Expand the sections below to explore our Spring 2024 course descriptions.
Undergraduate Courses
CAS AH112: Introduction to Art in Europe and the United States from Renaissance to Post-Modernism
Major monuments and artists in Europe and the United States from the Renaissance to Post-Modernism. Sequential development of major styles in architecture, sculpture, painting, and photography. Relationship of visual art to social and cultural forces.
Effective Spring 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Teamwork/Collaboration.
M|W|F 11:15-12:05 Zell / Ribner
plus a discussion section – see the academic planner on MyBU for section times
CAS AH113: Arts and Monuments of Asia
An introduction to the art and architecture of Asia from the earliest times to the present. Course addresses not only important cultural monuments but also portable art objects within museum collections. Course examines a wide range of media, including ink painting, ceramics, textiles, photography, as well as major architectural projects, monuments, and built environments. It aims to challenge and rethink monolithic definitions of “Asian art” by allowing students to understand the complex and sophisticated processes of interregional and global cultural exchange.
Effective Spring 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Oral and/or Signed Communication, Aesthetic Exploration.
T|R 9:30-10:45 Feng / Tseng
plus a discussion section – see the academic planner on MyBU for section times
CAS AH201: Understanding Architecture
Introduces a range of approaches to understanding architecture in an historical perspective. Learn how architects and others have interpreted meaning through rubrics of art, nature, and culture, focused upon European and American architecture from 1400 to the present.
Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
T|R 12:30-1:45 Granston
CAS AH210: Learning to See
Strengthens your ability to describe and analyze the visual world. From fundamentals such as color and composition to the design of advertisements, propaganda, and appliances. A lab component provides opportunities for direct engagement with objects, images, and the built environment.
Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
M|W|F 9:05-9:55 Ribner
plus a discussion section – see the academic planner on MyBU for section times
CAS AH215: Arts of Africa and Its Diaspora
Exploration of a diversity of visual and performing arts from Africa, including royal regalia, masquerades, and contemporary painting. Examines how the dispersal of Africans, due to the transatlantic slave trade and immigration, contributed to the cultural richness of the Americas.
Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
T|R 5:00-6:15 Foran
CAS AH257: Renaissance Art
Survey of the arts in the Renaissance in Italy from the communes of the early fifteenth century to the courts of the sixteenth century.
Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
T|R 3:30-4:45 Arnheim
CAS AH325: Art, Media, and Buddhism
Examines how textual, visual, and material forms of religious expressions have been conceptualized by Buddhists as well as how Buddhist objects are understood and re- contextualized in the West. Topics include self- immolation; museums; war propaganda, and pop culture.
Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Teamwork/Collaboration.
T|R 12:30-1:45 Hughes
CAS AH331: Arts of Archaic Greece
Examines the origins of Greek art and architecture through ancient accounts, modern scholarship, and physical remains. Topics include town and sanctuary planning, theories of the orders, wooden and stone sculpture, painted pottery, miniatures, color, artists, technologies, and myth.
Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Writing-Intensive Course.
M|W|F 9:05-9:55 Martin
CAS AH345: Early Medieval and Romanesque Art
Art and architecture of medieval Europe from the Early Christian Catacombs to the great Gothic cathedrals. Topics include piety, the cult of relics, the Virgin, monasticism, and secular monuments such as medieval European castles and the Bayeux Tapestry.
T|R 11:00-12:15 Kahn
CAS AH386: Modern American Art
This class explores the diverse and contested field of modern art in the United States, examining the broad range of artists and art practices that laid claim to aesthetic modernism in the years between 1890 and 1945. In Spring 2024, this course will focus on the art of the Harlem Renaissance.
Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
M|W|F 9:00-9:55 Prince
CAS AH392: Twentieth Century Art from 1940 to 1980
Explores major currents in art produced around the world during the tumultuous middle decades of the 20th century. The following topics, among others, are examined in relation to postwar culture and Cold War politics: realism vs. abstraction, global pop art and conceptual art, new materials and technologies, international artists’ networks, and performative art practices.
Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
M|W|F 1:25-2:15 Williams
CAS AH395: History of Photography
An introduction to the study of photographs. The history of the medium in Europe and America from its invention in 1839 to the present. After lectures on photographic theory and methodology, photographs are studied both as art objects and as historical artifacts.
Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
T|R 11:00-12:15 Sichel
CAS AH398: Twentieth-Century Architecture
This course provides an introduction to the major developments in architecture and urban planning from ca. 1900 to the present. It traces the proliferation of modernist thought through key projects but also to everyday buildings and landscapes.
Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy.
T|R 9:30-10:45 Alnajada
CAS AH404: Museum Exhibits Seminar
Topic for Spring 2024: “Museum Practice Today.” Art museums are at a point of inflection as they face multiple economic, social, and climate-related challenges. This course examines museums’ unique obstacles and opportunities, inviting students to critically reimagine our cultural organizations.
F 11:15-2:00 Tanga
CAS AH486: Architecture Capstone
This course guides senior and eligible junior architectural studies majors through a capstone experience, which may be an internship or a research project. Open only by application. Interested students contact Professor Martin by Nov. 1, 2023.
Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Ethical Reasoning.
M 2:30-5:15 Martin
Seminars for Undergraduate & Graduate Students
CAS AH500: Topics in History of Art & Architecture
Topic for Spring 2024: “Methods of Inquiry in Architecture Studies.”
This seminar draws from different methods across the humanities, social sciences, and environmental design to explore the range of research methods that can be used in architecture studies and architectural history. As we work through the semester, students will do assigned readings that provide an overview of intellectual debates and methodological approaches for architectural research, including humanist, ethnographic, archival, oral historical, urban, environmental, postcolonial, forensic, photographic, and virtual. Throughout, students will work on a set of exercises specifically created to expose them to different kinds of methods.
R 3:30-6:15 Alnajada
CAS AH521: Curatorship
This course examines the role of the curator today. The class considers strategies and concepts used by curators and institutions related to such issues as decentralizing paradigms of art, centering historically excluded artists and perspectives, and shaping innovative and inclusive approaches to exhibition-making. Student also learn practical and theoretical tools used by curators in these processes, including wall text and labels, display techniques, and educational programs supplemented by readings, class discussion, and case studies.
R 12:30-3:15 Cooney
CAS AH525: American Cultural Landscapes Studies
This seminar provides an introduction to analyzing and interpreting American cultural landscapes and acquaints students with the historiography of interdisciplinary study of the built environment.
Also offered as CAS AM 525.
T|R 12:30-1:45 Moore
CAS AH527 A1: Topics in Art & Society
Topic for Spring 2024: “Landscapes: Art and Environment in China.”
Commonly described as “mountain and water”, landscape imagery played a central role in Chinese visual culture. The course will examine the relationship between art and nature, power and cartographical strategies, microcosm and macrocosms, in the landscape tradition. We will look at mountain cults of early China, imperial parks of emperors, Daoist grotto-heavens, literati landscape painting and gardens, panoramic views in modern film and photography, and contemporary art projects with environmental concerns. Topics include landscape aesthetics, politics of landownership, and conceptions of transcendence.
R 3:30-6:15 Feng
CAS AH527 B1: Topics in Art & Society
Topic for Spring 2024: “Making and Meaning in Early Medieval Art.”
In the absence of direct observation of the natural world how was imagery conceived and developed in the early Middle Ages? Using specific manuscripts, sculpture, textiles, metalwork, and ivories as case studies this course will examine artistic process.
W 8:00-10:45 Kahn
CAS AH563: Global Baroque: Art and Power in the Seventeenth Century
Investigates the interaction between art and structures of power in 17th- century Europe, with particular attention to its global dimensions. Focus on Rubens, Rembrandt, Velazquez, and Bernini but also other forms of cultural production that circulated through global trade.
W 2:30-5:15 Zell
CAS AH574: Topics in African Art
With a focus on collections-based learning, this seminar explores the historical and cultural context of art of the Benin Kingdom beginning with the material culture of Ile-Ife and concluding with contemporary conversations concerning repatriation, ethical stewardship, and institutional critique.
M 2:30-5:15 Clunis
CAS AH591: Seminar in Photographic History
Topic for Spring 2024: “Documentary Photography.”
A study of changing uses, definitions, and archives of documentary photography from 1839 to the present. Topics will include urban photography, war imagery, topographical and survey landscapes, architectural records, social reform photography, New Deal imagery, and digital documents.
R 3:30-6:15 Sichel
Graduate Courses
GRS AH822: Seminar in African Art
Topic for Spring 2024: “Art and Trade Across the Medieval Sahara.”
This class highlights the artistic connections that occurred across the Sahara. It concentrates on how the movement of traders, scholars, artisans, and nomads set the stage for the emergence of richly diverse aesthetic expressions from Morocco to Timbuktu.
T 1:30-3:15 Becker
GRS AH895 A1: Seminar in Twentieth-Century Art
Topic for Spring 2024: “Afro-Latin American Art.”
Seminar delves into the contributions and challenges of artists from the African diaspora since the colonial period (Spanish, French, and Portuguese colonies) up to present “Latin” America. Course will study visual culture as a terrain for social and political negotiations.
W 2:30-4:15 Reyes
GRS AH895 B1: Seminar in Twentieth-Century Art
Topic for Spring 2024: “Modern Art and Comedy.”
Examines modern and contemporary art through the lens of comedy and its many related forms, including humor, laughter, jokes, satire, parody, stand-up, and slapstick. Starting with theories of jokes and laughter by Freud and Bergson, students read a wide range of texts on the comic mode while exploring Dada satire, Fluxus collectivity, performance and stand-up, critical humor and marginality, and contemporary debates about the ethics of comedic practices. Students may develop research papers on topics outside of the modern field.
W 4:30-6:15 Williams
Spring 2024 Registration Dates
Registration for Spring 2024 opens based on your academic class standing.
Details about specific registration dates and times can be found at https://www.bu.edu/reg/calendars/registration/