ARTH 300 Art Historical Methods

• Tuesdays, 11:45am-2:15pm
• Online: Access through Moodle
• Instructor: Dr. John Potvin

This course will explore the history of art history as an intellectual and academic discipline as it has been shaped since the eighteenth century. It will consider how modern art history, as a project of the Enlightenment, established definitions, contexts, demands, and parameters for art and its language. It will investigate theories and methods which have come to dominate the field in more recent years. Feminism, sexuality and queer theory, critical race theory and post-colonialism, phenomenology, theories of material culture and design history, and identity politics are among those issues central to art history’s ever-expanding field.  The texts studied include works by some of the principal theoreticians, historians and critics from the eighteenth century to the present.  The goal of the course is to hone critical, visual and communication skills through an investigation of the ways in which art, its methods, evaluations, theories and histories form intersecting, imbricated and even opposing discourses and approaches.