The University of St. Thomas

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

Heather Shirey

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

Cathy Peters

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

Kara ZumBahlen

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

Craig Eliason

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

Laura Miller

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

Elizabeth Kindall

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

Beverly Hedin

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

Marsha Olson

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

 

Andy Barnes
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
Sara Witty
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
Vanessa Rousseau

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

Elizabeth Avery
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