Faculty of Fine Arts
World Art Before 1400
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
This course examines a broad range of art, architecture, and material culture from prehistory to 1400. Students will learn to analyze and understand art from different time periods and cultural traditions by analyzing the visual culture of diverse groups and will consider issues such as the representations of authority and power, cultural identity, and cultural exchange. We will examine art from diverse cultures including the prehistoric world, Greece, the Islamic world, the Americas, Asia, and Europe.
Equivalent:Art History 2225 (prior to 2020/2021)
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
World Art Since 1400
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
This course examines art, architecture, and material culture from 1400 through to the mid-twentieth century with a focus on the development, diversity, and interaction of art and cultural traditions globally. Taking a comparative approach, this course will explore the relationship of cultural expression to globalization, colonialism, power, and social change. Understanding how audiences engaged with these cultural forms and considering how global political and cultural exchange has shaped visual culture may help develop critical analysis skills that are valuable in today's image-saturated world.
Equivalent:Art History 1000 (prior to 2020/2021)
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
Art and Culture (Series)
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Offerings in subject areas dealing with the interactions and relationships between art and culture.
Prerequisite(s):Will be specified (including any recommended background) for individual offerings
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
Theory and Methods in Art and Art History
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
This course examines various theoretical and interpretative methodologies for the study of art, art history, visual and material culture. Approaches may include: philosophical aesthetics, formalism, semiotics, hermeneutics, Marxism, feminism, postcolonial and decolonial theories, post-structuralism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, queer theory, and global studies. The class will involve close readings of theoretical texts with the aim of empowering students to determine which methods and theories are best suited to their own research and artistic interests.
Prerequisite(s):Art History 1002 and 15 university-level courses (a minimum of 45.0 credit hours)
Equivalent:Art History 2001 (prior to 2019/2020)
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
Art History (Series)
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Offerings in subject areas dealing with significant developments in art history.
Prerequisite(s):Art History 1002 or Third-year standing (a minimum of 60.0 credit hours)
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
Indigenous Art History (Series)
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Rotating topics in the study of Indigenous art and art history.
Prerequisite(s):One of Art History 1001, Art History 1002, or Third-year standing (a minimum of 60.0 credit hours)
Equivalent:Art History 3151 (Critical Issues in Contemporary Indigenous Art History) (prior to 2019/2020) is equivalent to the same titled offering in the Art History 3152 Series;
Art History 3250 (Northwest Coast Art) (prior to 2019/2020) is equivalent to the same titled offering in the Art History 3152 Series
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
Issues in 19th-Century Art and Culture
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
An in-depth consideration of selected topics in art and culture of the long nineteenth century. Topics will vary but may include the changing culture of display from Salon to World's Fair; changing patterns of tourism and its effects on the art world; the effect on art production of changing gender norms, political structures or cultural values.
Prerequisite(s):Art History 1002 AND
One of Art History 1001 or 15 university-level courses (a minimum of 45.0 credit hours)
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
20th-Century Art History to 1945
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
A survey of early 20th-century modern art until World War II. The development of philosophical and formalist abstract painting, sculpture and environments will be considered along with innovations in collage, photomontage, photography, avant-garde cinema and experimental literature. Primitivism's links to colonialism are examined, as are widespread interests in psychoanalysis and esoteric spirituality. Utopian and politically engaged art is compared with the emerging totalitarian art practices of the mid-1930s.
Prerequisite(s):Art History 1002 AND
One of Art History 1001 or 15 university-level courses (a minimum of 45.0 credit hours)
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
Art from 1945 to 1980
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
A survey of modern and contemporary art of the postwar period until 1980 in Western Europe, North America, Latin America and Japan. The revisiting and development of earlier avant-garde approaches to philosophical, gestural, formalist and existentialist abstraction along with the recycling of discarded materials and imagery linked to popular culture will be considered. New approaches to artists' performance, film, video, as well as language and publication-based art are examined, as are expansive engagements with architectural space, the landscape and environment. Critical works focussing on counter-cultural perspectives, feminism and the institutional strictures of the art world are dealt with.
Prerequisite(s):One of Art History 3001 or Art History 3215
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
Canadian Art History to 1960
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
An examination of the art, artists, and art institutions from pre-contact to the establishment of the French and English colonies, up until the advent of abstraction in Canada. Issues of race, gender, nationalism, and colonialism will be addressed.
Prerequisite(s):One of Art History 1001 or Art History 1002 AND
15 university-level courses (a minimum of 45.0 credit hours)
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
Canadian Art History from 1960 to the Present
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
An examination of art, artists, and art institutions in Canada from 1960 to the present, including First Nations and Inuit art, feminist art, race and multiculturalism, queer identity, and contemporary art practices.
Prerequisite(s):One of Art History 1001 or Art History 1002 AND
15 university-level courses (a minimum of 45.0 credit hours)
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
Art and Culture (Series)
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Offerings in subject areas dealing with the interactions and relationships between art and culture.
Prerequisite(s):Will be specified (including any recommended background) for individual offerings
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
Global Art Since 1980
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
An overview of a variety of themes and approaches in recent global art practices from the 1980s to the present. Issues include: the legacy of important movements like abstraction, conceptual art, performance and land art; the formation of global modernity and its entanglements with colonialism; the role of centres and peripheries in the history of contemporary art. The course will also explore how contemporary art practices have reinterpreted and expanded painting, sculpture, and photography, as well as performance, video, installation, and new media.
Prerequisite(s):One of Art History 3001 or Art History 3220 AND
15 university-level courses (a minimum of 45.0 credit hours)
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
Art History (Series)
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Offerings in subject areas dealing with significant developments in art history.
Prerequisite(s):Will be specified (including any recommended background) for individual offerings
Lib Ed Req:Fine Arts and Humanities
Undergraduate Thesis
Credit hours: 6.00
Contact hours per week: Variable
This is a challenging, work-intensive, research-oriented course. In consultation with the Thesis Supervisor, students will define a research problem, formulate a research plan, conduct research, report orally, and submit a report in the form of an Undergraduate Thesis or by curating an exhibition with an accompanying essay, which will be made publicly available.
Prerequisite(s):Fourth-year standing (a minimum of 90.0 credit hours) AND
A cumulative GPA of 3.50 or higher AND
Completion of a minimum of 9 courses (27.0 credit hours) in Art History and/or Museum Studies AND
Application to the Department of Art
Note:Contact hours will vary. Students should be aware that this course involves regular contact with the Thesis Supervisor as well as considerable independent work.