ART HIS Course Descriptions for 2025-2026

Fall 2025
Winter 2026
Spring 2026
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Winter Course Descriptions
CourseTitleInstructorDescription
ART HIS 30LATIN AMERICAN ARTLAPIN DARDASHT, A.This course charts the history of Latin American art and architecture from the invasion of the Americas in 1492 to the present. Covering a broad range of media including painting, sculpture, photography, performance, installation, and printmaking as well as architecture and urbanism, this course investigates transnational exchanges with West Africa, East and Southeast Asia, Western Europe, and North America; protest and resistance; migration; racism; the erasure of Black identity; persecution of Jewish people; Indigeneity; gender; sexuality; regionalism; and the relationship of the fine arts and popular culture. Aiming to challenge the whitewashed history of Latin American art, this course focuses on racial and ethnic identity formation in artistic production. We will examine the production of art in relation to shared issues of colonization, imperialism, and migration, understanding international exchange and racial formation through shifts in artistic production.

In addition to lectures and section discussions, this course offers students the opportunity to become familiar with Southern California’s extensive Latin American art and archival collections. Students will see Latin American objects at the Langson OCMA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach (MoLAA); and/or the J. Paul Getty Museums.
ART HIS 40BEUROPE:MEDIEVL &RENMASSEY, L.
ART HIS 103ATHENIAN ACROPOLISSTAFF
ART HIS 107ANCIENT DEATH ARTACOSTA, C.
ART HIS 150ACHAEMENID PERSIACANEPA, M.The course will examine the creation of an Persian imperial art and architecture under the Teispid and Achaemenid dynasties, starting under Cyrus the Great and tracing its revision and expansion under Darius I and his successors. In addition, we will study the mutual influences of Persian visual culture on those of its provinces and subject peoples, including Egypt, the Greek world, Mesopotamia, Anatolia and India. Topics include the development of the Persian palace, the Persian garden, urbanism, court culture, sacred spaces, luxury material, and seals and archives. We will consider sites of major dynastic importance and their development (e.g. Persepolis, Susa, Babylon); 'institutions' (e.g. palace, paradise, city, sacred spaces); media (rock reliefs/inscriptions, painting, coinage, seals and sealings etc.) from a transculturative theoretical persepective.
ART HIS 165B19TH CENT AMER ARTROBEY, E.
ART HIS 165CMODERN AMERICAN ARTSTAFF
ART HIS 165DTHE SHAPE OF POWERCOOKS, B.
ART HIS 167HOL&ARTINLATINAMERILAPIN DARDASHT, A.This course explores how the Holocaust shaped war-time and postwar art and architecture made by both Jewish survivors and witnesses as well as allies to perpetrators in Latin America and the Caribbean, negotiating definitions of placehood, trauma, memory, and belonging. During the rise of Nazi Germany, many Latin American countries adopted fascist approaches and commissioned compatible public art and architecture. During and after the war, Jewish residents and refugees used art as a method of resistance and to depict the Holocaust. We will look at the work of architects, designers, painters, photographers, printmakers, muralists, and installation artists, and examine how they leveraged depictions of the rising built environment in cities around the region to claim space as an act of resistance after their traumatic experiences of death, displacement, and marginalization both in Europe and Latin America. Additionally, we will explore the architecture of perpetrators’ allies in the region before, during, and after the war and their interactions with Jewish artists.

Although many Latin American countries had adopted a rhetoric claiming that their national identities were diverse in the 1920s and 1930s, they marginalized and racialized Jews as others, with many governments officially barring entry to Jews fleeing the Nazis. By centralizing the Holocaust and Jewish artists, this course reveals an understudied aspect of Latin American and Caribbean art and architecture history, aiming to redress inequities in the field.
ART HIS 181HOARDS & LUXURYCANEPA, M.This course explores luxury material (primarily drinking vessels and jewelry)  in the ancient to early medieval Iranian and Mediterranean worlds (including Central Asia and Northern India), from the Achaemenids to the Sasanians with a special focus on the Hellenistic period (after Alexander). It will also deal with the discovery of these objects, either as archeologically attested hoards or assemblages (e.g. in rare instances when excavated in a temple or palaces treasury), notional assemblages as attested by inscriptions of temples inventories, as well as the (more common) phenonomenon of 'dealer assemblages' when objects come from looted sites and are sold on the black or 'gray' market ending up in private collections or museum. We will explore a number of museum collections and attempt to reconstruct their collection histories as well as posit origins for other similar unprovenced objects. The class will be conducted partially in lecture format and partially as a discussion-based seminar.
ART HIS 198TOKYO: ART AND THE CITYWINTHER TAMAKI, B.Tokyo is one of the largest, richest, and most dangerous cities in the world. This seminar examines visual expressions of this global metropolis with a focus on photography, painting, sculpture, and architecture. These media will be explored as windows into the daily life and environmental design that gave Tokyo its character at different moments in its modern and contemporary history. Emphasis will be placed on disasters, public monuments, architecture, and individual artists’ visions of the life of the city. Seminar readings will include urban studies, as well as texts in art history, art criticism, and media theory.
ART HIS 198ARTS OF DEATHMASSEY, L.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYSTAFF
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYWUE, R.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYWINTHER TAMAKI, B.
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 STUDYJUNG, G.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYCOOKS, B.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYCANEPA, M.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYBETANCOURT, R.
ART HIS 199INDEPENDENT STUDYACOSTA, C.
ART HIS 298ART URBANISM TOKYOWINTHER TAMAKI, B.
ART HIS 298ARTS OF DEATHMASSEY, L.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHNISBET, J.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHWINTHER TAMAKI, B.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHOSORIO G. SILV, L.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHSTAFF
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHWUE, R.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHMASSEY, L.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHLAPIN DARDASHT, A.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHJUNG, G.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHCOOKS, B.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHCANEPA, M.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHBETANCOURT, R.
ART HIS 299MA THESIS RESEARCHACOSTA, C.
ART HIS 399UNIVERSITY TEACHINGLAPIN DARDASHT, A.
ART HIS 399UNIVERSITY TEACHINGMASSEY, L.