Fall 2025

(Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for a complete listing of courses and check Athena for course restrictions.)

ARHI 2300/ARHI 2311H

Introduction to Art History II & Introduction to Art History II Honors

Abbe

Undergrads: CRN 25733 | Honors: CRN 25738

Bust of Nefertiti, painted limestone with painted gypsum plaster, from Akhetaten (Tell el-Amarna), Egypt, 18th Dynasty, c. 1350 BCE. Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum.

Offered individually or as the first half of a year-long survey of the history of art, this course examines the rich and diverse traditions of art in western Eurasia and Africa from the Paleolithic period (75,000 BC/BCE) to the Early Renaissance (1500 AD/CE). This lecture class focuses on key monuments of sculpture, architecture, painting and more intimate artforms from the ancient Near East, ancient Egypt Classical Antiquity, Byzantium, the Islamic and Medieval worlds, and the Northern Gothic in Europe and Italian Early Renaissance. A key aim is to offer students the ability to quickly develop skills in the perception, comprehension, and interpretation of visual art forms across diverse historical and cultural eras. Students will engage in the direct, first-hand examination of artworks in regional collections, including at the Georgia Museum of Art. Throughout critical methodological issues, recent important discoveries, and on-going debates are highlighted.

ARHI 2400 

Introduction to Art History II 

TBD | CRN 70670

Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, 1784. 

This course is an introductory survey of art and architecture from the 14th-century to the present day through select global monuments. It also aims to introduce the discipline of art history through in-depth lectures and broad reading assignments that examine the content, style, and materials of art as well as the impact of geo-political, cultural, and historic developments of the modern era. Students will develop skills for finding and explaining meaning in works of art and cultural production in an increasingly interconnected world.  

ARHI 3065 

Modern Art

Andrew | CRN 53248

Caption: Vasily Kandinsky, Composition IV, 1911

This course will address the visual arts from the first half of the 20th century (roughly 1875–1945). We will cover artists, works, and critical debates surrounding the historical avant-garde in Europe and the Soviet Union. With close analysis of individual works of art, we will visually engage the conversation surrounding the avant-garde, modernism and modernity, and definitions of realism, abstraction, and the nature of the modern art object. Through critical readings and lectures we will explore the influences of new technologies, popular culture, politics, war, and genocide, as well as the changing roles of institutions of art making and marketing, and the emergence of new audiences for art. These contexts—along with issues of originality, identity, utopias, and alienation—will help us to define artistic production during this dynamic period.

ARHI 3002

Greek Art & Architecture

TBD | CRN 63452

Caption: Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros of Rhodes, Laocoön and his Sons, early first century C.E., marble (Vatican Museums)

Sculpture, architecture, and painting of the ancient Greek world from the beginning of the Protogeometric Period (1050 BC) to the end of the Hellenistic Period (31 BC) in its historical, social, and cultural context. Critical methodological issues, recent archaeological discoveries, and on-going debates are highlighted. Sculpture, architecture, and painting of the ancient Greek world from the beginning of the Protogeometric Period (1050 BC) to the end of the Hellenistic Period (31 BC) in its historical, social, and cultural context. Critical methodological issues, recent archaeological discoveries, and on-going debates are highlighted.

ARHI 3020

Renaissance Art

Lee | CRN 51533

Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-Portrait, 1556 

What was the Renaissance? How did its art differ from medieval visual culture and from artistic traditions elsewhere in the world? This course surveys major artistic currents in Europe between c. 1350 and 1600. Topics include devotional image-making, the revival of classical antiquity, the emergence of individual style and artistic theory, patterns of collecting and display, and the roles of women as artists and patrons. Particular emphasis will be placed on how European artists forged distinctive works and identities through cross-cultural encounters. We will examine painting, sculpture, and architecture by Masaccio, Donatello, Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Sofonisba Anguissola, Albrecht Dürer, and others. No prior knowledge of art history is required; the class introduces key concepts and methods through lectures, close looking, and discussion.

ARHI 3022

Art and Architecture of Byzantium

TBD | CRN 50226

Caption: Central dome and squinches, katholikon, Hosios Loukas monastery, Boeotia, 11th century

A survey of the art and architecture in the Byzantine world from the sixth to the sixteenth century.

 

ARHI 3530

Modernist Photography

Oh | 53249

László Moholy-Nagy, Fotogramm (Photogram), 1926

Photography stands among the most powerful forces in the formation of modernity. This course examines the development of photography from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, encompassing forms ranging from art photography to documentary practice. Rather than offering a comprehensive survey, the course traces key themes—individuals, collectives, genres, movements, and discourses—that illuminate what constitutes modernist photography in North America and Europe, while also engaging with photographic practices revolving around various modernities in Africa, Asia, and South America. Students will explore the broader historical, social, and aesthetic contexts of each theme while participating in close visual analysis and critical discussion of how photography both registers and produces modern experience. Particular emphasis will be placed on the methodological and theoretical questions that photography raises as a medium and modern form.

ARHI 4050/6050

Icons in Byzantium: Theory and Practice 

Kirin | Undergrads: CRN 53250 | Grads: CRN 53251

Caption: Icon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, c. 1400, Constantinople, tempera on wood (British Museum)

Various issues of panel painting in the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines not only mastered the production of such pieces of art but additionally they developed a highly sophisticated theory of images that was unique in the medieval world. This course explores the dynamics between the theory and the practice of creating, displaying, and venerating icons.

ARHI 4440/6440

American Modernism: Migration, Diaspora, and Forms of Belonging
Oh | CRN TBD

Joseph Stella, The Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an Old Theme, 1939

Migration largely shaped the conditions of modern America, driven by a complex mix of economic opportunities, social and political factors, forced migrations, advances in technology and transportation, and the pursuit of a better life, both domestically and internationally. Artists witnessed and represented this changing world, in which ideas of nation, community, culture, and identity frequently fluctuated and transformed—shaping a trajectory of American art in the age of modernity. At the same time, migrant artists responded to the new world by creating forms of belonging to—or estrangement from—their new place and community through cultural ideas and objects. This course will explore art and visual culture, from rich fusions of cross-cultural styles and narratives to inventive and resourceful practices of picturing identity, belonging, and home—each marking a vital chapter in the history of American art in the first half of the twentieth century.

ARHI 4900/6900

Topics in Ancient Art

TBD | Undergrads: CRN 63453 | Grads: CRN 63453

Head of Apollo. Carved ivory (burnt), hammered gold sheet, bronze, and inlaid stone (or glass). 6th century BCE. From the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, Greece. Delphi, Archaeological Museum.

This course provides students interested in Greek art, architecture, and mythology with an opportunity to delve into the visual and material culture of sacred spaces in ancient Greece. We will engage with questions of what sanctuaries were, to the ancient Greeks, and how individual Greek gods were represented and worshipped in their shrines across the Mediterranean in the first millennium BCE. The course encourages students to establish a foundation of knowledge on Greek sanctuaries—on temples, altars, treasuries, and votive offerings—and to simultaneously cultivate their interests in ancient politics, rituals, athletics, and performances. Students will develop their writing and speaking skills and learn to critically assess the different kinds of evidence available for narrating ancient art histories. Specific topics to be addressed include the art and architecture of festivals such as the Olympic Games and the Eleusinian Mysteries; the movement of objects in the Mediterranean through trade, piracy, and pilgrimage; evidence for worship and artistry by groups historically sidelined in scholarship, including women, enslaved peoples, and metics (foreigners with citizenship privileges); and the spread of healing sanctuaries throughout the Greek world following the Plague of Athens.

ARHI 4910/6910

Topics in Renaissance Art: Early Modern Printmaking & the Global World

Lee | Undergrads: CRN 53601 | Grads: CRN 53604

Theodore de Bry (after John White), The Marckes of Sundrye of the Cheif Mene of Virginia, 1590 

This class examines European prints from the early fifteenth century, when the first images were printed on paper, to the eighteenth century, immediately before the invention of lithography, and their global interactions with other cultures, particularly in the Americas and East Asia. Such a broad temporal and geographical scope challenges the conventional historiography of European prints, which has long been argued that printmaking propelled Europe toward early modernity. The rise of mass-produced images brought profound change through the Reformation, scientific discovery, and shifting political dynamics, making European culture distinctive from the societies with which it interacted. Although this narrative highlights key features of prints—especially their role as “agents of change”—it often reinforces Eurocentric perspectives and neglects the active functions of printed materials in a global context. To address both the particular development of prints in Europe and their operation within worldwide networks, the course is divided into two parts. During the first seven weeks we will trace the general history of European prints and investigate how the medium gained the status of fine art and an instrument of change. In the final seven weeks we will explore encounters between European prints and other civilizations, focusing on how prints shaped European perceptions of distant cultures, aided or challenged colonial politics, and were incorporated into local print traditions elsewhere. Students will write a research paper based on works in the print collection at the Georgia Museum of Art.

ARHI 8920

Seminar in 20th Century Art

Andrew | CRN 56908

GRSC 7770

Graduate Pedagogy

Andrew | CRN 53260