Art History

In this course, students examine key artworks in the Madrid museums, galleries, and public art interventions to question what these pieces can convey about the contemporary history and cultures of Spain. The course includes visits to the world-leading collections at the Museo del Prado and Museo Reina Sofía contemporary art museum, among other sites, to learn firsthand about the historical context of Picasso’s Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, study Dalí’s references to psychoanalysis and sexuality in relation to other surrealists, and approximate Miró’s multiple interpretations in abstractionism over the twentieth century. Students learn to interpret the cultural codes of classical Golden Age and Modern iconography (El Greco, Velázquez, Goya), as well as more contemporary interpretations of these tropes for the ways in which they have been resignified over time with new meanings that resonate with publics from contemporary history (Mallo, Equipo Crónica, Chillida, Oteiza, Saura, etc.). In addition to studying the visual material and artists in question, the course includes historically grounded ways of seeing, looking, and the gaze at issue in each artwork and its circumstance, as well as their transformations over time. 

This course is team-taught so that each topic can be led by an expert in the field. The specific topics vary from year to year, but may include such things as film, photography, graphic novel, book culture and digital texts, street art, performance art, painting, social media, animation, monuments & memorialization, and music videos. Each topic introduces students to a specific approach, theory, or methodology that is well-suited to analyzing the particular sites, texts, or images for that topic.

This class provides an overview of Eastern art, examining the important achievements of traditional Chinese, Indian, and Japanese art. It examines the visual characteristics of ancient Eastern art, Buddhist art, painting, calligraphy, ceramics, and crafts, and aims to understand them within their historical and cultural contexts. Focusing on important themes highlighted in the history of art, it enhances understanding of the historical trends, representative works, stylistic characteristics, and traditional aesthetics of each artwork.  

Topics include Ancient Chinese Art: Pottery and Bronze; Buddhist Art: India, Central Asia, China; Ceramics: The Art of Clay and Fire; The Age of Painting and Calligraphy: From Portrait to Landscape; Literary Painting; The Emperor and Art: Court Art; Diversity of Ming-Cheng Dynasty Painting; The Beginnings of Japanese Art and Buddhist Art in Japan; Japanese Painting.

This course introduces students to various modes of symbolic production, considering representative examples from primitive, classical, medieval, and Renaissance aesthetics. It addresses the purposes of art in different worldviews and some of the roles with which society has identified creators in diverse historical and cultural contexts.

This course explores the origins of the modern museum and trace the development of the Oxford collections as a paradigm for the assembly of a material analog for every kind of historic and scientific record. It considers the museum as an instrument for the promotion of national and racial ideologies and asks how we can constructively confront a past that has often embodied ideas that are deeply at odds with 21st century sensibilities. Most importantly, classes will be taught among the peerless collections of the Ashmolean. Students will handle and examine objects ranging from Palaeolithic hand axes to 19th century silver and from neo-Assyrian sculpture to Renaissance drawings by Michelangelo and Raphael, considering fundamental questions of sources, research, and what it is truly possible to know.

This course provides a study of Spanish artistic movements from the 16th century to today. It analyzes the stylistic characteristic of the Renaissance, Baroque, Romanticism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Particular attention is given to Spanish art within the European context, as well as aspects of patronage or the art market. The course includes examination of fundamental artists such as El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, Picasso, or Dalí, and their works in relation with artists from other areas of Europe.

The city of Paris is a constantly evolving structure, shaped by 2,000 years of history. Its urban layout and buildings reflect and stand on a substrate resulting from a balance between political, religious, social, demographic, heritage, and environmental aspects. This course provides an understanding of the city and its architecture during key periods through the analysis of notable buildings and neighborhoods. More specifically, it investigates constructions composed over a long period of time (on the scale of a building or site where different architectural styles coexist). Structures, materials, aesthetics, and ornamentation: the art of building reflects technical skill and thinking of an era. Thus, it is proposed to study this question of palimpsest architecture through a historical, cultural, and stylistic approach, through the transmission of essential urban and architectural vocabulary, as well as through bibliographical references. Furthermore, by focusing on strategic points in the city, this study connects to the history of architectural history and urban history, as well as themes that, beyond Paris, are linked to French and European history. Theoretical instruction is supplemented by field trips where students train their observation skills, making sketches that help them memorize and become familiar with architectures from ancient times to the present day.
 

This course undertakes cartography—a visual, panoramic, and critical survey—of selected themes and issues within modern Mexican art. Drawing upon artistic objects and images produced from 1940 onward, the course poses questions designed to establish transatlantic connections, as well as intersections with other nations across the Americas, thereby complementing conceptual discussions regarding the shaping of modernity in the Global South. This mapping will not be strictly chronological but rather thematic, allowing for the exploration of mediations from various angles: the history of science and technology, print media, and gender perspectives, among others. In turn, this approach will be complemented by the acquisition of analytical tools for examining the plastic arts, architecture, artistic objects, and images—tools that will prove invaluable in your professional practice as historians.

The course delves into the stages of the history of the ancient West in which ties were forged not only with the rest of Mesoamerica but also with distant regions such as South America and the Southwest of the present-day United States. It addresses historiographical issues such as the centralist biases that have influenced and continue to influence the study of the West, as well as methodological issues by exploring how the study of works of art can be an important tool for addressing topics as difficult to document as oceanic contacts, extensive trade routes, and migrations. 

This course introduces students to the key ideas, concepts and thinkers in the Western tradition which underpin the ways we approach the world in the different disciplines in the arts, from archaeology to literature, history to film, art to drama, religion to music. Students will have heard of Paul, Marx, and Freud, but may be less familiar with Connell’s arguments about gender, or Fanon’s writing on ethnicity. Students engage directly with the texts or images at the heart of the debate and gain a broad foundation in the ideas and concepts to understand the intellectual underpinnings of the Western approach to knowledge, wisdom, and truth.