ART 301 - Ecocritical Art Histories

While open to all students who meet the prerequisites, this course is required for all declared art history majors in their junior year. Juniors will have additional assignments that will serve as the junior qualifying exam in art history.

Ecocritical Art Histories
What perspectives and methodologies can art history contribute to ongoing debates and research on climate change, ecological crises, and the Anthropocene in the humanities and natural sciences? This course will introduce students to innovative examples of recent art historical scholarship that postulate ecologically conscious approaches to the study of visual and material cultures. As a discipline, Art History takes objects produced by humans as its loci of analysis. By engaging with new theoretical frameworks such as postcolonial ecocriticism, new materialism, posthumanism, and critical animal studies, we will confront established art historical paradigms that have privileged the human as the primary agent of history. Rather than focusing on specific geographical places or temporal periods, we will explore the interrelation of human cultural production and ecological systems through different thematic points of inquiry, ranging from water, air, and fire to animals and eco-activism. In doing so, we aim to challenge the binaries between human and non-human to advance non- hierarchical approaches to the study of art. While open to all students with the prerequisites, this is also a required course for all declared art history majors in their junior year.

Unit(s): 0.5
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Prerequisite(s): ART 201 and one 300-level course in art history or studio art
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 3 times for credit.
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).