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Students in this course travel to the South Caucasus country of Armenia to participate in a real archaeology excavation over the summer.  No prior experience necessary, anyone can join.

European art of the eighteenth century underwent major transformation in style and subject matter, from the elaborate pageantry of the so-called ‘rococo,’ to the neo-classical reimagining of antiquity, to the shifting passions of the ‘romantic.’ Multiple forces powerfully shaped art, among them rapid urbanization, emergent consumer culture and the growth of the middle classes, political unrest, and polemical debates on art’s purpose. This course explores painting, sculpture, printmaking, and architecture primarily across Britain and France, as well as in Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Topics include the rise of the academy and salon as agents for taste-making, changing ‘public’ markets for art, the home as a space for cultural display, the status of women as artists and patrons, printmaking and the rise of mass media, and art’s foundational role within the scientific revolution. Readings and discussions will also examine European colonization and the interconnections of exploration, exploitation, and an emergent global marketplace.