- Instructor
- Melody Barnett Deusner
- Location
- TV 226
- Days and Times
- MW 3:00-4:15 pm
- Course Description
- How do we understand documents as evidence? What do historical archives, newspapers, exhibition brochures, photographs, and other materials reveal about the history of art and culture in the United States? Explore the answers to these and other questions in this timely course, which is grounded in primary sources: the actual spoken words of artists, critics, politicians, philosophers, poets, and ordinary citizens as they encountered works of visual art, architecture, and mass culture in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We will work as a group to analyze these documents (in reproduction and in person) and use them as lenses through which to interpret a wide variety of visual materials. No previous art or art history experience is required; students of US history, philosophy, literature, gender studies, economics, and journalism (among others) will find much to engage their knowledge and interests here.
American Art to 1913
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