An overview of major monuments and themes in the art and architecture of East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia and Tibet), from the Neolithic to the present.

An overview of major monuments and themes in the art and architecture of East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia and Tibet) and its diaspora in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This course explores the architecture of the Islamic world from the 7th - 12th centuries through the lens of its major monuments throughout the central Islamic lands, North Africa and Spain. Through an emphasis upon the Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid and Seljuk periods, the course explores the range of cultural, political, social and religious aspects related to the development of the built environment. It also considers the impact of Islam's encounter with late antiquity and aims to position the rise of Islamic architecture within the context of this encounter. Additionally, the architecture is contextualized through a study of the urban history of select early and medieval Islamic cities.

A survey of architecture from pre-history to the start of modernism, with attention given to the ways in which architecture shapes human experience.

An introduction to the buildings, issues and ideas from Neoclassicism to the present.

An introduction to the traditions and patterns of building in Canada taking into account the unique landscapes, resources and history that comprise what is now a unified political entity. Lectures will pay special attention to the complexity of architecture throughout Canada including issues of land rights, natural resources, immigration, settlements and urban design, transportation, and heritage issues. A special feature of this class will be the opportunity to study Toronto first-hand through class projects. No previous architectural history study is required.

The thematic study of various aesthetic, cultural, social, political, and theoretical aspects of global art and photography.

Credit course for supervised participation in faculty research project. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities…. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course investigates the material culture, art and architecture of the Aegean civilizations from the Neolithic through to the building of the palaces of Crete around 2000BC.

In this course we will survey the history of Greek architecture and its impact on the buildings of the ancient Mediterranean. Chronologically, we will begin in the latter second millennium BCE, examining the consequences of the collapse of Mycenaean society on Greek building, after which we will examine the synthesis and dissemination of exciting new forms of monumental building at Greek sanctuaries and cities during the Archaic and Classical periods (ca. 700–350/323 BCE). We will conclude with the developments of the Hellenistic period, the era of eastern Mediterranean empires when architectural patronage is increasingly dominated by Greek and Hellenized royalty. Along the way, the course will examine topics such as the interpretation of meaning in Greek buildings and their sculptural decoration, the origins of building technologies, the interaction of Greek and non-Greek architects and builders, and the reception of Greek architectural forms within non-Greek contexts throughout the Mediterranean.

This course surveys the cultural, artistic and social interactions between the Graeco-Roman world and the so-called ‘Barbarians’ beyond its eastern and northern confines. Chronologically, it spans from the Greek Geometric and Archaic periods (9th - 6th c. BCE) to the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of Early Medieval Europe (6th- 7th c. CE). The course will address issues of artistic production, material culture, ritual and cult in relation to the mobility of peoples and groups, objects and individuals.

This course provides a detailed investigation of the city of Athens, focusing on the art, architecture and archaeology in the later Archaic and Classical Period. A combination of topographical and chronological approach is taken to familiarize the students with both the physical cityscape as well as its development in the context of major areas of interest, such as politics, religion and social customs. Some broad themes explored include: art, democracy and propaganda (Agora), the impact of the Persian wars, ritual and religious festivals (Acropolis), the symposium, Athenian women, funerary art (Kerameikos), cult, sanctuaries and votives, art and Athenian drama. The course will also feature digital humanities components in the assignments, which may involve spatial mapping, 3D tools/VR and/or databases, as well as a trip to the Royal Ontario Museum.

The art, architecture and archaeology of the city of Rome to AD476.

This course is a comprehensive exploration of the art of Greek vase painting, covering material from the late Geometric period (8th C. BCE) to the late Classical Period (4th C. BCE). While iconography and narrative will form a major portion of the content, the class will also explore issues surrounding material and technique, the prevalent sympotic (drinking) culture and Greek rituals that provides the cultural framework, dynamics of trade, theories of viewership and semiotics, status of the artist, and other historiographical concerns, including problematic issues surrounding the modern practice of collecting.

The course provides a thorough examination of ancient Greek sculpture from 7th - 1st century BCE, which in many ways defined the canon of western art that was to follow. Classic issues of style, dating, and technique are complemented by putting them into the contexts of cultural history, religion and socio-politics. While the course is a traditional monument-based survey of major sculptural works from the ancient Greek world, several important issues are also addressed, pertaining both to contemporary society and the study of other areas of art history. These include but are not limited to: gender, social class, colonialism, notion of the artist, originality, and aesthetic theory.

Transformation in the visual arts, paintings, sculpture, and mosaics of the expanding Greek world c. 400BC to c. 100BC; the response to Hellenization from the new artistic centres of Asia Minor and Italy.

A general introduction to Greek mythology and its uses (and abuses) by the Greeks and Romans through the art of antiquity. Students will learn about gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, their attributes and stories which constituted the subjects of (not only) ancient art.

Erotic ‘imagery’ – sculptures, reliefs, paintings – is ubiquitous in ancient art, to a degree that modern viewers have often found disturbing. This course faces the challenge posed by the ancient predilection for such imagery and explores it from a critical and scholarly perspective. At its most basic level, it reassigns a seemingly universal segment of human ‘nature’ and experience to the realm of culture, by examining the imagery against the background of ancient constructions of sexuality, gender and the body. But it also explores the libidinal and hedonic structure of the works of art themselves and asks for the functions of erotic imagery in its respective contexts. The course will avail itself of the excellent research on gender, sexuality and eroticism in antiquity that has been produced over the past few decades, and it will also explore the topic’s lateral connections with the thematic fields of ancient humour, the ‘grotesque’, apotropaism, myth and magic.

An examination of the role played by monks and nuns in the creation and use of art and architecture in the Middle Ages.

A focused survey of different types of manuscripts and their images from the origins of the book in Late Antiquity to the invention of printing.

By challenging essentialist questioning of Islamic urbanism, this course considers the inter-animated and complex web of forces that drive cities forward by identifying repertoires of underlying logic. Through a deep and historically situated reading of Medieval Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Cairo, and Cordoba, we will map and encode history on the urban scale to reveal what makes a city "Islamic." Visual mapping skill cultivation for communication purposes (both digital and analogue) will be taught throughout to enhance understandings of urban complexity in rich historical contexts.

From its earliest beginnings as an Umayyad province and up until the 15th century, al-Andalus acted as a lynch pin within the Mediterranean world. Connecting the Islamic empire in the East and forging links of trade and cultural exchange with Europe to the West, cities such as Cordoba and Granada captured the imagination of contemporary chroniclers, earning descriptions in the sources as truly “first-rate places”. Through an exploration of the historical, artistic, architectural, urban, social and economic contexts, this course will engage with and expand upon current understandings of this seminal period in Islamic history to examine Islam’s encounters and modes of cultural exchange with Europe and the Mediterranean world.

A consideration of art and architecture made for the court, the aristocracy, and other patrons outside the realm of the Christian church.

An examination of the Gothic cathedral from its origins in Paris in the 1130’s through its development and elaboration in France, England and Italy. This course also considers monumental decorations in painted glass, wall painting, tapestry and portal sculpture.

Albrecht Dürer and the painting and printmaking of his contemporaries. Consideration of the great Hall churches of Saxony and the altarpieces of Tilman Riemenschneider and his contemporaries; the status of the arts and attitudes towards Italian art, and the consequences of the Reformation for religious imagery.

The Netherlands had become one of Europe’s most fertile artistic cultures by the sixteenth century. Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel are famous today for their paintings of Hell and peasant life. Other painters introduced mythological and erotic subject matter, while practitioners in the other arts were perhaps even more widely known. Netherlandish sculptors created the tombs of northern European rulers, defining their public identity in the communal space of church and chapel. Miniature carved altarpieces helped guide modes of private devotion and were widely imitated from Italy to Scandinavia. Netherlandish tapestries broadcast the heroic deeds of the Caesars and the patriarchs in the palaces of kings and high nobles as prototypes for their reigns. We will examine the rise of the Renaissance manner in northern Europe, the role of the religious arts, the ideology of urban culture, the consequences of the Reformation and iconoclasm, the functions of various species of portraiture, and the particular properties of different media, while dedicating much attention to Bosch and Bruegel. And we will concentrate on the sixteenth century, the era in which the Netherlands was closely linked to the rest of Europe, from Italy to Sweden, from England to Ukraine.

Love is studied not only as a favorite theme of Renaissance art, but as the basis of some of its fundamental aesthetic claims. The question of love connects Renaissance art to important strains of philosophical thought and religious spirituality, as well as to some urgent realities of social life.

This course examines works in different art media, including painting, sculpture and prints, produced from 1400 to 1600, discussing how artistic practice of imitation and emulation stimulated the development of individual styles. In addition, this course addresses notions of disruptive rivalry, and the representation of slander and envy.

It has long been said that the material culture of the Renaissance generated the first stir of consumerism with a variety of artifacts produced from 1400 to 1700 in Italy. This course explores the material culture of Renaissance consumerism and discusses the production and function of works in different art media.

Concentration on the major painters of Holland’s Golden Age, ca. 1580-ca. - 1700. Particular attention is paid to genre painting and the notion of “Dutch realism.” Consideration of art within its social and political contexts. Notions of gender, of the historical past, of embodiment, and of contact with the non-western world will be discussed.