Medieval Art History and Theories of the Object

Catalog description

The recent turn to the object across the humanities and social sciences has brought to the fore concerns with the nature of material things, their operation in the world, and their entanglement with humans. This seminar will introduce you to some of the key theoretical writings on the object and material culture and will ask you to interrogate their relevance for the discipline of art history. Our focus will be on the Mediterranean and Western European Middle Ages, but depending on the specific interests of the seminar’s participants, we may venture into other historical periods and cultural domains. Topics to be addressed include the social life of things; agency; materiality; the relic; the gift; the miniature; and the question of the human/nonhuman divide. This course is only open to graduate students.