ARTH 145 Global Art Exchange This survey course focuses on painting, sculpture, manuscripts, and architecture produced in the Christian and Islamic worlds from the 12th through 17th century. We will consider the visual cultures of cosmopolitan cities such as Paris, Isfahan, Venice, and Constantinople, which were centers of power as well as points of exchange. Throughout the course, we will think about how objects structured both religious practices and complex relations between different social groups. Major goals of the course include honing skills in looking critically and using art historical terms to interpret works of art. This course counts as a Breadth course.

ARTH 150 Understanding Abstraction Ever looked at Marcia Wood's sculpture outside of Light Fine Arts, and wondered why it looks the way it does? Ever stood in front of a drip painting and thought to yourself, "I could make that myself!" This course takes a historical lens to the development of abstraction in art, with a particular focus on the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries. Artistic revolutions beginning in the late 18th century and extending throughout the 20th century caused radical visual and institutional transformations around the world. This course surveys the development of modern art from a global perspective, tracing the changing nature of art-making, art markets, and the concept of the artist. This course counts as a Breadth course.

ARTH 160 Art, Power, and Society This course provides an introduction to visual methodologies and to visual analysis. We will learn how to read the visual world around us through art, how to think critically about how it is presented and how we engage with it, and to articulate our interpretations of this visual world through writing and discussion. Students will work on a quarter long inquiry project as well as steps of writing for visual analysis. Offered annually in Spring.

ARTH 195 Intro to Asian American Art What does it mean to negotiate, and even perhaps reject, the terms of, in Yen Le Espiritu's words, "differential inclusion" How do Asian American artists navigate the boundaries of "Asian American art" and how do they trouble the hegemonic relationship between "dominant" and "minority" cultures? This class examines both the role of Asian American artists, as well as depictions of Asian Americans throughout U.S. history, in order to explore the Asian American aesthetics and political subjectivities. The course counts as a Breadth course. Offered based on instructor availiability.

ARTH 208 Introduction to Greek Art and Archaeology This introduction to the multidisciplinary field of Greek archaeology examines the art and architecture of the Greek world from a contextual perspective. The course traces Greek material culture from Bronze Age origins through Hellenistic transformations. (This is a designated Greek literature or culture course in Classics.) This course counts as a Breadth course.

ARTH 209 Introduction to Roman Art and Archaeology This introduction to the multidisciplinary field of Roman archaeology examines the art and architecture of the Roman world from a contextual perspective. The course traces Roman material culture from Iron Age and Etruscan origins through Early Christian transformations. (This is a designated Roman literature or culture course in Classics.) This course counts as a Breadth course.

ARTH 210 New Media Art History This course examines the recent history of new media art, a broad genre at the intersection of art and technology, as an open-ended series of connections spanning multiple theories, histories, and geographies. Focused on works by BIPOC, LGBTQI, and women artists, the course embraces new media art's fluid, transdisciplinary, nonlinear, and multimodal characteristics. We will examine the genre's inherent ties to advancements in technology; how artists respond by challenging those technologies and their impact on our lives, societies, and the environment; and the use of new media as tools for subversion, critique, activism, and the construction of imagined futures. This course counts as a Topics course. Offered based on instructor availiability.

ARTH 211 Architecture Urbanism Identity The design of interior and exterior environments reflect ideal and imagined futures. Architectural sites and spaces shape personal interaction, national identities, and global aspirations. This course surveys architects, designers, and city planners of the 20th and 21st centuries, who have shaped our built environment from the minute detail of the residential floor-plan to the creation of entirely new cities built wholesale from scratch. Moving from Chicago and Paris to Seoul and Kalamazoo, we will explore how architectural design has responded to the fundamental questions and shifting conditions of modern communities: how and where will we live, work, learn and play? This course counts as a Topics course.

ARTH 215 A History of Photography Photography was invented at two different geographic locations more or less simultaneously, which coincided with the rise of the modern political state and the industrial revolution in Western Europe. This course is a survey of that medium, and its cultural implications, from the beginning in France and England in the early 19th century, through the modern era of the 20th century, to touch upon conceptual, postmodern, and contemporary trends. This course counts as a Breadth course. Offered based on intructor availibility.

ARTH 224 The 1960s Painting, sculpture, architecture, performance, and installation art from approximately 1945 to the present day. The emphasis will be on examining the visual arts of this period from both a formal and socio-historical standpoint, using primary texts such as artist manifestos and the writings of critics to help guide an understanding of the visual. In the process, we will seek to better understand how the terms "modern," "postmodern," and "global," were expressed, evaluated, defined and shaped in the visual arts during the latter half of the 20th century. This course counts as a Breadth course.

ARTH 225 Public Art and Its Publics Public art has been the source of much commentary and controversy. After all, to call an artwork "public" is to suggest that it belongs to everyone, and thus that anyone might have a say in it. But what makes an artwork public? This course is an opportunity to reflect on this and other related questions, as we explore shifting conceptions of public art practice in the United States, primarily, from the 18th century to the present day. This course counts as a Topics course.

ARTH 227 Modern Art Museum This course addresses the ideological aims and critical functions of art museums, from the 19th century to the present day. Course topics include: the origins of the modern art museum, the politics of collecting and exhibiting art, the ethics of collecting practices, and the relationship between art history and the museum. Case studies of curators and artists who have pushed the boundaries of traditional museum display will be used to examine how the relationship between objects, artists, and institutions has changed over time. This course counts as a Topics course.

ARTH 229 Frozen in Time: the Ancient City of Pompeii Since its discovery in the 1700s, Pompeii has captured the popular imagination as a city frozen in time. Centuries of nearly uninterrupted excavation have made astonishing discoveries that allow us to paint a vivid picture of Roman life in the first centuries BCE and CE. In this course we will explore the material, visual, and architectural remains of the city to reconstruct the lives of its inhabitants. We will enhance our understanding of these topics by considering their connection to current debates on cultural identity, ethnic diversity and social inequality. This course counts as a Topics course.

ARTH 235 Devotional Stuff Skin. Blood. Bone. Dirt. Electricity. This course explores how religion is more about bodies, objects, and stuff than doctrine or belief. We examine how gods, spirits, and the dead become really present to devotees, how they are efficacious and animated. From skeletons and relics, to shrines and food, materiality is central to how people interact with and make the sacred. Not separate from the messy realms of everyday life, religion is often erotic, practiced in kitchens, and reliant on technologies. This course will introduce students to the study of material culture, sensation, and embodiment, to explore how things make us as much as we make things. This course counts as a Topics course.

ARTH 265 The Modern Avant-Garde Avant-garde describes cultural production that is experimental and "in advance" of styles of the time. In art history, avant-garde is artistic innovation that breaks boundaries of form, medium, and content. This course examines boundary-breaking artistic movements of the 19th and 20th century, such as Realism, "Primitivism," Cubism, Négritude, Dada, and Surrealism. Within these movements, the course engages in art history as a critical discipline to interrogate dominant narratives through a lens of transnationalism by emphasizing Africa and the African diaspora, gender, and sexuality.

ARTH 290 Art and Gender This course explores the intersection of visual culture and gender through the lens of critical theory. We will examine how gender has been constructed both in and through the visual arts historically as well as in the present through various interrelated topics such as the myth of the artist; the gaze, the voyeur, and desire; the gendered body's intersection with race, class, and sexual orientation; and how people have represented themselves in relationship to gender. Instructor to determine Topics or Breadth based on focus of course.

ARTH 295 Contemporary African Art In this course, students will gain familiarity with African material culture and artists, and with broad historical trajectories and major discourses in the field of African art history; develop fluency in formally analyzing and interpreting works of African art in relation to specific historical contexts; and build skills in close reading of texts and images. This course counts as a Topics course. Offered based on instructor availiability.

ARTH 295 Afro-Latin American Art This introductory and interdisciplinary course in Art History discusses the visual representation and production of the African Diaspora and African descendants in Latin America, which have been marginalized for a long time. Historical, political, and cultural concepts of race will be discussed regarding part and ongoing decolonial efforts and resistance from the 16th century. We follow a chronological order from colonial to contemporary times and touch upon the legacies of colonialism, slavery, resistance and rebellion, nationalism, and mestizaje. This courses counts as a Breadth course.

ARTH 295 This Is America: Art & Visual Culture In the Us, From Civil War to Civil Right Although the world looked to the late nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. as an emblem of the modern and new, American artists sought visual language to create a more complex account of their era in which (despite frequent assertions of progress) racism, sexism, and economic inequality remained pressing problems. Across countless visual media they helped to shape the socalled "American Century", but also helped Americans to question it. This course offers the unique opportunity to spend time each week at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, whose collection can tell much of the story of U.S. art across this period.

ARTH 345 Performance Art This course examines the history of performance art in the 20th and 21st centuries, with an emphasis on the political and aesthetic interventions of the body in visual art and visual culture, as well as the relationship between performance art, subjectivity, and identity, including queerness, gender, and race. Topics will range from action painting to video performance, dance to sex, and violence to social intervention. This course counts as a Topics course.

ARTH 360 Queer Aesthetics Through in-depth study of contemporary global queer visual art, this course provides an introduction to queer theory as a field through an engagement with more advanced and topical queer theories and artworks that prioritize Black, Indigenous, and People of Color knowledge and world making. This course assumes no prior knowledge of queer theory, but previous experience with critical theory is recommended. This course counts as a Topics course.

ARTH 395 In Color: Race & Representation in U.S. Art, From the Progressive Era to Pop The early to mid-20th century was a period of immense change in the U.S. This course investigates how works like Georgia O'Keeffe's New Mexican paintings, Archibald Motley's representations of urban African American communities, and Andy Warhol's images of celebrities and current events reveal (and helped shape) changing perspectives on race and ethnicity during a fraught era in American history. We will consider how both white artists and artists of color crafted works intended to speak to particular communities, as acts of resistance against racial injustice, or in support of pre-existing power structures within American society.

ARTH 491 Ways of Seeing: Methods in Visual Analysis This course begins with a basic but fundamental question: how do we describe what we see? We will explore how philosophers, artists, and critics have grappled with this issue throughout history, seeking to understand the critical issues that can arise when communicating vision in verbal form. Because the practice of art history rests upon translating the expressive content of the visual world into words, a significant component of this class will focus on methodology, writing, and the critical analysis of classic theoretical texts that have formed the approach and structure of the discipline. Art history majors and minors should plan to take this course during the fall of their senior year. Offered annually in Fall. Two Art History courses and Senior Standing required for enrollment. Open to non-majors who meet requirements.

ARTH 593 Senior Integrated Project Each program or department sets its own requirements for Senior Integrated Projects done in that department, including the range of acceptable projects, the required background of students doing projects, the format of the SIP, and the expected scope and depth of projects. See the Kalamazoo Curriculum -> Senior Integrated Project section of the Academic Catalog for more details. Permission of department and SIP supervisor required.

ARTH 600 Teaching Assistantship