This course aims to introduce BA students to the most relevant contemporary paradigms of art historical research and their respective historical and institutional conditions of emergence; to develop an understanding of the differences and dialogues between history and philosophy in the study of art; to feature debates on disciplinary norms in the field through theoretical and activist prisms such as decoloniality, ecology, race, gender, sexuality and class/social art history; to enable students to formulate research questions which are both immanent to the field and capable of rethinking its boundaries, and to prepare students to understand transformation and interdisciplinarity as core learning and research methods in this field.

Our main topics wll be: case studies of decolonizing approaches in historically and geographically diverse art historical projects, as well as in modern and contemporary art through use of up-to-date and non-traditional learning materials; the many kinds of relationship between ‘materiality’ and ‘materialism’ in art history, and how these analytic categories function in the philosophy of art; art theory and philosophy of art as both ‘meta’ disciplines and engagements with practice, as well as the role of theory and philosophy in artmaking, curating, etc.;  the transdisciplinarity of art theory from an epistemic, political and institutional standpoint – how this keys in to wider debates about transdisciplinarity in the sciences and humanities and whether they pose a challenge to the disciplinary grounding of the history and/or philosophy of art.

Participation in discussion, group presentation at the end of the semester based on topics and reading.