The honours program in art history at UBC is for exceptionally motivated students who intend to continue their studies with advanced and focused work in art history, whether through graduate study or a career in arts and heritage or a related field.
Building on the major program outcomes, as an honours graduate you will gain further research and writing experience, and develop an enhanced capacity for independent and self-directed study in art history by completing an extended research thesis.
Program Requirements
Students enter the honours program in their third year and must have completed 12 credits of 100- and 200-level ARTH courses. Honours students should have a high B average in all first- and second-year course work and a minimum A- average in art history. If students cannot maintain that minimum average in their third-year art history courses, the program will advise them to revert to the major program.
The honours program has the same course requirements as the major’s program with the addition of:
- 12 additional upper-level ARTH credits
- ARTH 499: Honours Essay (6 credits)
Completing these additional requirements gives honours students a minimum of 48 credits in art history over their third and fourth years.
The honours essay offers the student an opportunity to develop a specific interest in a topic of significant depth. The honours essay’s scope and length are defined in consultation with an art history faculty advisor.
- No more than 6 credits of cross-listed courses (indicated in course description as "Equivalent: xxx") offered by other departments may be counted toward the minimum requirements for the art history major.
- Cross-listed courses, even though they may be taken under the department offering the course, must be counted in the 60-credit limit of ARTH courses if students major in either department.
Mary Buckland, “Legacies of the Female Body: The Witch and the Pétroleuse,” 2018. Supervisor: Dr. Jaleh Mansoor
Irene Choi, “The Fetish in the Empires of Things: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Dutch Still-Life Paintings of the Seventeenth Century and Korean Chaekgeori Paintings of the Nineteenth Century,” 2015. Supervisor: Dr. Joseph Monteyne
Blake Finucane, “The New Era of Digital Art Product: Branding, the SMBAs and the Search Engine Aesthetic,” 2016. Supervisor: Dr. T’ai Smith
Doris Fuller Ruiz, "The Imprint of Cultural Exchange Amongst Different Social Classes: An Analysis of Flower Iconography in Architecture, Metalworks and Ceramics,” 2021. Supervisor: Dr. Saygin Salgirli
Karina Greenwood, “Monstrous (Re)production: An Analysis of Aida Laleian’s Hybrid Creatures,” 2019. Supervisor: Dr. Erin Silver
Niklas Groschinski, “On the Threshold to the Pastoral: Dosso Dossi’s Melissa as Allegory of Transformation in the Court of Alfonso I D’Este,” 2021. Supervisor: Dr. Catherine M. Soussloff
Marcus Prasad, “Marble and Metal: Translations and Replications of the Classical Form in Jeff Koons’s Gazing Ball (2013),” 2018. Supervisor: Dr. Joseph Monteyne
Cory Ratch, “(Dis)assembly: The Rendered Body in Eli Lotar and Georges Franju,” 2014. Supervisor: Prof. Marina Roy; Reader: Dr. John O’Brian
Daniel Schwartz, “Mughal Identity and Visual Claims to the Highest Office,” 2014. Supervisor: Dr. Katherine Hacker
Yasmine Semeniuk, “The Illusion of New: Depictions of Indigenous and White Figures in the Works of Tarsila do Amaral and Emily Carr,” 2024. Supervisor: Dr. Erin Silver
Maisie Westerman, “Starry Night(s): A Case of Transmediation,” 2024. Supervisor: Dr. Jillian Lerner
Yue Yao, “Traveling Artist, Traveling Clothes,” 2020. Supervisor: Dr. Julia Orell