Seminar (SEM)

• COLL INTENSIVE WRITING SECTION

• Above class open to undergraduates only
• Please contact arthist@indiana.edu for authorization to enroll in this course
• Above class COLL Intensive Writing section
• Above class open to Art History majors and minors
• Topic: The Art of the Question

Topic: The art of the question

The ever-changing questions that drive art historical research projects are a fundamental part of the study of art. In the last ten years, for example, curators, scholars, and artists' questions about the impact of digital literacy, queer and nonbinary artmaking, environmental and social justice activism, neural divergent inquiry, and more, have altered the future of curation, art history conferences, books, and curriculum. This senior seminar aims to facilitate, inspire, and support in-depth imaginative, question-oriented art historical research tailored to each student's particular interests and the issues they find most pressing today. Students will engage with an array of art historical argumentative frameworks, visual analysis techniques, and writing styles, as well as innovative interdisciplinary methods of inquiry that are currently challenging and reinventing the discipline of art history. Through creative writing exercises, discussion of weekly readings, visits to campus archives and museums, guest speakers, and collaborative peer-review workshops, this class invites students to cultivate a customized toolbox for researching and writing about art. Ultimately, this class prepares students to envision, map, and implement their own long-term art historical research projects, while simultaneously providing space for reflecting on the political history of art-historical research itself.