ARTH 394 | Interrogating Methods of Art History: From Artist Biographies to Global & Decolonizing Perspectives

This course explores the history of the discipline of art history from the 16th through the 21st century and serves as an introduction to fundamental art historical methods. The development of art history as a discipline--whose foundational thinkers were overwhelmingly white European men of the middle and upper middle classes--is implicated in European colonial and imperialist practices. The course lays bare how imperialism, colonialism, and the identity of its founders shaped the development of the discipline and the formation of the art historical canon. The course interrogates the systematic marginalization and/or exclusion of women and non-European (and later non-Euro-American) artists and artistic traditions in/from the history of art and critiques the Eurocentric and colonialist heritage of the discipline. The course explores what is accepted as "legitimate knowledge" in the field, who is entitled to produce and communicate it, and what institutions maintain and bolster this system. The course further examines recent art historical approaches (e.g., postcolonial, intersectional, decolonizing) that critique the narrowly defined parameters of the field and offer effective interventions that reconfigure the exclusionary practices of the discipline and aim to reshape its institutional system. Students develop and refine their analytical and research skills through discussions, response papers, presentations, and a substantial research project; as part of this work, students regularly examine the positionality of the scholars and artists whose work forms the content of the course and reflect on how their own social position impacts their learning and scholarly practices. The course prepares students for more advanced courses in art history, including the capstone seminar, ARTH 494.