Go Global Seminar – ARTH 439: Paris – Field Study in Nineteenth-Century Art

This immersive summer course takes students to study nineteenth-century visual culture in the museums and built environment of Paris. Offered in English, this hybrid seminar will combine online preparation with two weeks of intensive field study in Paris. To lay the thematic and methodological foundations for study abroad, the course will begin with one week of remote engagement with recorded lectures, readings, and zoom seminars. Participants will then convene in Paris for two weeks of experiential learning centered on museum visits, workshops, walking tours, and research in French collections. Subsequently, students will have another two weeks to complete their assignments; they may choose to continue traveling or return home as the remaining coursework can be done independently and submitted online.

Our exploration of nineteenth-century art and cultural history will focus on changing patterns of spectatorship, visual attraction, and display. Visits to Parisian museums, archives, and historical sites will enable first-hand examination of photography, print, painting, sculpture, decorative arts, waxworks, and displays of mechanical ingenuity. Evaluating histories of colonization, capitalist spectacle, and visions of Paris as the “capital of modernity,” we will also consider critical and creative practices of resistance and repair. We will interrogate imperialist claims and elite privileges, observing how these are manifest in past and present visual practices, cityscapes, and rituals of art tourism.