Art matters. Because images, buildings, and environments shape our ways of understanding our world and ourselves, learning how to look closely and analyze what you see is a fundamental life skill. Within a global frame, this course provides an introduction to art and its histories through a series of case studies from the ancient world to the present day. Through the case studies, we will explore concepts of gender and race, cultural appropriation, political propaganda, materials and media, questions of cultural ownership and repatriation, and other historical issues relevant to our current art world.  Site visits and assignments will engage with the rich art and architectural resources of Wellesley's campus.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, the practices of artists, craftsmen, and architects throughout Muslim-majority regions were transformed by industrialization, colonialism, and the emergence of the museum as an institution. Through the study of a variety of visual, spatial, and time-based media, students in this course investigate the local, national, and transnational concepts that shaped the production and reception of modern and contemporary visual cultures throughout the Islamic world. While the Middle East, North Africa, and Iran constitute the geographic focus of the course, case studies may also consider images, objects, and monuments produced in West Africa, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. Key topics include visual responses to colonialism, engagements with global centers of modernism, popular visual cultures, articulations of national and secular identities, and the reuse of prototypes drawn from real or imagined Islamic pasts.

An examination of modern art from the 1880s to World War II, including the major movements of the historical avant-garde (such as cubism, expressionism, Dada, and surrealism) as well as alternate practices. Painting, sculpture, photography, cinema, and the functional arts will be discussed.  Framing the course are critical issues including emerging technologies, colonialism, global exchange, the art market, gender, and tensions between national and cultural identities.

This course will challenge everything you think you know about Celtic art and aesthetics. Focusing on the period between 600 BCE and 800 CE, when Celtic styles first emerged, case studies will include golden necklaces and coins from France, mesmerizing mirrors and shields from England, intricate stone monuments from Scotland, and colorful manuscripts from Ireland. We will use this material to counter ethnic stereotypes developed by vengeful Greeks, to analyze the transformations of Celtic art made in the Roman empire, and to assess how modern notions of Celtic identity map onto the reality of the past. The course coincides with the Harvard Art Museums' Celtic Art Across the Ages, the first major exhibit of ancient Celtic art to take place in the United States. On field trips to the exhibit, we will engage directly with Celtic antiquities that have left Europe for the first time.

Frozen in time by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 C.E., Pompeii's grand public baths, theatres, and amphitheater, its seedy bars and businesses, its temples for Roman and foreign gods, and its lavishly decorated townhomes and villas preserve extremely rich evidence for daily life in the Roman Empire. Lecture topics include urbanism in ancient Italy; the structure and rituals of the Roman home; the styles and themes of Pompeian wall paintings and mosaics; and the expression of non-elite identities. We conclude by analyzing Pompeii's rediscovery in the eighteenth century and the city's current popularity in novels, television episodes, and traveling exhibits.

This seminar will analyze women in Italy from circa 1300 to 1700 through the lens of both art and history. We will examine a variety of sources to understand women's lives and work; with this evidence we will see that women had a much stronger presence than previously recognized, as artists, writers, musicians, patrons, nuns, and a wide range of professions inside and outside their homes. The seminar is linked to an exhibition at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and several sessions will be held on site with museum staff.  Other sessions will include visits to Wellesley's Special Collections, Papermaking Studio, and Book Arts Lab.

Landscape painting, or more accurately, shanshui (literally "mountain-and-water/river"), rose as an independent and major art form in the tenth century in East Asia as a great tradition in the history of world art. How did it develop so early? What did it mean? How was it used for? How does its past serve as inspiration for the present? And why does shanshui remain a major subject of significance in modern and contemporary East Asian art? Following the development of shanshui from the early periods to the twentieth century, the course explores such critical issues as shanshui and representation of nature, shanshui and power, shanshui and national development,  shanshui and environment, shanshui as images of the mind, the tension of tradition and creativity in painting shanshui. Comparisons will be made with Dutch, English, French, and American landscape painting to provide a global perspective.

Art matters. Because images, buildings, and environments shape our ways of understanding our world and ourselves, learning how to look closely and analyze what you see is a fundamental life skill. Within a global frame, this course provides an introduction to art and its histories through a series of case studies from the ancient world to the present day. Through the case studies, we will explore concepts of gender and race, cultural appropriation, political propaganda, materials and media, questions of cultural ownership and repatriation, and other historical issues relevant to our current art world.  Site visits and assignments will engage with the rich art and architectural resources of Wellesley's campus.

This first-year seminar examines the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1474-1564). Although he is best known as a sculptor and painter, Michelangelo was also a poet, architect, civil engineer, and diplomat driven by complex artistic, religious, political, and economic motivations. His long career provides a framework for understanding the Italian Renaissance, and the mythology surrounding that career provides insight into changing perceptions of the artist and the individual during that time. We will focus on works of art and contemporary texts, as well as real or virtual visits to Wellesley’s Special Collections, Papermaking Studio, and Book Arts Lab, as well as Harvard's Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

This course is a survey of the major artistic traditions of Asia including India, Southeast Asia, China, Korea, and Japan from Neolithic times to the turn of the twentieth century. It introduces students to Asian art and architecture by exploring the interactions of art, religion, culture, and society, especially how different artistic styles were tied to different intellectual thoughts, political events, and geographical locations. Students are expected to acquire visual skills in recognizing artistic styles, analytical skills in connecting art with its historical contexts, and writing skills in expressing ideas about art. Field trips to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Harvard's Art Museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and/or the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, depending on available exhibitions.

This course examines Chinese art in the socially and politically tumultuous twentieth century,which witnessed the end of imperial China, the founding of the Republic, the rise of the People's Republic, the calamity of Mao's cultural revolution, the impact of the West, and the ongoing social and economic reforms. Critical issues of examination include the encounters of East and West, the tensions of tradition and revolution, the burdens of cultural memory and historical trauma, the interpretations of modernity and modernism, the flowering of avant-garde and experimental art, and the problems of globalization and art markets. The course is designed to develop an understanding of the diverse threads of art and society in twentieth-century China.

We will investigate the transmission and transformation of African art and culture and their ongoing significant impact on the continent, in Europe, and in the Americas. This course explores the arts of primarily western and central Africa, including the communities of the Bakongo, Yoruba, and Mande, among many others. The influences of early European contact, the Middle Passage, colonialism, and postcolonialism have affected art production and modes of representation in Africa and the African Diaspora for centuries. Documentary and commercial films will assist in framing these representations. The study of contemporary art and artists throughout the African Diaspora will allow for a particularly intriguing examination of postmodern constructions of African identity.

How do images, or their absence, shape belief, power, and identity? In the Islamic world, sacred images have been celebrated, contested, erased, and reimagined across centuries. This course explores the shifting roles of sacred imagery—from depictions of holy figures and places to talismans believed to hold divine power. We’ll dive into big questions, including debates over iconoclasm and aniconism, the power of images to protect or provoke, and moments in history when new attitudes toward images emerged. Spanning from the seventh century to today, this course invites students of all backgrounds to rethink the role of sacred art in shaping culture, politics, and faith.