Graduate Courses
Graduate Course Descriptions
ARTH 601
Theories and Practices of Art Historical Interpretation
3 credits
Critical analysis of selected writings influential in art history and the humanities. Designed to help students hone their interpretive skills through close examination of assumptions, standards of argument and evidence, core concepts, procedures, boundaries, and objectives that have shaped art historical writings past and present.
ARTH 602
Theories and Methodologies in Architectural History
3 credits
Introduction to issues and methodologies in architecture and urbanism history. Readings in philosophy and sociology and in recent works of architectural and urbanism history they have inspired. Organized thematically (capitalism, colonialism, print culture, etc.).
ARTH 605
Studies in Greek and Roman Art
3 credits
The art of antiquity from the origins of Greek civilization to the fall of Rome. Recent topics include Roman Architecture; Religion, Religiosity and Ritual in the Lives of Romans; Visual Culture in Pompeii.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 606
Studies in Medieval Art
3 credits
The art of Europe from the fall of Rome to the late Gothic period. Recent topics include the Court of Charlemagne, Early Irish and Anglo-Saxon Art, and Medieval Ivories.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 611
Studies in Italian Renaissance Art
3 credits
Italian art from 1300 to 1600.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 614
Studies in Italian Renaissance Architecture
3 credits
Italian architecture from 1300 to 1600. Recent topics include Renaissance Villas and Gardens, Brunelleschi and Alberti, Roman Architecture in the Age of Michelangelo, and Palladio.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 616
Studies in Italian Baroque Art
3 credits
Italian art in the seventeenth century. Recent topics include Bernini and Roman Baroque Sculpture, Seicento Poetics and Imagery, Caravaggio.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 617
Studies in Northern Baroque Art
3 credits
Seventeenth-century art in northern Europe. Recent topics include Vermeer and Dutch Genre Painting; Art and Money; Seventeenth-Century Netherlands; and Prints in the Age of Rembrandt.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH618
Eighteenth-Century Paris: Architecture, Town Planning and Theory
3 credits
Examines how architectural practice, patronage, and thought were transformed by the radically new ways of understanding the public and public opinion that developed in eighteenth-century Paris. Analysis of public debates, their relation to contemporary politics, and their impact on practice.
ARTH 619
Spanish Art of the Golden Age
3 Credits
Art in Spain and its colonies from 1500 to 1700. Topics vary. Seminars may focus on particular artists, or on broader historical and/or methodological issues dealing with artistic production, reception and circulation within the Spanish culture.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 620
Seminar in African Art
3 credits
Topics vary from pre-Dagaman art (pre-European 'discovery') to twentieth-century painting and contemporary African cinema and may include representations of Africa in Enlightenment art and philosophy, reviews of the literature on the arts of Fulani peoples and its related archive of documentary film.
ARTH 621
Studies in Nineteenth-Century Art
3 credits
Art from David to Impressionism. Recent topics include Géricault, Delacroix, Cézanne, Art and Politics (1780-1880), The Theory and Practice of Romanticism; and Center and Periphery: the French Avant-Garde.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 622
Research Topics in Historic Preservation
3 credits
Seminar that addresses a specific research issue within historic preservation, including hypothesis construction, design of research methodology and evaluation of results. Emphasis on the use of primary sources and application of database techniques.
Cross-listed with UAPP 636.
ARTH 623
Studies in Twentieth-Century Art
3 credits
Art in Europe, with some reference to later American art, from 1900 to the present. Recent topics include Symbolism, Picasso, Dada and Surrealism, and Cubism and French Art.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 625
Silent Cinema
3 credits
Examination of the invention, emergence, and development of silent cinema in Europe, the former USSR, and the United States. Includes study of significant films and filmmakers; the social, cultural and artistic contexts; and the critical literature.
ARTH 626
Studies in Modern Art and Theory
3 credits
Studies in Modern Art, exploring diverse themes, media, theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives. Possible topics include Art and Nationalism; Classicism and Modernity; Allegory; Regimes of Visuality; Modern Art and Literature; Modern Portraiture; Freud, Psychoanalysis, and Colonialism.
ARTH 627
Studies in the History of Photography
3 credits
Aspects of the history and aesthetics of photography. Recent topics include Nineteenth-Century Documentary Photography, Nineteenth-Century "Art" Photography, 20th-Century Photography and Criticism, and Twentith-Century Photography and Art.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 628
Seminar in Historic Preservation
3 credits
Survey of historic preservation and management of cultural resources, examining cultural contexts and public policy. Covers techniques of preservation, the legal and legislative basis of preservation programs, with particular attention to the National Register of Historic Places.
Cross-listed with UAPP 629.
ARTH 630
History of Theories in Material Culture
3 credits
Landmark works and recent theoretical approaches to the understanding and interpretation of the man-made environment. Readings draw from a variety of disciplinary frameworks including art history, anthropology, historical archaeology, cultural geography, sociology and history.
Cross-listed with MSST 606.
ARTH 631
Studies in American Architecture of the Colonial and Federal Periods
3 credits
Architecture in the American Colonies from the anonymous buildings of the seventeenth century to the designs of Thomas Jefferson and B. H. Latrobe in the early nineteenth century.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 632
Making the American City
3 credits
Advanced research and reading seminar on the material organization of early American cities. Examination of historical and cultural issues related to housing, consumerism, gender, ethnicity, craft, poverty and wealth as a means to interpreting the city as artifact and symbolic setting. Includes field trips to cities in the region. Students will work with primary sources including archaeological materials, architecture and documentary evidence.
Cross-listed with UAPP 632 and/or HIST 632.
ARTH 633
Studies in Nineteenth-Century American Architecture
3 credits
The Greek, Gothic, Egyptian and Oriental Revivals; High Victorian Style and its culmination in the Age of Elegance; and Late Nineteenth-Century American Architecture.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 635
American Art to 1865
3 credits
Topics change with each offering. Recent topics include Visual Culture in Antebellum America; Common Ground; Dialectics of High and Low in Nineteenth-Century American Visual Arts.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 636
Studies in American Art 1875-Present
3 credits
Painting, sculpture and related media from Eakins to the present. Recent topics include Eakins and American Modernism, and American Painting and Sculpture after World War II.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 637
Studies in English Art and Architecture 3 credits
The art of England, emphasizing the period from the sixteenth century through the end of the nineteenth century. Recent topics include the English Country House, British Painting, English Architecture, and Collecting in England.
RESTRICTIONS: May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
ARTH 640
Seminar in Latin American Art
The arts of Latin America from pre-Hispanic times to the twenty-first century. Recent topics include Art and Conquest in the New World, and Art and Religion in the New World.
ARTH 657
Survey of African Art
3 credits
Major African art styles, their interrelationships, the context of usage and the meanings of African artworks.
Cross-listed with ANTH 657.
ARTH 680
Studio Materials and Techniques of Drawing in the West
3 credits
Lecture-studio presentation on materials and tools, supports and techniques of wet and dry media drawing in the West from about the year 1400 to the present. Topics include: the development and manufacture of paper, pens, brushes, inks.
Cross-listed with MSST 680.
ARTH 681
Materials and Techniques of the Contemporary Painter and Draftsman
3 credits
Twentieth-century artists' materials. Topics: acrylic emulsion and acrylic solution alkyd resin, PVA paints: collage-assemblage; solvent-photo transfer; synthetic fiber canvas, spray gun; and non-art materials. Potential health hazards. Conservation topics: pH, light-fastness, adhesion and storage environments.
Cross-listed with MSST 681.
ARTH 685
Cultural Theory and Criticism
3 credits
A topical introduction to cultural theory, emphasizing such varied topics as semiotics, deconstructionism, feminism, post-colonial and third-world studies, and problems of representation and signification in literary and non-literary texts.
Cross-listed with ENGL 685
ARTH 688
Studio Materials and Techniques of Painting I
3 credits
Major materials, including tools, supports and techniques of architectural painting, manuscript illumination and panel painting in encaustic, watercolor, and egg tempera from about 1500 BC to AD 1500. Major topics include true fresco and egg tempera painting, Studio reconstructions, lectures and library research.
Cross-listed with MSST 688.
ARTH 689
Studio Materials and Techniques of Painting II
3 credits
Major masters and the materials, tools and techniques of indirect and direct oil and tempera painting. Time frame: 1500 to the present. Major topics include the development of canvas, brushes. Oil paint, mediums, varnishes, solvents and the complex relationship between indirect and direct techniques. Includes studio reconstruction of masterworks, lectures and library research.
Cross-listed with MSST 689.
ARTH 690
Studio in the Materials and Techniques of Printmaking I
3 credits
Major masters and the materials, tools, and techniques of relief, planographic and intaglio printmaking. Time frame: ca. 1400-1920. Major topics include woodcut, copperplate engraving, etching, drypoint, aquatint, mezzotint, lithograph and wood engraving. Studio reconstructions, lectures and library research.
Cross-listed with MSST 690.
ARTH 801
Introduction to Decorative Arts in America to 1860
3 credits
Development of decorative arts, painting and architecture in America. Principles of connoisseurship and studies of American and imported objects of art. Collections of the Winterthur Museum.
Cross-listed with EAMC 801.
ARTH 850
Resources in Art History
3 credits Pass/Fail
An introduction to the art historical resources of the University of Delaware and to the techniques of scholarly research and bibliographical materials in the historical study of the visual arts.
RESTRICTIONS: Offered every Fall semester.
ARTH 851
Seminar in Art Historical Pedagogy
3 credits Pass/Fail
Discussion of all aspects of teaching in the field of art history (lectures, discussions, materials, examinations, grading), especially in the context of the teaching of a large introductory survey course.
RESTRICTIONS: Open only to teaching assistants in ARTH 153 or ARTH 154. May be taken for credit only once.
ARTH 860
Reading and Research
1-9 credits Pass/Fail
Readings and conferences on an approved subject under faculty direction.
RESTRICTIONS: Requires permission of Department Chair. Open to Art History Ph.D. students only.
ARTH 869
Master's Thesis
1-6 credits
ARTH 964
Pre-Candidacy Study
3-12 credits
Pass/Fail Research and readings in preparation of dissertation topic and/or qualifying examinations for doctoral students before admission to candidacy but after completion of all required course work.
RESTRICTIONS: Not open to students who have been admitted to candidacy.
ARTH 969
Doctoral Dissertation
1-12 credits Pass/Fail
