Art History

This course deals with masterpieces of Japanese visual art (architecture, sculpture, painting and decorative art) from ancient to contemporary period. The course explains the meaning; expression; material, and technique of artwork selected from various categories, so the class can gain basic knowledge and skill to express their appreciation of Japanese art in writing.
 

This course explores the evolution of color and form in the twentieth century and is a tutorial for ARTHS 105. It discusses topics such as Cubism, Dadaism, Fauvism, Impressionism, and Surrealism. The course covers the origins of abstract art and Dutch abstract painters, Italian futurism, and Russian constructivism. In addition, it analyzes post-1945 American art, pop art, and French new realism. Further discussion continues with art and communication in the 1960s, art and politics after 1968, and conceptual art, minimal art, and the direction of art in the 1980s.

This course offers an interdisciplinary exploration of visual culture, bridging visual studies, communication, media, and cultural studies to understand how images and the act of looking carry meaning across everyday life. The curriculum covers a wide range of topics, including the power and politics of images, the role of viewers in making meaning, modern and postmodern theories of spectatorship and the gaze, the impact of visual technologies, media and brand cultures, as well as globalization and contemporary digital practices. Student engage with critical theories and methods to analyze artworks and visual media, while addressing social, psychological, and economic implications of visual representation. It course covers a range of themes such as representation, expression, form, style, Formalism, Iconography, Marxism, Gender etc. Using modern and contemporary Chinese art as examples, the course equips students with transferable and analytic skills, knowledge of modern and contemporary Chinese art, aesthetic sensibility, and theoretical literacy, encouraging them to apply these methods and knowledge to the study of visual art.

Historical museums play a role in shaping their local communities - they weave a rich local history based on the historical and cultural resources (local heritage) that remain in the area. These resources are not necessarily limited to the materials stored in museums, but includes the local environment shaped by history itself. This course explores the relationship between museums and local heritage, drawing on the instructor's experience as a museum curator specializing in architectural history in Yokohama. 

This course investigates Western art practices from ancient times around 500 BC, to the modern era, the 20th century. Analyses of key works of art are considered in relationship to the social, political, economic and cultural circumstances that surrounded and informed them.

Taught by numerous site visits to historic buildings alongside lectures and seminars, this course introduces students to the study of architecture by exploring buildings in the London area from the start of the 17th century to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837. During the course, students witness London burn to the ground, be comprehensively rebuilt, and then expand from a small European capital into the largest city in the world. Along the way, students encounter a wide variety of buildings including cathedrals, palaces, churches, synagogues, breweries, shops, and hospitals. Students acquire skills in looking at, reading, and understanding buildings and become adept at using them as historical evidence. Students also learn how to relate architecture to its social, political, and intellectual context, and develop insights into the ways that buildings may carry and convey meaning, whether to an expert or to a more general audience. No prior knowledge of architecture or architectural history is required to undertake the module. When timetabling, allow yourself an hour's travel time either side of the class for site visits.

This course explores the development of intercultural competencies and the formation of a global vision. The course analyzes the identity of a nation through its cultural assets; observes the importance of cultural and artistic heritage in the integration of multiculturalism; implements aesthetic analysis on a cultural asset; identifies the organizations dedicated to the protection and safeguarding of heritage, and discerns the contexts and situations of risk in which the possession of heritage generates intercultural conflicts.

This class surveys premodern Japanese art, looking at painting, sculpture, architecture, and material culture--particularly those related to Buddhism, kami worship, and Buddha-kami combinatory practices.

This course explores Europe and Asia's mutual fascination with, and appropriation of, each other's visual and material cultures. From the Buddhist art of Central Asia to KL Petronas Towers through medieval textiles, chinoiseries, Orientalist paintings, colonial architecture, museums, modernist avant-gardes and postmodernism, the course surveys chronologically some fifteen centuries of East/West artistic interactions while introducing students to the disciplines (art and cultural history, post-colonial and cultural studies) concerned with visual culture. 

This course traces the history of comics and graphic novels in Western Europe and North America. Beginning with an introduction presenting the main characteristics of this medium, this course traces its development, from the beginnings of storytelling with images in Antiquity to the latest innovations. Even though they have retained their own characteristics over the last two centuries, Western European and North American comics have also developed in close proximity. Following the development of the press and book industry, as well as other media like cinema, comics and graphic novels have a rich history that can only be understood in their cultural context. This course allows students to understand how this medium has shaped and been shaped by many aspects of the history and cultures of these places.