SPRING 2027 ART HISTORY COURSES

This seminar introduces students to the rich field of material culture studies with a focus on colonial North American. This class will provide participants with a strong foundation in the diverse histories of colonial North America, an introduction to the methodology and historiography of American material culture studies, and multiple opportunities to develop and workshop their own writing. Drawing on the framework of “Vast Early America,” class sessions will connect cultural and geographic spaces and histories that are traditionally treated as distinct within studies of the visual and material world of North America. Examining a wide range of objects and materials including textiles, architecture, paintings, maps, and more, the course considers how objects were sites for cultural negotiation between the many peoples and empires of the continent.

This seminar will explore classic and contemporary debates on the nature and meaning of the ubiquitous practice of incorporating preexisting artifacts into new objects or monuments in the Middle Ages. Modern art historical discourse lumps these reused elements together under the catchword spolia (plunder), although they were not necessarily acquired by violent means. Scholars of spolia have focused on developing competing taxonomies of reuse, or on monuments that include ancient Roman fragments. How useful has the taxonomic approach been in interpreting the phenomenon? Has the emphasis on the antique obscured other modes of spoliation? How does it relate to other modes of citation or allusion? What is the practice's relationship to appropriation? What other conceptual frameworks might illuminate the practices of material reuse in the Middle Ages?

This course examines important methodologies and theories of the past and present employed in the field of Asian art history. Through critical reading of primary documents and secondary scholarship, students will gain historical perspective on and practical tools for research in the history of Asian art and visual culture