An introduction to the fundamentals of art history, including traditional and innovative perspectives designed for candidates for higher degrees. Offerings vary from year to year. Students should consult the department's "Announcement of Classes" for offerings before the beginning of the semester.

This seminar is intended to introduce graduate students to a range of critical perspectives, theoretical issues, and methodologies that constitute the practice of art history. The course will dig into the archaeology of the discipline with an eye to the useful and the latent. While exemplary art historical work draws generously on the theory and methodology of other disciplines, the seminar will attempt to understand art history’s particular (if not peculiar) histories, accretions, inheritances, disruptions, and futures. The structure of the course will be shaped by the following keywords or issues among others raised in seminar: description (ekphrasis), sign (formal persistence, (dis)continuity, misrecognition and afterlife or revival), change (structure and transformation), object, materiality, reception, archive, and agency (biography and authorship). Emphasis will be placed on writing as practice.

Repeat Rules