Art History (ARTH)

ARTH 101 | INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ART

Units: 3

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

This course is an introduction to many of the theories and methods that have been used by art historians. The visual foci will include conventional works of art as well as a variety of other visual media, including the museum setting and its strategies of display.

ARTH 102 | INTRODUCTION TO ASIAN ART HISTORY

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: First Yr Integration (LC Only), Artistic Inquiry area

This course is an introduction to the way ideas and practices pertaining to art have developed in the cultural traditions of Asia. We will study the historical materials through the lens of many concepts and ideas that have become integral to art historical scholarship, including material culture theory, iconography, and visual narration.

ARTH 109 | INTRODUCTION TO SONIC ARTS

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

A survey of the natural, cultural, historical, and artistic experience of sound with an emphasis on the use of sound in artistic and critical engagements with the world. Topics include: acoustic ecology, philosophy of music, musical instrument technology; scientific and mathematical application of sound; radical challenges to musical traditions in the 20th century, including electronic, experimental, and improvised musics; installations and sound sculpture; technologies of sound reproduction; copyright and technological change; sampling; and DJ culture. Cross-listed as MUSC 109.

ARTH 121 | INTRODUCTION TO MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

A survey of the intellectual origins, artistic concerns and utopian programs of the Modern Movement in architecture. The course examines how modern architecture responded to the social, political, and technological changes in the years between 1750 and 1960. Topics include a wide range of debates on class, race, gender, nationalism, and colonialism, linking them to the questions of housing, domesticity, privacy, and standardization, as well as to the formal vocabularies of modern architecture. Cross-listed as ARCH 121.

ARTH 133 | INTRODUCTION TO ART HISTORY I

Units: 3

A critical survey of western art history from prehistory through the Middle Ages.

ARTH 134 | INTRODUCTION TO ART HISTORY II

Units: 3

A critical survey of western art history from the Renaissance to the present.

ARTH 136 | THE YEAR 1500: A GLOBAL HISTORY OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

This survey introduces students to the art and architecture of some of the many cultures that flourished around the year 1500: Italy and the Netherlands, the Ottoman empire, the Safavid dynasty in Iran, the rising Mughals in India, the Ming dynasty in China, and the Muromachi shogunate in Japan. The class discusses these artistic traditions in their own right, while at the same time emphasizing thematic and stylistic relationships and cross-cultural influences. The survey challenges the primacy of European artistic norms, and invites students to experience the diversity and complexity of the definition of art in the age of exploration.

ARTH 138 | ART AND VISUAL CULTURE

Units: 3-4 Repeatability: Yes (Can be repeated for Credit)

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

This introductory seminar is designed to introduce students to the questions and debates that propel art history and the methodologies that have shaped its unfolding shifts in strategy. While topics will vary from year to year, the central focus of the course will be constant: to equip students to look purposefully, critically, and contextually at images, mindful of the ways that meaning is produced and perceived.

ARTH 140 | THE BUDDHIST TEMPLE

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: First Yr Integration (LC Only), Artistic Inquiry area, Domestic Diversity level 1

This course considers the forms and roles taken by temples as they followed the spread of Buddhism from ancient India throughout the world. Throughout the course, we will pay close attention to the ways that Buddhist communities have struggled to find a balance between tradition and acculturation. Many times over the course of history, Buddhist traditions have been adopted by converts who have interpreted it in new and distinctive ways, or else brought to new lands by people who have carried it with them from their homeland as a way of preserving their cultural heritage. How does the challenge of translating old forms into a new culture necessitate compromises of architectural style or ritual use? In addition to important temples in Asia, the course will introduce students to thriving Buddhist institutions much closer at hand, and explore diversity issues in relation to the Lao and Japanese Buddhist communities of San Diego.

ARTH 144 | INTRODUCTION TO CINEMA

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

This course is an introduction to film form and the historical, industrial, and cultural contexts that make form significant for analysis. This class aims to equip students to look purposefully, critically and contextually at the moving image, mindful of the ways that meaning is produced and received.

ARTH 221 | ARCHITECTURE AND THEORY SINCE 1945

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

This course aims at a synoptic view of architecture and the debates surrounding it from 1945 to the present. In addition to foundational readings in architectural history and theory, this course examines design projects by some of the most influential architects of the second half of the 20th century. Cross-listed as ARTH 221. Prior completion of ARCH /ARTH 121 recommended.

ARTH 294 | SPECIAL TOPICS IN ART HISTORY

Units: 0.5-4 Repeatability: Yes (Repeatable if topic differs)

An investigation of select issues in the history of art. May be repeated when topic changes. Students may enroll concurrently if topic differs.

ARTH 305 | BUDDHIST ART AND PILGRIMAGE IN INDIA

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Advanced Integration, Artistic Inquiry area

Pilgrimage is a core element of Buddhist practice, and the earliest Buddhist art was both located at and inspired by pilgrimage sites. Just as works of art are best encountered in person, the nature of pilgrimage can be explored most profoundly through travel. This team-taught study abroad course involves pilgrimage to Bodhgaya, India, the site associated with the Buddha's awakening, one of the original and most important Buddhist pilgrimage destinations. The course is only offered as a study abroad course.

ARTH 321 | CITY AND UTOPIA: INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY OF URBANISM

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

This course surveys the relation between social and physical space in the formation of modern cities, as well as in the formation of modern disciplines, city planning, and urban design. It examines how the projects of social reform and political control shaped the grand urban projects and the “master plans” of the 19th and 20th centuries. This course is intended to introduce students to a history of ideas in modern urbanism and enhance their understanding of the city as a symbolic form. Cross-listed as ARCH 321.

ARTH 322 | CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Advanced writing competency, Artistic Inquiry area

ARTH 323 | MEMORY, MONUMENT, MUSEUM

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Advanced writing competency, Artistic Inquiry area

This course examines museums, monuments, and other sites of cultural memory, understood both as powerful institutions and distinct architectural spaces. We will begin with a critical investigation of the legacy of Europe’s and America’s great museums, which epitomize the political aspirations of the colonial empires and nation states that built them. Central to this discussion are the problems that come along with the representations of identity and difference—cultural, racial, class-based and gendered—in the museum. In this course we will tackle the cultural heritage, and symbolic violence of colonialism today, as expressed in the current debates of cultural repatriation and restitution. ARCH 323 and ARTH 323 are cross-listed.

ARTH 325 | PRACTICUM IN ART HISTORY

Units: 1 Repeatability: Yes (Can be repeated for Credit)

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

A practical course of limited hours or short duration, focusing on a specific art historical project.

ARTH 327 | ARCHITECTURE AND DECOLONIZATION

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Global Diversity level 2

This course examines the ways architecture, urban planning and real estate have been implicated in the histories of colonialism—understood broadly as instituting white settler control over indigenous lands, the dispossession and marginalization of colonized peoples, and/or establishing European cultural, economic, and political domination. By decolonization we refer to the historical liberation movements around the world, and the indigenous peoples’ struggle for the recognition of their sovereignty over land, as well as the intellectual experiences that counter, or diverge from, European hegemony. Focusing on the years since 1945, this course surveys the architecture profession’s intersections with military logistics, total war, environmental control, infrastructure systems, and monetary, cultural or philanthropic institutions that either violently suppressed insurgencies and liberation movements around the world, or help recolonized the global South. Extending into the post-colonial period, the course will also examine Third World development, international assistance, and humanitarianism especially as they shaped housing and land use policies. While many of our case studies are located in Africa, Middle East and South Asia, the questions of decolonization/marginalization closely relate to our experience in the United States. Topics include the role the US housing policy played in segregating American cities in twentieth century, and Southern California’s intertwined histories of architectural modernism and settler colonialism. Cross-listed as ARCH 327.

ARTH 330 | SPECIAL TOPICS IN THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

Units: 3

Non-Core Attributes: Writing-Pre F17 CORE

A focused investigation of select issues in architectural and design history. Topics vary. Cross-listed as ARCH 330.

ARTH 331 | ART IN PUBLIC SPACES

Units: 3

Core Attributes: Advanced writing competency, Artistic Inquiry area

A consideration of the expressive import and historical context of art in public places, with emphasis on work since World War II.

ARTH 332 | ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF NORTH AMERICA: CULTURE WARS IN THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

This course explores a variety of representations from throughout North America starting with the late-18th and continuing through the early-20th centuries. Painting, sculpture, photography, architecture (both civic and domestic), as well as other potent forms of representation will be considered. Students will encounter a range of critical methods deployed by art historians to explain these objects. A close reading of primary sources--letters, contracts, critical accounts and other documents--that surrounded the manufacture and circulation of works of art will reveal the "culture wars" of this long nineteenth century.

ARTH 333 | MODERN ART: 1780-1920

Units: 3

Core Attributes: Advanced writing competency, Artistic Inquiry area

This course will examine the emergence of modern art in Western Europe during the years of radical transformation bracketed by the French Revolution and the First World War: from Jacques-Louis David’s images of Revolution and Empire, and Goya’s dissonant revelations of human irrationality, to the fragmentation of Cubism, irony of Dada, and subjectivity of Surrealism.

ARTH 334 | ART OF THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY FIRST CENTURIES IN EUROPE AND THE AMERICAS

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Advanced writing competency, Artistic Inquiry area

From World War I to the close of the Cold War, from the advent of the movies to the Internet and touch-screens, the modern world has been swept into the currents of globalization. The ways that art has intersected with the momentous shifts in life will be considered. In the utopian dreams of Constructivism, philosophical reveries of Cubism, subversions of Dada, and introversions of Surrealism and Expressionism, and in the low-brow allusion of pop art, unboundedness of performance art, and media-infiltrating interventions of the 2020s, artists have probed the meaning of human experience and action in the 20th and 21st centuries.

ARTH 336 | HISTORY AND THEORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Units: 3

Core Attributes: Domestic Diversity level 1

This course surveys the history of photography from its origins in the early 19th century to the present. Students will explore historical debates about photography’s status as a fine art, as well as current issues in photographic theory.

ARTH 340 | BIOGRAPHIES OF WORLD CITIES

Units: 3 Repeatability: Yes (Can be repeated for Credit)

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

This course is a focused survey of the arts and architecture of a great city throughout history. It examines how shifting social contexts and patronage shaped the monuments of art and architecture; how the function and meaning of these monuments have changed in subsequent stages of the city's history; how the traces of past architecture - the archaeological strata - structure the city's present form; and how the monuments record the individual experiences and collective memory of a city's inhabitants. Students will learn to analyze art and architecture based on firsthand experience, field surveys, and faculty-guided research. Offered mainly as a study abroad course by the USD faculty during the winter Intersession or summer programs. Cities may include Rome, Istanbul, Madrid, Paris, London, Mexico City and Los Angeles, among others. Cross-listed as ARCH 340.

ARTH 345 | THE AVANT-GARDE AND MASS CULTURE: ART AND POLITICS

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

This course will examine the intersections between mass culture and the artistic movements in the first decades of the 20th century which came to be known as the “historical avant-garde.” Class discussions will focus on the question of aesthetic autonomy versus the social/political engagement of art. We will investigate the way the technologies of modern communication and mass media which made art available to a larger public at the beginning of the century — photographic reproduction, cinema, and, more recently, television — have transformed the production and reception of art.

ARTH 350 | THEORIES OF ORGANICISM

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

This seminar examines discourses surrounding the themes of “Organicism” (19th Century) and “Organic Architecture” (20th Century) as productive constructs from which to gain a deeper understanding of the development of modern architecture. A critical investigation of primary and secondary sources will serve as the basis from which to understand the creative, social and political questions driving this discourse, as well as their continuing legacy in contemporary artistic practices.

ARTH 354 | ART IN THE 1960S AND 70S

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Advanced writing competency, Artistic Inquiry area

Amidst the Civil Rights movement, student activism, flower power, Feminism, the Black Art Movement, the Chicano movement, the Cold War, the war in Vietnam, art during the 1960s and 1970s broke boundaries. Defying the confines of museum and gallery walls, artists moved into the streets, blurred the borders of art and life, confronted popular culture, dematerialized their work, deployed the body in performance art, transcended objecthood in favor of experience. This was a time of radical rethinking in art as in life.

ARTH 356 | RACE, ETHNICITY, ART AND FILM

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Advanced writing competency, Artistic Inquiry area, Domestic Diversity level 1

This course examines representations of race and ethnicity in art and film. Focusing on work of the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States, students will consider the ways that theoretical perspectives and lived experience are articulated in art and film.

ARTH 357 | GLOBAL FILM AND 'ASIA'

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Global Diversity level 2

This course starts by examining the filmic construction of “Asia” as a category or concept that contains a multitude of places and peoples. Through lectures, texts, discussions and screenings, the course materials will help us reflect on the oppressive histories of global systems such as imperialism and capitalism in that region; the experiences and memories of everyday people to the extent we can access them through media; the stereotypes and prejudices that are captured in filmic strategies. Along with discussing assigned texts, we will screen and analyze films from Japan, China, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Hong Kong–alongside domestic films about “Asia.” Topics of discussion also include: precarity and migration; global supply chains; imperialism/settler colonialism; environmental sustainability; and Afro-Asian solidarity, among others. Discussions, assigned written responses and papers encourage connections between the experiences of people in various parts of Asia with our own everyday identities and cultures.

ARTH 358 | MEXICAN CINEMA

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area, Global Diversity level 2

Prerequisites: ARTH 144 or FILM 101

This course offers a critical survey of Mexican cinema through a variety of contexts, including the Mexican Revolution, political and economic policies, cultural dynamics (religion, race, gender, identity), violence and insecurity, Surrealism, and migration. Course readings will situate the films within these contexts and offer multiple perspectives with which to perceive and analyze movies from (and of) Mexico. Through in-class screenings, discussions, and readings, we will examine how filmmakers have documented, commented upon, and critiqued Mexico’s ideologies, histories, and societal structures.

ARTH 360 | ASIA MODERN

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

Today, some of the most dynamic and noteworthy works of contemporary art are being produced by Asian artists, but how did we reach this point? What was the trajectory of modernism in Asian art, and might it offer alternative understandings of modernity? How did once-distinct artistic cultures converge to become the transnational art world of today? To what extent do regional or cultural differences still matter, now that contemporary art can reach global audiences?.

ARTH 361 | CHINOISERIE AND JAPONISME

Units: 3

“Chinoiserie” and “Japonisme” were two movements in European art that drew inspiration from the art and material culture of the Far East. This course challenges students to synthesize a balanced and historically informed understanding of the ways that images and objects can acquire new contexts and meanings when they travel cross-culturally.

ARTH 370 | MUSEUM STUDIES

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

This course examines the history, theory, structure, and roles of museums, alternative spaces, and art in public places programs. The class will meet with a number of southern California museum professionals.

ARTH 371 | CURATORIAL PRACTICE

Units: 3 Repeatability: Yes (Can be repeated for Credit)

This course considers the dynamics of curatorial work and delves into the ways that collections and exhibitions are shaped. Students gain direct experience working with objects and exhibition planning in USD’s Hoehn Galleries and Print Study Collection. May be repeated for credit.

ARTH 372 | EXHIBITION DESIGN

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Advanced Integration, Artistic Inquiry area

This course will provide background knowledge as well as hands-on experience of the design of art exhibitions. We will delve into the history of art galleries, salons, and museums, and examine theoretical, ethical, and legal debates about the roles and responsibilities of those who collect and exhibit art. Each student will have the opportunity to design their own real or ideal art exhibition, and together we will collaborate in putting together a group exhibition of student work. Each project will be supported with multiple kinds of discipline-specific writing for a variety of purposes and audiences.

ARTH 373 | COLLECTIONS, COLLECTING, COLLECTORS: HISTORY, THEORY, MADNESS

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

This seminar will consider the "problem" of what it means to collect from a variety of perspectives, including historical, theoretical, and more or less speculative frameworks. Why do people seek out things and what can we possibly learn from their accumulations? Linking research and practical experience, the class will visit collections/archives in our region and will propose a work to be added to the permanent art collections of the university.

ARTH 376 | ART AT EL PRADO MUSEUM, MADRID, SPAIN

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Artistic Inquiry area

Non-Core Attributes: International

This course is designed to equip students to analyze and reflect on works of art, enlisting some of the theories and methods that have been used by art historians. The class is structured around art in the collection of the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, with emphasis on works from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. Students will also consider the museum setting and its strategies of display. Offered as a study abroad course in Madrid.

ARTH 382 | PUBLIC ART SEMINAR

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

This course focuses on the role of the artist outside of the gallery/museum context. Tangential to this investigation will be discussions that engage social, political, and urban issues relevant to this expanded public context. Traditional approaches of enhancement and commemoration will be examined in light of more temporal and critical methodologies. Historical examples will be studied and discussed, including the Soviet constructivist experiments, the situationists, conceptual art, and more recent interventionist strategies.

ARTH 384 | SEMINAR IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Units: 3 Repeatability: Yes (Can be repeated for Credit)

Core Attributes: Advanced writing competency, Artistic Inquiry area

Discussion, research and writing focus in-depth on topics that shift each semester. Recent topics have included: Medieval Islamic Art: British Art 1500-2000; Nuclear Cinema; African-American Art; Caravaggio and Baroque Italy; Rubens and Rembrandt; Printmaking in the History of Art; Colonialism and Art History; Ends of Art: Histories of the Fin de Siècle; Soviet Art; The American Home, 1850-1950; Whitman, Warhol: Democratic Culture; Theories of Word and Image. Seminars are often taught by visiting art historians and curators and, when possible, draw on the resources of San Diego’s museums and collections.

ARTH 394 | SEMINAR

Units: 3-4 Repeatability: Yes (Can be repeated for Credit)

Discussion, research, and writing focus in-depth on topics which shift each semester. Recent topics have included: Ends of Art: Histories of the Fin de Siècle; Colonialism and Art History; Li(v)es of the Artist: Biography and Art History; The American Home, 1850-1950; Art and Film; Race and Ethnicity in Art; Image World/Written Word: Art History, Theory, and Criticism.

ARTH 395 | METHODS IN ART HISTORY

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Global Diversity level 2

As a capstone seminar in Art History, the course allows students to recognize, compare, and synthesize some of the key methodological and theoretical perspectives that shape the interpretation of art, and to situate these perspectives in the history of the discipline. The course is based on the close reading and discussion of key art historical texts that have influenced the development, aims, and practice of the discipline. Attention is also given to the development of Art History from its origins, closely focused on Greco-Roman and European art, through contemporary expansion to a global field with attention to racial and cultural diversity. Through a series of writing assignments, students will gain familiarity with various interpretative and analytical strategies, and learn to distinguish between different kinds of readings of artworks. This class fulfills Global Diversity Inclusion and Social Justice level 2 (FDG2 from the Core).

ARTH 490 | IMAGE WORLD/WRITTEN WORD

Units: 3 Repeatability: No

Core Attributes: Advanced writing competency, Oral communication competency

This course offers the possibility of pursuing an independent writing project in a supportive group setting. Art History majors will conceive a research project drawing on historical, theoretical, and critical strategies, and will develop a preparatory draft for their senior thesis. Other majors will have the opportunity to craft a writing project of their choice connected with the history or theory of images.

ARTH 494 | SPECIAL TOPICS IN ART HISTORY

Units: 0.5-4 Repeatability: Yes (Repeatable if topic differs)

A focused investigation of select issues in art history. Recent topics have included: Postcolonial and Diasporic Cinema, the Museum as Artifact, and Latin American Art.

ARTH 495 | SENIOR THESIS

Units: 1 Repeatability: No

Senior art history majors will complete the senior thesis conceived and drafted in ARTH 490 Image World/Written Word.

ARTH 496 | SENIOR THESIS

Units: 1

Each senior will conceive a research project drawing on historical, theoretical, and critical strategies. Every semester.

ARTH 498 | MUSEUM INTERNSHIP

Units: 3 Repeatability: Yes (Can be repeated for Credit)

Non-Core Attributes: Experiential

Working firsthand with curators, exhibition designers, and registrars, in education programs, and in outreach and development offices at area museums, students gather crucial practical experience in the field. Students in recent years have done internships with USD’s University Galleries and Hoehn Print Study Collection, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Timken Museum, Mingei International Museum, the New Children’s Museum, and Quint Contemporary Art.

ARTH 499 | INDEPENDENT STUDY

Units: 1-3 Repeatability: Yes (Can be repeated for Credit)

A project developed by the student in coordination with an instructor. The project should investigate in-depth a field of interest to the student not covered by established art history courses.