SDSU School of Art, Design, and Art History

Undergraduate Art History Studies

General Overview

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.

Coursework Overview

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.

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.

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.

For more information, you can download an Art History Undergraduate Checklist for degree requirements.

Admissions and Financial Assistance

You can learn more detailed information about the admissions process on the Undergraduate Admissions page. For more information on financial assistance, please visit our Financial Aid page or our student scholarships page to find scholarships available through the School of Art, Design, and Art History.

Facilities

Read detailed information on our research facilities on the Art History Facilities page, where you can also link to other interdisciplinary facilities within the School of Art, Design, and Art History.

Faculty

The Art History area faculty is professionally active nationally and internationally, and the area's graduates successfully compete for admission to graduate programs.

To contact or learn more about individual faculty in this department, please refer to the Art History department directory listing.

This page was last updated at 11:46AM on October 16, 2008