The discipline of Art History encompasses the study of artistic endeavors of peoples around the globe. Individuals often choose to study art history to satisfy a deep curiosity about how art communicates the ideas of a culture. In many ways, works of art and architecture are visual documents with which we can recapture other peoples’ experience of the world. That makes the field of art history interdisciplinary since art historians recognize how politics, literature, economics, religion, science, and other cultural factors affect the making of art. As professional art historians, we seek to understand the context of art – how art fits into larger cultural histories. We employ a broad spectrum of critical strategies to explore the diverse roles played by these artifacts. In our publishing, in our presentations in public venues, and in our teaching, we formulate reasoned analyses and interpretations of works of art and architecture as they relate to their historical and cultural circumstances.

In recent decades, the discipline of art history has expanded from a narrow study of the fine arts to the wider and more inclusive fields of visual and material culture. Different perspectives, including feminist, postmodern, postcolonial and contemporary theories, have also reinvigorated art historical writing. In effect, art history stands at the center of wide-ranging discourses on past and present visual cultures.

Visual Intersections In 2006 the Art History Program received a Dee Grant for seed funding of the Visual Intersections Initiative, an interdisciplinary visual studies project that explores rigorous scholarly approaches to the production, use, and interpretation of images and visual representations of all kinds. Visual Intersections connects the study of diverse media and genres of the arts, performance, design, film, television, video, and digital and web technologies.  See our current course offerings for more information.