Art and Ideas in Motion: New Perspectives on the British Empire

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Building on crucial insights of the “global turn” in art history, this course examines how the circulation of art and ideas, propelled by British expansionism, shaped cultural identities, artistic traditions, knowledge systems and arts institutions in Britain and its colonies from 1750 to 1950. Topics will include colonial collecting, period and contemporary debates around spoliation, cultural heritage, the formation of the British Museum and restitution, intersections between military conquest and landscape painting, relationships between colonial natural history, ecology and art, questions concerning race, representation and identity and the ways in which artists, including major figures like William Blake and J.M.W. Turner, grappled with empire and its deleterious effects. Although geographically and temporally focused on the British Empire, the course seeks to introduce methodologies that can be applied to different contexts and periods. Students are thus encouraged to think outside of the parameters of the course for their final projects (of which there is a choice between a formal research paper, a mock exhibition, or a creative work). This course includes visits to the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art.