Upper-Division

Introduction to major issues of method and critique in study of art and visual culture. Focuses on understanding disciplinary and critical modes of scholarly inquiry in the visual arts, including role of historical research. Emphasizes intensive reading, discussion, and writing. HAVC 100A is a prerequisite for all History of Art and Visual Culture seminars.

Explores visual cultures of West Africa through time (Nok to present). Attention paid to relationships between peoples and impact of European/Arab presence on visual cultures. Prerequisite(s): HAVC 10 or HAVC 80 recommended.

Examination of visual cultures of Central Africa within a historical sequence from the Sanga archaeological excavations to contemporary easel painting.

In Africa, relationships exist between gender and visual culture. Course examines where categories come from, differences in men's and women's visual cultures, and how visual cultures teach, reinforce, and negotiate gender definitions. When are male/female boundaries crossed, and why?

Study of the built environment in Africa. The course explores the diversity of architectural types and how gender, politics, religion, and culture shape and are shaped by architectural spaces and how the natural environment shapes the built environment.

Examines contemporary arts in post-colonial Africa, 1960-present, including new popular cultural forms; arts resulting from new class and national structures; commodification of culture; Pan-Africanism; exhibitionism; and questions of destiny.

Considers contemporary art by African artists operating in metropolitan centers, as well as Afro-British, Afro-Caribbean, and African-American production. Topics are organized thematically and address constructing and deconstructing the idea of Africa; cultural authenticity; diaspora; Creolite and creolization; hybridity; cosmopolitanism; post-black; and globalism in the arts.

Using contemporary art and other visual materials, examines how select African cities are structured, imagined, and contested, and how migration, colonialism, race, ethnicity, and globalization inform their spatial politics. Draws from urban studies, political theory, memoire, anthropology, and visual studies.

An examination of the close relationship of religious traditions and the natural world in China, and its expression in visual representation. Particular emphasis on the ways in which competing groups sought to define or re-envision an understanding of the terrain.

Consideration of biographies and portraits in China as representations of human types and individuals, and the use of these representations as models for constructing lives. Attention to historical and social contexts, early times to present. Special focus on Chinese Buddhist traditions. A previous course that focuses on traditional China or Buddhist studies strongly recommended.

Examines material and conceptual phenomena of writing in Chinese visual culture. Focuses on the intersections of places and practices of writing through various inscribed sites, ranging from oracle bones, seals, and mountain facades to hand scrolls, architecture, and contemporary art.

Examines the history and significance of the subjects most prominent in Chinese painting since the Han Dynasty, focusing on the cultural factors that made landspace a fundamental value in the Chinese tradition and the methods whereby painters created pictorial equivalents.

Examines painting, photography, sculpture, film, mixed-media works, propaganda posters, and performance art from the mid-19th century to the contemporary period. Investigates how transcultural exchanges shaped the trajectory of Chinese arts; the roles new mediums played in changing Chinese art and national identity; the impact of politics on the development of visual culture; and the varied styles and movements that burgeoned since the post-Mao period. Course provides students with a firm understanding of the development of modern and contemporary Chinese art and visual culture within social, political, and historical contexts.

Introduces images, thoughts, and practices of bodies in Chinese culture. In China and Taiwan, the body is to be cherished, adorned, nourished, cultivated, and gazed upon, but also disciplined, altered, and controlled. Examines texts and images of the Chinese body in relation to religion, gender, ethnic politics, martial arts, sports, nationalism, food, medicine, and death. No knowledge of the Chinese language is required.

Deals with artistic responses to the forces of modernity, colonialism, industrialization and globalization in India during the 19th and 20th centuries. Addresses the complex and often painful climb toward re-establishing a truly Indian artistic identity. (Formerly Modernity and Nationalism in the Arts in India.)

South Asia is the home of many religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, and Sikhism). Introduces the role images (painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, film) play in shaping these diverse religious traditions.

Focuses on Hindu and Buddhist arts of ancient Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand). Materials covered include indigenous megalithic arts, stone sculptures, and monumental temple architecture such as Angkor Wat, Borobudur, Prambanan, and the Bayon.

Examines how photography was used in Southeast Asia to document the racial difference and the exotic Others under the regime of colonialism. Considers the role photography played in documenting the Vietnam-American War and how contemporary Southeast Asian-American artists challenge this photographic history in their art.

Consideration of the arts and architecture in Theravada Buddhist traditions in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Topics and themes include ritual, relics, visual narrative, mural painting, contemporary art, mass-meditation movement, and political protest.

Examines the respective national notions of modernity in the region through a comparative lens. How global capital flow and transnational cultural exchanges impact the production of arts of Southeast Asia and its diaspora. Themes and issues include: colonialism and art education; nationalism; identity politics; memory; trauma; gender; race; sexuality; and the body.

Focuses on Southeast Asian refugee visual culture in the United States. Themes and issues include: trauma; memory; the politics of race and ethnicity; gender and sexuality; and the politics of inclusion and exclusion from the nation-state.

Introduction to the study of Buddhist visual traditions, from their beginnings to the present day. Case studies examined with careful attention to historical, social and cultural contexts; particular emphasis on the relation of visual traditions to Buddhist practices.

Explores Buddhist imaginative worlds of the "pure lands": worlds in outer space, sacred mountains, internal states of mind. Study of related practices, including expression and representation of these concepts in paintings, scriptures, poetry, and built environments. Focus is on Chinese traditions.

Examination of interaction between image and ritual in Asian religious art. Case studies from different historical periods and geographical locations (e.g., China, Tibet, Japan, Indonesia, India). Examples include mandalas, ritual bronzes, tankas, sacred caves, temples, tea ceremonies, and calligraphy.

Combination of theoretical perspectives on narrative from literary criticism, rhetoric, folklore, and film theory with art historical focus on images (cave temples, stone reliefs on stupas, scrolls, dance-drama, etc.) from India, Pakistan, China, Japan, Cambodia, and Indonesia.

Examines 20th- and 21st-century architecture in the Asia Pacific. Examines how aesthetic, socio-political, economic, and technological networks have contributed to Asia Pacific's dynamic and experimental approaches to contemporary architecture.

Examines Asian American artists as well as representations of Asian Americans through U.S. history. Addresses such themes as migration and dislocation, race and identity, intergenerational relationships, origins and diasporas, and American foreign policies in Asia.

Many issues associated with contemporary artistic production and visual culture originated in the Middle Ages. Themes to be considered: role of secular art; women as artists and patrons; aesthetic attitudes; relationship between cultures in holy war, crusade, and pilgrimage.

Expressionism, agitprop, the Bauhaus, New Objectivity, attacks on modernism, National Socialist realism. Painting, sculpture, graphic art, and some architecture and film, studied in the context of political events from the eve of World War I to the end of World War II.

Lecture course focusing on the dynamics of art and politics in France, Britain, and to a lesser extent Spain, from 1750 to 1850. This period of dramatic social change gave rise to new conceptions of subjectivity, freedom, nationhood, and the public address of visual culture. (Formerly French Painting, 1780-1855.)

An exploration of the theoretical and practical or experiential applications of Jewish identity in European visual representation. Brief background on pre-emancipation textual and cultural issues followed by study of the Jewish subject and Jewish subjectivities in modernity.

The history of European books circa 500-1600, primarily medieval, illuminated manuscripts and the first years of printing. Focuses on the relationship between text and image. Topics include techniques of book production, the archeology of the book, and the life and travels of individual books. (Formerly course 191R.)

Examines images of war from 1400 to the present. Class discusses the many aspects of war while considering major painters of the last 600 years, including da Vinci, Rubens, Goya, Picasso. Class also discusses Callot, Marinetti, etc., and other media, including film, photography, and public monuments.

Consideration of how and why Europeans in Europe and Europeans and European-Americans in North America blended nature and human response between 1600 and the present in a variety of media and practices (painting, maps, photography, tourism, film, scouting, artist colonies).

Examines a select number of case studies from 1500-1900 to see how thinkers and makers relied upon science and art to help them understand the world, asking how have scientists and natural philosophers used art to make their claims more convincing, how have artists relied on scientific research to do the same, and what practices do they have in common.

Focuses on the public lives of printed pictures in Europe between 1789 and 1914. In lectures and in written assignments, the class analyzes how artists created works in multiple, which were then circulated by publishers and dealers and consumed by viewers across Europe. In-class discussions compare 19th-century print cultures to our current practices of engaging socially with digital images to see what each illuminates about the other.

Examines the places, spaces, practices, and representations of Paris in the 19th century. Tracing the changing face(s) of Paris by way of its literary and visual representations, students consider the experiences and constructions of the modern city.

Considers the painting and prints produced in Northern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. Major issues include the status of realism and classicism, the role of religion and religious reform, and the rise of popular imagery.

Examines the issues surrounding the technology and uses of printed images from the early Renaissance through the end of the early modern period. Topics may include the political, religious, and satirical uses of prints and the representation of women in prints.

Introduction to American visual arts: architecture, painting, photography, sculpture, and performance art, from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century. Explore social and political meanings of art and what art reveals about our nation's values and beliefs, in particular, gender and race.

Examines how American writers and artists negotiated complexities of U.S. society during the 19th century. Emphasis on issues ranging from women's rights to laissez-faire capitalism, and from Reconstruction to manifest destiny. Considers how the era's cultural products provided artists, patrons, and audiences with metaphorical coping strategies to counteract what Victorians perceived to be the period's overwhelming social and political changes.

Investigation of the role played by visual arts in fashioning the racial identities of European-Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos in the United States.

Taking the terms Chicano and Chicana as a critical framework, addresses cultural and conceptual themes in visual art production since 1970. Questions concerning aesthetics, identity, gender, and activism in painting, photography, murals, and installation art explored.

Examines the relationship between art and scientific inquiry in American visual culture from earliest European exploration through the 19th century, when new scientific theories and technological advancements challenged earlier modes of understanding vision, spirituality, and the physical world.

Explores critical debates concerned with the visualization of African-American identity. In the 21st century, we have seen a renewed interest in racial justice and a sense of urgency around eradicating the enduring scourge of intolerance and inequity. As a result, there is a great necessity to explore the complexities of race and representation. By surveying a range of visual forms—from narrative and documentary film, to Internet-based and print media—the course explores the current landscape of black cultural representation. Also looks at the intersection of gender, race, and sexuality as intersecting phenomena.

Examines how Pop Art and popular culture in the Untied Stateswere (re)formulated into public icons that challenged the visual and ideological associations between high and low art.

Modern art in Europe and America, 1848-1914. Consideration of painting, graphic arts, and sculpture in Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism (Symbolism) Art Nouveau, Fauvism, and Cubism as well as exploration of photography's changing status and influence.

Explores war, consumption and desire in the art of the 20th century. From Paris to New York, Cubism to Feminism, explores the relationship between the visual arts and intellectual movements such as psychoanalysis, existentialism, and phenomenology with particular attention to racial and sexual politics.

Surveys the art forms and critical ideas that have shaped artistic practice from the 1950s to the present, including an overview of the socio-political, economic, and cultural forces that inspire artists to articulate human experience in visual form. Examines how popular culture in the post-war United States became intertwined with visual art, forming into the artistic genre known as Pop Art. This important aesthetic shift challenged the political, ideological, and representational value systems that inform our understanding of so-called "high art."

Introduction to the histories of photography and the critical debates around different photographic genres such as medical photography, art photography, and political photography. Students will develop a critical language in order to analyze photographs while considering the importance of social and institutional contexts.

Through the study of historical and contemporary visual texts (from ethnography and portraiture to advertising and erotica), this course explores how photographic images of the body, while masquerading as natural, self-evident, or scientific, participate in highly coded sign systems that influence who looks at whom, how, when, and why.

An introductory examination of the writing about the issue of medium and media theory in visual culture. Technologies, discourses, and practices from all periods that use the comparison of media as a major approach to understanding the problems of the visual are highlighted. New media, film, television, video, traditional arts are also treated.

From the "happenings" of the late 1950s to contemporary ecological art, this course will examine temporary, site-specific projects of the U.S and Western Europe. Students will be introduced to theories of public art and the social production of space, and invited to explore practices that change the role of the audience, remake museum spaces, situate art in nature, or transform urban life.

Explores how theory can illuminate various forms of cultural production from art and cinema to popular and material cultures. Considers how scholars and visual producers utilize theory creatively and in the study of aesthetic objects and experiences.

Students explore art and technology produced for social change since 1960 within the context of major historical ruptures, such as the Vietnam War, the women's movement, environmental protection, AIDS activism, anti-capitalist, and international human rights movements.

Explores the world of museums in the age of digital technologies and the Internet. Key themes include digital repatriation, social media, interactivity, participation, net art, and digital aesthetics.

How are museums organized, categorized, visited? How are objects physically handled, documented, and displayed? Course explores various concepts upon which museum practices are based and the impact these concepts have on society and cultures.

Through critical readings, interactive assignments, and primary sources, this course explores cultural and political issues around data, emphasizing the impacts of relevant technologies and practices on art and visual culture. Sample topics: digital art, critical mapping, social media, and surveillance.

Focuses on contemporary experiments in artistic documentary practice, including photography and digital imagery, moving-image media, and artistic installations. Considers artistic case studies and leading theoretical and critical elaboration in relation to international cultures of documentary practice.

Through critical readings and primary sources, this course explores the historical and theoretical developments in the interactions of art, culture, nature, and technology. Sample topics include environmental art; media infrastructures; concepts of nature and the nonhuman; and climate change and visual culture.

Examines contemporary art visual culture in relation to climate havoc. Climate-change threats and impacts grow more widespread, frequent, and severe wreaking environmental havoc worldwide. In the absence of effective governance and international leadership in addressing adequate solutions, artists and activists are inventing and participating in creative strategies of consciousness-raising, mass mobilization, and ecologically sustainable modes of thinking and living. Seminar focuses on creative practices of climate justice, considering ecological transformation in relation to justice-oriented frameworks that both stress socio-political and economic inequities, and seek ways to rectify such inequalities. Also maps out new trajectories of practice and methodologies of scholarship at the convergence of art history, visual cultural studies, and climate breakdown.

Explores the history of campus design in North America. Traces the ways designers have used the campus for staging new ideas of education and work, stimulating social relations, and connecting architecture with the natural world. Emphasis is devoted to UCSC and the Silicon Valley tech campus.

The history of architecture and design along the California coast. Through a series of case studies selected from topics in twentieth century design, course explores the roles of designers in mediating relationships between infrastructure and landscape, technology and natural forces, ideas of the artificial and natural, as well as between humans and non-human species.

Explores how art and other visual cultural practices--like participatory mapping, data visualization, and image sharing--negotiate the material and social consequences of both sudden and slow-moving disasters. Emphasizes critical, activist, and regenerative methods of representation, collaboration, and response.

Integrates academic study with meaningful community service to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities. Projects may serve non-profit agencies, schools, or art/culture institutions. Enrollment is restricted to junior and senior history of art and visual culture majors and minors. Enrollment is by instructor permission.

Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Independent field study away from the campus. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Independent field study away from the campus. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Individual study in areas approved by sponsoring instructors. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Individual study in areas approved by sponsoring instructors. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.