Courses

HART B103 Survey of Western Architecture

Not offered 2025-26

The major traditions in Western architecture are illustrated through detailed analysis of selected examples from classical antiquity to the present. The evolution of architectural design and building technology, and the larger intellectual, aesthetic, and social context in which this evolution occurred, are considered. This course was formerly numbered HART B253; students who previously completed HART B253 may not repeat this course.

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HART B110 Introduction to Medieval Art and Architecture

Fall 2025

This course takes a broad geographic and chronological scope, allowing for full exposure to the rich variety of objects and monuments that fall under the rubric of "medieval" art and architecture. We focus on the Latin and Byzantine Christian traditions, but also consider works of art and architecture from the Islamic and Jewish spheres. Topics to be discussed include: the role of religion in artistic development and expression; secular traditions of medieval art and culture; facture and materiality in the art of the middle ages; the use of objects and monuments to convey political power and social prestige; gender dynamics in medieval visual culture; and the contribution of medieval art and architecture to later artistic traditions. This course was formerly numbered HART B212; students who previously completed HART B212 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Growth and Structure of Cities.

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HART B120 History of Chinese Art

Fall 2025

This course is a survey of the arts of China from Neolithic to the contemporary period, focusing on bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the Chinese appropriation of Buddhist art, and the evolution of landscape and figure painting traditions.This course was formerly numbered HART B274; students who previously completed HART B274 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: East Asian Languages & Culture; Museum Studies.

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HART B130 Renaissance Art

Spring 2026

A survey of painting in Florence and Rome in the 15th and 16th centuries (Giotto, Masaccio, Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael), with particular attention to contemporary intellectual, social, and religious developments. This course was formerly numbered HART B230; students who previously completed HART B230 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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HART B140 The Global Baroque

Fall 2025

Global Baroque examines the Baroque style both within and beyond Europe, moving from Italy, France, Spain and Flanders to seventeenth-century India, Iran, Japan and China, the New World, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Kongo. We will study the role of Baroque art in early modern politics, religious missions and global trade; the emergence of princely collections of wonders and cartography; the flourishing of new and wondrous art materials; and the changing role of the artist and artisan in this period. We will consider the Baroque as an invitation for emotional engagement, as a style of power that was complicit in the violence of European colonialism, and as a tool of cultural reclamation used by artists across the world. As a class, we will work to construct an art history of The Global Baroque that also attends to the complex specificities of time and place. This course was formerly numbered HART B240; students who previously completed HART B240 may not repeat this course.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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HART B150 Nineteenth-Century Art

Not offered 2025-26

This course takes a transnational approach to the history of art from the Age of Revolution (beginning in the late-eighteenth century) through the industrial globalization of the late-nineteenth century. Lectures, readings and class discussions will engage key artistic and historical developments that shaped art and culture during this period. This course was formerly numbered HART B233; students who previously completed HART B233 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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HART B151 Modern Art

Fall 2025

This course traces the history of modernism from ca. 1890 to ca. 1945. Lectures, readings, and class discussions will engage key artistic and historical developments that shaped art and culture during the modern period. This course was formerly numbered HART B260; students who previously completed HART B260 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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HART B160 The Global Present

Spring 2026

This course navigates the global geography of art, from 1989 to the present. This course was formerly numbered HART B266; students who previously completed HART B266 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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HART B161 Survey of Contemporary Art & Theory

Not offered 2025-26

This class focuses on European and American art and theory from approximately 1960 to the present. We examine key aesthetic developments including Pop Art, Minimalism, institutional critique, performance, installation, and video. This course was formerly numbered HART B272; students who previously completed HART B272 may not repeat this course

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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HART B170 History of Narrative Cinema, 1945 to the present

Spring 2026

This course surveys the history of narrative film from 1945 to the present. We will analyze a chronological series of styles and national cinemas, including Classical Hollywood, Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, and other post-war movements and genres. Viewings of canonical films will be supplemented by more recent examples of global cinema. While historical in approach, this course emphasizes the theory and criticism of the sound film, and we will consider various methodological approaches to the aesthetic, socio-political, and psychological dimensions of cinema. Readings will provide historical context, and will introduce students to key concepts in film studies such as realism, formalism, spectatorship, the auteur theory, and genre studies. Fulfills the history requirement or the introductory course requirement for the Film Studies minor. This course was formerly numbered HART B299; students who previously completed HART B299 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: English; Film Studies.

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HART B201 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Medieval/Modern

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Byzantine Icons, Then and Now

Spring 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course is writing intensive. This course examines intersections between the medieval and modern worlds through art and architecture. Students study medieval works of art and/or architecture as well as their afterlives in the modern era, as realized through revivals of style and form, museum exhibition excavation, alteration and adaptation for reuse, etc. There are no prerequisites for this course. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Museum Studies.

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HART B205 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Art, Death, and the Afterlife

Spring 2026

This course is writing intensive. This course aims to explore how art was used as a symbolic form to overcome death and to assure immortality in a variety of archaeological, philosophical, religious, sociopolitical, and historical contexts. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art. This course was formerly numbered HART B112; students who previously completed HART B112 may not repeat this course.

Writing Intensive

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: English.

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HART B210 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: The Classical Tradition

Not offered 2025-26

This course is writing intensive. An investigation of the historical and philosophical ideas of the classical, with particular attention to the Italian Renaissance and the continuance of its formulations throughout the Westernized world. This course was formerly numbered HART B104; students who previously completed HART B104 may not repeat this course. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

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HART B215 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Topics in South Asian Art

Not offered 2025-26

This course is writing intensive. This course examines the representations of gods, plants, humans and animals in the Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Islamic artistic traditions of India. It traces both the development of naturalistic representations, as well as departures and embellishments on naturalism in the painting, sculpture, architecture, metalwork and textiles of South Asia. The course will consider the spiritual, social, political and aesthetic motivations that led artists to choose naturalistic or supernatural forms of representation.This course was formerly numbered HART B102; students who previously completed HART B102 may not repeat this course. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

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HART B220 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Landscapes, Art, & Racial Ecologies

Spring 2026

This course is writing intensive. This course uses art, visual, and material culture to trace the plantation's centrality to colonial and post-colonial environments in the Atlantic World from the eighteenth century to the present, as a site of environmental destruction as well as parallel ecologies engendered by African-descended peoples' aesthetic and botanical contestation. Objects to be considered include landscape painting, plantation cartography, scientific imagery, environmental art, and ecologically motivated science fiction. This course was formerly numbered HART B111; students who previously completed HART B111 may not repeat this course. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Environmental Studies.

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HART B235 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Identification in the Cinema

Fall 2025

This course is writing intensive. An introduction to the analysis of film and other lensed, time-based media through particular attention to the role of the spectator. Why do moving images compel our fascination? How exactly do spectators relate to the people, objects, and places that appear on the screen? Wherein lies the power of images to move, attract, repel, persuade, or transform their viewers? Students will be introduced to film theory through the rich and complex topic of identification. We will explore how points of view are framed by the camera in still photography, film, television, video games, and other media. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art and Film Studies. Fulfills Film Studies Introductory or Theory course requirement. This course was formerly numbered HART B110; students who previously completed HART B110 may not repeat this course.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Film Studies; Visual Studies.

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HART B275 Museum Studies: History, Theory, Practice

Fall 2025

Using the museums of Philadelphia as field sites, this course provides an introduction to the theoretical and practical aspects of museum studies and the important synergies between theory and practice. Students will learn: the history of museums as institutions of recreation, education and leisure; how the museum itself became a symbol of power, prestige and sometimes alienation; debates around the ethics and politics of collecting objects of art, culture and nature; and the qualities that make an exhibition effective (or not). By visiting exhibitions and meeting with a range of museum professionals in art, anthropology and science museums, this course offers a critical perspective on the inner workings of the museum as well as insights into the "new museology." Not open to first-year students. Enrollment preference given to minors in Museum Studies. This course was formerly numbered HART B281; students who previously completed HART B281 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Museum Studies; Visual Studies.

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HART B276 Topics in Museum Studies

Not offered 2025-26

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B248.

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HART B310 Topics in Medieval Art

Section 001 (Fall 2025): Kings, Caliphs, and Emperors: Images of Authority

Fall 2025, Spring 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Current topic description: This course investigates how notions of political and social authority were conveyed through the visual and material cultures of Byzantium, the Islamic world, and western Christendom during the late eleventh to late thirteenth centuries when these groups experienced an unprecedented degree of cross-cultural exposure as a result of Crusader incursions in the eastern Mediterranean. Particular attention is paid to the production of hybrid monuments and objects that interwove artistic styles and visual languages from multiple cultural sources. Prerequisites: An introductory course in the History of Art, Medieval Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, or another relevant field at the 100- or 200-level is recommended. Students interested in the course who lack the recommended background are welcome to contact the instructor to discuss.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Growth and Structure of Cities; History.

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HART B320 Topics in Chinese Art

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Critical Probs: Ritual Bronze
Section 001 (Spring 2025): Chinese Calligraphy
Section 001 (Fall 2025): Chinese Painting
Section 001 (Spring 2026): Logistics/Space/Ancient China

Fall 2025, Spring 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Current topic description: This course explores Chinese landscape painting as a distinctive and self-contained artistic tradition, one without a direct counterpart in the Western canon. Adopting theoretical, material, and historical perspectives, it considers the tradition both within its native discursive frameworks and through an intercultural lens. Key questions include, but are not limited to: Does Chinese landscape painting reflect a unique conception of nature? How has it been shaped and reshaped over time, and by what forces? How has it been received and interpreted in the West? The course combines seminar discussions of critical concepts and methodologies with the development of individual research projects and hands-on engagement with original works.

Current topic description: Topology, the study of spatial properties and relationships, has rarely been applied to the analysis of art. This graduate seminar investigates the diverse visual logics of space-architectural, pictorial, and otherwise-in Chinese art across a range of genres, media, materials, and cultural contexts. By examining how space is constructed and perceived, the course aims to illuminate its significance in ancient Chinese thought and practice. A workshop format will be incorporated to support the development of original student research projects.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: East Asian Languages & Culture; East Asian Languages Cultures.

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HART B330 Topics in Renaissance and Baroque Art

Not offered 2025-26

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B323.

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HART B340 Topics in Material Culture

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Ornament
Section 001 (Spring 2025): Textile Dyes

Spring 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B345.

Current topic description: TBA

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Museum Studies.

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HART B346 The History of London Since the Eighteenth Century

Not offered 2025-26

Selected topics of social, literary, and architectural concern in the history of London, emphasizing London since the 18th century. This course was formerly numbered HART B355; students who previously completed HART B355 may not repeat this course. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Growth and Structure of Cities.

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HART B350 Topics in Modern Art

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Postwar Painting
Section 001 (Spring 2026): Caribbean Art on the World Stage

Spring 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Current topic description: TBA

Course does not meet an Approach

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HART B365 Exhibiting Africa: Art, Artifact and New Articulations

Spring 2026

At the turn of the 20th century, the Victorian natural history museum played an important role in constructing and disseminating images of Africa to the Western public. The history of museum representations of Africa and Africans reveals that exhibitions-both museum exhibitions and "living" World's Fair exhibitions- has long been deeply embedded in politics, including the persistent "othering" of African people as savages or primitives. While paying attention to stereotypical exhibition tropes about Africa, we will also consider how art museums are creating new constructions of Africa and how contemporary curators and conceptual artists are creating complex, challenging new ways of understanding African identities.This course was formerly numbered HART B279; students who previously completed HART B279 may not repeat this course.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Anthropology; Museum Studies; Visual Studies.

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HART B370 Topics in History & Theory of Photography

Section 001 (Spring 2026): Race & Identity in the Photographic Archive

Spring 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art. This course was formerly numbered HART B308.

Current topic description: This course focuses on constructions, representations and interpretations of racial and social identities within the history of lensed media.  To this end, we will consider critical, historical and theoretical approaches that seek to problematize the racial, cultural and political matrices through which identity has historically been constructed and represented in photography and film.  Throughout the course, we will ground our analysis in a consideration of a range of photographic media and genres from the daguerreotype to the polaroid, from landscape photography to the portrait.  The goal of this course is to engage with an array of aesthetic, historical and theoretical texts that will enrich our critical interrogations of a medium that continues to shape the ideological contours of the present. Class work will be supplemented by visits to Special Collections and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Assignments will include short response papers that will scaffold a final research paper.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Growth and Structure of Cities.

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HART B375 Topics in Contemporary Art

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Latin American Conceptualisms
Section 001 (Spring 2026): Visual Culture & the Holocaust
Section 002 (Spring 2026): Latin American Conceptualisms

Spring 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art. This course was formerly numbered HART B380.

Current topic description: TBA

Current topic description: This seminar explores a variety of Latin American artistic approaches to conceptual practice in the 1960s and 1970s.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Growth and Structure of Cities.

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HART B376 Topics in Interpretation and Theory

Section 001 (Spring 2025): Affect, Art, & Psychoanalysis

Not offered 2025-26

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Course does not meet an Approach

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HART B380 Topics in Film Studies

Section 001 (Spring 2025): Digital Media Art
Section 001 (Fall 2025): Ecologies of Empire:Western in Contemporary Cinema
Section 002 (Fall 2025): Art & Film in Philadelphia

Fall 2025

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art and Film Studies. This course was formerly numbered HART B334.

Current topic description: This course will consider the ways that films of the past four decades interrogate the myths and representations of the American west.  Our engagement with films by Robert Altman, Kelly Reichardt, Jordan Peele, Alejandro Gonzáles Iñaritu, Jane Campion, Chloe Zhao and others will be informed by readings in post-colonial, feminist and critical theory.  Assignments include short response papers that will scaffold a final research paper.

Current topic description:This course will explore the vibrant contemporary art world of the city of Philadelphia-a city uniquely positioned to attract artists with its many top-tier fine art schools, world-class museums, relatively affordable living and studio spaces, and thriving network of artist-run galleries and exhibition spaces.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Film Studies; Visual Studies.

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HART B398 Senior Conference I

This course is open only to History of Art senior majors; permission of the instructors is required for registration. A critical review of the discipline of art history in preparation for the senior thesis. Capstone in the major; culminates in the senior thesis proposal.

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HART B399 Senior Conference II

This course is open only to History of Art senior majors; permission of the instructors is required for registration. A seminar for the discussion of senior thesis research and such theoretical and historical concerns as may be appropriate. Interim oral reports. Capstone in the major; culminates in the senior thesis.

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HART B403 Supervised Work

Advanced students may do independent research under the supervision of a faculty member whose special competence coincides with the area of the proposed research. Consent of the supervising faculty member and of the major adviser is required.

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HART B420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

This course provides students a forum in which to ground, frame and discuss their hands-on work in museums, galleries, archives or collections. Whether students have arranged an internship at a local institution or want to pursue one in the Bryn Mawr College Collections, this course will provide a framework for these endeavors, coupling praxis with theory supported by readings from the discipline of Museum Studies. The course will culminate in a final presentation, an opportunity to reflect critically on the internship experience. Prior to taking the course, students will develop a Praxis Learning Plan through the Career and Civic Engagement office. All students will share a set syllabus, common learning objectives and readings, but will also be able to tailor those objectives to the specific museum setting or Special Collections project in which they are involved. Note: Students are eligible to take up to two Praxis Fieldwork Seminars or Praxis Independent Studies during their time at Bryn Mawr.

Counts Toward: Museum Studies; Praxis Program.

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HART B425 Praxis III

Students may register for this course with approval of a faculty supervisor in conjunction with internship projects in the college's collections and other art institutions in the region.

Counts Toward: Praxis Program.

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HART B610 Topics in Medieval Art

Section 001 (Fall 2025): Kings, Caliphs, and Emperors

Fall 2025

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B620 Topics in Chinese Art

Section 001 (Spring 2025): Rethinking Chinese Caligraphy
Section 001 (Fall 2025): Chinese Painting
Section 001 (Spring 2026): Logistics/Space/Ancient China

Fall 2025, Spring 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor. This course was formerly numbered HART B639.

Current topic description: This course explores Chinese landscape painting as a distinctive and self-contained artistic tradition, one without a direct counterpart in the Western canon. Adopting theoretical, material, and historical perspectives, it considers the tradition both within its native discursive frameworks and through an intercultural lens. Key questions include, but are not limited to: Does Chinese landscape painting reflect a unique conception of nature? How has it been shaped and reshaped over time, and by what forces? How has it been received and interpreted in the West? The course combines seminar discussions of critical concepts and methodologies with the development of individual research projects and hands-on engagement with original works.

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HART B630 Topics in Renaissance Art

Not offered 2025-26

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B640 Topics in Material Culture

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Ornament

Spring 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor. This course was formerly numbered HART B646.

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HART B646 The History of London Since the Eighteenth Century

Not offered 2025-26

Selected topics of social, literary, and architectural concern in the history of London, emphasizing London since the 18th century. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B650 Topics in Modern Art

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Reconceiving Abstraction

Not offered 2025-26

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B675 Topics in Contemporary Art

Section 001 (Spring 2026): Visual Culture & the Holocaust

Spring 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B680. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

Current topic description: TBA

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HART B676 Topics: Interpretation and Theory

Section 001 (Spring 2025): Affect, Art, & Psychoanalysis

Not offered 2025-26

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B651. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B680 Topics in Film Studies

Section 001 (Spring 2025): Digital Media Art
Section 001 (Fall 2025): Art & Film in Philadelphia

Fall 2025

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B661. Open to graduate students, AB/MA candidates, or by permission of the instructor.

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HART B699 Advanced Research Methods

Spring 2026

This is a workshop designed to support graduate students in the History of Art in independent research and writing projects at any stage, including MA theses, preliminary exams, researching and writing a dissertation prospectus, or writing drafts of dissertation chapters. May be taken more than once for credit; mandatory for graduate students beyond coursework stage except by permission of primary advisor.

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HART B701 Supervised Work

Fall 2025, Spring 2026

Supervised Work

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AFST B202 Black Queer Diaspora

Fall 2025

This interdisciplinary course explores over two decades of work produced by and about Black Queer Diasporic communities throughout the circum-Atlantic world. While providing an introduction to various artists and intellectuals of the Black Queer Diaspora, this course examines the viability of Black Queer Diaspora world-making praxis as a form of theorizing. We will interrogate the transnational and transcultural mobility of specific Black Queer Diasporic forms of peacemaking, erotic knowledge productions, as well as the concept of "aesthetics" more broadly. Our aim is to use the prism of Blackness/Queerness/Diaspora to highlight the dynamic relationship between Black Diaspora Studies and Queer Studies. By the end of this course students will have a strong understanding of how systems of power work to restrict the freedoms of Black Queer and Trans communities, and how Black LGBTQ people have lived, organized, and created in spite of and in response to these oppressions. This interdisciplinary undergraduate upper-level course will utilize academic texts accompanied by poetry, fiction, film, television, and visual art to understand Black Queer and Trans subjectivities.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender & Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; History of Art.

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ANTH B356 The Politics of Public Art

Not offered 2025-26

In this class we will explore the politics of public art. While we will look at the political messaging of public art, we will also seek to understand how public art, through its integration into a social geography, has a political impact beyond its meaning. We will see how art claims public space and structures social action, how art shapes social groups, and how art channels economic flows or government power. By tracing the ways that art is situated in public space, we will examine how art enters into urban contest and global inequality. Class activity will include exploration of public art and students will be introduced to key concepts of urban spatial analysis to help interrogate this art. One 200-level course in Social Sciences, Humanities, or Arts fields, or permission of the instructor

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ANTH B368 The Anthropology of Art

Spring 2026

The idea that "art is what makes us human" has a long lineage and is a key concept of enlightenment philosophy. The anthropology of art historically drew inspiration from this idea, with anthropologists arguing that creative expression was a universal feature of human society - proof of universal human equality. But if art is evidence of humanity's common creative drive, art has also often been a profound site of inequality - the development of art was closely connected to colonial exploitation, racial segregation, gendered violence, and contemporary gentrification. In this course we will draw on anthropological scholarship to investigate this tension between art as a feature of common humanity and art as a site for the production of difference. If art makes us human, does some art make some of us more human than others? Prerequisite: Sophomore standing (minimum of at least 8 units) or higher.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: History of Art.

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ARCH B102 Introduction to Classical Archaeology

Spring 2026

A historical survey of the archaeology and art of Greece, Etruria, and Rome.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Classical Culture and Society; Classical Studies; History of Art; Museum Studies.

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ARCH B125 Classical Myths in Art and in the Sky

Spring 2026

This course explores Greek and Roman mythology using an archaeological and art historical approach, focusing on the ways in which the traditional tales of the gods and heroes were depicted, developed and transmitted in the visual arts such as vase painting and architectural sculpture, as well as projected into the natural environment.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Classical Culture and Society; History of Art; Museum Studies.

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ARCH B204 Animals in the Ancient Greek World

Not offered 2025-26

This course focuses on perceptions of animals in ancient Greece from the Geometric to the Classical periods. It examines representations of animals in painting, sculpture, and the minor arts, the treatment of animals as attested in the archaeological record, and how these types of evidence relate to the featuring of animals in contemporary poetry, tragedy, comedy, and medical and philosophical writings. By analyzing this rich body of evidence, the course develops a context in which participants gain insight into the ways ancient Greeks perceived, represented, and treated animals. Juxtaposing the importance of animals in modern society, as attested, for example, by their roles as pets, agents of healing, diplomatic gifts, and even as subjects of specialized studies such as animal law and animal geographies, the course also serves to expand awareness of attitudes towards animals in our own society as well as that of ancient Greece.

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ARCH B240 Archaeology and History of Ancient Mesopotamia

Not offered 2025-26

A survey of the material culture of ancient Mesopotamia, modern Iraq, from the earliest phases of state formation (circa 3500 B.C.E.) through the Achaemenid Persian occupation of the Near East (circa 331 B.C.E.). Emphasis will be on art, artifacts, monuments, religion, kingship, and the cuneiform tradition. The survival of the cultural legacy of Mesopotamia into later ancient and Islamic traditions will also be addressed.

Writing Attentive

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: History of Art.

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ARCH B252 Pompeii

Not offered 2025-26

Introduces students to a nearly intact archaeological site whose destruction by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E. was recorded by contemporaries. The discovery of Pompeii in the mid-1700s had an enormous impact on 18th- and 19th-century views of the Roman past as well as styles and preferences of the modern era. Informs students in classical antiquity, urban life, city structure, residential architecture, home decoration and furnishing, wall painting, minor arts and craft and mercantile activities within a Roman city.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Classical Languages; Classical Studies; Classics; Growth and Structure of Cities; History of Art; Museum Studies.

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ARCH B254 Cleopatra

Not offered 2025-26

This course examines the life and rule of Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Ptolemaic Egypt, and the reception of her legacy in the Early Roman Empire and the western world from the Renaissance to modern times. The first part of the course explores extant literary evidence regarding the upbringing, education, and rule of Cleopatra within the contexts of Egyptian and Ptolemaic cultures, her relationships with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, her conflict with Octavian, and her death by suicide in 30 BCE. The second part examines constructions of Cleopatra in Roman literature, her iconography in surviving art, and her contributions to and influence on both Ptolemaic and Roman art. A detailed account is also provided of the afterlife of Cleopatra in the literature, visual arts, scholarship, and film of both Europe and the United States, extending from the papal courts of Renaissance Italy and Shakespearean drama, to Thomas Jefferson's art collection at Monticello and Joseph Mankiewicz's 1963 epic film, Cleopatra.

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ARCH B301 Greek Vase-Painting

Fall 2025

This course is an introduction to the world of painted pottery of the Greek world, from the 10th to the 4th centuries B.C.E. We will interpret these images from an art-historical and socio-economic viewpoint. We will also explore how these images relate to other forms of representation. Prerequisite: one course in classical archaeology or permission of instructor.

Counts Toward: Classical Studies; Classics; History of Art.

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ARCH B501 Greek Vase Painting

Fall 2025

This course is an introduction to the world of painted pottery of the Greek world, from the 10th to the 4th centuries B.C.E. We will interpret these images from an art-historical and socio-economic viewpoint. We will also explore how these images relate to other forms of representation. Prerequisite: one course in classical archaeology or permission of instructor.

Counts Toward: Classical Studies; Classics; History of Art.

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CITY B190 Histories of the Built Environment

Spring 2026

This course studies the city as a three-dimensional artifact. A variety of factors, geography, economic and population structure, politics, planning, and aesthetics are considered as determinants of urban form.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Environmental Studies; History of Art.

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CITY B253 Before Modernism: Architecture and Urbanism of the 18th and 19th Centuries

Spring 2026

The course frames the topic of architecture before the impact of 20th century Modernism, with a special focus on the two prior centuries - especially the 19th - in ways that treat them on their own terms rather than as precursors of more modern technologies and forms of expression. The course will integrate urbanistic and vernacular perspectives alongside more familiar landmark exemplars. Key goals and components of the course will include attaining a facility within pertinent bibliographical and digital landscapes, formal analysis and research skills exercised in writing projects, class field-trips, and a nuanced mastery of the narratives embodied in the architecture of these centuries.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: History of Art.

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CITY B254 History of Modern Architecture

Fall 2025

A survey of the development of modern architecture since the 18th century.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: History of Art.

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CITY B306 Advanced Fieldwork Techniques: Places in Time

Not offered 2025-26

A hands-on workshop for research into the histories of places, intended to bring students into contact with some of the raw materials of architectural and urban history. A focus will be placed on historical images and texts, and on creating engaging informational experiences that are transparent to their evidentiary basis.

Counts Toward: History of Art.

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CITY B377 Topics in Modern Architecture

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Multiplicity & Singularity in later 19th C. Archit
Section 001 (Fall 2025): Queer Pedagogies

Fall 2025

This is a topics course on modern architecture. Topics vary.

Current topic description: This course investigates the city using queer and trans theoretical frameworks to offer alternative ways of knowing, sensing, and representing the built environment. Classes will focus on key texts of gender, sexuality, and queer history and theory, and also include site-specific engagements with queer/trans Philadelphia.

Counts Toward: Environmental Studies; History of Art.

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CITY B378 Formative Landscapes: The Architecture and Planning of American Collegiate Campuses

Fall 2025

The campus and buildings familiar to us here at the College reflect a long and rich design conversation regarding communicative form, architectural innovation, and orchestrated planning. This course will explore that conversation through varied examples, key models, and shaping conceptions over time.

Counts Toward: History of Art.

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COML B213 Theory in Practice: Critical Discourses in the Humanities

Spring 2026

What is a postcolonial subject, a queer gaze, a feminist manifesto? And how can we use (as readers of texts, art, and films) contemporary studies on animals and cyborgs, object-oriented ontology, zombies, storyworlds, neuroaesthetics? By bringing together the study of major theoretical currents of the 20th century and the practice of analyzing literary works in the light of theory, this course aims at providing students with skills to use literary theory in their own scholarship. The selection of theoretical readings reflects the history of theory (psychoanalysis, structuralism, narratology), as well as the currents most relevant to the contemporary academic field: Post-structuralism, Post-colonialism, Gender Studies, and Ecocriticism. They are paired with a diverse range of short stories across multiple language traditions (Poe, Kafka, Camus, Borges, Calvino, Morrison, Djebar, Murakami, Ngozi Adichie) that we discuss along with our study of theoretical texts. We will discuss how to apply theory to the practice of interpretation and of academic writing, and how theoretical ideas shape what we are reading. The class will be conducted in English, with an additional hour taught by the instructor of record in the target language for students wishing to take the course for language credit.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Africana Studies; East Asian Languages & Culture; English; French and Francophone Studies; German and German Studies; History of Art; Italian and Italian Studies; Philosophy; Russian; Spanish.

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ENGL B205 Introduction to Film

Spring 2026

This course is intended to provide students with the tools of critical film analysis. Through readings of images and sounds, sections of films and entire narratives, students will cultivate the habits of critical viewing and establish a foundation for focused work in film studies. The course introduces formal and technical units of cinematic meaning and categories of genre and history that add up to the experiences and meanings we call cinema. Although much of the course material will focus on the Hollywood style of film, examples will be drawn from the history of cinema. Attendance at weekly screenings is mandatory.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Film Studies; History of Art; Visual Studies.

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GERM B223 Topics in German Cultural Studies

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Gender and Artificial Life

Not offered 2025-26

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Taught in English.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; History; History of Art.

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GSEM B608 Material Geologies

Not offered 2025-26

This course mobilizes a humanistically informed approach to the study of geological materials, with a focus on late antique and medieval understandings of stones, minerals, metals, and land formation(s). Readings will encompass current perspectives on the diverse epistemologies of geology in the pre-modern world, from the magical and medicinal properties of gems, to the relation of stone and earth to concepts of empire, to mythologies of landscape and geomorphology. Students will explore primary textual sources such as ancient and medieval magical treatises, travel literature, and lapidaries, including works by Pliny the Elder, Procopius, Paul the Silentiary, and Michael Psellos. The course will also foreground visual and material culture, introducing students to both conventional and innovative methodologies and theoretical frameworks for exploring human understandings of the natural world from an interdisciplinary perspective. Students will work with Bryn Mawr's outstanding collection of geological samples and will learn fundamentals of mineral identification and crystallography. Final projects are expected to build from students' primary research interests and disciplinary investments. Course enrollment is limited to graduate students in the departments of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology; Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies; and History of Art.

Counts Toward: Classical & Near Eastern Arch; Classical Studies; History of Art.

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GSEM B619 Death and Beyond

Not offered 2025-26

The question of what happens after the moment of death has always fascinated humanity - at one moment there is a living person, the next only a corpse; where did the person go? Every culture struggles with these questions of death and afterlife - what does it mean to die and what happens after death? This seminar will examine a variety of types of evidence - archaeological, poetic, and philosophical - to uncover ideas of death and afterlife in some of the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world, with particular attention to the similarities and differences between ideas of death and beyond in the cultures of Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. Van Gennep's model of death as a rite de passage provides the basic structure for the class, which is divided into three sections, each concerned with one section of the transition: Dying - leaving the world of the living; Liminality - the transition between the worlds; and Afterlife - existence after death. This anthropological model allows us to analyze the different discourses about death and afterlife.

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GSEM B624 Greek Tragedy in Performance

Not offered 2025-26

In this seminar we will approach Greek dramatic texts from two angles: theoretically and experientially. On the one hand, we will be reading (in English translation) the tragedies of the three great playwrights of Classical Athens-Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides-while examining their treatment of myth, systems of metaphor and imagery, and the role of the chorus, as well as the relevance of Greek tragedy for subsequent centuries down to the present day. Special attention will be given to such themes as fate and predestination; relation between mortals and immortals; disability; euthanasia; slavery; and the impact of war on women and children. On the other, concurrent with our textual analysis, we will be reading Constantin Stanislavski, Michael Chekhov and other modern theater theorists. We will be applying these acting techniques to the texts in practice (i.e., performing them in class!) as we ask the question, What can be gained from stepping inside the plays and trying them on? No prior acting experience is necessary: just a curiosity about bringing ancient texts to life through the medium of one's body!

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GSEM B625 Dots and Loops: Form and Aesthetics Across Time and Media

Fall 2025

Though it has long been at the heart of aesthetic criticism, the subject of form as an axis of methodological inquiry has regained conspicuous popularity in recent years. Scholars working across, and at the intersection of, various media--including but not limited to material culture, visual art, sound, film, and literature--have been thinking through the ways that form both informs and is informed by what were considered its various antitheses, such as history, politics, and the material archive. The presumed extrication of external "context" was integral to a hermeneutic of form. This was a driving factor, for instance, in nineteenth-century formalism, used to construct coherent narratives surrounding Classical Antiquity through archaeological and art historical understandings of ornament and architecture. These interests continued with the inception of Russian literary Formalism in the early twentieth century, and then French narratology of the midcentury, for whom Homeric form was particularly important. This seminar will examine the various modes of formalist analysis that have emerged in contemporary criticism and their relationships to the formalisms that have come before, studying them alongside artworks across media and through various global histories. How can form speak across Art History, Classics, and Archaeology and to projects that vary widely in their temporal and geographic scopes, we will ask? What does attention to form yield for interdisciplinary scholars, specifically? What are the scope and limits of thinking with lines, dots, loops, circles, squares, parabolas, and shapes of any kind?

Counts Toward: Classical & Near Eastern Arch; Classical Studies; Classics; Classics; History of Art.

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GSEM B652 Interdepartmental Seminar: History and Memory

Not offered 2025-26

The seminar will begin by establishing the categories of history and memory, as they have been constituted across the humanistic disciplines, defining and refining the epistemological and ontological distinctions between the two. Readings will be drawn first from the writings of Nietzsche and Freud and then move to the work of Barthes, Caruth, Connerton, Foucault, Guha, Gundaker, La Capra, Margolit, Nora, Sebald, Todorov, and Yerushalmi. Once a grounding context is established, the second half of the seminar will be organized around a set of categories, ranging from the material to the theoretical, through which we will continue our explorations in history and memory, among them, the following: trauma, witness, archive, document, evidence, monument, memorial, relic, trace. It is here that we would each draw specifically on our own disciplinary formations and call upon students to do the same. The seminar would, of course, be open to all students in the graduate group.

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ITAL B218 Early-Modern Intersections: A New Italian Renaissance

Not offered 2025-26

The period or movement commonly referred to as the Renaissance remains one of the great iconic moments of global history: a time of remarkable innovation within artistic and intellectual culture, and a period still widely regarded as the crucible of modernity. Although lacking a political unity and being constantly colonized by European Empires, Italy was the original heartland of the Renaissance, and home to some of its most powerful and enduring figures, such as Leonardo and Michelangelo in art, Petrarch and Ariosto in literature, Machiavelli in political thought. This course provides an overview of Italian culture from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century by adopting a cross-cultural, intersectional, and inter-disciplinary approach. The course places otherness at the center of the picture rather than at its margins, with the main aim to look at pivotal events and phenomena (the rise of Humanism, courtly culture, the canonization of the language), not only from the point of view of its protagonists but also through the eyes of its non-male, non-white, non-Christian, and non-heterosexual witnesses. The course ultimately challenges traditional accounts of the Italian Renaissance by crossing also disciplinary boundaries, since it examines not only literary, artistic, and intellectual history, but also material culture, cartography, science, technology, and history of food and fashion. All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students seeking Italian credits will complete their assignments in the target language.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; History; History of Art.

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ITAL B221 What is Aesthetics? Theories on Art, Imagination, and Poetry

Not offered 2025-26

This course investigates how global thinkers, poets, and artists reflected in their works on the roles and powers of art, poetry, and human creativity. The course approaches this theme through a cross-cultural and trans-historical approach, which encompasses the Italian Humanism, which argued for the first time for the importance of aesthetic knowledge, as well as the Age of Enlightenment, which founded 'aesthetics' as a specific scientific discipline. Readings from these writers will show how artistic products, human imagination, and poetry are not just light-hearted activities but powerful cognitive tools which can reveal aspects of human history. If the human being is deemed to be a combination of reason and feeling - soul and body - art and poetry, which border both the rational and irrational realms, appear the most appropriate scientific tool to reveal the human essence and its destiny. The discussion will focus on pivotal global writers and philosophers such as Giambattista Vico and Giacomo Leopardi, who pioneered aesthetic, historical, literary, and anthropological ideas which are still crucial in the current theoretical debate on arts and poetry. All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students will have an additional hour of class for Italian credit.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: German and German Studies; History; History of Art; M Eastern/C Asian/N African St; Middel Eastern Central Asian; Philosophy.

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ITAL B240 Philadelphia the Global City: The Italian Legacy across Time

Fall 2025

This course investigates the history and evolution of Philadelphia as a globalized and multi-ethnic city, using as a case study for this analysis the impact and legacy of transnational Italian culture across the centuries. By adopting a cross-cultural, trans-historical, and interdisciplinary approach, the course explores the influence that - along with and in intersection with many other cultural inputs - also Italian arts and cultures have exerted on the city, making it become the cosmopolitan and transnational urban environment that it is today. Throughout the centuries and way before Italy even started existing as a state, Philadelphians traveled to the peninsula and brought back objects to display in emerging cultural institutions or studied the country's art and architecture styles to shape the evolving aspect of the city. Simultaneously, incoming immigration formed new neighborhoods - such as South Philly, home to the Italian Market - and Italian figures came to prominence and became part of the social fabric of the city. Nowadays, many non-profit organizations work to preserve the traces that Italian migrants left within Philadelphia's multi-ethnic urban environment as well as to extend the city's global profile and celebrate its heritage and diversity. Through specific field trips, on-site experiential activities, and forms of civic engagement this course highlights both the enduring fascination of Philadelphians with Italy (or with the idea thereof) across the centuries and the role that the Italian Diaspora played in the development of the city. The course ultimately challenges geographical, chronological, and cultural boundaries by showing how places, arts, identities that today are perceived as 'American' have in most cases an intersectional, multi-ethnic, and cross-cultural history to tell. This course will be taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program. All readings and class discussion will be in English, and no knowledge of Italian is required. Students seeking Italian credits will complete their assignments in the target language.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Growth and Structure of Cities; History; History of Art; Museum Studies; Praxis Program.

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ITAL B326 Love, Magic, and Medicine: Poetical-Philosophical Bonds

Not offered 2025-26

The course investigates how the concepts of love, magic, and medicine emerged and developed throughout early modernity and beyond. In exploring the fields of Philosophy, Medicine, and Magic, global thinkers, poets, and artists drew not only from classical sources, but were also deeply influenced by a wide range of models, such as fictional ancient sources, Islamic philosophy, and the Jewish Kabbalah. In this interesting syncretism, love was considered as an inspiration experienced by the entire universe, and magical practice was understood as a philosophy in action, which had the power to establish a bond of a loving nature between the different realms of reality. Magicians were therefore conceived as wise philosophers capable of joining this network of correspondences and controlling them (art)ificially. As a result, the figures of poets and artists interestingly merged into those of magicians of physicians, and poetry was conceived both as a magic able to arouse mental images stronger than real visions, and as a medicine able to exert a mental and physiological agency on the body. The course will approach these themes through a multi-disciplinary and trans-historical approach, which will include in the discussion a wide variety of figures, such as global early modern and modern philosophers, physicians, poets, artists, and composers.All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students will have an additional hour of class for Italian credit.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Classical Culture and Society; Classical Languages; Classical Studies; Health Studies; Health Studies; History; History of Art; M Eastern/C Asian/N African St; Middel Eastern Central Asian; Philosophy.

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MEST B210 The Art and Architecture of Islamic Spirituality

Not offered 2025-26

This course examines how Muslim societies across time and space have used art and architecture in different ways to express and understand inner dimensions of spirituality and mysticism. Topics to be studied include: the calligraphical remnants of the early Islamic period; inscriptions found on buildings and gravestones; the majestic architecture of mosques, shrines, seminaries, and Sufi lodges; the brilliant arts of the book; the commemorative iconography and passion plays of Ashura devotion; the souvenir culture of modern shrine visitation; and the modern art of twenty-first century Sufism. Readings include works from history, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, and the history of art and architecture.

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SPAN B312 Latin American and Latino Art and the Question of the Masses

Fall 2025

The course examines the ways in which Latin American and Latino texts (paintings, murals, sculptures, and some narratives) construct "minor," "featureless" and "anonymous" characters, thus demarcating how and which members of society can and cannot advance a plot, act independently and/or be agents of change. By focusing the attention on what is de-emphasized, we will explore how artistic works, through their form, are themselves political actors in the social life of Latin America, the US, and beyond. We will also consider the place of Latin American and Latino Art in the US imaginary and in institutions such as museums and galleries. Prerequisites: Course is taught in English. Students seeking Spanish credit must have taken at least one Spanish course at the 200-level, or received permission from instructor. Course does not meet an Approach. Counts toward Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies. Counts toward Museum Studies. Counts toward History of Art.

Writing Attentive

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: History of Art; International Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Museum Studies.

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