An interdisciplinary approach to the study of the basic structures (gender, art within political sphere, and spiritual aspects of visual culture) and cultural institutions (initiations, closed associations, kingship, title association, etc.) around which the study of African visual culture revolves.
General Education Code
CC
An introduction to the art and architecture of East Asia, including China, India, Southeast Asia, and Japan. In order to achieve a fuller understanding of the arts of these countries a historical, cultural, and religious context is provided.
General Education Code
CC
Introduction to the study of religious currents and practices in China and their visual expression. In addition to religious art, topics include such pivotal matters as body concepts and practices, representations of the natural world, and logics of the built environment.
General Education Code
CC
Introduces the visual cultures of Southeast Asia. Topics include indigenous megalithic art, textiles, and jewelry, as well as Hindu and Buddhist art and architecture. Also considers shadow play and dance performance as alternative lenses to looking at ritual and visual narratives rendered on stone temples.
General Education Code
CC
Examination of the ways social, religious, and political patronage have affected the production and reception of art in the Indian subcontinent. The course is designed as a series of case studies from different periods of Indian history.
Instructor
Kirtana Thangavelu
General Education Code
IM
Explores the theme of memory, haunting, ghosts and the politics of erasure and remembrance in films made by Asian filmmakers and contemporary artists in Asia. Examines the intersecting themes of haunting, memory, and ghosts and how selected filmmakers and visual artists in Asia go about framing and unframing this topic in their work. The goal of the course is to see, through a comparative lens, how these selected filmmakers and artists treat the topic of specter and the politics of memory and erasure in their respective films from a national and transnational perspective.
General Education Code
CC
General survey of European art and architecture with a focus on the southern, Mediterranean ancient cultures. Course consists of a number of case studies of works from various periods from ancient to modern.
Instructor
Allan Langdale
General Education Code
IM
Survey of the visual and material products of European contact with Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas between 1500 and 1900 focused both on object-specific case studies and thematic discussions of contact, colonialism, appropriation, and the visual construction of race.
Instructor
Kailani Polzak
General Education Code
ER
Interdisciplinary investigation of the construction of race in the United States, tracing the impact of European art on American artistic production, exploring its influence on African-American art and culture, including the Harlem Renaissance, black internationalism, and the vibrant Negritude movement. Explores how a definable black aesthetic crystallized during the late 1950s-70s African anti-colonial, Civil Rights and Black Power eras, and continued to flourish through the 1990s—all of which gave rise to new artistic forms such as black queer, feminist, and conceptual art. Also studies the phenomenon of post-black art, popular visual culture, as well as discourses on African modernity and globalization.
General Education Code
ER
Explores the history of collecting and displaying art (museums, galleries, fairs) since the mid-19th century and the effect of institutional changes on aesthetic conventions. Follows the history from the origins of museums and collections to contemporary critiques of institutional exclusion and misrepresentation.
Instructor
Jennifer Gonzalez
General Education Code
IM
Examines the social, economic, and political significance of European and U.S. modernist art and architecture, moving from French realism to American minimalism. Provides the historical background and theoretical frameworks needed to make sense of modernist art and culture.
General Education Code
IM
Examines the origins and development of modern architecture, from the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution to the 20th Century and beyond. Buildings, urban plans, and works of art and design are discussed in relation to political, social, and cultural currents.
General Education Code
IM
Introduces the complex interplay between design--including architecture, art, engineering, and city planning--and conceptions of environment during the 20th Century in the American West.
General Education Code
PE-E
Explores recent methods and approaches in photography. Surveys significant aesthetic, conceptual, and theoretical shifts occurring in the photographic medium and related discourses. Special attention given to the current landscape of contemporary photography (1980-present).
General Education Code
IM
Overview of U.S. art and visual culture from the late 18th Century to the present. Examines art as evidence for understanding evolving beliefs and values of Americans. Explores the social and political meanings of art, and pays particular attention to how artists, patrons, and audiences have constructed nationalism, race, class, sexuality, and gender.
General Education Code
ER
Introduces students to major debates and practices in contemporary art from 1960 to the present. Not a strict chronological survey or exhaustive catalogue, the course attends to movements and theoretical frameworks that still fuel contemporary practice and criticism.
General Education Code
IM
As climate change grows more severe, artists and activists are creating strategies of consciousness-raising, mass mobilization, and sustainable living. This course investigates the convergence of climate justice and cultural politics, exploring imperatives for a just transition to a post-carbon future.
General Education Code
PE-E
Introduction to digital visual culture including critical and historical approaches to memes; social media and politics; and the many intersections of data, images, and society. Sample topics include: digital art, digital activism, and surveillance.
General Education Code
PE-T
The role that ancient art and visual culture play in constructing social identities, sustaining political agendas, and representing various cultural, ritual, and mythological practices in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, including the sociology of ancient cultures, mythology, religious studies, gender studies and history.
General Education Code
IM
The central role of visual communication in ancient Greek civilization: examines the construction of cultural, social, political, religious, and gender identities through material objects and rituals. Includes discussions of images of the public and private sphere, athletic and theatrical performances, mythology, pilgrimage, and magic.
Instructor
Maria Evangelatou
General Education Code
IM
The human body without clothing in European and European-American art and visual culture from ancient Greece to the present day. Among the themes to be addressed: gender, youth and age, sexuality and sexual preference, fecundity and potency, erotic art and pornography, primitivism and the naked body of the non-European. (Formerly HAVC 31, The Nude in the Western Tradition.)
Instructor
Maria Evangelatou
General Education Code
IM
Examines some of the most representative creations of Islamic visual culture from the 7th Century to the present in order to appreciate the richness of this tradition and its extensive influence on other cultures. Focuses on the social, political, and religious role of a variety of materials, from mosques, palaces, and gardens to visual narratives, ceremonies, dance, and contemporary films.
Instructor
Maria Evangelatou
General Education Code
CC
Selected aspects of art and architecture of the first peoples of the Americas, north, central, and south, from ca. 2000 B.C.E. to present. Societies to be considered may include Anasazi, Aztec, Inca, Northwest Coast, Maya, Navajo, Plains, and others.
General Education Code
ER
Through case studies of contemporary and historical practices, course examines the rich visual cultures of the United States and Canada. Students learn about the role artists play in resisting colonization and sustaining community knowledge.
General Education Code
ER
Introduces students to the work of Native American artists that either reflects environmental knowledge or which reacts against threats to natural resources. By studying current issues such as fossil fuel extraction, invasive species, and wildfires, students learn how artists contend with threats to their ancestral homelands and how art functions as a powerful medium for raising awareness of these challenges.
General Education Code
ER
Interdisciplinary course examines visual cultures of Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia from the archaeological past through contemporary periods.
Instructor
Stacy Kamehiro
General Education Code
CC
Focuses on critical oceanic studies as an artistic paradigm for creating digital technologies. Pacific Islander artists create digital art to preserve and revitalize cultural practices. Oceanic digital arts are a form of cultural reclamation and represent a growing artistic movement to archive knowledge for future generations in the face of climate disaster and cultural erasure. Students analyze Indigenous virtual art to understand the benefits and shortcomings of prioritizing technology for Native knowledge production/preservation within our ever-increasingly techno-mediated world.
Instructor
Nicole Furtado
The arts and visual cultures of selected cultures that developed outside the spheres of influence of major European and Asian civilizations, with an emphasis on the history and influence of colonialism in creating current ethnic and racial categories.
General Education Code
ER
Introduces the study of architecture and the built environment from a global perspective, focusing on architecture's relation to themes, such as ritual, power, the city, technology, and climate.
General Education Code
CC
Supervised study for undergraduates. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
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.
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.
General Education Code
IM
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.
Instructor
Yi Yi Mon (Rosaline) Kyo
General Education Code
IM
Instructor
Kirtana Thangavelu
Instructor
Kailani Polzak
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.
General Education Code
ER
Instructor
Jennifer Gonzalez
Instructor
Jennifer Gonzalez
Instructor
Maria Evangelatou
Instructor
Allan Langdale
Instructor
Stacy Kamehiro
Instructor
Stacy Kamehiro
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.
Introduces the visual studies discipline, providing students with an overview of the field's development, its primary texts, and its issues of central concern. Features intensive readings and student-led discussions.
Examines research methods and approaches in a variety of materials, cultures, periods, and subjects that are relevant in the discipline of visual studies. Discussions focus on research and readings by history of art and visual culture faculty who share practices, experiences, and advice.
Students work on grants for educational support, dissertation funding, or both; learn about effective, accessible, and equity-minded TA- and GSI-related pedagogy (including developing course content, logistics, assessment, and grading criteria); and cultivate professional skills in relation to the publication process, CV preparation, and gaining employment in academia and beyond. (Formerly Grant Writing.)
Devoted to grant-writing. Students work on composing and peer-reviewing research proposals, personal statements, bibliographies, CVs, and writing samples. Readings include literature on grant-writing and scholarly writing in the humanities.
Yoruba conceptions of visuality are explored and compared to seeing through Western eyes. Critical reading focuses on Western and Yoruba scholars' work on visualities and complementary theoretical writings on Yoruba aesthetics and philosophy.
Examines theories that attempt to explain iconoclasm, the willful destruction of religious or political objects, by applying the theory (including theories of cultural heritage) to various case studies. The universal aspect of iconoclasm and the differences in understanding and practice are explored.
Examines selected and changing topics in the visual studies of Asia. The specific topic varies with each offering to keep up with recent directions in scholarship.
Indian Buddhist sage-monks (arhats) are portrayed in China in ways that represent a remarkable variety of visual/historical/practice traditions. This seminar examines these depictions and explores the ranges of means and functions attached to this theme.
Begins with an analysis of photography and films capturing the Gandhian and Dalit movement in India. Students then read key Buddhist texts on engaged Buddhism, and look at the rise of engaged Buddhism in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and how it impacted modern and contemporary art in Southeast Asia and its diaspora.
Looks at the 18th-century connections of theories of beauty to practices of art-making, the production of knowledge about the natural world, and the construction of race. Students discuss not only the debates of this era but the impacts they have made on the study of visual culture.
Instructor
Kailani Polzak
Examines visual culture from 1500 to the present in conversation with texts about the relationship between material practices and water spaces. This aquatic focus allows us to learn together across a broad range of materials, periods, and geographies, calling into question static boundaries.
Instructor
Kailani Polzak
Investigates modern monuments (1750 to present) and the creation or maintenance of a nation, especially in terms of war and its immediate aftermath. Destruction or alteration of monuments and production of anti- or counter-monuments are also examined.
Focuses on recent scholarly approaches engaged with the representation of African-American culture and identity, with a specific emphasis in the visualization of blackness. Utilizing a cross-disciplinary approach, students explore the evolving critical discourses concerned with blackness and the human. (Formerly Topics in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture.)
Investigates the complex relationship between photography and history. Considers the evolving perceptions of photography's capacity to capture reality, the discursive means by which photographic truths are produced, and the utility of photographs as primary evidence.
Interdisciplinary approach to the study of democratic political theory of the last two decades and its relation to contemporary art practice with an emphasis on activist art, public art, and theories of speech and performance.
Instructor
Jennifer Gonzalez
Investigates how discursive systems racialized the sight of various racial and ethnic groups in 19th- and 20th-century U.S. society. Focuses on the construction and maintenance of racial values systems and on the historically specific ways in which an eclectic assortment of visual artifacts have been read by groups over time. Considers the visual and material implications of race-based sight.
Considers how visual culture intersects with environment. Considers how, in the age of neoliberal globalization, documentary and neo-conceptual practices confront the biopolitics of climate change; the financialization and rights of nature; climate refugees; and indigenous ecologies.
Examines and compares radical futurisms-Indigenous, Afro, Chicanx/Latinx, multispecies, Postcapitalist-and situates them in relation to experimental visual cultural, media, and aesthetic practices, asking critical and creative speculative questions about what comes after end-of-world narratives.
Focuses on what is commonly left out of architectural history: the ephemeral, informal, illegal, and uncertain. Topics include: anonymous and collective architecture; temporary interventions; everyday urbanism; and vestigial urban spaces. These topics are understood through theories of space as socially produced (Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, among others), and through cultural movements and manifestoes (Situationist International, Aesthetics of Hunger, etc.)
Departing from an interdisciplinary seminar held at the UC Humanities Research Institute in 1994 entitled "Reinventing Nature," course engages discourses around ecology, technology, environmental politics, and visual representation that emerged in the 1990s through debates about the idea of nature.
Explores how human subjects come to be visually defined and marked by race discourse. Covers diverse theoretical literatures on the topic, primarily in visual studies, but also in cultural studies, post-colonial studies, and psychoanalysis.
Cross Listed Courses
HISC 245, FMST 245
Instructor
Jennifer Gonzalez
An interdisciplinary exploration of the performative dimensions of art, visual culture, and new media. Investigates theories of performance and action across multiple fields and considers their relevance to themes, problems, and contexts of interest to those enrolled.
Through the study of the Byzantine cult of Mary, we examine diverse modalities in the construction and interaction of political, religious, and gender values, and we investigate the interrelated role of images, rituals, and text in human experience, expression, and communication.
Instructor
Maria Evangelatou
Visual literacy is considered as a particular predicament of colonial societies. Students consider the legibility of artifacts in colonial Spanish American contexts given its culturally diverse audiences and examine specific instances of (mis)interpreted images and transcultured representations.
Seminar focusing on the work of contemporary Native American artists. Students explore ecological activism, the relationship of Native artists with the art market and factors that shape artistic production, and what it means to be an Indigenous artist.
Examines collections and exhibitions of colonized people, places, and objects through primary sources, theoretical texts, and analytical case studies (with some emphasis on Oceania). Focuses on visual discourses of race, science, religious conversion, colonial settlement, nation-building, education, and entertainment.
Instructor
Stacy Kamehiro
Considers 18th-century to 21st-century colonialisms, especially in Oceania. Concentrates on representations conditioned by particular cross-cultural engagements in colonial peripheries rather than focusing on metropolitan representations. Explores the construction and transgression of rigidly defined colonial identity categories, as expressed in visual/material form. (Formerly offered as Imaging Colonial Peripheries and Borderlands.)
Instructor
Stacy Kamehiro
Explores the visual cultures of travel and tourism with some focus on Oceania. Travel and tourism are implicated in the histories of colonialism, ethnography, and globalization, and offer rich sites for critical engagement with theories of transnationalism, imperialism, diaspora, and identity.
Instructor
Stacy Kamehiro
Examines selected and changing issues in visual studies. The specific issue varies with each offering to keep pace with recent directions in scholarship.
Directed graduate research and writing coordinated with the teaching of undergraduates. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Directed reading that does not involve a term paper. Students submit petition to course-sponsoring agency. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Independent study or research for graduate students. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Independent study or research for graduate students. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Students submit petition to course-sponsoring agency. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Students submit petition to course sponsoring agency. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Students submit petition to course sponsoring agency. Enrollment restricted to graduate students.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring