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The Department of the History of Art at Cornell University is committed to preparing students to undertake journeys into visual culture. It promises to do so through the study of areas traditionally central to the discipline such as Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance art, and through the integration of recent fields of theory and research to the study of visual culture. The Internet is only the most recent in a history of journeys students as participants in visual culture are invited to undertake. High-fired ceramic pots, cabinets of curiosity, stereoscopic cards, for example, were once in their own time and place perceived to be powerful visual devices, their very promise of three-dimensionality having a similar capacity to invite the viewer into a virtual world. In our program, students can explore the history of cultural interactions as manifested in visual culture both inside and outside the West from antiquity to present. These investigations will further students’ understanding of the discipline of art history, its roots, its methodologies, as well as its historical and critical connections with other disciplines.
Our program encourages the crossing not only of geographic but also disciplinary borders. Students will be encouraged to explore a wide range of fields, including archaeology, dendrochronology and material culture, anthropology, architecture and urban planning, art practice, connoisseurship, critical and post colonial theory, media studies, museology, performance, race and gender studies, religious studies, the sciences, and social history. Our collaboration with Visual Studies at Cornell expands this range of possibilities to include courses from other departments including Government, Cinema Studies, German Studies, and Information Science.

Shirley Samuels
Chair, History of Art
Professor, Dept of English
(607) 255-3994

srs8@cornell.edu

 

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