Arts of North America

This class provides an introduction to the visual and material cultures of North America, primarily the United States, from the Colonial Period until World War II, produced by artists with a variety of cultural and social identities.  Through the close visual analysis of images and objects, the careful reading of primary sources, and the strategic engagement with recent scholarship, we will study how what and who is “American” have been defined and redefined over the past three centuries.  In 2024, the course will be organized into four large thematic units focusing on the relationships between visual culture and a) materials and material practices, b) a) social and political identities, c) nature and the environment, and d) cultural institutions and public spaces.  Each of these themes is keyed primarily to a different historical moment, but will reach beyond those boundaries.  Painters, craftspeople, sculptors and photographers discussed will include (but not be limited to) Miguel Cabrera, Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Thomas Cole, Lilly Martin Spencer, Harriet Powers, Rafael Aragon, Robert Duncanson, Frederick Church, Winslow Homer, Francisco Oller, Thomas Eakins, Timothy O’Sullivan, James MacNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Frida Kahlo, and Dorothea Lange.  Readings draw heavily on primary sources to give students a feel for how artists and audiences described their own historical situations.