History of Medieval Art and Architecture

This course, the second in the History of Art and Architecture sequence, focuses on global cultural encounters and exchanges in the post-Medieval period. A thematic and analytic study of major developments in different cultures, it challenges the hegemony of the geographic center. Adaptation, initiative and innovation flow along many different pathways, and in addition to the formal differences amongst visual languages, the course emphasizes processes of cultural production in imperial contexts, their ideological frameworks, and their socio-political significance in writing the history of art, architecture and artifacts.