ARTH 110: Introduction to Art History
Our core introductory art history course breaks from the tradition of the western survey course that emphasizes chronology, style, slide tests, and European art. Rather, this class focuses upon issues and problems in the arts, particularly how the arts express cultural, religious, and social ideas and issues.
Individual sections will examine a variety of broad themes such as the human body, archaeological investigation, and religious architecture. Each class will have five distinct learning units with associated assignments. Rather than emphasizing memorization and slide tests, these classes will focus upon papers and oral presentations and assignments that seek to solve problems involving the arts.
The content of individual sections will vary considerably according to the expertise of the instructor. Click on the instructor's name below to see a synopsis of the content for each of the five learning units in her or his sections.
All sections of 110 meet both the fine arts requirement and the human diversity requirement of the core curriculum.
Instructors Fall 2012
| Unit 1 | The Arts of Africa |
| Unit 2 | Art and Revolution in France |
| Unit 3 | Art and Revolution in Mexico |
| Unit 4 | African American Art |
| Unit 5 | Landscape and the American Imagination |
| Unit 1 | Prehistory and the First Civilizations |
| Unit 2 | The Middle Ages (400-1400): Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art and Architecture |
| Unit 3 | The Human Body: in Art |
| Unit 4 | The Human Body: as Art |
| Unit 5 | Women Artists: An Historical Survey |
| Unit 1 | Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt |
| Unit 2 | Greek and Roman Art |
| Unit 3 | African Art |
| Unit 4 | Arts of China and Japan |
| Unit 5 | Modern Art |
| Unit 1 | Contemporary Land Art |
| Unit 2 | Traditions of Landscape Painting in China and Europe |
| Unit 3 | The Iconography of Buddhism |
| Unit 4 | Class Structure, Religious Strife, & European Baroque Painting |
| Unit 5 | Contexts of West African Art |
| Unit 1 | Art of China |
| Unit 2 | Art of Native America |
| Unit 3 | Images of the New World |
| Unit 4 | Women Artists: A Feminist Approach to Art History |
| Unit 5 | Modern Sculpture and its Environment |
| Unit 1 | Buddhist Art: The Silk Road, India, China and Japan |
| Unit 2 | Architecture of the Gods: Hindu Temples, Shinto Shrines, Imperial Palaces and Gentry Gardens |
| Unit 3 | Images of the Mind: Chinese Landscape Painting |
| Unit 4 | Empresses, Eunuchs, and Cigarette Girls: Gender and Art |
| Unit 5 | East and West: Artistic Intersections |
| Unit 1 | Ancient Near East and Egypt; personal statuary in promotion of authority |
| Unit 2 | Women artists from the Renaissance to the twentieth century; the resourceful navigation and influence of a male-dominated sphere |
| Unit 3 | Reformation to the Counter-Reformation; Western European art in propagation of Christianity, with an eye to gender and politics |
| Unit 4 | 16th to 18th-century China and Japan; hierarchy and gender delineated through architecture, calligraphy, screens and prints |
| Unit 5 | African Art; architecture, masks and carvings in promotion of royal, ancestral and gender power |
Unit 1: Art and Architecture of the Ancient Near East and Egypt
Unit 2: Mesoamerican Art and Architecture
Unit 3: Sarcophagi to Church Portals: The Development of Early Christian Art
Unit 4: Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture
Unit 5: The Early Art and Architecture of India
| Unit 1 | Visual Mechanics: How Art Works |
| Unit 2 | Four Great Cultures of Ancient Mesoamerica |
| Unit 3 | Roman Architecture (in St. Paul?) |
| Unit 4 | Survivor: Asmat |
| Unit 5 | Coventos and the Colonization of Mexico |
| Unit 1 | Medieval Art 1200-1400 |
| Unit 2 | Islamic Art and Architecture 1500-1800 |
| Unit 3 | Art and Appropriation: Orientalism in the West 1700-1900 |
| Unit 4 | African Art and Diaspora 1800-2000 |
| Unit 5 | Power and Agency: Institutional Architecture in the United States 1850-2000 |
| Unit 1 | Egypt as an introduction to formal analysis |
| Unit 2 | Building of cities and images of power |
| Unit 3 | The Greco-Roman ideal |
| Unit 4 | Sacred imagery |
| Unit 5 | Burial and concepts of the afterlife |
| Unit 1 | The Modern City |
| Unit 2 | Renaissance Florence |
| Unit 3 | Urban Arts of Edo Japan |
| Unit 4 | Ancient Mesoamerican Cities |
| Unit 5 | Public Art in Contemporary Cities |
