ART HIS Course Descriptions for 2024-2025

Fall 2024
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Fall Course Descriptions
CourseTitleInstructorDescription
ART HIS 40AANCIENT GREECE ROMEACOSTA, C.
ART HIS 40CMODERN ART EUR&AMERNISBET, J.
ART HIS 110MEDIEVAL MATERIALTYSTAFF
ART HIS 134DCUBISM TO SURREALSMROBEY, E.An investigation of visual arts and design in Europe circa 1905-1940. The course follows European artistic and intellectual developments from the radical dissolution and reassembly of the visual field offered by the Cubists in the first decade of the century to the Surrealists’ explorations of unconscious desire on the eve of World War II. The period covered is one of extreme dislocation, including the breakup of the Victorian social order, the horrors of World War I, the Russian Revolution, the promises of new technology, the chaos of economic panics, and the deadly rise of totalitarian governments around Europe. Against that background, artists used their media to investigate the nature of representation, propose new expressions of male and female sexuality, adapt popular and consumer culture into the fine arts, combat social norms, celebrate the machinery of the modern world, advocate revolution, resist (and promote) Fascist authoritarianism, and model utopian societies. The course will primarily examine painting and sculpture, but will also introduce students to developments in industrial and graphic design, architecture, photography, and film of the era.
ART HIS 140BENVIRONMENTAL ARTNISBET, J.
ART HIS 150DISASTER ART JAPANWINTHER TAMAKI, B.How are disasters such as earthquakes, atomic bomb detonations, tsunami, landslides, and nuclear reactor meltdowns visualized in the arts?  Three catastrophic events had extraordinary impacts on developments of Japanese art over the past century: the Great Kantō Earthquake which destroyed Tokyo in 1923, the even greater magnitude of destruction of urban Japan at the end of World War II including the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the Triple Disaster of 2011. Still more horrendous levels of destruction have been conjured in science fictional imagery. This course examines diverse functions of the arts of disaster including journalism, sensationalism, warning, reconstruction, mourning, and commemoration. Media covered include architecture, manga, painting, photography, and printmaking.
ART HIS 151CMODERN CHINAWUE, R.
ART HIS 165CMODERN AMERICAN ARTSTAFF
ART HIS 167MODERN LATIN A/LTNXLAPIN DARDASHT, A.This course charts the history of the modernist art movement Mexican Muralism as well as its impact throughout the Americas on a variety of media including large-scale painting on canvas and public walls, performance, film, photography, and video. By positioning Mexican Muralism as a springboard for subsequent artistic practices and modernist movements in the Americas, this course highlights its legacy as an influential modernist movement, despite its marginalization from histories of global modernism. We will look at how the formal innovations and revolutionary practices of Mexican Muralists like Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, among other artists, bled into modernist practices such as Social Realism, Abstract Expressionism, and experimental performance throughout the continent. The course includes a special focus on Mexican American and Chicano/a/x art in California, which highlights the powerful development of Mexican Muralism’s ideas into the contemporary period. It features a workshop with a mural artist in collaboration with the UCI Latinx Resource Center as well as a field trip to Los Angeles to see a variety of murals.
ART HIS 190WART HISTORY METHODSROBEY, E.This writing-intensive course surveys major approaches and methodologies in art history to guide students in developing their own perspectives and voices in their art-historical writing. It has two interrelated themes: the practical and the historical. Students will practice skills of research and persuasive writing for various audiences. The class will also survey the history of art history itself and its various critical approaches. Historians, philosophers, collectors, and artists have been cataloguing and discussing the arts since antiquity, and a formalized academic discipline of art history has developed since about the late 18th century. We will be readings historians’ statements of method and exemplar analyses of particular artists and artworks. Much of the course content comes from the past half century, a period that has seen art historians expanding the methodology and purview of the discipline in many directions, sometimes by borrowing from other fields, such as linguistics or psychoanalysis. In this period, art history has come to encompass wider fields of production, more types of cultural objects, and a more critical understanding of the relationship between the arts and social structures. The course will explore these developments and address ongoing debates within the discipline.
ART HIS 197AH SOCIAL HOURSTAFF
ART HIS 198MEDIEVAL TOPICSSTAFF
ART HIS 198CARIBBEAN ARTLAPIN DARDASHT, A.This course explores the history of modern and contemporary Caribbean art, focusing on movement and migration around the archipelago as well as local theoretical and artistic exchanges. Understanding the relationship of the Caribbean to the rest of Latin America, this course takes the image, writing, and thinking about the sea as an art historical method to understand Caribbean art. It extrapolates the complications in narrating the art history of a region with distinctive spoken languages, fractured colonial histories, and continued imperialism. In addition to looking at artistic production in the Caribbean, we will also explore the vaivénof artists living in the diaspora in the Americas and Europe. Importantly, the course includes an experiential learning trip to Martinique, which will feature visits to artists' studios, private collections, museums, and explorations of the sea.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYWUE, R.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYPATEL, A.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYOSORIO G. SILV, L.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYNISBET, J.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYMASSEY, L.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYLAPIN DARDASHT, A.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYACOSTA, C.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYWINTHER TAMAKI, B.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYCANEPA, M.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYCOOKS, B.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYJUNG, G.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYBETANCOURT, R.
ART HIS 298CARIBBEAN ARTLAPIN DARDASHT, A.This course explores the history of modern and contemporary Caribbean art, focusing on movement and migration around the archipelago as well as local theoretical and artistic exchanges. Understanding the relationship of the Caribbean to the rest of Latin America, this course takes the image, writing, and thinking about the sea as an art historical method to understand Caribbean art. It extrapolates the complications in narrating the art history of a region with distinctive spoken languages, fractured colonial histories, and continued imperialism. In addition to looking at artistic production in the Caribbean, we will also explore the vaivénof artists living in the diaspora in the Americas and Europe. Importantly, the course includes an experiential learning trip to Martinique, which will feature visits to artists' studios, private collections, museums, and explorations of the sea.
ART HIS 298MEDIEVAL TOPICSSTAFF
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHBETANCOURT, R.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHACOSTA, C.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHCANEPA, M.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHWUE, R.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHCOOKS, B.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHJUNG, G.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHLAPIN DARDASHT, A.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHMASSEY, L.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHNISBET, J.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHOSORIO G. SILV, L.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHPATEL, A.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHWINTHER TAMAKI, B.
ART HIS 399UNIVERSITY TEACHINGNISBET, J.
ART HIS 399UNIVERSITY TEACHINGACOSTA, C.