In this seminar, we will examine the often complex, dynamic relationships between words and images in the book, broadly conceived, from the birth of the codex in the ancient mediterranean to the so-called “death” of the codex and rise of digital illustrated texts today. Working directly from RISD’s Special Collections and the collections of the RISD Museum, we will attend to the history of the illustrated book, the materials and techniques of its production, and the distinct means by which books tell stories beyond words. A series of critical essays—in psychoanalysis, Black studies, thing theory, among other methods—will enrich our perspective on picture books of all kinds.

Elective

This course provides an introduction to the built environment of the Middle Ages. From the fall of Rome to the dawn of the Renaissance, a range of architectural styles shaped medieval daily life, religious experience, and civic spectacle. We will become familiar with the architectural traditions of the great cathedrals, revered pilgrimage churches, and reclusive monasteries of western Europe, as well as castles, houses, and other civic structures. We will integrate the study of architecture with the study of medieval culture, exploring the role of pilgrimage, courts and civil authority, religious reform and radicalism, crusading and social violence, and rising urbanism. In this way we will explore ways in which the built environment profoundly affected contemporary audiences and shaped their lives. Throughout, we will also reflect on how medieval architecture is still present with us today—whether through medieval revivals here in Providence, museum collections, or tragedies such as the burning of Paris’ Notre-Dame Cathedral in 2019.

Elective

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 

First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Transfer students should register into the evening section offered in the Spring semester. Pre-registration into this section is managed by Liberal Arts Division.

Major Requirement | BFA

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 

First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Transfer students should register into the evening section offered in the Spring semester. Pre-registration into this section is managed by Liberal Arts Division.

Major Requirement | BFA

The artists who travelled in the wake of Christopher Columbus were by no means objective in their depictions of the "New World." European artists came already equipped with well-defined ideas about savages and wilderness that they could conveniently fit to the Americas. These colonial tropes had been worked out for centuries by Europeans in conquest and expansion at the borders of Europe and across the Mediterranean—from Ancient Greek and Roman colonies to the settler expansion of medieval Christian kingdoms in Iberia, the Baltic, and the Middle East. In this seminar, we turn to a range of pre-modern colonial settings in order to understand how art and architecture operate within hegemonic colonial rhetoric. We will also consider comparative examples outside Europe-from Tang China to Tawantinsuyu (The Inca Empire)-and place these in dialogue with modern scholars of colonialism like Edward Said, Patrick Wolfe, and Ann Stoler to better understand the historical relationship of art to colonization.