Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: The Life and Death of Disegno Course Number: R1B Section 1 | CCN: 21607
Kevin Block
Monday | Wednesday: 8:00 - 9:30am
The concept of disegno is one of the most important and difficult concepts in Renaissance art and architectural theory, one that continues to structure contemporary understandings of creativity. The difficulty of disegno stems from the concept’s ambivalence. On the one...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Hauntings Course Number: R1B Section 2 | CCN: 21608
Caty Telfair
Monday | Wednesday: 9:30 - 11:00am
“There is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence … Haunted places are the only ones people can live in.”
Michel de Certeau
Ghosts, literal and metaphorical, are found in the blurry boundaries of understanding...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Hauntings Course Number: R1B Section 3 | CCN: 21648
Caty Telfair
Monday | Wednesday: 11:00 - 12:30pm
“There is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence … Haunted places are the only ones people can live in.”
Michel de Certeau
Ghosts, literal and metaphorical, are found in the blurry boundaries of understanding...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Food Writing Art Historically Course Number: R1B Section 4 | CCN: 21649
Jon Soriano
Monday | Wednesday: 12:30 - 2:00pm
Can food be art historical? Claims of its homeliness, perishability, and immediate use-value seem to place food outside the traditional domain of art. However, unique forms of food can certainly be identified with specific places and times. ...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Secret, Hidden, and Lost Objects in Buddhist Material Culture Course Number: R1B Section 5 | CCN: 21650
Mary Lewine
Monday | Wednesday: 2:00 - 3:30pm
In this course, we will explore themes of hiddenness, secrecy, and inaccessibility in the art and material culture of Buddhism in East Asia—and in writings about sacred objects, sites, and visual experience from within the tradition. We will read travelogues...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Missing Heads, Mermaids, and Masquerades: Visual Culture in Urban Nigeria Course Number: R1B Section 6 | CCN: 21651
Ivy Mills
Monday | Wednesday: 3:30 - 5:00pm
When the new public sculpture honoring legendary musician and activist Fela Kuti was unveiled in Lagos, some were dismayed by the artist’s choices. Abolore Sobayo fashioned the figure in a pose reminiscent of iconic photographs of Fela on stage....
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Truth, Text, and the Indexical Photograph Course Number: R1B Section 7 | CCN: 21652
Bessie Young
Monday | Wednesday: 5:00 - 6:30pm
What does it mean to say that we can “read” a photograph? Victor Burgin writes that "the intelligibility of the photograph is no simple thing; photographs are texts inscribed in terms of what we may call ‘photographic discourse,’ but this...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Medicine and the Art of Observation Course Number: R1B Section 8 | CCN: 24507
Eva Allan
Tuesday | Thursday: 11:00 - 12:30pm
Increasingly over the past 20 years, medical schools have started to integrate art observation courses into their curricula. The visual tools of art history–observation and questioning; careful, critical looking; and noticing details in relation to the whole–have been shown to...
Freshman Seminar: Feminism and Other Life Skills Course Number: HA 24 | CCN: 32183
Friday | 1:00 - 2:00pm
What does it mean to be a feminist now? What is feminism’s lineage? What does feminism look like? How can feminism teach us now? This course is designed to give students an introduction to key texts in feminist theory with...
Contemporary Art + Architecture from Asia, ca. 1945-present Course Number: HA 37 | CCN: 32149
Tuesday | Thursday: 3:30 - 5:00pm
This course will offer an overview of contemporary art and architecture from South, Southeast, and East Asia. Beginning around 1945 and paying special attention to new avant-garde and experimental practices, the lectures will trace the emergence of abstraction, hyperrealism, pop...
Introduction to Modern Art Course Number: HA 80 | CCN: 32577
Mon. | Wed. | Fri. | 10:00 - 11:00am
This course introduces students to modern western art from the 1860s to the 1960s. It aims to demystify the “isms” of modern art—including Cubism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Futurism, Impressionism, Minimalism, Modernism, Post-Impressionism, Realism, and Surrealism—as well as labels such as Art...
Theories and Methods Course Number: HA 100 | CCN: 24927
Mon. | Wed. | Fri. | 2:00 - 3:00pm
This course introduces theories and methods of art history that have played a major role in the formation of the discipline from the later eighteenth century to the present day. Readings include key texts by major art-writers, art theorists, and...
Eco Art: Art, Architecture, and the Natural Environment Course Number: HA 105 | CCN: 32151
Tuesday | Thursday: 12:30 - 2:00pm
Nuclear disasters. Acid rain. The mass extinction of animal and plant species. The environmental crisis that the planet faces today has fundamentally transformed the way we perceive human interaction with the natural environment. What can art, architecture, sustainable design, urban...
Buddhist Icons in Japan Course Number: HA 134B | CCN: 31004
Tuesday | Thursday: 2:00 - 3:30pm
This course introduces the study of Buddhist icons in Japan within broader visual cultures in Asia. We will consider exemplary and unusual images of the Buddha and other deities; miraculous and secret icons; relics and icono-texts; and art historical praxis....
Visual Culture in Early Modern Spain and Colonial Latin America Course Number: HA 171 | CCN: 31006
Tuesday | Thursday: 9:30 - 11:00am
The epithet “Golden Age” is commonly used to describe the art and literature of seventeenth-century Spain. Ironically, the complex paintings of Diego Velázquez, harbingers of Manet’s modernity, were produced during the decline of Spain and its Empire in Europe and...
The Transatlantic Gilded Age and Its Discontents Course Number: HA 190G | CCN: 32602
Tuesday | Thursday: 12:30 - 2:00pm
This course considers the linked arts of the United States, England, and France in the period between 1865 and 1918 looking at specific case study artists, structures, social movements, and literary works. We will focus on the arts and institutions...
Contemporary African Art in Transnational Perspective Course Number: HA 190T.1 | CCN: 31009
Ivy Mills
Mon. | Wed. | Fri. | 1:00 - 2:00pm
In February of this year, British-Liberian artist Lina Iris Viktor announced she was suing hip-hop superstar Kendrick Lamar, whose music video for “All the Stars” – one of the hit songs on the Black Panther soundtrack – appears to draw...
Theory of the Copy Course Number: HA 190T.2/Rhetoric 136 | CCN: 32948
Mon. | Wed. | Fri. | 11:00 - 12:00PM
The course surveys critical controversies surrounding fakes, forgeries, multiples, counterfeits, imitations, and appropriations from the Late Renaissance to the present day, in European, American, Australian and Chinese art. Each of the images and objects we will examine sparked extensive debate...
Undergraduate Seminar: Europe in Asia: The Visual Culture of Colonialism, 1500-1850 Course Number: HA 192A | CCN: 32599
Friday | 2:00 - 5:00pm
Spices. Porcelain. Silk. Diamonds. Asia was seen as the exotic other and a land of astonishing wealth in European accounts of travel, trade, and empire from the Roman times onwards. But it was only in the 16th century that European...
Undergraduate Seminar: Roman Mummy Portraits Course Number: HA 192B | CCN: 31010
Monday | 2:00 - 5:00pm
In the Roman period Egyptian mummies were sometimes equipped with extremely lifelike painted portraits rather than the traditional gilded masks. About 1000 such painted portraits survive, and of these about 100 are still attached to the mummy cases to...
Undergraduate Seminar: Exploring the Etruscans at the Hearst Museum Course Number: HA 192CU | CCN: 32579
Lisa Pieraccini
Thursday | 2:00 - 5:00pm
At the turn of the 20th century Phoebe A. Hearst set out to bring Etruscan antiquities to UC Berkeley for the educational benefit of students, faculty, and the public at large. Some 4,000 Etruscan artifacts (the largest collection in the...
Undergraduate Seminar: Renaissance Walls & Wall Paintings Course Number: HA 192D | CCN: 31011
Thursday | 9:00 - 12:00pm
The study of wall painting unites some of the most defining elements of Renaissance artistic practices: Questions of patronage, spirituality, materiality and illusionism, architecture, time, and narrative arise from the many options of covering walls with murals. We will examine...
Undergraduate Seminar: AR/VR Development for Art History (and Beyond) Course Number: HA 192DH | CCN: 34279
Justin Underhill
Tuesday | 9:00 - 12:00pm
“The true method of knowledge is experiment.”
-William Blake
In this course, we will collaborate to build several AR and VR apps of art historical significance. A series of case studies will explore how museums and cultural heritage specialists use technology...
Undergraduate Seminar: Victorian Art and Beauty Course Number: HA 192F | CCN: 25942
Friday | 11:00 - 2:00pm
This course explores the different concepts of beauty in three Victorian art movements—the Pre-Raphaelite movement, the Aesthetic movement, and the Arts and Crafts movement. Pre-Raphaelite beauty was associated with truth to nature; Aesthetic beauty with subjectivity; Arts and Crafts beauty...
Undergraduate Seminar: Evolutionary Aesthetics and the History of Art Course Number: HA 192T | CCN: 24450
Tuesday | 2:00 - 5:00pm
A recent resurgence of interest in evolutionary-developmental aesthetics (in such disciplines as cognitive anthropology, philosophy of art, and prehistoric archaeology) has reopened many questions about the “origins of art” and aesthetic consciousness, about “prehistoric art,” and about the role of...
Proseminar in History of Art Course Number: HA 200 | CCN: 21659
Tuesday | 2:00 - 5:00pm
This seminar is intended to introduce graduate students to a range of critical perspectives, theoretical issues, and methodologies that constitute the practice of art history. The seminar is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of the history of the...
Graduate Seminar: Art and Decolonization Course Number: HA 285 | CCN: 32819
Wednesday | 2:00 - 5:00pm
Demands for decolonizing the curriculum has gathered force and momentum across Europe and North America. But what does decolonizing systems of knowledge mean for our practice as art historians? By way of approaching the question, this seminar will explore the...
Graduate Seminar: The Transatlantic Gilded Age and Its Discontents Course Number: HA 289 | CCN: 32604
Monday | 2:00 - 5:00pm
This graduate seminar will move in tandem with the Undergraduate Gilded Age lecture course. As the lectures in that class will form the background of the seminar sessions, participants will be expected to audit the lectures. Readings for graduate students...
Mellon Exhibition Graduate Seminar: Diaspora | Migration | Exile Course Number: HA 290 | CCN: 24936
Lauren Kroiz, and Leigh Raiford
Wednesday | 10:00 - 1:00pm
Co-taught by professors in History of Art and African Diaspora Studies, this year-long graduate seminar will curate an exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) focused on issues of migration, diaspora, and exile in the visual...
Seminar in History of Art Teaching Course Number: HA 375 | CCN: 21629
Thursday | 3:30-5:30pm
This class is a pedagogy course and a pre-professional workshop. It will encourage you to think both broadly and pragmatically about the function of pedagogy in art history in particular: what we learn, how we teach, and who we are...
