Fall 2025

What is left out of view and why? Many landmark works about the intersection of race, culture, and equity have been censored, excised, or unseen—viewed and then disregarded—or even erased from official narratives. This course will focus on key works from...

This is a general introduction to and survey of the arts of Ancient America. We will look at both Mesoamerica and the Andean art and architecture beginning with some of the earliest cultures and ending with Aztec, Maya, Muisca and Inca. Questions about...

Architecture of the eastern Mediterranean basin (at Italian, Ottoman, and Mamluk courts) with emphasis on cross-cultural encounters and transmission of the Romano-Byzantine heritage, science and technology, architectural practice, ornament, urban design...

People change. They grow up and grow old, each differently but in ways divisible into stages. Different cultures and different eras understand and number these stages differently, but between birth and death bodies and minds develop and age. This...

Photomontage—the assembly of photographic fragments—is as old as photography itself. Prompted by the Harvard Art Museums’ recent accession of over one hundred works by Gustavs Klucis and Valentina Kulagina--leading Soviet photomonteurs of the 1920s and...

This seminar explores the art of Indian Esoteric Buddhism from various interpretive vantage points. After a brief historiographical introduction, we will examine scholarly discourses on Esoteric or Tantric Buddhism in relation to the artistic productions...

Individual work in preparation for the General Examination for the PhD degree or, by arrangement, on special topics not included in the announced course offerings.

A team-taught course led by the DGS based on exemplary readings designed to introduce students to a wide range of art-historical methods.

This seminar will serve as a design platform for inquiry, documentation and analysis in relation either to the thesis topic or capstone project of interest to each student. Thesis students will be responsible for selecting a Thesis Advisor (or Advisors)...