An instructor-supervised group project in an off-campus setting. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities…. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

An instructor-supervised group project in an off-campus setting. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities…. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Investigation of the wall-paintings of the Minoan, Cycladic and Mycenaean worlds in the second millennium BC: context, associations, viewing and historical interpretations.

Around 2000 BC, the island of Crete sees the emergence of what are arguably the earliest towns and states in European prehistory. At the heart of this new social order are the so-called ‘palaces’, massive architectural complexes usually interpreted as seats of administrative and political authority. However, fresh discoveries over the past two decades, coupled recently with radical new interpretations, require a fundamental rethinking of the nature of the palaces and their role in Minoan society. This course will provide students with an active opportunity to learn about the latest developments in Minoan art, architecture, and archaeology.

The Greek god Dionysos presents a multifaceted entry point into exploring Ancient Greek art, culture, religion and history. This course is a comprehensive exploration of the figure of Dionysos, from his obscure pre-historic beginnings of foreign origin, to his transformation into other post-classical entities, spanning Christianity to Buddhism. A substantial part of the course deals with his representations in Greek art, and the god's relationship to the Greeks as the governing figure of many important facets of their lives: drinking practices, sexuality, the performative arts, and the transition into the afterlife through the notion of eternal bliss. The course reading draws on art historical literature, as well as primary sources, and theoretical texts regarding religion and cultural practices.

When cultures collide, they assimilate, they exchange, they transform, and they develop, and there seems to be a pattern of recognizable centres of power around which artistic tradition often revolves. This has caused the conventional understanding of certain flowering of artistic heritage as a product of cross-cultural influences. This course is a seminar style survey that explores these fascinating amalgams of artistic traditions that lie at the Eastern outskirts of the Hellenistic world throughout the roman Period, from Bactria to India, and with a heavy focus on the Buddhist art of Gandhara, reaching out along the Silk Road. As the title suggests, the class aims at a renewed framework that re-evaluates the role of the Ancient West, which has been absent since the heavily Eurocentric scholarship from the early 20th century. It also aims to familiarize students with current theoretical issues surrounding cross-cultural studies as it pertains to the visual arts, touching upon modern postcolonial theories of space.

Issues explored might cover Republican and Imperial painting; its Hellenistic sources and parallel media (mosaic, relief). The four distinctive genres of Roman sculptural production: the portrait, the historical relief, sarcophagi, and replicas of famous Greek sculptures. Styles, themes and modes of display in cultural context.

This seminar explores the architectural and urban development of Islamic Cairo (al-Qahira) between the 7th and 16th centuries. As a nexus of both the Islamic empire and the Mediterranean world, Cairo provides an opportunity to explore a major Islamic Medieval city. Modern day Cairo emerged first as a provincial capital (al-Fustat and later al-Qata'a) in the 7th and 8th century and later morphed into a capital under successive dynasties from the 9th to the 16th century. Exploring Cairo throughout this critical historical period, one of both relative stability and upheaval during the post-conquest period to the Crusades, allows for a better understanding of the reciprocity between architecture and urbanism on the one hand and broader political shifts on the other. A central organizing theme of this course is Cairo's position as a place of multiplicity and confessional diversity, embedded within networks of cultural and economic exchange. Other themes explored include the role played by ceremonies and processions on urban form and the development of public space as well as the development of various religious, charitable, military and educational institutions and their impact upon shaping the city.

In-depth examination of monuments and issues in the art and architecture of Western Europe from the sixth to the fifteenth century.

A focused examination of urbanism, art and architecture of a specific medieval city, such as Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople, or Paris.

A consideration of individual types of books, their decoration, function, and cultural context. Topics might include, for example, Gospels, Psalters, or Books of Hours.

The study of Pieter Bruegel’s works in the context of Netherlandish culture. Emphasis on secular works.

This seminar examines major critical developments in the interpretation of High Renaissance art in Italy by looking at key works produced by Leonardo, his contemporaries, and followers (1470-1530).

In Vasari’s Lives of the Artists and their “after-lives,” painters and humanists explored questions of word and image, art and life, biography and history, the psychology of style, the economics and politics of art and the languages of art. How and why did art history originate?

This seminar explores fashion in the visual and material culture of Renaissance Italy. It focuses on the discourse of fashion as represented by Renaissance artists in their works and as treated in contemporary texts. It further examines the multiple meanings of dress in the courts of Renaissance Italy.

"Bad" art is a critical category that shadows and defines "good" art. How has the art of invective shaped the histories of art by applying ethical, psychological and anthropological values to the world of art? Topics include blasphemy, decadence, senility, the "other" and anti-social behaviors. Special attention will be given to such prejudicial period styles as Gothic, Mannerism, Baroque and Rococo, and to such artistic movements as the Macchiaioli, neo-Kitsch, Dada, Automatism and Degenerate Art. Readings range from Seneca and Vitruvius to Walter Benjamin and Clement Greenberg. Case studies of artists range from Caravaggio to Odd Nerdrum.

Focused examinations of themes and methods in the study of Renaissance and Baroque visual arts and material culture.

Study of so-called “scenes of everyday life.” Special attention given to cultural context and problems of constructions of gender and gendered relationships, of social and economic interests, of class conflict, of the relationship with broader European culture. Considerable attention will be paid to the work of Jan Vermeer.

‘Arctic Anthropocene’ examines the extensive visual culture of voyages in the Arctic in the long 19th century. We will probe both Western and Inuit perspectives on the search for the Northwest Passage, whaling, and scientific understandings of the exotic meteorological, human, and animal phenomena of this region through its complex image culture. To underscore ecological understandings of the Arctic in the 19th century and today, we will frame our investigation of the visual culture of this place and time with an interrogation of the notion of the ‘Anthropocene.’

Investigation of English, French, German and Swiss landscape painting from the birth of the Romantic movement to Post-Impressionism.

Developments in the mainstream of Western painting and sculpture since World War II with special emphasis upon interrelations between Europe and North America.

Selected aspects of the complex array of international contemporary art movements, their artists, objects, and critical discourses. Potential issues include the theoretical, philosophical, and political concerns addressed by given artworks and artists; the role of art journals, the private patron, and museum display.

This Seminar explores the work of Black artists from across the African Diaspora, attending to questions such as formal innovation, sociopolitical and historical context, and methodological problems for art historical research.

This course focuses on Indigenous artists working both within and outside of contemporary art spaces in Canada and the United States, through a study of key exhibitions and movements in the Indigenous arts community from 1984 to the present. From the Columbus Quincentennial in 1992 and its echoes in the "Canada 150" celebrations, to artists working from the front lines of land protection movements, we will explore ideas of nationalism, inclusion, intervention, and 'decolonization' of the gallery.

Focused, thematic examinations of the visual arts in Canada in the first half of the twentieth century.

Focused, thematic examinations of the visual arts in Canada from c. 1960 to the present.

Methodologically-focused seminar engaged with recovering and articulating in Western terms indigenous ways of seeing and thinking about East Asian art.

Seminar based on firsthand examination of East Asian objects in Toronto collections that attends to the historical processes by which such objects were valued and collected.

In-depth examination of the play of East Asian Art within and beyond East Asia.

This seminar teaches students the skills required to curate an exhibition of Chinese materials. Working firsthand with objects of Chinese art and visual culture in local Toronto collections, students learn to document the object, assess authenticity, write object labels, panel texts, and catalogue essays. Students will thus prepare an exhibition, actual or virtual, of Chinese objects in local collections.