A focused, critical examination and analysis of a selected topic in Art History varying according to faculty teaching the course. A subtopic course description will be published each term the course is offered. Students may take this course multiple times with different topics. Topic will be determined by the instructor.

This course is focused on the critical examination and analysis of a selected topic in art history varying according to faculty teaching the course. A subtopic course description will be published each term course is offered. This course can be retaken, topics may not.

This course presents an overview of the multiple, intersecting histories and aesthetic practices of photography between 1800 and 1915 and its applications in fine art, snapshot, documentary, scientific, commercial, and propaganda in a global perspective. Course lectures include the medium’s pre-history and the development of photography as a modern art form. Students will learn about different photographic processes as well as the multiple interpretations of notable images from the era, and will analyze connections between science, culture, history, and photography.

The objective of this course, the second course of a two-semester sequence, is to present an overview of the multiple, intersecting histories and aesthetic practices of photography from the development of Modernism at the beginning of the 20th century to the present, including the medium’s transformation by digital imaging in the 21st century. Photography’s applications within fine art, documentary, scientific, journalistic, commercial, and vernacular practices will be investigated within a global perspective.

This course, the second in the two-semester sequence, will offer an in-depth study of key historical, critical, and theoretical issues in photographic visual culture in the modern, postmodern, and contemporary periods. The course will explore aesthetic trajectories in modern and contemporary photography from the emergence of the modernist Avant Garde at the beginning of the 20th century to such contemporary phenomena as the deadpan aesthetic, performance documentation, fictive photography, and photographic appropriation. This course will also examine the evolving language of commercial photography, stylistic and ethical approaches to photojournalism, photography and the politics of the museum, vernacular photographies, and the presence of digital technologies and social media networks in the contemporary global media age.