Art History Curriculum

51a,b,c.  Introduction to the History of Art.  Mr. Emerick, Mr. Gorse, Ms. Pohl.  Asks how the visual cultures of past times relate to those of the present.  Critically examines the modern notion of "Art."  Proceeds chronologically and globally with examples from Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia.  51a: Prehistory through Ancient times in the Mediterranean world. 51b: European Middle Ages.  51c: from ca. 1200 to the present.

SC 52.  Monuments of Asia.  Mr. Coats.  Survey of major monuments from Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic Asia.  Lectures focus on the artistic significance and social context of such religious sites as Sanchi, Horyuji, Angkor Wat, and the Taj Mahal.

67 CH.  Contemporary Chicano Art and its Antecedents.  Mr. Botello.  Chicano art as an autonomous offspring of Mexican art.  The influence of Mexican muralists and other Mexican artists depicting the dramatic changes brought by the revolution.

140 BK.  The Arts of Africa.  Ms. Jackson.  Survey of African art and architecture exploring ethnic and cultural diversity.  Emphasis on the social, political, and religious dynamics that foster art production at specific historic moments in West, Central, and North Africa.  Critical study of Western art historical approaches and methods used to study African arts.

141A BK.  Seminar: (Re)presenting Africa: Art, History, and Film.  Ms. Jackson.  The seminar centers on post-colonial African films to examine (re)presentations of the people, arts, cultures, and socio-political histories of Africa and its Diaspora.  Course critically examines the cinematic themes, aesthetics, styles, and schools of African and African Diasporic filmmakers.

141B BK.  Africana Cinema: Through the Documentary Lens.  Staff.  This course examines documentary films and videos created by filmmakers from Africa and the African Diaspora (United States, Britain, and the Caribbean).  Topics include: history and aesthetics of documentary filmmaking, documentary as art, the narrative documentary, docu-drama, cinema vérité, biography, autobiography, and historical documentary.

147.  Topics in Media Theory I.  Ms. Friedlander.  A close examination of theories of media analysis, with an emphasis on the visual arts (painting, photography, film, video, installation art, performance art, conceptual art, art museums).  Topics change from year to year.  Course may be repeated for credit as topics vary.  Prerequisite: one Media Studies or Art History course.

SC 150.  The Arts of China.  Mr. Coats.  Survey of artistic traditions from Neolithic to Modern times.  Architecture, sculpture, painting, calligraphy, ceramics, and metal work in their cultural contexts.  Discussion and research on objects.

SC 151.  The Arts of Japan.  Mr. Coats.  The development of Japanese art and civilization from the Prehistoric through the Meiji periods.  Major art forms examined in their cultural context.

SC 152.  Arts of Late Imperial China.  Mr. Coats.  Ming and Qing Dynasty arts and literature will be examined with special attention to literati and imperial court tastes.  Students will help prepare an exhibition using Chinese art objects from the Scripps College collections.

SC 154.  Seminar: Japanese Prints.  Mr. Coats.  Treats the subject matter and production techniques of Japanese prints.  Examines woodblock printing in Japan from 1600 to the present, using the Scripps College collection of Japanese prints.

SC 155.  The History of Gardens, East and West.  Mr. Coats.  From sacred groves to national parks, this survey focuses on the functions and meanings of gardens, on the techniques of landscape architecture, and on the social significance of major parks and gardens in Asian, Europe, and North America.  Prerequisite: Art History 51a,b,c or 52, or permission of the instructor.

159.  History of Art History.  Mr. Emerick.  Theories of Art History in Modern times, from Hegel to Schnaase, Semper, Riegl, and Wölfflin to Warburg and Panofsky, and to the Frankfurt School (Benjamin and Adorno).  Postmodern challenges to traditional art historiography.  Not open to first-year students.

PZ 161.  Greek Art and Archaeology.  Mr. Glass.  Introductory survey of Greek sculpture, architecture, and vase painting from their beginnings to the mid-4th century BC.  Major archaeological sites and their historical significance.  Identical to PI Classics 161.

163.  Hellenistic and Roman Art.  Mr. Emerick.  Treats art in the Ancient Mediterranean from the end of the Periclean era in Athens (ca. 430 BC) to the reign of Augustus Caesar (27 BC-AD 14) in Rome.  Asks how the public art of the Ancient Greeks and Romans incorporated the world views of its creators.  Charts the shifting meanings of standard forms or symbols over time and place.

170.  The Early Renaissance of Italy.  Mr. Gorse.  Painting, sculpture, and architecture in 15th-century Italy.  Emphasis on Florence and the princely courts as artistic center of the new style.  Artists and major works considered in their historical context.

171.  High Renaissance and Mannerism in Italy.  Mr. Gorse.  Art and architecture in Florence, Rome, and Venice during the 16th Century.  The invention of the High Renaissance style by Bramante, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giorgione, and Titian.  Major works of the post-High Renaissance masters.  The interaction of artists and patrons in historical context.

173.  The Medieval and Renaissance City.  Mr. Gorse.  Interdisciplinary approach to the Medieval and Renaissance city in Italy, 1250-1600, with emphasis on architecture and urbanism.  The rise of Italian city-states and how their urban designs go hand-in-hand with their social, political, and economic institutions.  Compares Florence, Venice, Rome, Genoa, Pisa, Siena, and the small princely courts.  City dwellers' civic, religious, and family rituals.

174.  Italian Baroque Art.  Mr. Gorse.  Painting, sculpture, and architecture in Italy, 1600-1750.  Rome and the development of the Baroque style in the works of Caravaggio, the Carracci, Gentileschi, Bernini, Borromini, and Pietro da Cortona.  Church and social history as background.

177.  Eighteenth-Century European Arts.  Mr. Coats.  The European Enlightenment will be explored, with a focus on the visual and performing arts, and with concern for the popularization of the arts through public displays and performances.  Field trips to see original 18th-century works are planned.

178 BK.  Black Aesthetics and the Politics of (Re)presentation.  Staff.  Survey of the visual arts produced by people of African descent in the U.S., from the colonial era to the present.  Emphasis on Black artists' changing relationship to African arts and cultures.  Examines the emergence of an oppositional aesthetic tradition that interrogates visual constructions of "blackness" and "whiteness," gender and sexuality as a means of revisioning representational practices.

SC 180.  Seminar: Early 20th-Century European Avant-Gardes. Staff.  Examines major movements of early 20th-century European art, including cubism, dada, surrealism, futurism, constructivism, and productivism, to explore how the avant-garde irrevocably altered traditional ideas of the definition and function of art.  Prerequisite: one upper-division Art History course.

SC 181.  Art Since 1945. Ms. Koss.  Painting, sculpture, non-traditional art forms from Abstract Expressionism to the present, emphasizing American art.  Major artists (Pollock, Rothko, Worhol, Stella), movements (Pop, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Photorealism, Neo-Expressionism), and the relationship between Art History and recent art criticism.  Not open to first-year students. Prerequisite: one previous Art History course.

182.  From Colony to Nation-State: A Social History of North American Art.  Ms. Pohl.  A comparative analysis of artistic production in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico from colonial times to 1900.  Emphasis on issues of race, class, and gender and on the role of the visual arts in the formation of national identities, cultures, and myths.  Includes the work of both Native Americans and Euro-Americans.

184.  Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism: A Social History of North American Art.  Ms. Pohl.  A comparative analysis of artistic production in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Examines issues of race, class, and gender and the relationships between artistic theories and practices, economic developments, and social and political movements (e.g. the Mexican Revolution, the Depression, the Women's Movement).

185.  History of Photography.  Ms. Howe.  Explores evolution of the photographic image in documentary work, portraiture, aesthetic expression, journalism, and advertising from its inception to the present time.

SC 185.  History of Photography.  Staff.  Explores evolution of the photographic image in documentary work, portraiture, aesthetic expression, journalism, and advertising from its inception to the present time.

186G.  Gendering the Renaissance.  Mr. Gorse.  Takes up historian Joan Kelly's challenge, "Did women have a Renaissance?"  Expands the question to cultural constructs of the male and female body, sexuality, identity, homosexuality and lesbianism, and their implications for the visual arts, literature, and the history of early modern Europe (14th-17th centuries).

SC 186C.  Seminar: Topics in Asian Art.  Mr. Coats.  Designed as a "hands-on" experience with interpreting works of Asian art through investigative research and educational presentation.  The topics of this seminar will vary, but the focus will be on art works.

186F.  Seminar: Topics in North American Art.  Ms. Pohl.  Intensive investigation of a variety of topics relating to the production and reception of art in Canada, the United States, and Mexico.  Topics vary from year to year.

186J BK.  Seminar: Issues in African Diasporic Visual Arts.  Ms. Jackson.  Seminar examines the art produced by 20th-century artists of African descent in the United States.  Course will center on artistic movements, aesthetic trends, or a specific medium, such as the Harlem Renaissance, the 1960s Black Arts Movement, Afrocentrism, feminism, or photography and Information Age technologies.

SC 186K.  Seminar in Modern Art.  Mr. Koss.  Examines in-depth one theme or set of themes in 19th- and 20th-century art and related fields.  Topics change from year to year.  Prerequisite: one upper-division Art History course or permission of the instructor.

186R.  Manet, Degas, Cézanne.  Mr. Reed.  Examines three formative figures of modern art in their social and aesthetic contexts.  Some attention to popular imagery, photography, women painters, academic artists, pornography, literary parallels.  Museum visits.  Not open to first-year students.

186T.  Art and Time.  Mr. Reed.  Technological developments over the past 200 years have altered relations between art and time.  How has moving from painting to lithography, photography, film, and digital media influenced the creation of art and its relation to beholders?  Considering North America and Europe since 1800, we explore relations between still and moving images, and ask how artists manipulate our experience of time.  Alongside mainstream forms we examine wax museums, natural history dioramas, stereographs, tableaux vivants, MTV.  The seminar constitutes a brief history of making and looking at images.

186W.  Whiteness: Race, Sex, and Representation.  Ms. Jackson.  An interdisciplinary interrogation of linguistic, conceptual and practical solipsisms that contribute to the construction and normalization of Whiteness in aesthetics, art, visual culture, film, and mass media.  Course questions dialectics of "Blackness" and "Whiteness" that dominate Western intellectual thought and popular culture, thereby informing historical and contemporary notions and representations of race, gender, sexuality, and class.

SC 186M.  Seminar in 20th-Century Art.  Ms. McNaughton.  Seminar will examine one movement, artist, or other selected topic within the art of the 20th century.  Open to juniors and seniors.  Offerend annually; topic changes each year.

SC 188.  Representing the Metropolis.  Ms. Koss.  Concentrating on the visual arts and incorporating film and literature, this seminar examines selected 20th-century representations of cities such as Vienna, Paris, Londong, Moscow, Berlin, New York, and Los Angeles.  Explore the cultural and political configuration of the metropolis as modern, cosmopolitan, and urban.

SC 189.  Modernism 1840-1940.  Ms. Koss.  Beginning with Courbet and ending with surrealism, this course surveys European art between 1840 and 1940 with particular emphasis on the relationship between modernism and mass culture.

191a,b.  Senior Thesis.  Ms. Koss.  Students meet weekly in the fall semester for guidance on the researching and writing of the senior thesis, an original investigation into a topic in art history, to be completed in the spring.  Students also meet with their thesis readers throughout the fall and spring semesters.  Graded separately (half-credit each).

98/198.  Summer Reading and Research.  Staff.  Prerequisite: permission of instructor.  98, lower-level; 198, advanced work.  Full or half credit.

99/199.  Independent Study: Reading and Research.  Staff.  Prerequisite: permission of instructor.  99, lower-level; 199, advanced work.  Full or half credit; may be repeated.