting and collecting antiquities, as well as preserving and presenting collections. Additionally, you will work with primary sources: the ceramic objects in the AAHC provide the basis for written assignments and digital humanities projects focused on these artworks. To that end, your coursework includes group-work and collaborative projects in digital curation to enhance online exhibits for a virtual museum project as well as a hands-on component to create a paired exhibit in the Fine Arts Library.

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

ARH 347L
Mesoamerican Art and Culture

Dr. Julia Guernsey
TTH 12:30–2
Fulfills →  VAPA / Global Cultures flag

This course surveys the art, architecture, and material culture of a number of the ancient civilizations of Precolumbian Mesoamerica that flourished in what are now the modern countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. The course spans the time of the Olmec through that of the Aztecs, or from the 2nd millennium BC through the arrival of the Spanish in 1519. The goal of this course is to provide students with a general knowledge of the history, ritual traditions, and belief systems of ancient Mesoamericans, as expressed through sculpture, painting, architecture, archaeological remains, and ancient writing systems.

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

ARH 347N
Aztec Art and Civilization

Dr. David Stuart
TTH 9:30–11
Fulfills →  VAPA / Global Cultures flag

This class explores the art and visual culture of Aztec (Mexica) civilization, focusing on sculptures, paintings, and architectural monuments from the fourteenth century into the early colonial period of the sixteenth century. Students will learn how to look at art and architecture through the systems of iconography and hieroglyphic writing, interpreting their historical, linguistic, and mythological contexts. The art and the methods we use to interpret it provide important windows into larger issues of Aztec history, politics, ideology, and social structure.

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

ARH 366P
Color in Theory and Practice

Dr. Carma Gorman
TTH 9:30–11

Explore contemporary color notation systems and color management techniques. Survey economic, health and safety, environmental, cultural, legal, political, and other ethical considerations pertinent to using color.

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

ARH 374
Art, Identity, and Racial Difference

Dr. Eddie Chambers
MW 9–10:30
Fulfills →  Global Culture and Writing flags

This class will look at artwork that explicitly or implicitly references identity and racial difference. How do we perceive ‘racial difference?’ This leads us of course, to the question, ‘how do we construct ‘race’’? In turn, this will lead us, within this class, to considering art that can be read as addressing racial matters. Given that ‘race’ is above all else an artificial construct, it nevertheless is one that dominates the ways in which our society functions. The dominant culture has constructed for itself a world in which to be whiteness is the ‘normal’ state of affairs, and to be ‘Black’ or to be perceived as Black signifies difference. How have artists responded to this state of affairs? Or, how can we read art by a range of practitioners, over the course of the 20th and thus far into the 21st centuries, as either confirming or contradicting our attitudes to race? Certain Black artists might have made work that reflects a distinct pride in their skin color, ethnicity, ‘race’ or cultural difference. But certain other artists of color might well have been reaching for representations of normalcy or the everyday (what Nicole Fleetwood has termed the ‘noniconic’) or the ‘universal’ in their depictions of Black people. Beyond this, artists of varying ethnicities might have been seeking to make interventions into such things as racism, national identity, citizenship, belonging, unbelonging, and so on. The class will also concern itself with additional questions such as how do we read race, racial difference and identity in art practices originating in majority Black countries such as Jamaica or South Africa? What are the limits or the extents to which we can read identity as relating to the individual, or the community, or the nation? This class will explore tensions such as these, as reflected in art by a range of practitioners, from different parts of the world, from Australia to Europe to the Americas to the African continent. Artists to be studied include US practitioners such as Faith Ringgold, artists of Caribbean background such as Barrington Watson, and British artists of the African diaspora such as Chris Ofili and Godfried Donkor.

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

ARH 375
Theories and Methods in the History of Art

Dr. Julia Guernsey
TTH 9:30–11
Fulfills →  Independent Inquiry and Writing flags

This course, which carries Writing and Individual Inquiry Flags, provides an introduction to the discipline of art history and to some of the most significant methodological approaches and challenges to the study of art and visual culture. This course does not follow a lecture format but instead focuses on class discussion, active participation, and collaborative learning. Our goal is to become familiar with the fundamental characteristics and objectives of various methods and traditions in art history, and to create a productive environment in which to analyze, critique, compare, and utilize them. Because this class carries both Writing and Individual Inquiry flags, emphasis will also be placed on a series of written assignments and papers that enable the student to more fully research and explore a topic of particular art historical interest to her/him/them.

Prerequisite: ARH 321: Problems in Art Historical Research. Restricted to Art History Majors.

ARH 376
Independent Study: Art History

Individual projects to be completed under faculty supervision.

Requires consent of instructor to register.

Fulfills → Independent Inquiry flag

ARH 379H
Art History Honors Thesis

Individual conference course in which student researches and writes a thesis.

Restricted to those participating in Art History Honors Program. Requires approval by Art History Honors Program Director to register.

Fulfills →  Independent Inquiry and Writing flags