ARTH 6800 - Critical Theory and Methodology of Art History

Students develop strategies for reading, looking, and writing about art and visual culture. As a reading intensive, we will read seminal theoretical texts that address issues of visual perspectives on race, class, gender, the body, art and culture. The assigned texts raise relevant questions: What is an image? how does one acquire visual literacy? What is the relationship between word and image? How does one approach and write about images effectively? Where does meaning reside? How has the emergence of the Internet and digital camera changes our notions of an image and its replications? The course is structured around different media and thematic issues. One of the goals of the course is to facilitate writing about all facets of art and visual images.