Introduction to African Art
Introduces archaeological, historical, modern, and contemporary works of African art in their aesthetic, cultural, and historical contexts. Examines sculpture, masquerade, textiles, painting, photography, architecture, and personal objects.
African Art and the City
Explores African art through the lens of historical and contemporary cities. Examines the visual art--architecture to royal sculpture to contemporary mixed media works--from a different 20 African cities. Situates artworks and artists within their urban place and time.
Fashion in Africa
Traces African fashion from cloth to everyday clothing and high fashion catwalks between the 19th century and the present. Surveys techniques of cloth production, pattern creation, and tailored styles across the continent. Explores how African dress reveals information about culture, history, political systems, religious worship, gendered relations, and social organization.
African Art and Colonialism
Studies late 19th- and early 20th-century African art within the context of European colonialism. Focuses on episodes of change and collection in Africa and display and reception in Europe. Pays particular attention to influence of European colonialism on pre-existing African artistic traditions, social structures, power dynamics, gender relations, and religions.
Global Trade in African Textiles
Uses African women’s insatiable desire for fashionable textiles as a nexus to understand global trade. Explores the rise and fall of colonial powers in east Africa through an investigation of cloth trading relationships. Analyzes how trading relationships transformed east African religious, cultural, political and economic systems through conspicuous consumption and displays of self.
The Art History of African Apparel
Explores the art history of apparel in Africa, ca. 1850 to the present. Uses clothing as an inclusive window into African societies. Focuses on worn garments—textiles, jewelry, headwear, accessories, and clothing—as the product of love, labor, and significant investment. Situates sartorial displays in their historical, cultural, religious, and political realities, which change over time.
Museum Studies Practicum
Examines the development of museums, interrogates issues of display, and exposes students to professional museum work. Compels students to practically apply art history skills in service of a professional exhibition at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum.
Introduction to Global Art
Introduces art from the Islamic world, South and Southeast Asia, China, Korea, Japan, Oceania, Africa, and the native Americas from early times to the present. Examines sculpture, painting, architecture, pottery, book arts, textiles, photography, and other visual art forms, emphasizing the relationship between form and function within an historical context.
Fashion in the Global World
Examines the western history of fashion and case studies from the global world using artworks to explore influences and trace designs across the globe. Highlights the kimono, the codpiece, the corset, the three-piece suit, the qipao, the hijab, wax-print, and denim jeans.
Global Borrowings in Art
Explores artworks as the visual ramifications when cultures interact. Focuses on case studies from the global world of artistic traditions that are the product of episodes of global interaction or consciously borrow elements from previous artworks.
Art for Rollins
Focuses on visual art at Rollins to explore the cultural dynamics of collecting, the ethics of purchasing, acquiring, owning, contextualizing, and issues involved in displaying artwork on campus. Provides overview of artworks at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum and its Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art.
Fashion through Film
Explores how fashions chart social change from ca. 1850-2010s. Analyzes how rising hemlines in the 1920s led to a plethora of casual styles in the 2010s by examining fashion history texts and applying them to popular film. Connects clothing to individuals’ lived experiences, who display aspects of their identities through their sartorial choices. Bring popcorn.
Art in Orlando
Explores artworks, the creation of art collections, and the elevation of artistic culture in Orlando. Takes place entirely in local museums and art collections, with visits to the Alfond, Morse, Polasek, OMA, Mennello, Casa Feliz, Art & History Museums Maitland, Snap! Space, UCF, Crealdé, Hannibal Square, and other private galleries and public art.
Making Any Major Marketable
Develops students’ abilities to discuss their academic, co-curricular, internship, and employment experiences cogently. Includes discussion of résumés, cover letters, professional networking, interviewing, online presence, and graduate school.
