Required of juniors concentrating in History of Art and Architecture. A group tutorial consisting of weekly meetings with a graduate student, with regular reading and writing assignments. HAA 98ar offers concentrators the choice of several study groups investigating a particular field or topic in art history, including each year: museums and collections; race and aesthetics; the art of looking and writing, and; architectural methods. Concentrators select two of the group tutorial topics.

For AY 21-22, the following topics will be offered:

"Museums and Collections" (...

Melissa McCormick

This interdisciplinary and team-taught course provides an introduction to several of the approaches and methods through which the societies and cultures of East Asia can be studied at Harvard, including history, philosophy, literary studies, political science, film studies, anthropology and gender studies. We consider both commonalities and differences across the region, and explore how larger processes of imperialism, modernization, and globalization have shaped contemporary East Asian societies and their future trajectories.

Required of sophomore...

Zach Seibold, Ian Miley

Architecture assembles multiple models, surfaces, and materials; it is not a single monolithic thing, rather it is comprised of disparate parts and organizational systems operating at different scales.  Design, the bringing together of these elements, requires sensitivity, registers scale, and renders perceptual effect.  This course is an introductory architectural design studio focused on building foundational architectural concepts and design methodologies studied through a process of making.  A series of physical modeling/fabrication...

Thomas Cummins, Alejandro de la Fuente,

This seminar explores how visual artists and the visual arts have contributed to debates on race, citizenship, and nation in Latin America, from the colonial period to the present. We approach the history of art in Latin America primarily through the production of images of afro-decendants and works by artists of African descent.  We will offer a critical and historical analysis of  the racialized biases of the existing canon, as well as the need for new research strategies, new methods, and new sources. We also study the...

Eugene Wang

Artefacts unearthed from ancient Chinese tombs gravitate toward a biocentric universe. Its enabling force is the vital energy (qi or pneuma), which structures the early imagination of both the microcosm of the body and the macrocosm of the universe. The course examines how this qi-centric world works, and how it informs the design and organizational principle behind some monumental projects such as the First Emperor’s mausoleum and Mawangdui tombs.

Makeda Best, Mary Schneider Enriquez

Practicing art history in today’s increasingly mobile art world—whether as a field curator, academic researcher, critic, or other professional specialism—requires museum literacy, intellectual empathy, and the ability to work in multiple voices and mediums, in addition to art historical expertise. This object-centered seminar will introduce students to the central competencies required of art historians working in or with museums today, ranging from skills for assessing the quality and authenticity of objects on the market, to tools for...

Shawon Kinew

“Ogni dipintore dipinge se”—every painter paints himself—is a Renaissance proverb that posited every artist would inevitably replicate himself in his artwork, try as he might to avoid this. In short, no artist can escape himself. Are art historians really any different? Can the highly subjective experience of art be rendered objectively? Always embedded in the third person is a perspective and worldview that is specific and individual. This seminar will explore those art historians and scholars who dared to use “I” in their...