History of Art Courses

ARHS 1010 Art Survey I: Prehistory through the Middle Ages
Staff. An introduction to the history of painting, sculpture and architecture from the Old Stone Age through the ancient Mediterranean world to the end of the medieval period in Western Europe. Considers issues including technique, style, iconography, patronage, historical context, and art theory. Required for majors in the history of art.

ARHS 1020 Art Survey II: Renaissance to the Present
Staff. An introduction to the history of Western European and American painting, sculpture and architecture from the Renaissance through the baroque, rococo, and early modern periods to the late 20th century. Considers issues including technique, style, iconography, patronage, historical context, and art theory. Required for majors in the history of art.

ARHS 2910 Special Topics in the History of Art
Staff. Special topics in the history of art. Subjects will vary and may not be available every semester. Individual topics will be listed in the Schedule of Classes.

ARHS 3111 East Asian Art from Prehistoric to Medieval Times
Area 1. Prof. Zhang. An introduction to the art, architecture and visual culture of China, Korea and Japan from the beginnings to about 1200 CE. The course considers technique, iconography and style and will approach art works in theoretical contexts such as social functions and aesthetic discourses.

ARHS 3112 Monks and Merchants: East Asian Art after 1100
Area 2. Prof. Zhang. This class introduces students to the visual and material culture of China, Korea, and Japan from the medieval period to the present. We will interrogate works of art in different mediums, such as ink, wood, stone, lacquer, and porcelain, as well as a variety of genres, including painting, calligraphy, sculpture, and architecture. We will also explore the social, economic, and intellectual forces behind the production and appreciation of works of art. Among the topics discussed in class are: art and imperial patronage, art and cultural identity, transmission of Buddhist art, garden and urban designs, etc. Special attention will be given to the transcultural exchange among China, Korea, and Japan and the encounter between the East and the West.

ARHS 3200 Early Christian and Byzantine Art
Area 1. Prof. Flora. A survey of art and architecture in the Mediterranean from the third through the fourteenth centuries, with a focus on the rise of Christian art in the late Roman world and the art of the Byzantine state.

ARHS 3210 Art and Experience in the Middle Ages
Area 1. Prof. Flora. A survey in which both modern and historical categories of experience are used to understand the art of the Middle ages, especially as it manifested itself in the most characteristic of all medieval forms, the church. Along a chronological and geographical trajectory from Early Christian Rome to Gothic Paris this course will move through topics such as memory, poetry, pilgrimage, the body, gesture, devotion, narrative and liturgy.

ARHS 3220 Romanesque & Gothic Art
Area 1. Prof. Flora. This course will examine painting, sculpture, architecture, mosaics, tapestries, metalwork, ivories, and stained glass windows of the late Middle Ages in Europe. Through weekly readings and discussions will also explore themes such as religion, women, the Classical tradition, and cross-cultural contact. Various critical and theoretical approaches to art history will be considered.

ARHS 3350 Renaissance and Baroque Architecture
Area 2. Prof. Geddes This course provides a survey of architectural history in Europe from 1400-1750, stressing a critical approach to architecture through the analysis of social and cultural context, expressive content, function, structure, style, building technology, and theory. Lectures will range from close examinations of specific monuments to broader engagements with architectural forms as they cut across time. Particular attention will be paid to the socio-cultural dimensions of architecture and the ways in which individual buildings and the built environment have shaped humanity’s experience of the world. Class meetings will focus on a range of issues, including civic and corporate identity, political and religious power, the status of the architect, the dissemination of architectural knowledge, building technology, construction techniques, patronage, and symbolic meaning.

ARHS 3375 Leonardo’s World
Area 2. Prof. Geddes. This course uses Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings, drawings, and writings to explore the interrelation of art and nature in early modern Italy.  Using Leonardo as a focus, the course is divided in two halves; the first half considers ways of seeing and picturing the natural world. The second considers the ways man changes the environment, including its practical and aesthetic uses. These themes are not easily divided, and in the early modern world their intersections had significant implications for intellectual thought, artistic practices, and manmade interventions in the landscape, be they fountains, fortifications, gardens or urban planning. Leonardo will be our interlocutor throughout the term, although the course is not intended to be a monographic study of the artist per se. Instead, we will examine Leonardo’s and his peers’ artworks as a way to investigate early modern conceptions of nature, its transformative potential, and the natural and built environment.

ARHS 3380  Italian Renaissance Art
Area 2. Prof. Geddes. This course introduces students to the study of the visual culture of Renaissance Italy (1350–1600). By examining how artists, architects, critics, and patrons used and discussed artworks including paintings, prints, sculpture, and architecture, students explore themes such as the revival of antiquity, the study of nature, the training of the artist, the role of competition, and the public and private display of art.

ARHS 3410 Theaters of the Baroque
Area 2. Prof. Porras. Surveys the visual and material culture of the Baroque world, roughly the period 1575-1750, considering the diverse locales (Rome, London, Mexico City, Goa), styles and objects of Baroque artistic production, as related to early modern notions of theatricality and performance.

ARHS 3420 Van Eyck to Bruegel
Area 2. Prof. Porras. This course explores the artistic production of the Low Countries, Germany and France in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including painting, sculpture, manuscripts, metalwork, tapestries and printmaking. The course will focus on a range of topics, including: technical and iconographic innovations in artistic production, art’s devotional function, the changing market for art in this period as well as the early impact of the Reformation on the visual arts in the Low Countries and Germany.

ARHS 3430 Rubens to Rembrandt: Flemish and Dutch Art of the 17th Century
Area 2. Prof. Porras. Explores the artistic production of the early modern Spanish Netherlands and Dutch Republic, covering key artists (Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer), as well as how art was bought, sold, defined and critically evaluated in the Low Countries.

ARHS 3510 From Rococo to Romanticism
Area 2. Prof. Foa. In this course we will analyze art produced in Europe from the early 18th century through the mid-19th century. We will consider the work, careers, and reputations of key artists such as Watteau, David, Goya, Friedrich, Turner, and Delacroix, among others, situating their work in relation to the political, socio-economic, and intellectual developments of the period.

ARHS 3540 Impressionism and Post-Impressionism
Area 3. Prof. Foa. In this course we will analyze art produced in Europe from the mid-19th century through the early 20thcentury. The class will focus primarily on French painting, but will also include art produced in Germany, Belgium, Norway, and Austria, and will explore the histories of photography, sculpture, print-making, and architecture as well. We will consider the work and reputations of artists such as Manet, Seurat, Cézanne, Munch, and Rodin, situating their work in relation to the political, socio-economic, and intellectual developments of the period.

ARHS 3600 American Art 1750-1950
Area 3. Prof. Plante. Analysis of American painting and sculpture from the colonial period until the onset of World War II. Issues include the transformation of cultural forms from the Old World to the New in developments (such as the rise of American urbanism and the formation of a “national” iconography in America in the years following the Civil War) and the ways in which that art reflects the social, intellectual, and political life of the nation up to World War II.

ARHS 3620 Contemporary Art since 1950
Area 3. Prof. Plante. Explores the developments in the visual arts in the U.S. and Europe since 1950. Concentrates upon the social-historical formation of artistic development beginning with the aftermath of World War II, and continuing to the present. Emphasizes movements such as Pop, Minimalism, Earth art and Postmodernism. Issues surrounding the objects will include post-structuralism, postcolonialism as well as African-American, feminist, and gay and lesbian strategies for self representation.

ARHS 3650 Early Twentieth Century European Modernism
Area 3. Prof. Plante. This course will explore the developments in the visual arts in Europe from 1890 to 1945. We will concentrate upon the social-historical formations of artistic production beginning in the late-nineteenth century with Post-Impressionism and continuing into the first half of the twentieth century examining movements such as Fauvism, Cubism, Dada, Surrealism, Russian Suprematism.

ARHS 3700 Ancient American Art
Area 1. Prof. Mundy. The course focuses on the sophisticated and urbanized cultures of the Americas: the Olmec, the Maya, the Mexica (or Aztec), Chavín, Moche, Nazca and Inka. Taking a contextual approach, it pays attention to the ways ancient makers constructed meaning by creating constellations of objects, often collations of buildings, sculptures and cached offerings. It will also look at large scale environmental manipulations, meant to align human occupations with a divine design. Since how we see ancient art is tangled up in modern attempts to collect and classify it, the last third of the class deals with the ways the art of Ancient America (sometimes called pre-Columbian) has been collected, often looted or secreted out of its country of origin. We will gain firsthand experience with both artworks and provenance by working with the collections at Tulane’s Middle American Research Institute and the New Orleans Museum of Art.

ARHS 3710 Colonial Art of Latin America
Area 2. Prof. Mundy. Renaissance and baroque architecture, painting and sculpture of the metropolitan centers of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies from the 16th to the early 19th century with a major emphasis on Mexico.

ARHS 3760 Modern Art in Latin America
Area 3. Prof. Anagnost. This course introduces students to the study of modernity and visual arts in Latin America, from the late 19th-century through roughly 1950. We will trace the radical social transformations of this period and the art that reflected, resisted, or intervened in these processes, emphasizing key themes: the formation of collective identities (and the intersections of race, class. and nation); the impact of social and political revolutions and counter-revolutions; the reception and reconstitution of European avant-garde art; and national, regional, and universal definitions of artistic traditions.

ARHS 3770 Contemporary Art of Latin America
Area 3. Prof. Anagnost. This course introduces students to the study of visual arts in Latin America from the 1950s through the present. Examining Latin America as part of transnational networks, this course explores artistic innovations in response to the still-developing modernist canon of Latin American art. This course investigates radical formal transformations of the art object over this period and the particular social and political contexts of Latin America within which such transformations took place.

ARHS 3790 Art & Architecture of Brazil
Area 3. Prof. Anagnost. This course provides an interdisciplinary and critical examination of the art and architecture of Brazil, from 1500 through the early twenty-first century. We will examine artistic representations and responses to major historical events from the colonial, imperial, and national periods until the present. Key themes to be explored are artistic engagement with the intersections of race and the national imaginary; the formation of collective identities and the roles of Indigeneity and Afro-brasilidade; the relationship of art and politics; urbanism; and Brazilian museology.

ARHS 3871 Introduction to African American Art and Visual Culture, c.1700-1945
Area 3. Prof. Bagneris. This course explores the production of visual and material culture related to the African American presence in what is now the United States from the eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. The course investigates visual materials made by African American artists and artisans as well as materials by non-African Americans that feature African American subject matter (as well as considers the relationship between these two types of visual production). We will work to understand the images and objects featured in the course within both the specific context of the history of African American art and visual culture and the larger context of American art history in general. Arranged roughly chronologically but more strongly guided by a thematic and topical approach, the course aims to communicate basic content information while providing students with an understanding of the kinds of dominant questions and concerns engaged by current African American art historical scholarship.

ARHS 3872 Art of the African Diaspora, c. 1925-Present
Area 3. Prof. Bagneris. Does it necessarily make sense to consider the work of artists of African descent together as a unit (In other words, should this course exist?)? What persistent themes, issues, and debates inform the work by African diaspora artists? What makes art “Black” (or “African” or “African American”)? Can an artist of African descent legitimately claim to be an “artist who just happens to be black”? Do artists of African descent have a particular obligation to make art that advances a black cultural or political agenda? Is not doing so in and of itself a political statement? How might a landscape or Abstract Expressionist work be racially charged (are they, in fact, ever, regardless of who makes them, racially neutral)? How do vectors of identity other than race inform the work of African diaspora artists? How does the artwork studied in this course fit into the context of other art histories? How might we study this work outside the rubric of “African American/Diaspora” art history? Through these questions and others, this course explores the major themes and issues that have occupied artists of African descent as well as examines individual artists’ motivations and intentions.

ARHS 3910 Special Topics in the History of Art
Staff. Special topics in the history, criticism, or theory of art. The subjects will vary and may not be available every semester. Individual topics will be listed in the Schedule of Classes.

ARHS 3910 Buddhist Conquest of Asia: Art, Transmission, and Transformation
Prof. Zhang. This course examines the transmission of Buddhist art from its birthplace in India to other parts of Asia, including Afghanistan, China, Korea, and Japan. Students will learn major artworks and religious sites of Buddhism in early and medieval Asia. By studying Buddhist art and architecture, students will explore various topics in Buddhist Studies, including Buddha’s life story, the Buddhist pantheon, and different schools in Buddhism. Special attention is given to the integration of Buddhist art into local traditions in the hope of exploring the adaptation and appropriation of religious iconography in a cross-cultural context. We will also interrogate the role of patrons, the clergy, and artisans in the production of Buddhist art to understand the entanglement of art, religion, and politics. 

ARHS 4560 Internship Studies (1-3)
Prof. Culotta. The internship course is designed to give students the opportunity for hands-on experience in arts-oriented institutions across the greater New Orleans area. Students commit to 60 internship hours throughout the semester along with a weekly classroom component. The classroom component is used to examine issues facing an arts professional, such as stewardship and community, the role of art in healing/preservation, cultural patrimony and protections, alternative voices, and more. The course is available as a Tier-2 service learning course (which requires concurrent enrollment in ARHS 4890). Course Notes: Register for course in department. Includes additional required internship hours.

ASTA 4600 Dragon and Lotus: Chinese Visual and Material Culture
Prof. Zhang. Visual and material culture played a pivotal role in the development of Chinese history. It not only translated social relations, political agenda, and religious belief into pictorial and tangible forms. but also actively shaped and even defined Chinese culture. This course, focusing the visual and material culture of China from the prehistory to the medieval period, is to interrogate the dynamics between art, politics, and rituals. Each week we will examine selected masterpieces in decorated pottery, engraved jade, cast bronze, stone sculpture, woven textile, gold and silver. We will investigate production, circulation, transmission, and reception of the artworks to reconstruct the social life of things against its historical background. Lastly, we will highlight three of the most prominent motifs in Chinese art—animals, flowers, and human forms—as case studies to illustrate how similar patterns were interpreted via different mediums, used in different contexts, and articulated different social relations throughout the Chinese history.

ARHS 4880 Writing Practicum (1)
Staff. Prerequisite: successful completion of the First-Year Writing Requirement. Corequisite: three credit departmental course. Fulfills the college intensive-writing requirement.

ARHS 4890-01 Service Learning (1 credit):
Instructor Approval Required. You can enroll in the Tier-2 Service Learning Requirement through the Art History department. In order to enroll in the Service Learning course, you must register concurrently for both ARHS 4560 Museum Internship (3 credits) and ARHS 4890 Service Learning (1 credit), for a total of 4 credits. If you sign up for the Service Learning component, you must complete the requirements for ARHS 4560 and an additional assessment component incorporated into the final paper (additional details will be provided in the seminar syllabus). 

ARHS 4910, 4920 Independent Studies
Staff. Open to qualified juniors and seniors with approval of instructor and chair of department.

ARHS H4990-H5000 Honors Thesis (3, 4)
Staff. Open to qualified students with approval of department, instructor, and Honors Committee

ARHS 6020 Seminar: Art and Belief in the Western Tradition
Area 1. Prof. Flora. This course will provide a capstone experience for undergraduate majors in art history via an examination of major monuments and works in the Western tradition in the context of systems of belief, such as mythology, philosophy, and religion. The notion of belief will be the lens through which we approach selected case studies drawn from throughout the history of Western art. We will examine instances where belief is thought to influence art and we will probe the problems and tensions that can arise when art and belief coincide. Integrating interdisciplinary readings with critical texts from the discipline of art history, the course will require students to actively recall and critically synthesize the works and methods learned in courses at the 100 and 300 levels.

ARHS 6040 Seminar: Spaces of Art
Area 2. Prof. Porras. This course will provide a capstone experience for undergraduate majors in art history, investigating the various spaces in which Western art has been made, exchanged and critically evaluated, from the late medieval period to today. Each week, students will consider a distinct space – for example, the studio, the academy, the auction house – its definition, history and conceptual impacts on the history of Western art. Students will analyze the material, social and intellectual culture of each of these spaces, utilizing key case studies drawn from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries.

ARHS 6050 Seminar: Scandals of Modern Art
Area 3. Prof. Foa. From the shock that greeted Manet's portrayal of a modern Parisian prostitute in his 1863 painting Olympia, to Sally Mann's 1992 exhibition of disturbing photographs of her pre-adolescent children, the history of modern art is very much a history of scandal-of challenge to the artistic, social, and political orders. The objective of this course is to examine key works of controversial modern art to shed light on changing social values and on the expectations and definitions of art at different points in the modern period, including the present time. Scandals we examine include those surrounding Matisse's Blue Nude, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, Constantin Brancusi’s Bird in Space, Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, and Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, among others. Throughout the course, we will ask: What is the place and function of art in modern society? How should art represent the world to its audience? How can we account for viewers' wildly divergent reactions to the same work? And, finally, who determines the meaning and value of a work of art-the artist, the general public, arts professionals, the courts, or the government?

ARHS 6060 Seminar: Gender, Race and Representations of the Body
Area 3. Prof. Plante. This course will examine the ways in which artists--painters, sculptors, filmmakers, writers, etc.--have constructed and organized representations of the body. We will examine the human body as a contested field, a site across which history, memory, and politics are played. We will be using a wide variety of methodologies as appropriate to certain artistic expressions such as phenomenological experiences of art and the body; the organizing principles of “visuality,” as interpreted through the psychoanalytic writings of Freud and Lacan; and both the political and subjective uses of the body as it is deployed in culture through methodologies as diverse as social history, feminist theory, queer theory, and post-colonial theory.

ARHS 6090 Seminar: The Intersections of Art and Science
Area 3. Prof. Foa. The objective of this course is to explore key moments in the relationship between art and science in Europe and the United States from the Renaissance to the 20th century. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the many ways that artists have drawn on scientific methods and practices to inform their work, and analyze how scientists have employed visual images to advance their investigations. We will focus on a series of topics that span time and place, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings and interest in optics, Enlightenment theories of perception, Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painting, and abstraction in the 20thcentury, among other topics.

ARHS 6210 Medieval Pilgrimages: Saints, Bones and Art
Area 1. Prof. Flora. This course will examine some of the most popular medieval Christian pilgrimage centers of Europe. We will focus mostly on Santiago de Compostela and Rome, with brief looks at other pilgrimage centers such as Jerusalem, Assisi, and Canterbury. Topics to be covered include the cult of the saints, the pilgrimage roads, architectural settings and their decoration, as well as reliquary shrines and related works of art, images and their use in imaginary or mental pilgrimage.

ARHS 6220 Women and Gender in Medieval Art
Area 1. Prof. Flora. This seminar will focus on the relationships between gender and the production and reception of medieval European art and architecture. Topics to be explored include images of women, works of art commissioned by women, images made for women, architectural spaces designed for women and/or men specifically (i.e. monastic architecture), women as artists, etc. Comparative material known to have been made for/by men specifically will also be explored as we consider the meaning of the concept of “gender”. Feminist theory and various contemporary critical approaches to gender and medieval art will enhance our exploration of specific works.

ARHS 6230 Art and Architecture of Medieval Italy
Area 1. Prof. Flora. This course will examine the art and architecture of the late Middle Ages in Italy from approximately 1200 to 1350 A.D./C.E. We will focus particularly on the rise of the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century and their impact on art and the narrative (the introduction of "naturalism" into art of the late medieval period). Topics include civic architecture and the city-states, the development of the tradition of panel painting, and the impact of Byzantine art on art of the Italian peninsula.

ARHS 6310 Global Renaissance
Prof.Mundy. This course studies at the goods and artistic ideas that were created in the wake of two world-changing phenomena that unfolded around 1500. First, new technologies of communication and transport allowed more goods and ideas to circulate rapidly around the world. And second, the Invasion of the Americas brought autonomous Indigenous empires under European control. Across the semester, we will read recent scholarship in art history that explores the global nature of artistic phenomena from 1500-1700, and offers perspectives on it from outside of Europe. In addition, we will practice deploying models for writing connected art history, following lead of the historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam.

ARHS 6350 Landscape Theory (1450–1800)
Area 2. Prof. Geddes. The ways in which our society figures in its relation to the natural environment has never been so urgent. This seminar studies the history of that entanglement, through an examination of the significance and meaning of “landscape” in art, literature, architecture, and landscape design. This course studies how conceptions of landscape, evident in physical forms as well as poetic and artistic representations shaped the ideological and natural terrain of Europe from Antiquity to the 18th century, with particular emphasis on the period of 1450–1800. The course stresses a critical approach to landscape through the analysis of social and cultural context, expressive content and function, style, and theory.

ARHS 6410 Amsterdam as the Global Capital of the Dutch Golden Age
Area 2. Prof. Porras. This course examines the visual and material culture of the Dutch Golden Age, centered in Amsterdam, as the product of global forces. Rather than solely tracing the Dutch domestic consumption of international goods (like Chinese porcelain), or art objects produced in the Dutch mercantile colonies in Batavia (Indonesia), Brazil and North America, this seminar critically examines concepts of influence, exoticism and cross-cultural exchange. We will focus on objects and art works produced in, imported and exported through Amsterdam, the commercial capital of the newly formed Dutch Republic and home to the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the world’s first multinational corporation.

ARHS 6420 Early Modern Copies
Area 2. Prof. Porras. This course considers the uses, technologies and theories of the early modern copy from the miraculous icon to the forgery, the emulative imitation to the workshop replica, and the pastiche to the reenactment. Copying was a crucial part of artistic pedagogy; the early modern period is characterized by imitation and emulation of classical art, architecture and literature, but the Renaissance also saw innovative technologies of reproductive art-making and new concerns with how to distinguish good copies from the bad.

ARHS 6525 Social Practice Art
Area 3. Prof. Anagnost. This Art History course examines the history and theory of Social Practice art, a recent mode of artmaking in which artists and art institutions collaborate with individuals and organizations to create community-specific works of art. Classroom readings and discussions will examine forms of Social Practice in relation to histories and theories of participatory, political, and activist art since the 1960s. We will consider the relevance of historical and contemporary issues of race and inclusion in the United States for artistic projects, institutional policies, and curatorial concepts around Social Practice Art. When possible, when this class coincides with the Prospect exhibition, we will have an optional service learning component.

ARHS 6540 Paris: Capital of the 19th Century
Area 3. Prof. Foa. In this seminar, we will explore the transformation of Paris during the second half of the nineteenth century into a great modern metropolis. Beginning with the formation of the Second Empire in 1851, we will analyze the ways that the architecture, painting, photography, literature, urban planning, and popular and visual culture of the era both reflected and shaped experiences and perceptions of this modern city. During the semester, we will explore such developments as the controversial reconstruction of the city by Baron Haussmann, the poetry and prose of Charles Baudelaire, Impressionist painting, the construction of the Eiffel Tower, the rise of photography, and new spaces and modes of leisure, entertainment, and consumerism in the city. Throughout the course, we will investigate the complex relationship between urban modernity and modernist art, situating the artistic and cultural production of the period in its rich historical context.

ARHS 6550 The Work and Mythology of Vincent Van Gogh
Area 3. Prof. Foa. In this seminar, we will explore the brief but productive career of Vincent van Gogh and the mythology that developed around him during and after his lifetime. We will look closely at Van Gogh's paintings, drawings, and writings, studying them in the context of such issues as his attitudes towards modernity and his relationship to the art market. We will also undertake a critical examination of the myth surrounding Van Gogh's life and work, discussing such themes as the modern artist as mad genius and the quest for originality and immediacy in modern art.

ARHS 6620 Reading Abstract Expressionism
Area 3. Prof. Plante. Examines the ways in which Abstract Expressionism has been interpreted, both from the view of American critics and historians and their European counterparts. Emphasizes the extent to which formalist criticism evolved around Abstract Expressionism, and that only recently have scholars challenged those apolitical reading of this art, considering the political and economic factors which contributed to its international predominance on the global stage. Artists will include De Kooning, Frankenthaler, Hofmann, Krasner, Newman, Pollock, and Still.

ARHS 6630 Revising the 1960’s
Area 3. Prof. Plante. Charts the development of American, and some European, art during the 1960’s, away from the international dominance of Abstract Expressionist style toward a more diverse range of styles such as Color Field painting, Pop art, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism, and Performance art. Attention will be paid to the development of artistic and cultural criticism during this period (Greenberg, Sontag, Barthes), and the arguments about the role of culture in American society, the status of so-called “high” and “low” art. Artists studied will include Frankenthaler, Hesse, Judd, Lichtenstein, Morris, Smithson, and Warhol.

ARHS 6650 Postmodern Formations: Art Since 1980
Area 3. Prof. Plante. Examines both European and American conceptions of postmodernism, as it originated in post-structural and psychoanalytic theory. Emphasis will be place upon artists working since 1980, including Basquiat, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Warhol and the politically-based art project of Gran Fury, the Guerrilla Girls and the Names Project. Interpretive strategies will be taken from readings in European literary theory, with emphasis place upon the shift in criticism in art-making, away from Europe, toward an ideology formed around the issues of racial, sexual, and gender performance of identity.

ARHS 6720 Seminar on Aztec Arts
Area 1. Prof. Mundy. Prerequisite: ARHS 370 or approval of instructor. Intensive investigation of Aztec arts as fundamental manifestations of Aztec imperial ideology (especially political and religious). The course concentrates on the urban iconographic programs developed in sculpture and architecture and considers the role of ritual and performance within these programs. It also reviews the sixteenth century sources (pictorial and alphabetic) that are used to understand Aztec culture.

ARHS 6510, 6520, 6560, 6570, 6580, 6810 6820, 6830, 6850 Seminars in the History of Art (3 each)
Staff, Prof. Anagnost, Prof. Bagneris, Prof. Flora, Prof. Foa, Prof. Plante, Prof. Porras, Prof, Zhang. Advanced topics in the history, criticism, or theory of art. The subjects of the seminars vary according to the needs of the students and the scholarly interests of the individual instructor. Specialized topics are listed in the Schedule of Classes.

ARHS 6810 Theories of Baroque Art
Area 2. Professor Geddes. How do we characterize the strange and fertile period of art production associated with the Baroque? What happened to art production following the High Renaissance? In the latter half of the sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth century, there was an explosion of new approaches to art making in diverse geographies. This time coincides with cultural upheavals and religious wars in Europe, with scientific discovery and new geopolitical landscapes. The period known as the Baroque is a historical style characterization rife with misunderstandings. The name itself derives from a term used by Portuguese jewelers for deformed pearls (barrueco). How can we best understand this time of remarkable artistic production, its early and late critics, and how does understanding art help us make sense of the rapidly changing, expanding world of the Early Modern period? This seminar investigates innovations in artistic media, primarily painting, sculpture, and architecture, that can be described as Baroque in diverse locales, including its origins in Italy to its diffusion in the present day.

ARHS 6810-01 The Art of Digital Scholarship
Prof. Anagnost and Prof.Culotta
In step with our modern world that is increasingly focused on digital applications, this undergraduate seminar is designed as a gateway course for students to embrace the potential of digital manifestations of their research. Students will gain exposure to the fundamental terms and technologies used in the field while at the same time be challenged to think more deeply about how we define, visualize, and ethically maintain data once when broadcasting it to the larger public.

ARHS 6811 Art, Archaeology, and History of the Silk Road
Area 1. Prof. Zhang. First coined by German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen in the late 19th century, the Silk Road has fascinated scholars as well as the public for over a century. This class introduces students to the art, archaeology, and history of the Silk Road with the hope of exploring east-west exchanges from the 2nd BCE to the 10th century CE. We will travel through history to trace the opening, flourishing, and decline of the Silk Road. Engaging with writings on the Silk Road produced in the early 20th century to the most recent scholarship, students will learn to situate the study of ancient cultural heritage in both colonial and post-colonial contexts. Throughout the class, we will focus on visual and material remains excavated from key archaeological sites across Eurasia, including but not limited to Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, India, China, and Japan. We will also explore key issues involved in the current scholarship of transcultural interactions, such as center and periphery, gender and ethnicity, as well as hybridity and locality.

ARHS 6811 Material Meaning in the Americas
Prof. Mundy. This class examines the materials and technologies used to make art in the Ancient Americas to understand how worldviews are expressed in matter. It covers a wide sweep of indigenous empires (Maya, Aztec, Inca, Olmec, Chavin, Moche) and media (jade, gold, feathers, ceramic, paper, flint, obsidian, shell, and bones). It considers  Indigenous categories of art and materials—as expressed in language and the facture of objects themselves—as a way of decentering traditional art historical categories of “art.”  We will also look at bodies of theory coming from literature, anthropology, and art history itself to help us ask frame questions about artworks and their material basis and nature. 

ARHS 6812 The Meaning of Materials (cross-listed with Environmental Studies)
Area 3. Prof. Foa. This course will explore a range of materials, substances, and everyday objects that have altered the course of art history, our region, and our daily lives.  Each week will be organized around the study of a different material - soil, clay, paper, cotton, canvas, pigments, and so on.  Some questions we will explore are: What is the ground of New Orleans made of and how have its unique qualities affected the history and current life of the city?  In what ways did artists’ materials originate in the natural world and how did new materials impact the history of art?  How do the material qualities of art works help to shape their meaning for viewers?  How has our relationship to paper changed over time?  What role has cotton played in the histories of art, in our region, and in our everyday environment?  In what ways has the digital revolution changed how we read, write, and look at art? 


ARHS-6812-01 Reading the Field: Trends and Methods in Art History
Prof. Porras. This seminar is a blurry snapshot of a field (art history) in 2023. Together we will examine the methods and critical strategies of art history, visual and material culture studies as practiced today. We will work to identify and examine current trends in research, the methodological tools used by art historians, exhibition curators and critics working on different periods and places to examine questions like: What is representation? How do artworks model ways of thinking, seeing or being? How do artworks constitute different subjectivities? How do art objects reflect upon their own material or geographic origin? How does aesthetic experience affect individual and collective viewers? What is the relationship between the visual arts and other forms of artistic or scientific engagement, with politics or labor; the intersections of gender, race or class identities? Students will read a range of scholars and critics, who employ different styles of writing, cite different intellectual concerns, invoke diverse political and ethical stakes. This is not a survey of all methods of art historical analysis, but an attempt to map the contested territories of the discipline at the current moment.

ARHS 6812 Doing Public Art History
Area 3. Prof. Anagnost and Prof. Bagneris. Doing Public Art History is a seminar for graduate students and upper level undergraduate students that introduces concepts and skills related to Public Art History, meaning art history for non-scholarly audiences. We will explore principles of Public Art History in the context of museum exhibitions, digital modes of presentation, and public events. Topics to be considered include theories of public(s) and society, changing definitions of the museum, the inclusivity and accessibility of arts institutions, and approaches to community engagement. In addition to class readings and written assignments, we will consider the activities of the Newcomb Art Museum as our primary case study and final papers/projects will work with current exhibitions at the museum. 

ARHS 6812 Inventing the New World
Area 2. Prof. Mundy. With the entry of Europeans into the Americas in the sixteenth century, indigenous art and architecture was dramatically transformed, as were European notions of art. This course examines the new transcultural works of art and architecture created over the sixteenth century in New Spain, later known as Mexico, in the wake of the collapse of the Aztec empire in 1521. It surveys the urban and architectural programs, mural painting, manuscripts and featherworks that were meant to create and give visibility to an new utopian social order.  It pays close attention to the role of Amerindian artists who were the inventors of many new forms, particularly as they absorbed ideas and models from Renaissance Europe and Asia within longstanding indigenous frameworks. Over the course of the semester, we will play close attention to how art historians themselves have “invented” New Spain as an object of study, from first approaches that extended a Renaissance model of art history to the anti- and decolonial art historical practices of today.

ARHS 6814 Dutch Americas
Area 2. Prof. Porras. Founded in 1621, the West India Company traded across the Atlantic, with footholds in regions of New York, Curaçao, Guyana, Brazil, Suriname, Ghana and Benin – dealing primarily in fur, tobacco, sugar, gold and enslaved Africans. Modelled on laboratory courses in the sciences, this seminar will focus on assembling a corpus of objects, sites, and materials related to the Dutch trading companies presence in the Americas. These range from the life-size canvas portraits of Brazilians by Albert Eckhout to tobacco pipes and plantation architecture. The course will also be taught at the same time by Aaron Hyman at John Hopkins University;  teams comprising of students from both schools will be assigned a geography (New York, the Caribbean, West Africa, Brazil) to identify, research, catalogue and publish relevant items on a public database built by the seminar. Working alongside students in Baltimore, Tulane undergraduate and graduate students will work together to do groundbreaking foundational research in an emerging field of art historical scholarship – taking advantage of a range of published and translated Dutch archival sources, as well as newly digitized archival materials, as well as close object study of items held in nearby collections (such as the early 18th century Dutch map held in Howard Tilton, and the Latin American Library’s copy of Willem Piso’s 1648 Historia Naturalis Brasiliae).

ARHS 6870 Mapping the Renaissance
Area 2. Prof. Geddes. This course examines the production of maps during the medieval and early modern periods. Map production during this period transformed how the world was envisioned. This course studies the various functions maps served and their significance in specific religious, political, and cultural contexts in light of medieval and early modern notions of navigation, technology, materiality, and cultural geography. Specific attention will be paid to the diverse artistic, scientific, political, and religious influences informing map production during this period. Students will become familiar with recent literature relevant to the study of maps, develop skills of visual analysis particular to reading map projections, conduct research on select objects, and learn to analyze maps using art historical skills from a variety of methodologies. Emphasis will be placed on recent literature applying the most current methodologies applied to the analysis of maps.

ARHS 6871 Art of Death: Funerary Art and Ritual in Ancient China
Area 1. Prof. Zhang. This course guides the students to explore the complexity concerning the art of death in ancient China from the Bronze Age to the Medieval Period. We will examine the evolving structure of the burial architecture, scrutinize mural paintings covering the burial chambers, and analyze the funeral goods that create mimesis of the living world for the dead. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this course inquiries into the social dimension of mortuary art and explore the intersection between art history, history and archaeology.

ARHS 6880 Writing Practicum (1)
Staff. Prerequisite: successful completion of the First-Year Writing Requirement. Co-requisite: three credit departmental course. Fulfills the college intensive-writing requirement.

Classics Department Offerings Counting Toward the Art History Degree

CLAS 3120 Etruscans and Early Rome
Area 1. Prof. Lusnia. A survey of the cultures of pre-Roman Italy from the Bronze Age to the fall of Veii. The course focuses on the material cultures of Etruscan and Latin Settlements from ca. 900 to 300 B.C.E. Topics include: Etruscan language, economy and trade, sculpture, painting, and Etruscan religion, as well as major social and historical developments in Etruria, Latium, and archaic Rome.

CLAS 3160 Aegean Bronze Age
Area 1. Staff. The cultures of the Cycladic Islands, Crete, and the Greek mainland during the Bronze Age (ca. 3200-1150 B.C.E.). Emphasis is on the major and minor arts of the Minoans and Mycenaeans and how this material can be used to reconstruct the societies, cultures, and religions of the Aegean Bronze Age.

CLAS 3170 Greek Art & Archaeology
Area 1. Staff. Greek arts (architecture, sculpture, and painting) and material culture in the light of social, intellectual, and historical developments from the end of the Bronze Age (ca. 1200 B.C.E.) to the end of the Hellenistic period (31 B.C.E.).

CLAS 3180 Roman Art & Archaeology
Area 1. Prof. Lusnia. Architecture, sculpture, and painting in Rome and the Roman Empire, their sources, and their history from the Etruscan period (ca. 900 BCE) through the 4th century C.E.

CLAS 4130 Egypt under the Pharaohs
Area 1.Staff. The culture of ancient Egypt from the pre-dynastic period through the end of the New Kingdom. The course emphasizes the sculpture, architecture, and painting of the pharaonic periods. Other areas covered are: Egyptian literary and historical documents, Egyptian religion, and major social developments.

CLAS 4180-01, 4180-02 Bronze Age: Problems & Methods 
Area 1. Prof. Oddo. The Aegean Bronze Age is a perfect laboratory to study the way archaeology works. From the retrieval of primary data to the final interpretation, the field is a treacherous path in which methodological approaches and theoretical models are the only strongholds. This class will take a deep dive into the Bronze Age of ancient Greece, particularly the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures. Rather than an overview of all the Bronze Age cultures and their remains, this course is centered on social and political changes that can be tracked and studied. Spanning from the first, maritime pre-palatial societies of the Early Bronze Age (3000-1800 BCE) to the emergence, development, and collapse of complex societies in Crete and Mainland Greece (1800-1200 BCE), we will use material culture to assess the pivotal moments of socio-political development of Bronze Age societies. Coming together as a class, we will analyze the scholarship on these problematic phases, building our reconstructions from the ground up, starting with the available evidence. We will study current models of interpretation, dissect their methodology, challenge them, and come to our own conclusions. Particular emphasis will be given to the presentation and discussion of current topics of scholarly debate.

CLAS 4190 Seminar in Aegean and Greek Archaeology
Area 1.Staff. Topics include: Problems in Aegean Archaeology; Major Monuments in Greek Sculpture; Greek Vase-Painting; The Athenian Acropolis.

CLAS 4200 Seminar in Roman Art and Archaeology
Area 1.Prof. Lusnia. Topics include: Ancient Painting and Mosaics; Building the City of Rome; Roman Sculpture in Context.

CLAS 6190 Seminar in Aegean and Greek Archaeology
Area 1. Staff. Topics include: Problems in Aegean Archaeology; Major Monuments in Greek Sculpture; Greek Vase-Painting; The Athenian Acropolis.

CLAS 6180 Bronze Age: Problems & Methods
Area 1. Prof. Oddo. The Aegean Bronze Age is a perfect laboratory to study the way archaeology works. From the retrieval of primary data to the final interpretation, the field is a treacherous path in which methodological approaches and theoretical models are the only strongholds. This class will take a deep dive into the Bronze Age of ancient Greece, particularly the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures. Rather than an overview of all the Bronze Age cultures and their remains, this course is centered on social and political changes that can be tracked and studied. Spanning from the first, maritime pre-palatial societies of the Early Bronze Age (3000-1800 BCE) to the emergence, development, and collapse of complex societies in Crete and Mainland Greece (1800-1200 BCE), we will use material culture to assess the pivotal moments of socio-political development of Bronze Age societies. Coming together as a class, we will analyze the scholarship on these problematic phases, building our reconstructions from the ground up, starting with the available evidence. We will study current models of interpretation, dissect their methodology, challenge them, and come to our own conclusions. Particular emphasis will be given to the presentation and discussion of current topics of scholarly debate.

CLAS 6200 Seminar in Roman Art and Archaeology
Area 1. Prof. Lusnia. Topics include: Ancient Painting and Mosaics; Building the City of Rome; Roman Sculpture in Context.