The mission of the Art History program is to offer a broadly based, interdisciplinary program in the visual cultures of the world. To this end we have full and part-time specialists in African, American, Asian, European, Latin American, and Oceanic art. Our goal is to serve the serious art history student by preparing undergraduate majors to be competitive in applying to excellent graduate schools, to prepare M.A. students to be competitive with other candidates applying to Ph.D. programs, and to offer the general student a multi-faceted introduction to global cultural studies.
Courses address a range of media (painting, sculpture, architecture, graphic arts, performance, popular arts) as well as the staging of art at different sites (museums, public venues, and other exhibitionary spaces). The program thus focuses on creativity and culture at both the individual and community/civic levels. Faculty critically examine gender and sexuality, nationhood and national identity, colonialism, race and ethnicity, popular culture and its audiences, identity politics, pedagogy, the politics of cultural institutions, and global culture in a post-modern age. To these ends, the faculty employ semiotics, deconstruction, ethnography, survey research, anthropology and film studies.
Currently our M.A. program has two areas of strength: Modern and contemporary western art and Asian art.
| Undergraduate Program | Graduate Program |
| Area Facilities | Faculty Bios |
At the undergraduate level, the Art History program is dedicated to providing a quality program leading to the Bachelor of Arts degree. This degree offers sound preparation for advanced study in Art History.
The Art History area offers a broad undergraduate curriculum of courses that cover the visual culture of the West (Greco-Roman through Contemporary), Asia (with an emphasis on Japan and on Buddhist art), Sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific Islands and Pre-contact and Colonial Latin America. This is accomplished by a combination of full- and part-time faculty. Two unique offerings, a course in art history methodology and one in history of museums distinguish the program from many other undergraduate programs.
The Art History area faculty is professionally active nationally and internationally, and the area's graduates successfully compete for admission to graduate programs.
Click here for the Art History Undergraduate Checklist (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
At the graduate level, the Art History area offers the MA degree with specializations in l9th century, Modern and Contemporary Western art, US/Mexico border art, American art, Japanese art, Buddhist art, and History of Museums. Prospective applicants must have a BA in Art History and meet University graduate application criteria.
The MA program consists of taking 30 units of 500, 600 and 700 level courses, passing a qualifying examination, submitting a written thesis and making a public presentation of the written thesis. The MA program also requires three semesters of a language other than English; if a student has the requisite three semesters of language study, but undertakes an area of specialization that requires another language, one year of that language will be required.
"Graduate students, please download the Graduate Information Document, which includes necessary checklists, program info, and information on qualifying exams."
Click here for the Art History Undergraduate Checklist (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
Click here for more information on SDSU Art History Graduate Programs.
SDSU Love Library holdings, supplemented by holdings at local and regional libraries, provide faculty and students with good research facilities.
Regional and local resources include the San Diego Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Museum of Photographic Art; Sushi Performance Space; the Los Angeles Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles); the Norton Simon Museum, and a lively Southern California gallery scene.
Jo-Anne Berelowitz
Jo-Anne Berelowitz received her BA in Art History and English Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, her M.A. in Art History from Stanford University, and Ph.D in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles. She taught at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, and at the University of California at Irvine before joining the faculty at SDSU. She has published on museum histories and border studies in the Oxford Art Journal, Genders, the Canadian Journal of Comparative Literature, Sociotam, Third Text, and Society and Space. Her work is included in the anthology: Art Apart: Art institutions and ideology across England and North America (Manchester), and in Mixed Feelings: Art and Culture in the Post-border Metropolis (Routledge), and in an anthology (as yet untitled) on museums. She serves on the editorial board of Genders. She teaches classes in Contemporary Art, American Art, Museum Histories, A History of the Artist’s Profession, and Critical Theory.
Hiroko Johnson
Hiroko Johnson specializes in Japanese art history. She was born in Japan and received the majority of her graduate work in art history from the university in Japan. She received her Ph. D. from University of Southern California. Her dissertation was on Western influence on Japanese art. Numerous articles from her dissertation on Akita Ranga, Western-inspired art school, have been published both in English and Japanese. Her MA degree in art history was from California State University, Northridge. Her Master's thesis was on Ito Jakuchu, an artist from the 18th century. From her MA thesis, articles on Jakuchu's Birds, Animals and Flowers, and Shen Nanpin and His Circle Theory were published in prestigious art journals in Japan. She is a recipient of the Kajima Art Foundation for Research Fund, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Social Science Research Council (SSRC), Kagaku Kenkyu (Kaken) from the Ministry of Education in Japan. She did her Post Doctorate Fellowship at the University of Tokyo. She has organized a panel and presented papers at AAS as well as at the International Conferences. She curated a traveling exhibition commemorating the 150th Anniversary of Commodore Perry's Visit to Japan. Her new book is Western Influences on Japanese Art: the Akita Ranga Art School and Foreign Books.
Ida Katherine Rigby
Ida Katherine Rigby received her BA in history and philosophy at Stanford University and her MA and Ph..D in Art History at the University of California, Berkeley. She has taught at the University of Montana, Tulanen University, the Universit of Victoria, British Colulmbia and the Universit of California, Berkeley. She teaches l9th and 20th century European art history and, historiography and methodology. Her specialization is German art from 1900 to 1933. Her publications include two books, Karl Hofer and An alle Kunstler: War-Revolution-Weimar and five chapters in German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism. She has curated exhibitions of German Expressionist prints. She has served on National Endowment review panels. She has received grants from the Kress Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Society, and the Canada Council. She has held positions on the boards of directors of the San Diego Museum of Art, Dorland Mountain Colony, The Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation, and the San Diego Museum of Man.
Teri L. Sowell, Ph.D.
Teri L. Sowell, Ph.D. , teaches courses in Pacific Island, African and Native North American Art History. Specializing in the Arts of Polynesia, Dr. Sowell has traveled extensively throughout the Pacific conducting fieldwork and examining museum collections. In 2000 she curated the award wining exhibit “Worn With Pride: Celebrating Samoan Artistic Heritage” at the Oceanside Museum of Art and wrote the accompanying catalogue. As a curator at the Brooklyn Museum (1993-95), she reinstalled the Pacific galleries and initiated a docent program of the Pacific Collection. Teri was also a Curatorial Associate at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (1990) during the Pacific Gallery reinstallation. In addition to numerous publications, she frequently presents professional papers at national and international conferences, including College Art Association, Pacific Arts Association, Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, and the European Society for Oceanists. In addition to teaching at SDSU, she has taught courses at the University of California San Diego, the State University of New York at New Paltz, and Indiana University. Dr. Sowell received her Ph.D. (1999) and M.A. (1992) at Indiana University, and a B.A. at UCSD (1988).
Allyson Burgess Williams
At San Diego State since 1996, Dr. Williams teaches lower division survey classes, upper division classes in Renaissance and Baroque art, and a seminar in Renaissance Courtly Patronage. Her doctoral dissertation was on the 16th century artistic patronage of the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara, Alfonso I d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia. Her current research interests include gender issues in the Italian Renaissance, the ideology of courtly patronage of the visual arts, and the history of collecting and display. She has traveled and done extensive research in Italy and regularly presents papers at the annual conferences of the Sixteenth Century Studies Society, the Renaissance Society of Southern California, and the Renaissance Society of America. Dr. Williams received her B.A. in International Relations and English Literature, a Diploma in Art History and her M.A. degree in Art History from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her Ph.D. is from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has also taught at the University of British Columbia, Capilano College, UCLA and Point Loma Nazarene University.
Ann Woods
Ann Woods teaches courses in ancient and medieval art, and the history of architecture. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Pomona College, and received her Masters of Art and Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, specializing in Roman art, with minors in Roman history and medieval art. Her dissertation examined the funerary monuments of a Roman imperial priesthood composed of freed slaves, who used their tombs to assert their upward social mobility and assimilation into Roman society. In addition to teaching at SDSU, she teaches at Cal Tech and the University of San Diego.
This page was last modified on Thursday, 30 August, 2007 [09:45:07 pm]