Course summary

You'll explore practices and interpretations of art across an exceptionally wide array of intersecting cultures and different periods. In a world increasingly defined through images and material culture, we approach art history as a vital and dynamic framework for understanding both our shared histories, and some of the most pressing questions we are faced with now. With an emphasis on the interconnections between art and larger social dynamics, the course offers an active engagement with questions of power, politics and society, and the potential for a deep understanding of art history to illuminate the wider frameworks that shape our culture, such as those of race, our relations to nature and the environment, class, gender and sexuality. Our students are equipped to become global citizens, as experts in their fields of study and as socially aware thinkers with a panoply of dynamic, relevant and transferrable skills.