The Undergraduate program in art history is directed toward two primary educational goals:
1. to acquaint students pursuing a Liberal Arts degree with the historical significance, cultural diversity, and intellectual richness of human artistic traditions from prehistoric times to the present, and
2. to provide those students with the intellectual tools needed to investigate the complex roles played by the arts in a variety of social contexts.
The skills students develop through the study of art history include visual analysis, historical research, critical reading, analytical and descriptive writing, and oral communication. The study of art history fully complements students’ work in other Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines represented in the College of Arts and Sciences, including history, classics, archaeology, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, and communication studies. Ultimately, the curriculum designed by the Department of Art seeks to help students acquire an individual perspective on their own values and beliefs and on their places in a society increasingly shaped by visual communications and technology.