Art History Courses

ARTH 588: Current Issues in Art – Technology, Art, Politics
TTh 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM / Instructor: Levine

This seminar-style course will critically examine the relationships between technology and art in modern culture, with particular emphasis on the implicit and explicit politics of such relationships. We will explore histories of art, aesthetics, scientific thinking, and mechanical production as ongoing struggles over notions of social progress and emancipation, alienation and domination. We will think through the realities and myths of technological devices as tools by which people extend themselves out into the world, connecting, (re)producing, and engaging with sensual, intellectual, and material apparatuses. This course will focus on the aesthetic politics of technology—the possibilities and limits of critically engaging in the making and distribution of images and objects, information and knowledge, and the challenges posed by and to artistic production.

ARTH 982: Seminar in American Art – Media and Materiality
W 2:30 PM – 5:10 PM / Instructor: Cao

This is a course about matter. At one end of our spectrum of interrogation will be material culture, from artistic masterpieces to mundane, everyday goods. How do objects embody cultural, social, or psychological systems? What modes of exchange do they facilitate or hinder? At the other end of our spectrum is media, which we often assume to be abstract and immaterial (especially now that our lives are more virtual than ever). This course will attempt to make visible the materiality of intangible networks and interrogate the objecthood of technologies.

Studies of materiality, or the agency of matter, has challenged the anthropocentric legacy of many academic disciplines, but many recent theoretical interventions also tend to be untethered from actual artifacts. This course will explore an interdisciplinary set of ideas emerging from thing theory, new materialism, and media archeology and consider their methodological potential for the study of artworks and other material objects. We will examine matter as malleable, portable, and destructible as well as subject to circulation, transformation, and translation. Each week’s reading will include theoretical texts paired with object-based scholarship. Students will research a single artifact throughout the term and be expected to complete oral presentations and a seminar paper on the basis of their ongoing research. While many of readings will concern Euro-American topics from the eighteenth century to the present, student projects may engage with any geographical region or historical period.

Undergraduates

1. To request an independent study (ARTH 396), email the faculty member you wish to work with. To request credit for an internship by enrolling in an Art History Practicum (ARTH 293), email the Director of Undergraduate Studies for Art History well in advance of the start of your internship.
2. Submit an Online Learning Contract for approval via OLCM. OLCM student instructions are available here.
3. Once your learning contract has been fully approved, monitor your inbox for an enrollment confirmation email from the Student Services Specialist.

Graduates

1. To request an independent study, email the faculty member you wish to work with.
2. If the faculty member agrees to work with you, please have them email the Student Services Specialist so you can be enrolled.
3. Monitor your inbox for an enrollment confirmation email from the Student Services Specialist.

Current UNC Students

Students registered for courses in the same term may audit an Art History course without paying an additional fee. Unregistered students may audit a course for $20.

1. To audit Art History courses, email the course instructor and request permission to audit.
2. Once permission is obtained, please request an audit form.
3. Monitor your inbox for an email confirming that your form is ready to be picked up. Your email confirmation will contain further instructions.

Community Members

Community members wishing to audit an Art History course may do so for a $20 fee.

1. To audit Art History courses, email the course instructor and request permission to audit. Recitations (designated as REC on the course schedule) are designed to be taken in conjunction with their matching lecture course and are not available for audit unless otherwise noted by the lecture instructor.
2. If the instructor agrees to a course audit, please request an audit form. Due to a high volume of requests and limited faculty availability, audit forms can sometimes take a while to prepare. Your patience is appreciated while the Student Services Specialist works to arrange your course audit.
3. Once your form is ready, the Student Services Specialist will contact you with instructions on registration and payment.

Additional Information

Visit the Registrar’s website for information regarding general provisions, class participation, records, and fees.