American Art and Culture Before 1900

3 Units

This is the first of a two-part survey that will cover the history of American art from about 10,000 BC when the first humans walked across the Bering Strait to America up to about 1900. This course emphasizes Native American Art, African-American art, the work of woman artists, and the representation of diverse ethnic groups, providing a doorway to explore the remarkable artistic and cultural transformations that have taken place over the last hundred centuries. The second course in the series, ARTH 271, will explore the multifaceted 20th century-which Henry Luce famously described as "The American Century" --as well as the opening decades of the 21st. Counts as a Human Diversity & Commonality course.