Courses Offered This Year

Course description
Explores the arts and cultures of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Era, and considers the objects and buildings produced between 350 and 1700, from soaring cathedrals and gem-encrusted crowns to beguiling portraits and Baroque fantasies, both as extraordinary aesthetic achievements and as participants in global artistic and political networks.

UC: 2016 Creativity & Aesthetics, 2016 Historical Contexts
CC: Creativity & Aesthetics

Monday/Wednesday, 11 - 11:50 a.m. and Friday lab section
O’Donnell Lecture Hall (Room 2130), Owen Arts Center

Image: Coronation casket, Kōṭṭe (Sinhalese Kingdom, present-day Sri Lanka), c.1541, ivory panels, gilt silver, precious stones. Schatzkammer der Residenz, Munich, Inventory no. 1241.

Course description
Most people take for granted the built environment through which they move every day. However, the world we inhabit is the product of millennia of architectural investigation and experimentation, from the first occupations of naturally formed caves to newest innovations in smart home design. In this course, we will examine the evolution of architectural and urban form across the world’s cultures. Through the analysis of site, structure, materials, and form, we will consider how the work of architecture quickly exceeded the primal need for shelter, giving shape to ritual practices and political agendas, defining communities, and cross-pollinating cultures. We will approach architecture as a spatial language used to both communicate and shape cultural values. By studying the architectural past, students will develop the interpretive tools necessary to “read” their own built environment.

UC: 2016 Creativity & Aesthetics, 2016 Historical Contexts
CC: Creativity & Aesthetics

Monday/Wednesday/Friday, 10 - 10:50 a.m.
O’Donnell Lecture Hall (Room 2130), Owen Arts Center

Image: Adjaye Associates, Ruby City Art Centre, San Antonio, Texas, 2019

Course description:
This is an introductory survey of the major artistic traditions within the Islamic world between 650 and 1650 CE. Our aim is to explore the stories and histories behind buildings, paintings, and art objects (e.g., ceramics, glass, metalwork, and textiles) produced and consumed by various communities historically under Muslim rule. Within this diverse and expansive world that stretches from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, special focus will be dedicated to masterpieces from medieval Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq and India.

UC: 2016 Creativity & Aesthetics, 2016 Historical Contexts
CC: Historical Contexts

When: Tuesday/Thursday, 3:30 - 4:50 p.m.
Greer Garson (Room 3515), Owen Arts Center 

Image: Bahram Gur Slays a Dragon,' folio from the Great Mongol Shahnameh (Iran, 14th century), The Cleveland Museum of Art.

Course description
This course surveys African American Art from the 19th century to the contemporary moment with specific attention devoted to considering notions of identity, race, class, ethnicity, gender, representation, sexuality and aesthetic sensibilities. Organized both chronologically and thematically we will explore the development of early American portraiture, landscapes, civic engagement, artist collectives, political and social influences, urbanization and the built environment, and various other cultural expressions. We will cover a range of visual and performing arts including painting, sculpture, prints, photography, mixed media, collage, public art, installation, happenings, film and new materials. Students will develop a basic familiarity with key figures and themes in African American art, learn the appropriate vocabulary and critical tools for discussing and writing about works of art, and be able to relate specific works of art to their stylistic, historical and social contexts.

CC: Historical Contexts
UC: 2016 Creativity and Aesthetics, UC 2016 Historical Contexts

When: Tuesday/Thursday, 11 a.m. - 12:20 p.m.
O’Donnell Lecture Hall (Room 2130), Owen Arts Center

Image: Romare Bearden, Black Odyssey: Home to Ithaca, 1977

Course description
A visual analysis of the rich tapestry of ancient Greek culture, fountainhead of Western civilization, with emphasis on mythological, archaeological and historical settings in which the art and architecture occur. Touches on various aspects of ancient Greek life such as religious practices, Olympic contests, theatrical performances and artistic perfection.

UC: 2016 Humanities and Fine Arts

CC: Creativity and Aesthetics, Civics and Individual Ethics

When: Monday/Wednesday/Friday, 9 - 9:50 a.m.
Greer Garson (Room 3515), Owen Arts Center

Image: The Parthenon (Temple of Athena Parthenos), Athens, 447-432 BCE

Course description:
This course introduces students to a range of artistic media and techniques and provides the skills needed to produce a materially grounded analysis of artworks. Through a series of in-depth case studies of different media (sculpture, painting, printmaking, photography, drawing, ceramics, textiles, etc), participants will study historical and contemporary artmaking processes, train their eyes to recognize a range of materials and techniques, acquire basic art handling skills, and learn about conservation technologies that help us analyze and preserve artworks. The course will combine hands-on work with art objects in local museums, libraries and art studios with an introduction to technical art history and a consideration of how the development of artistic technologies and materials impact society. Students will leave the course with skills essential for careers as museum curators, conservators, registrars and art handlers.

CC: Technology & Society (pending)

When: Thursday, 12:30 - 3:20 p.m.
Meadows Museum, Room 0151

Image: Sculpture, illustration from Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopedia (1765)

Course description
This course looks at the ways in which American society has shaped and been shaped by changes in the built environment over the last 500 years. Looking at sites as diverse as Haudenosaunee long houses, the plantation landscape in eighteenth-century Virginia, and the Las Vegas strip, lectures and discussion reveal the American built environment as a site repeatedly reshaped in an on-going contest of cultures. While we will discuss buildings and their design at length, this is not simply a history of architectural style and development in the United States. Rather, it is an examination of the ways in which the manipulation of space has served to communicate cultural ideals, articulate identity, even register protest—all through the vehicle of architectural form.

CC: Creativity & Aesthetics

When: Monday/Wednesday/Friday, 12 - 12:50 p.m.
Greer Garson (Room 3515), Owen Arts Center

Photo caption: Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970, Promontory, Utah.

Course description:
In 18th-century Europe, the visual arts served as a form of royal propaganda, as a vehicle for Enlightenment philosophy, as a tool for religious education, as interior decoration, as a source of erotic stimulation, and as an expression of radicalism – and often as more than one of these things at the same time. In this writing-intensive course, we will examine, among other themes, the birth of the art market, the gendering of art production and the work of female artists, the role of the visual arts in European colonial conquest, and the political uses of art.

CC: Creativity and Aesthetics, Writing

UC: 2016 Humanities and Fine Arts, 2016 History, Social and Behavioral Sciences

When: Tuesday/Thursday, 9:30 - 10:50 a.m.
Greer Garson (Room 3515), Owen Arts Center

Image Caption: William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, Plate 1, 1753, etching and engraving, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Course description
The purpose of the course is to provide a stylistic and iconographic survey of American painting, sculpture, decorative arts, and architecture from 1865-1940. The course will also attempt to situate the images within their specific cultural contexts. Broad underlying issues such as nationalism, class, race, and gender, will be discussed. The strengths, assumptions, and weaknesses of these interpretations will be evaluated through group discussions. Such discussions will be relevant for the students’ research, thinking, and writing.

CC: Creativity and Aesthetics
UC: 2016 Humanities and Fine Arts, 2016 History, Social, and Behavioral Sciences

When: Tuesday/Thursday, 11 a.m. - 12:20 p.m.
Greer Garson (Room 3515), Owen Arts Center

Photo caption: Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930, Art Institute of Chicago

Course description
A survey of art and architecture in Latin America and the Caribbean from the initial contacts between American and European civilizations until the 21st-century. The course will consider the politics of representation within art, visual and material culture, incorporating themes of conquest, colonialism and slavery, resistance, independence and nationalism, avant-garde movements, modernisms, and the contemporary moment. Through an emphasis on the cross-cultural connections and the relationship between high art and visual culture, this course looks at the development of race, class, and gender vis-à-vis visual images, architecture, sculpture, installation, photography, film and new media. This course offers a pedagogical strategy that embraces diversity and introduces a Global South perspective, preparing students for engagement with critical debates and theoretical fluency while providing ways for them to understand and actively engage with their environment.

CC: Creativity & Aesthetics (pending)

When: Tuesday/Thursday, 2 - 3:20 p.m.
Greer Garson (Room 3515), Owen Arts Center

Image caption: Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939

Course description:
Students learn to critically engage with art museums and galleries, exploring the history of these institutions as well as their interpretative, cultural, and social roles today. Students evaluate how the visual, aesthetic, and didactic components of curatorship, collections management, and exhibition design influence how art is understood by the public. Museum ethics and social justice concerns within art museums and galleries is carefully considered.

CC: Creativity & Aesthetics (pending)

When: Wednesday, 1 - 3:50 p.m.
Greer Garson (Room 3515), Owen Arts Center

Photo caption: Thomas Struth, Museo del Prado 1, Madrid, 2005. C-print. 204 x 244.5 cm.

Course description
This course guides students through the process of curating an exhibition, drawing on a collection on campus or in the DFW area. Throughout the course, students will survey the literature on the history of exhibition making and hear local curators speak about the process of conceptualizing, proposing and executing exhibitions. Under the guidance of the instructor, students will organize their own exhibition, participating in the selection and installation of objects, the production of text panels and interpretative materials, and the planning and delivery of a public program.

When: Thursday, 9:30 a.m. - 12:20 p.m.
Room 1190 (Visual Resources Lab)

Photo caption: Aquatic Channels: Waterways, Water Resources, Fluvial Imagination curated by SMU Art History Ph.D. candidate Gabriela Paiva de Toledo

Course description
This seminar will examine the history of documentary photography, from the beginnings of photography to recent images of poverty. The class will also explore the assimilation of photography in the fields of criminology, sociology, medicine, astronomy and anthropology. Photographs in this genre elucidate how the borders of “normalcy” have been continually defined and redefined. Documentary photography raises vexing questions about photography’s power to bolster structures of power and dominant ideologies. The seminar will grapple with those questions, as well as if the medium of photography is unique or not, and how documentary photographs should be treated by art museums. We will discuss various ways in which this cultural discourse has been interpreted both then and now. The strengths, preconceptions, and weaknesses of these interpretations will be evaluated through group discussions. Such discussions will be relevant for your own research, thinking, and writing.

When: Tuesday, 2 - 4:50 p.m.

Image: Robert Frank, Paris, 1952