81 courses with the subject ARTH, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
ARTH 001DFirst-Year Seminar: Architecture of Philadelphia1
Philadelphia offers a virtual hall of fame of architectural and urban history. Even a cursory list touches on many of the major developments in the built environment over the last five centuries and beyond: William Penn’s Philadelphia Plan; Independence Hall; Eastern State Penitentiary; Levittown; Society Hill; the Vanna Venturi House; and the Barnes Foundation. This discussion-based seminar turns to this history not only to understand the architecture of one important metropolitan area, but to understand how these examples can teach about broader themes including the history of land use and planning, the industrial and urban revolutions, social struggle and social change, public memory, metropolitan growth and urban renewal, and aesthetic and formal innovation. Through field trips, archival research, critical interpretation of interdisciplinary sources, and writing assignments, students will learn the foundational methods of architectural history as well as many of the major cultural and social forces that have shaped it. Arts and Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Spring 2028 Staff.
ARTH 001EFirst-Year Seminar: Michelangelo and Renaissance Culture1
In this discussion-based first-year seminar, we will study the sculptures, paintings, architecture, poetry, drawings, and biographies of the Renaissance artist Michelangelo. We will investigate these in light of Michelangelo’s patrons, audiences, and the larger cultural, political, and religious contexts in which these works were produced. We will also consider the ways in which these works have been analyzed over the centuries and how the biographies and myths of Michelangelo have been created and understood. In doing so, we will develop a critical understanding of the methods and terminology of the discipline of art history itself. Course projects include convening as a mock group of museum trustees to discuss whether the museum should purchase a sculpture that has recently been attributed to Michelangelo. Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit.
This course looks at the questions and arguments art historians have developed to address the multiple facets of Picasso’s art, richly represented in the nearby Philadelphia Museum of Art and Barnes Foundation. Methods and perspectives explored include formal analysis, iconography, biography, social history, feminism, semiotics, and museum practice. Class sessions will focus on discussion of case studies and assignments will encourage critical skills and effective written and oral communication. Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit.
ARTH 001GFirst Year Seminar: Brought to Life: The Art of Animation in East Asia1
To bring an image to life is an undying fantasy. In this discussion-based seminar, we explore the art of enlivenment in East Asia, beginning with early accounts of inanimate objects coming to life, from bronze sculptures of the Buddha walking off of their pedestals in medieval China, deities captured in paintings animated by shamans in Korea, to abandoned furniture and kitchen utensils banding together to seek vengeance on their owners in Japan. Imbued with movement, lifelike dolls, puppets and automata also take on a life of their own, and static images like those painted on a handscroll move to tell riveting stories. We trace this development of moving images into the twentieth century by examining the early history of animation in China and Japan, the emergence of anime and its media culture, and the use of animation in avant-garde art and cinema. Arts and Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA. FMST.
ARTH 001JFirst Year Seminar: Arts of Everyday Life
Centered on the study of five artworks, this first year seminar introduces students to the interconnectedness of art and everyday life. The course traces the parallel histories of feminism and art in US modernity. Students of this seminar will study the work of women who relied on art to make sense of their everyday experience and fight for a more inclusive art world. At the end of this writing course students will have produced forms of art writing such as the art review, the personal essay, the wall caption, and the research paper. Arts and Humanities. Writing Course.
ARTH 001LFYS: Handscrolls to Manga: Visual Storytelling in Japan1
Through examination of select pictorial narratives produced in Japan between the 12th century and the present, this first-year seminar introduces students to the basics of art historical research and analysis. We will look at the ways in which handscrolls, folding screens, and (comic) books employ image and text in addressing subjects such as romances, miracles, battles, and fantasies, and consider the roles and functions performed by pictorial narratives in society. Arts and Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Spring 2027. Sakomura.
Leonardo da Vinci was a great anatomist, engineer, architect and inventor whose drawings circulated around the courts of Europe. In this discussion-based course we will study the inventions, writings, paintings, drawings and biographies of this important Renaissance artist. We will consider the ways in which the works, biographies, and myths of Leonardo have been analyzed (and created) over the centuries. In doing so, we will develop a critical understanding of the methods and terminology of the discipline of art history itself. Eligible as Writing Course. Arts and Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Fall 2027 Reilly.
ARTH 001NFirst Year Seminar: Indigenous Art, Land, and Environment.1
Cross-Listed: ENVS 002 This first year seminar introduces students to the ways that Indigenous art and cultural traditions center diverse relationships to the environment, land, and place. This course will examine how Indigenous artists of the Americas model and visually express a relationship to place as something inhabited equally by human and non-human beings across present and ancestral time. Throughout this seminar, we will examine maps, land art, monuments, and other visual material through an expanded field, considering other practices such as beading, pottery, and carving alongside contemporary Indigenous art as expressions of land relations that reframe the mainstream history of Euro-American art and environmentalist movements. Students will be asked to consider and evaluate art and the present landscape in terms of colonial histories, ancestral timescales, and changing Indigenous traditions, including a critical evaluation of the land and place upon which Swarthmore College is situated. This writing course will introduce students to forms of art writing such as the art review, the personal response essay, cartographic interpretation, and the research paper. Art History Writing course. 1 credit. Fall 2026. Green.
ARTH 001PFirst-Year Seminar: Objects of Empire: The Global Arts of the Early-Modern World1
This class seeks to understand the so called “Age of Discovery” (15th- 17th century) through the lens of material culture, looking at the objects that motivated and facilitated European imperial expansion as well as those that negotiated the cross-cultural interactions produced by European exploration. We will examine this “stuff” for insights into the lives of the people who made, purchased, or collected it. Although grounded in the field of art history, this course capitalizes upon the recent “material turn” in the humanities and the proliferation of object-based inquiries to consider material culture from a variety of disciplinary perspectives (including art history, history, and anthropology). We will not only learn to think about the “objects of empire,” but also to think with them, gaining a better understanding of important issues such the role of art in establishing colonial regimes, questions of hybridity and artistic influence, the origins of global exchange, and the politics early-modern collecting practices. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for LALS
ARTH 001QFirst-Year Seminar: Caravaggio Revisited: Criminal, Rogue, or Genius?
Arguably one of the most notorious artists in history, Caravaggio (c.1571-1610) was both revered and denigrated by his contemporaries in Europe. The painter’s innovative naturalism and expressive use of light and shadow secured his place among the greatest talents of the seventeenth century. Yet his irascible nature, purported sexual libertinism, and criminal activities earned him a reputation as the ultimate bad-boy of art history. This romantic notion of Caravaggio as a rogue genius has been bolstered by anecdotal biographies and sensational accounts written by contemporaries and later promulgated by modern art historians. In this course we will reexamine Caravaggio’s legendary persona and his career as a painter, placing the artist and his revolutionary style into accurate historical context. Humanities.
ARTH 001RFYS:Art in Flux: Metamorphosis and the Arts of China1
Metamorphosis (n.): the act or process of transformation from one form, state, or substance to another, through natural or supernatural means This seminar is an introduction to the arts and visual-material culture of China through the lens of metamorphosis. Change is inherent to matter, as it is to our bodies, environments, and lives. Transformation is the key term through which artists and craftspeople approach their work. After they are made, works of art and objects are used, moved, replaced and modified; they are valued and revalued; they are damaged, stolen or misplaced. They are invested with animate qualities and seen as alive. Finally, they are conduits for physical, spiritual, and symbolic transformation. We will learn methods for analyzing works of art across several states of creation, circulation, change and loss. Topics for discussion include creative processes of making, transformations of jade in the afterlife, the liquidity of bronzes and other metals, the animation of Buddhist sculptures, Daoist practices of alchemy and the body, self-cultivation and the brush, performance as a means of becoming other, and the politics of recycling, loss and destruction. Through seminar discussions, field trips and in-class workshops, critical analysis of sources, and writing assignments, we will learn interdisciplinary methods for art history, and consider the broader implications of metamorphosis for a world in flux. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA.
ARTH 001SFYS: Uncovering Philadelphia’s Asian Art1
An exploration of Philadelphia’s often-overlooked engagements with Asia through art, architecture, material culture, and sites. This course introduces methods for visual and object-based analysis, and examines how the visual dimensions of local history can illuminate the tensions of global connections. Arts and Humanities. Writing Course 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA, ASAM, GLBL paired
This course is an introduction to the Western tradition of art and architecture as developed in the Mediterranean, Egypt, and Europe from prehistoric cave painting through the seventeenth century. The goal of this course is to provide you with a chronology of the major works of art and architecture from this period and to teach you the vocabulary and methodologies necessary to closely analyze them. In addition to considering works of art and architecture in terms of the material, historical, and cultural circumstances in which they were produced, we will analyze the concept and history of the “Western tradition” itself. A full range of issues related to the production and reception of artworks will be examined in this course, including: the representation of-and construction of-race, gender, class, religion, social relations, and politics; the use and status of materials; the context in which these works were used and/or displayed; and the critical responses these works elicited.
This course surveys the arts of China, Korea, Japan, and India from the late Neolithic period to the present. Using vocabularies and tools of analyses from the discipline of art history, we examine the form and significance of key monuments of art and architecture, consider the dynamic relationship between the visual arts and their ritual, religious, economic, and socio-political contexts, and reflect upon parallels between past and present motivations for cultural production.
ARTH 005Modern Art in Europe and the United States1
This course surveys Western European and American art from the late 18th century to the 1960s. It introduces significant artists and art movements in their social and political contexts and also focuses attention on art historical approaches that have been developed to interpret this art, including socio-economic and feminist perspectives.
This course takes a focused look at European and American art from 1945 to the present, a period during which most conventional meanings and methods of art were challenged or rejected. Beginning with the brushstrokes of abstract expressionism and continuing through to the bitmaps of today’s digital art, we consider the changing status of artists, artworks, and institutions. Emphasis will be placed on critical understanding of the theoretical and historical foundations for these shifts. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GMST, DGHU
This course examines the diverse styles and histories of modern and contemporary Indigenous art. Focusing on global contexts, including the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand, we will examine how art is a material form through which international relationsand exchanges between Indigenous artists and cultural producers have been practiced since time immemorial. We will consider how different forms and languages of visual art allow Indigenous artists, activists, and community members to express decolonial,diplomatic, economic, kinship, cosmological, and place-based relations within and beyond the category of fine and contemporary art. Students will come away with an understanding of and appreciation for the key issues that inform the reception, curation, and history of modern and contemporary Indigenous art, including the boundaries of gender, craft, and tradition; authorship and ceremony; interventions in archives, collections, and displays; sovereignty over self-representation, territory, and identity; ecocritical and land-based practice; and the impacts of commodification and nationalist exploitation. Art and Humanities. 1 Credit.
ARTH 008Built Ecologies: Architecture, Landscape, and Environment in East Asia1
A thematic introduction to approaches to building and landscape in East Asia, this course stresses environmental connections (from the ecological to the extractive) while also examining East Asian notions of nature (from the philosophical to the ideological). Arts and Humanites. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA. ENVS. Fall 2026. Eberhard.
Eligible for ENVS. In this introductory level seminar students will learn how changing conceptualizations of nature have shaped the genealogy of art in Euro-American modernity. Special emphasis will be placed on the strategies developed by contemporary artists to make sense of the unfolding climate crisis. Arts and Humanities.
This course will examine the art and architecture of ancient Greece and Rome, highlighting how certain artistic and architectural traditions were used by political powers to control the population and to provide the basic infrastructure of civilization. Topics will include: the changing image of the human figure; mythological narratives and their iconography; the development, canonization, and diffusion of architectural forms; the integral role of images in the day-to-day religious and domestic practices of ancient people; and the turn from a Classical visual world to a Christian one. Arts and Humanites. Writing course. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL-Paired
In the late 20 th Century, scientists concurred that race is more of a social construction than it is a biological one. Although physical markers of race such as skin color, hair texture, and the shapes of facial features are determined by a tiny part of human genetic information, art history evidences the persistent impact of racial concepts on American lives and art. This social interpretation of race has had a tremendous impact on the history of American cultural production and its engagement with the global art world. This course explores art history in terms of racial and cultural identity, and points to the ways in which race intersects with other group identifications such as class, religion, sexual orientation or gender. We will examine the visual history of race in the United States, as both self-fashioning and external cultural mythology, by looking at the ways that conceptions of Native American, Latino, and Asian identity, alongside ideas of Blackness and Whiteness, have combined to create the enduring ideologies of class, gender, and sexuality evident in our historical visual and material culture. How did race become attached to individual bodies? How did art, fashion, and film aid in the creation and reification of racial categories in the United States during the 19th through 21st centuries? We will also investigate the ways that these creations have subsequently helped to launch new visual expression, from the colonial period through the early 2000’s, including painting, sculpture, photography, film, installation art, and performance. In this class you may have the opportunity to ask and explore open-ended questions, investigate your own identity, visit museums, archives, and local art collections, to analyze works of art and art movements in terms of various identity issues, to hear from contemporary artists, and to look at, read about, and discuss how artists have used their work to investigate their identity or larger ideas about identity, diversity, race, and ideas about the Americas. We will analyze art and imagery that may be considered by some to be controversial and challenging. Participants must make a commitment to openly consider multiple perspectives and diverse arguments with dignity and respect. Humanities. 1 credit.
This course explores artistic innovation and cultural exchange from the 14th to 17th centuries, focusing on Northern and Southern European Renaissance and Baroque developments while incorporating a global perspective. Students will examine the Italian Renaissance, Northern Renaissance, and Baroque periods, questioning the concept of “rebirth” and studying patronage in humanist courts and ecclesiastical centers. The course emphasizes global influences, including Islamic art and colonialism’s impact on art in the Americas and Asia. Key topics include technical innovations like linear perspective and chiaroscuro, patronage dynamics, religious and secular themes, and the evolution of portraiture and identity. Through lectures and discussions, students will develop a nuanced understanding of Renaissance and Baroque art, recognize significant works and artists, analyze cross-cultural influences, and gain critical thinking skills in interpreting visual culture. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL
This survey class introduces students to key developments within global art practices since 1950. The course will explore how the politics, ideologies, and the contexts of contemporary artists working around the world shaped diverse artistic approaches in diverse media, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, performance, new media, and digital art. Students will be introduced to the major stylistic trends in art since 1950 and examine how these styles were translated across international and cultural contexts and developed in response to or as an alternative to the dominant narrative of modernism as conceived by the West. Areas of study include instances of Abstraction, Pop art, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Land Art, Video, Performance Art, and Installation Art in geographic areas including the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Indigenous Americas. Each class will explore major historiographic themes through case studies of exemplary contemporary artists including postcolonialism, feminism, postmodernism, hybridity, decolonization, ecocriticism, and transnationalism.
This course examines the intersections of art and technology across a wide range of art and popular media. Beginning with an exploration of a set of aesthetic and cultural production that includes 16 th century woodcuts, 17 th century cabinets of curiosity, 18 th century magic lantern shows, and 19 th century stereoscopes and panoramas, the course will provide historical context for a consideration of the role that various forms of technology have played in shaping art and culture in the 20 th and 21 st century. Through class trips to local museums and galleries, classroom and online discussions, guest lectures, readings, screenings, and creative experiments in art and technology, this course will reflect on emerging technologies and their historical origins to understand the ways in which the relationships between humans and machines continue to evolve in our contemporary cultural context. Humanities. 1 credit.
Cross-Listed: CHEM 003B. This interdisciplinary course explores the intersection of chemistry with the visual arts. During the course of the semester we will learn about the materials available to artists, issues faced by museum curators and conservators, and some basic chemistry concepts related to these topics. Our exploration of the chemistry, and history, of art media will include labs that extend and enhance the lecture topics. Does not fulfill NSEP requirement. Arts and Humanities. Natural science and engineering. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL-Core Spring 2027. Reilly.
The course considers the history and practice of exhibiting art. Using Philadelphia’s rich array of museums, galleries, and public art collections, we will examine past and present exhibition practices to ask: what educational, aesthetic, and political purposes do exhibitions serve? How have they done so and why? How do exhibition curators and designers use space, design, and technology to contribute to–and control–the experience of the visitor? As part of this course students will conceive, design, and execute a virtual exhibition. Humanities. 1 credit.
The making of duplicates informs a long tradition of artistic productions in China. This course explores diverse modes and technologies of reproduction, bringing into focus the function and cultural value of the copy in the history of Chinese art and visual culture. Through case studies of replications of painting, calligraphy, sculpture, film, architecture, ritual and religious art, we will consider a range of motivations for making copies that often became something more than just mindless imitation, serving as integral components of an artist’s training, as acts of piety, as forms of preservation and documentation, as agents of dissemination, and as homage to artists and calligraphers of the past. As we study multiples made from the Bronze Age to contemporary China, we will pay close attention to the different processes of reproduction, examining how technique and material shape not only the duplicate produced but also the varied perception of the practice of copying. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA
ARTH 029Architecture and Urbanism of Philadelphia1
Swarthmore sits amidst a hall of fame of architectural and urban history. This course turns to this history not simply to understand the architecture of one important metropolitan area, but to understand how these examples can teach about broader themes including the history of city planning, the industrial and urban revolutions, the search for “American” architectural styles, metropolitan growth and urban renewal, the ascent of modernism, the emergence of postmodernism, and historic preservation, among others. Students will learn both foundational methods of architectural history as well as many of the major movements that have constituted it. This course will be taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program . Art and Humanities. 1 credit.
ARTH 030Brought to Life: The Art of Animation in East Asia1
To bring an image to life is an undying fantasy, one that predates anime and computer-animated films. This course takes as its focus the art of enlivenment in East Asia. It explores the idea of animation through a range of topics spanning across time, media, and contexts, including: the production of remarkably life-like images, such as ikiningyo (“living doll”) in Japan; activation and enlivenment of Buddhist icons; theories on the criteria of “spirit resonance” in Chinese paintings; pictorial formats and optical devices that set static pictures into motion; animated films from Korea, China, and Japan; and the use of animation in experimental and contemporary art. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA.
ARTH 032Matcha and Sencha: The Arts of Japanese Tea Culture1
This course explores the rich cultural practice of chanoyu , the “Japanese tea ceremony,” which emerged around the preparation of powdered green tea. We will examine the ritual, aesthetic, and institutional history of this practice from the 12th century to the present and consider the various cultural forms-painting, calligraphy, ceramics, architecture, garden design, religious ritual, performance, food preparation, and flower arrangement-that were integrated into and developed through chanoyu . Discussions will include the place of Zen Buddhism in the history of chanoyu , the role of chanoyu in Japanese aesthetic discourse and art collecting practices, and the impact of chanoyu on contemporary productions of architecture, lacquerware, metalware, and ceramics. We will learn the formal procedures of preparing tea ( temae ) and visit Shofuso, the Japanese House and Garden in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. Arts and Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA Fall 2026. Sakomura. Fall 2027 Sakomura.
This colloquium examines the major calligraphic traditions of China, Korea, and Japan from 1200 B.C.E. to the present. We will study the functions and contexts of calligraphic inscriptions among a rich range of material texts, such as animal bones, bronze vessels, stone stelae, mountain cliffs, and various paper-based formats. In addition to analyzing the development and circulation of calligraphic styles within East Asia and celebrated works of individual calligraphers, we will explore how calligraphy conveys meaning and how it has been used as a powerful tool for cultural and political commentary. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA Spring 2027. Sakomura.
ARTH 036Modern Architecture in Japan: Culture, Place, Tectonics1
This course explores the diversity of forms and meanings that architecture took on in Japan since its industrialization in the 19th century. With that focus, it opens up more general questions on the capacity of construction, structure, materials and their assembly to express cultural, aesthetic, environmental and social concerns. It begins by introducing the context of traditional architecture that served as a foundation for the emergence of modern architecture, and continues to discuss the work and words of architects who demonstrated salient topics in architecture in the 20th and 21st centuries in Japan. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA
This course explores Chinese art and visual culture from the late nineteenth century to the present. It surveys key artists, movements, landmark exhibitions, major debates and issues to trace the contours of the modern and contemporary art scene, focusing on intercultural encounters beginning from the era of international treaty ports to contemporary global art circuit. By studying works across media in tandem with primary sources including artist writings, group manifestoes, and exhibition statements, we consider how artistic concerns engaged with the unfolding seismic sociopolitical and economic transformations in China, as well as with an expanding art world and art market. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA.
ARTH 040Michelangelo to Mussolini: The Classical Tradition in Rome1
This course considers how artists and patrons in Rome (and beyond) imitated, reinterpreted, and challenged the classical tradition of art and architecture-and to what ends. We will first acquire a foundational knowledge of the Greco-Roman tradition. We will then analyze how artists and architects from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century have employed this tradition to promote the agendas of dynastic, military, and elected rulers, such as popes, kings, dictators, presidents, and prime ministers. For the final project, students will analyze an example of how the “neoclassical” project took form in other countries, such as Germany, Russia, France, England, and the United States. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit. Fall 2026. Reilly.
This course explores the history of photography in China, Japan, and Korea from the 1840s to the end of the twentieth century. It focuses on the development of this powerful form of visual communication against specific cultural and historical contexts, examining the various motivations for making and displaying photographs as well as the ways in which the history of modern East Asia was mediated through the lens. We consider how photography was integrated into artistic practices and everyday life, playing a vital role in forging new national and social identities and the shaping of both public and personal memories. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA
Can art change the world? Questions about the impact of art in the social fabric are constitutive of the idea of avant-garde art. This course will introduce students to these debates as they took shape in the American continent since 1960. With an emphasis on forms of art practice that outspokenly seek to provoke positive social change, this class provides a parallel narrative of contemporary art, in which art exits the museum space to ingrain itself in broader social processes. During the semester students will learn about different theories of socially engaged art articulated by artists and art historians alike. We will consider art as activism in the Civil Rights era, forms of artistic resistance to Latin American military dictatorships, second wave feminist art, contemporary community-based art, and forms of engaged art practice concerned with planet-wide environmental crisis. We will debate the tactics and ideals guiding these practices, and we will evaluate the potential risks that come with relying on art for social transformation. This course alternates short lecture periods with in-class discussion of primary and secondary sources. It is structured around six thematic blocs, at the end of which students will produce a short written assignment. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ESCH, PEAC, GLBL-paired, LALS, ASAM Fall 2027 Checa-Gismero.
This introductory course exposes students to the histories, theories, and forms of modern art in Latin America in the 20th Century. The course explores the development of artistic scenes in the continent, and how avant-garde art practices have engaged a variety of nation-building programs -either as reinforcements or as refutations. During this course students will become familiar with scholarship and critical frameworks formulated in Latin America, as well as in the United States.
(Cross-listed as ARTT 049 ) This course combines the history and hands-on making of photography for an integrated exploration of this medium as a form of visual documentation. It examines the uses and abuses of photography from the late nineteenth century to the present to focus on techniques and practices that challenge the documentary authority of photography. With its unique combination of lectures, reading discussions, demonstrations, hands-on image-making and critiques along with guest speaker sessions, this course will provide students with a robust set of critical and practical tools and perspectives for thinking about how the photographic image profoundly shapes our understanding of the world. No prerequisite; students should have a smartphone or digital camera, other supplies will be provided. Humanities. 1 credit. Access the class schedule to search for sections.
This discussion-based course focuses on Europe’s relations with Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East in the early era of colonization and global expansion. Students will explore what the visual arts can reveal about the transfer and hybridization of ideas; the relationship between art, religion, and colonialism; the development of the “exotic”; and the growth of global trade in this era of increasing internationalism. We will focus on cross-cultural exchange in the 15th - 17th centuries, and consider these issues primarily from the European perception of the expanding world. The theme of globalism will be addressed through an examination of arts such as paintings, sculptures, prints, ceramics, textiles, architecture, maps, festival art, and ice and sugar sculptures. Arts and Humanites. 1 credit. Eligible for GLST. Fall 2027 Reilly.
This course will consider the art and architecture of Renaissance Florence. In addition to studying the works of artists such as Brunelleschi, Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, we will consider a full range of issues related to the production and reception of artworks. Topics will include patrons and their agendas, the construction of artistic identity, artists’ rivalries, the role of art in the domestic sphere, the use of art as propaganda, the education of the artist, and the source, meaning, and use of materials. Art and Humanities. 1 credit.
The “Global Renaissance,” focuses on Europe’s relations with Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East in the early era of colonization and global expansion. Students will explore what the visual arts can reveal about the transfer of ideas and the growth of global trade and cultural/religious conflict in this era of increasing internationalism. We will focus on cross-cultural exchange in the 15 th and 16 th centuries, and consider these issues primarily from the European perception of the expanding world. The theme of globalism will be addressed though the lens not only of painting, sculpture and architecture, but also objects that are not typically considered “high art” such as maps, textiles, festival art, and ceramics. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL-Core
Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo have come to stand for Renaissance art itself. This course will study these masters, their works, and their heated rivalries with one another in the context of the worlds in which they lived and worked. We will consider topics such as the construction of the artist as genius, the relationship between art and science, the role of art in the domestic sphere, the use of art as propaganda, and the education of the artist. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit. Spring 2027. Reilly.
ARTH 060Building New Worlds: The Arts and Architectures of Liberation1
This mid-level course examines the legacies of artists and architects who, since the 1960s, have relied on the power of cultural work in struggles for racial emancipation. It centers the contributions to the fields of socially engaged art and architecture of African American, Latinx, Asian American, and Native American practitioners who worked to make the United States a nation for all. Faced with a hostile environment of systemic racism that often excluded them from institutions of artistic and architectural legitimacy, these practitioners relied on imagination and the power of community to plan, realize, and historize their interventions. We will focus on six sites of the built environment that have historically been settings of struggle against racialized systemic violence: the prison, the home, public space, the school, the international border, and the neighborhood. Humanities. 1 credit.
ARTH 061Art and Culture of Indigenous Philadelphia: From Shackamaxon to the Present1
Cross Listed with (ENVS 056) For millennia prior to the signing of the “Great Treaty” by William Penn and Chief Tamanend of the Lenape under the Treaty Elm at Shackamaxon, Indigenous peoples have played a central role in the history of Philadelphia and the art and material culture of theregion. This course will examine the visual and material histories of Indigenous communities, artists, and leaders of present-day Philadelphia and its surrounding ancestral territories, from pre-contact to the present. We will consider the history of the city and the land upon which it stands as an Indigenous place, one that has been occupied since time immemorial by Indigenous peoples and that has served as a gathering place and cross-roads for the travelers, diplomats, and storytellers of many Native nations. We will consider how the Indigenous history of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania more broadly reflects on and is interrogable through present-day sites and constructions of civicidentity, and how to this day a resurgent Indigenous community calls Philadelphia home. Among topics for close study are the archaeologyand material culture of the Eastern Woodlands and ancestral Lenape territory, including earthworks, mounds, and their environmentalrelations; Euro-American representations of Indigenous peoples and the landscape from early contact through the nineteenth century, including important scenes in the city’s history such as Benjamin West’s Penn’s Treaty with the Indians and portraits of Indigenous leadersand diplomats passing through the city as part of delegations to the nation’s capital in Washington, DC; Indigenous oral histories of andvisual representations of such histories, such as the Shackamaxon wampum belt; monuments and the memorialization of colonial history; and modern and contemporary Indigenous art and exhibitions that reflect Philadelphia as vibrant urban Indigenous center. This course will be taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program . Arts and Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ENVS, ESCH Fall 2026. Green.
(Cross-listed as ENVS 053) As climate change brings about the breakdown of global ecological systems, humanity is faced with the urgent need to evaluate our place in those systems and reckon with our impact as agents of change. Art has long been a site through which societies have visually and materially expressed and explored their relationships to nature, both as a cultural-aesthetic construction and as a real site inhabited by human and non-human beings. This course will examine the changing nature of land, place, and environment in modern and contemporary art and its representation and deployment as a genre, theme, and medium over the last half-century, with special attention to the Eastern Woodlands as an ancestral and contested site. Approaching diverse art forms such as earthworks, painting, photography, installation art, and site-specificity from ecocritical and decolonial art historical lenses, we will consider “nature” as a cultural-aesthetic construction and as a politically embattled site inhabited by human and non-human agents and beings. With select local site and collection visits, we will examine the role of [the] E/earth in art as material, vibrant matter, pigment, place, and collective home of social, cosmological, and ecological relations. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ENVS
In his essay, “Preserving Wildness,” environmentalist Wendell Berry wrote: “We need to understand [nature] as our source and preserver, as an essential measure of our history, and as the ultimate definer of our possibilities.” With Berry’s multidimensional conception of nature in mind, this course examines the interrelationship of architecture, planning, and the ever-changing American landscape. It looks at the ways in which architecture may respond to the political, social, and philosophical implications of diverse ecological perspectives and uncovers the part architecture plays in environmental preservation and degradation. The class takes as its starting point colonial settlements and Native American land use patterns in the Eastern United States and concludes with national responses to 21st-century climate change discourse, paying particular attention to fluctuating conceptions of wildness and nature over time and to the wider socio-cultural implications of these attitudes. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ENVS Spring 2028 Staff.
Cross listed: ENVS 059 The Eastern Woodlands has long been an international territory and gathering place for the Native nations of North America. Stretching from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic, and from the Gulf of Mexico to the boreal forests north of the Great Lakes, this huge geographic area has been home to diverse groups of Indigenous peoples since time immemorial whose stories, art, and ways of life reflect an intimate relationship with the varied ecologies and non-human inhabitants of the region. As the site of first contact with Europeans in the present-day United States and now one of the most densely populated areas in the continent, the Woodlands has also seen great environmental and socio-political upheaval over the course of the last 500 years. This course examines the history of the Woodlands from pre-contact to the present through the art and material culture of the Indigenous peoples who call the region home. We will explore how Indigenous ancestral and ecological relations to place have changed over time and how they are expressed in diverse visual and material cultural forms, from ancient earthworks to basketry, quillwork, beadwork, painting, sculpture, multimedia installations, and other forms that transcend the artificial divide of the traditional and contemporary. With an emphasis on Lenape, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee art, histories, and traditional ecological knowledge, students will be asked to consider Swarthmore’s place on these Indigenous lands and within a nexus of contested territories. The course will include visits to Philadelphia-area museums and collections and coincides with the exhibition The sky loves to hear me sing: Woodland Art in Transmotion at the List Gallery, the art which will anchor key discussions alongside visiting artists and speakers. Eligible for ENVS. Arts and Humanaties. 1 credit.
ARTH 065Land Back!: Visual Expressions of Global Indigenous Sovereignty1
Cross-listed: ENVS: 056B The “Land Back” movement is an Indigenous-led campaign that in recent years has emerged as a prominent focal point for establishing Indigenous political authority over territories once claimed and controlled by Indigenous nations. This course examines how Indigenous artists and activists have expressed “Land Back,” or sovereignty over land, culture, and representation, in visual and material forms across time. It will consider Land Back and decolonization movements within a history of generational efforts to reestablish Indigenous sovereignty over ancestral territories around the world, and seek to understand how cultural expression imagines, shapes, and informs debates around return and sovereignty. It will examine the intertwined nature of Indigenous arts, land rights, and issues such as environmental protections, land loss, and language; material expressions of place-based knowledge; cultural property laws such as NAGPRA; the relationship between federal and state recognition and arts, crafts and copyright laws; and global Indigenous sovereignty movements. Arts and Humanities. Writing Course. 1 credit. Eligible for ENVS, GLBL- core.
ARTH 066Colloquium: Race, Space, and Architecture1
This colloquium considers how race and identity interact with architectural and urban spaces, especially in the United States in the twentieth century. By studying the historical and theoretical dimensions of topics including the meanings attached to public and private housing, the training and practice of designers, and the reconstruction and transformation of urban places, we will interpret how race has shaped buildings, landscapes, and plans. In turn, we will also examine how the built environment has shaped the formation and interpretation of racial categories. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST Fall 2026. Goldstein.
This course will offer a history of architecture not as a history of styles or historical periods but as an account of building, making, and constant remaking. Starting from the production of materials from which we construct architecture and ending with the decline, deterioration, and afterlife of structures, this discussion-based course will offer a chance to reflect on the labor that constructs the built environment and the many people who are involved in its production from the very beginning to the very end. Beyond the architect, we will also consider the role of miners and manufacturers, finance capital, labor unions, construction workers, users and renovators, maintenance staff, and those involved in deconstruction and resale. Over the course of the semester, we will come to understand architecture as constructed by many hands, largely outside of the control of the principal architect, and involving many forms of design. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit.
ARTH 072Global History of Architecture: Prehistory to 1750 CE1
This survey will provide an introduction to the history of the global built environment from the earliest human settlements to the middle of the second millennium. Chronologically and geographically broad, we will examine selected works of architecture and urbanism from diverse cultures around the world, commencing ca . 10,000 B.C.E. and ending around 1750 C.E. In doing so, we will interpret the built environment as both a product of its social, political, and cultural contexts and a force that shapes those contexts. Despite a diversity of examples, common themes–such as cultural interaction and exchange, religion and belief, transmission of knowledge, architectural patronage, spatial and aesthetic innovation, and technological transformation–will emerge across the course.
This course surveys the history of photography from the announcement of photography’s invention in the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It traces the development of the medium as a form of artistic expression and as means of visual communication, highlighting how photographic images, practices, and discourses have not only informed but also changed our perception of the world around us. We examine the varied meanings of photography within specific social, historical, cultural contexts as well as through different methodological lenses across disciplinary divides, reflecting on the countless ways through which photography bound itself to modern life.
Museums are public institutions that collect, preserve, document, exhibit and interpret material objects for the benefit of the public. This course examines the history of museums, modes of collecting, and attempts to preserve different visions of the past. It will consider how art museums reveal the social and cultural ideologies of those who build, pay for, work in, and visit them. It will also examine the complicated relationship between the history of art and museum acquisitions, curatorial practice, and exhibition strategies. Arts and Humanities. Spring 2028 Reilly.
Cross-Listed with (ENVS 056A) This survey course introduces students to Indigenous art and architecture of the Americas from time immemorial to the present. It selectively surveys the visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of Americas, with an emphasis on those whose ancestral territories reside in what is now known as the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Students will consider how different forms of Indigenous cultural production, including architecture, painting, sculpture, ceramics, carving, textiles, beadwork, photography, and new media, operate within the category of “art” in conjunction with a range of traditions and beliefs. The class is organized into six regional sections - Ancient Americas, Southwest, Northwest Coast, Woodlands, Great Plains and West, and Arctic - that will each focus on the major forms of art from each region, and will conclude with an examination of how these traditions continued and developed into the Modern and Contemporary period. Discussion classes will explore major historiographic questions, including the role of ethnography in the history of Indigenous art; the politics of museum display, ownership, and repatriation; and the decolonization of institutions and (art) histories in conjunction with visual sovereignty. The course will emphasize that different forms of Indigenous art represent continuous, dynamic, and living traditions which have preserved culture and resisted domination in the face of colonial conflict, assimilation, and oppression.
Cross-List: BLST 009 This course introduces students to the history of black art and the representation of blackness in the American museum. Black art has been at various times excluded from, segregated within, and problematically embraced by museums. Black artists, curators, and activists have found ways to challenge these institutions’ racial politics, while also creating networks, models, and venues for showcasing black artists’ works and processes to their communities of concern. This class will take stock of this history and its relationship to the current moment of recognition black artists face. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit.
Eligible for ASIA What are the hidden (and not-so-hidden) histories of Asian and Asian American art in Philadelphia and its surrounding areas? Philadelphia is often associated with the American revolutions of independence, industrial production, and carb-focused foods such as pretzels and cheesesteaks. But its connections with Asian art, architecture, visual culture, and material culture are fundamental to its history and continue to impact its present. How can Asian and Asian American works of art in Philadelphia serve as objects for analysis and investigation, and open up pathways of inquiry? How and in what ways is art understood as “Asian,” and what strategies are at play in its making, display, and interpretation? This course examines how Asian art and its situated contexts can illuminate the histories and tensions of global connections. It is also an introduction to the diverse interdisciplinary methods and concerns of art history, architectural history and material culture studies. Through in-class discussions and visits to site and collections, we will unpack the complex “social lives” of the case studies presented by Philadelphia’s many engagements with Asia, focusing mainly, though not exclusively, on connections to the arts of China, Japan and India. We will consider issues such as exchange between Asia and the Americas, constructions of “East” and “West,” the role of cultural intermediaries, exoticism and cultural appropriation, modernism and tradition in architecture and design, ideologies of nature, collecting, and museum practices, among others. The course will also feature study sessions and exhibition viewings of works of art such as Japanese prints, Asian-inspired French ceramics, and a variety of Asian and Asian-influenced textiles, in order to consider more broadly how issues of global exchange have shaped works of art, visual culture, and material culture. No prior knowledge of Asian art is required. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit.
Eligible for GLBL and ESCH The relationship between the arts and the crafts is… complicated. Since the mid 19th Century, artists, theorists, industrialists, and reformers have tried to define the terms of their bond, albeit unsuccessfully. While some defend their necessary entanglement and permanent cross-pollination, others work hard to defend their fundamental incompatibility. In this seminar students study the nuances of this messy yet fertile affair involving avant-garde art and artisan productions from the 1850s until today. They hypothesize on the foundations of their attraction and thread through the different historical narratives that have argued for or against their marriage. With a global perspective, this course considers the status of artisanship with regards to art making in North Atlantic modernity and its regions of influence. So as to better understand this complicated liaison, students will craft two fabric objects and reflect on their experience as artisans, or artists, in the making. Arts and Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL. ESCH. Spring 2028 Checa-Gismero.
ARTH 083Object, Media, Matter: Introduction to Material Culture and Material Histories1
A wide-ranging introduction to the detective work of analyzing objects and material culture, with an emphasis on Asian objects and cultural histories. In addition to learning how to study media such as metals and ceramics, textiles and paper, glass and animal horn, among others, this course considers theories of materiality and the material histories of different media. Arts and Humanites. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL paired.
ARTH 084Asia/Americas: Art Across the Pacific, 1571 to Today1
This course examines the art and visual-material culture produced out of cultural encounter between Asia and the Americas, starting from the founding of Manila in 1571, spanning histories of imperialism and migration in the Pacific, and ending with Asian American and diasporic art. Arts and Humanites. Writing. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA. ASAM. GLBL. Spring 2027. Eberhard.
This course will investigate the relationship between the visual arts and the art of propaganda. We will study how sovereigns in Europe from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries—-emperors and empresses, kings and queens, dukes and duchesses and popes as well as other patrons such as city leaders, merchants and nuns—-commissioned works to justify and secure their power. These works ranged from buildings, paintings, sculptures and prints to ephemeral festival carts, triumphal arches, stage sets, ice sculptures and banquet decorations. Through these commissions patrons made explicit their taste, erudition, financial status, and ambition and put on full display the hierarchies and values that shaped the warring city-states and nations of Europe. Arts and Humanities. 1 credit. Spring 2028 Reilly.
This discussion-based course, applies a transnational lens to study the development of artistic modernisms during the Cold War. In this course, students will learn the theories and forms of avant-garde art production in a world shaped by the ideological competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Departing from an examination of how these tensions materialized in New York and Moscow, students will examine how this polarized climate impacted as well artistic production in Western and Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, setting the foundations of a transnational sphere of artistic circulation that anticipated the globalization of art at the turn of the century. Arts and Humanities. Writing Course. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL-core Fall 2027 Checa-Gismero.
A 2-credit thesis normally carried out in the fall of the senior year. The topic must be submitted and approved by the instructor in charge before the end of the junior year. Fall 2027 Staff.
ARTH 098Interpreting the Classical Tradition: Neoclassicism and Romanticism1
This seminar will focus on conceptions of the “Classical” during the artistic and literary movements known as Neoclassicism (1750-1850) and Romanticism (1800-1850). Neoclassicism was a period of new attitudes towards Greco-Roman antiquity that were stimulated by archaeological discoveries extending from Italy and the Mediterranean to Egypt and the Near East. Whereas Neoclassicism interpreted the “Classical” as calm and restrained in feeling and clear and complete in expression, Romanticism subsequently viewed antiquity as characterized by a highly imaginative and subjective approach, emotional intensity, and a visionary quality. Seminar topics will include: art, architecture, decorative arts, neoclassical and romantic aesthetic theory, German philhellenism, the discipline of Classical Philology, and romantic Hellenism. We will consider the works of artists and architects such as: Jacques-Louis David, Piranesi, Robert Adam, Blake, Angelica Kauffman, Ingres, Hamilton, Benjamin West, Canova, Flaxman, and Nash. Readings will include Winckelmann, Goethe, Shelley, Nietzsche, adaptation theory, and translation theory. Eligible for CLST 091, CLST 091A, INTP 091 Arts and Humanities. 1 credit.
This course is open to and required of senior majors in art history and is the culminating research experience in the major. Students will write a substantial research paper over the course of the semester based on their previous coursework and interests. Weekly meetings will focus on developing the project step-by-step; learning about research methodologies from the instructor, other department faculty, and staff; and workshopping in-progress writing with classmates. Successful completion of the Senior Capstone fulfills the senior comprehensive requirement for Art History. This is a designated writing course. Arts and Humanities. Writing Course. 1 credit. Spring 2027. Eberhard. Spring 2028 Sakomura.
ARTH 136Word and Image in Japanese Art Honors Seminar2
This Honors seminar explores the dialogue between text and image as manifested in visual representations of courtly culture in Japan from the 10th to the 18th century. Through select works of courtly narrative and poetry, such as the 11th-century classic The Tale of Genji , we will examine the complex and nuanced interactions of text, image, calligraphy, object, function, patronage, production, and consumption as shaped by the materiality of a range of media including handscrolls, folding screens, poem sheets, illustrated and printed books, lacquerware, and fans.
Two courses in art history or permission of instructor. Art and Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for ASIA Fall 2027 Sakomura. Catalog chapter: Art History Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/art-history Access the class schedule to search for sections.
ARTH 138Renaissance Art & Global Expansion: Honors Seminar
This Honors seminar focuses on Europe’s relations with Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East in the early era of colonization and global expansion. Students will explore what the visual arts can reveal about the transfer of ideas and the growth of global trade and cultural/religious conflict in this era of increasing internationalism. We will focus on cross-cultural exchange in the 15th and 16th centuries, and consider these issues primarily from the European perception of the expanding world. The theme of globalism will be addressed through the lens of painting, sculpture and architecture, and through objects that are not typically considered “high art” such as maps, textiles, festival art, and ceramics. Eligible for GLBL-Core Arts and Humanities. Writing Course 2 credits. (1 credit option also available with permission of instructor)
From the 14th to the 17th century, Rome was transformed from a “dilapidated and deserted” medieval town to a center of spiritual and worldly power. This seminar will consider the defining role that images played in that transformation. In addition to studying the painting, sculpture and architecture of artists such as Fra Angelico, Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo, we will study the creation and use of objects such as banners, furniture, and temporary festival decorations. Topics will include papal reconstruction of the urban landscape; the rebirth of classical culture, art and the liturgy, private devotion and public ritual, and the construction of the artist as genius. Humanities. 2 credits.
ARTH 153Modern Architecture and Urbanism: Honors Seminar2
This honors seminar examines the broad array of designed and built works, makers, sites, and texts that constitute modern architecture and urbanism. Students will interpret the many facets of modernism through key historical readings-both primary and secondary, canonical and revisionist; analysis of examples; and consideration of their makers, both well-known and less so. A guiding assumption is that modernism was never only one thing and had different-even sometimes opposite-intentions, manifestations, and consequences in different contexts. Yet we will follow one persistent question as a link across the semester: how did modern architects and urbanists seek to create a better world? The motivations behind and answers to this defining question of modernism were never consistent across our period of study. While centering designed objects, then, we will interrogate how people have experienced modernism differently, depending on their identities, subject positions, geographic locations, and social roles.
Two courses in art history or permission of instructor. Arts and Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for GLBL Spring 2027. Goldstein. Catalog chapter: Art History Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/art-history Access the class schedule to search for sections.
ARTH 154Art of Modern China: Honors Seminar
This honors seminar explores modern Chinese art and visual-material culture, focusing on creative engagements across the profound changes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-a period that spans China’s final imperial century, its tumultuous development into a modern nation, and its emergence on the global stage as a single-party state. How did creators (artists, craftspeople, designers, etc.) navigate foreign invasions and domestic uprisings? How did they experiment with new technologies, contribute to reform movements, and launch new types of popular culture and entertainment? How did they participate in revolution and collectivism, and negotiate the rise of post-socialist state power? Across this period, how did art intersect with the environment on issues such as famine, resource extraction, and state-sponsored development? Finally, how did notions of modernity in China operate in tension with China’s past and present, Westernization, and the larger Asia-Pacific context? In closely studying the field of modern Chinese art history, the course examines key artists, industries, and movements, the impact of political, social, and technological developments, and major debates and issues. By studying works across media in tandem with primary sources, we consider how creative concerns engaged with seismic transformations over the last two centuries.
Two Art History classes, or with instructor’s permission. May be taken for one credit with permission of instructor. Eligible for ASIA.
ARTH 160Global Contemporary Art: Honors Seminar2
What is ‘Global Contemporary Art’? Since the end of the Cold War contemporary art has experienced a phenomenon of rapid planet-wide expansion. Over 600 art fairs and biennial exhibitions structure a network where artworks, art professionals, and ideas circulate periodically, informing a community that is simultaneously autonomous from and connected to local art scenes. In these last three decades, art as previously practiced in Europe and the United States has expanded to acquire planetary visibility. Simultaneously, traditions of art making from other world regions have been welcomed -albeit in altered fashion-, into the central stages of the artworld. As historians, artists, and critics: How do we make sense of this shift? More importantly: How do we fit in this picture? In this Honors seminar students will learn about the institutional, epistemic, and sociopolitical processes involved in the formation of ‘global contemporary art’ as an art historical category. We will study the role that exhibitions, academia, and the art market play in the setting of artistic trends, while we analyze how these influences materialize in the practice of artists around the globe. During the semester students will engage with primary sources such as artworks and artists writings, and secondary sources from the art industry and academia alike. At the end of this course, students will be ready to describe the political, economic, and cultural processes active in the globalization of the art industry since 1990, and reflect on the consequences of this process in academic, practiced, and curatorial approaches to contemporary art.
Two courses in art history or permission of instructor. Arts and Humanities. Writing. 2 credits. Eligible for GLBL - Core Catalog chapter: Art History Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/art-history Access the class schedule to search for sections.
ARTH 164Modernism in Paris and New York2
This seminar focuses on “Modernism” in 19thand 20th-century art, addressing selected artists from Courbet and Manet through Degas, Gauguin, Cézanne, Picasso, Pollock, and Rothko. Artists and readings are also chosen to illuminate current scholarly approaches to “Modernism,” including socio-economic, feminist, and post-colonialist perspectives.
Two courses in art history or permission of instructor. Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for INTP Catalog chapter: Art History Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/art Access the class schedule to search for sections.
ARTH 180Thesis2
A 2-credit thesis normally carried out in the fall of the senior year. The topic must be submitted and approved by the instructor in charge before the end of the junior year. 2 credits.
Independent Study: Crafting Kin: A Year of Socially Engaged Art By inviting social practice artists for a series of workshops and programming, Crafting Kin: A Year of Socially Engaged Art will foster a culture of dialogue and mutual aid among students and the Swarthmore community. Learning from others, the project invites us to think creatively and collectively about how to resist difficult historical times. Held on Mondays over lunch, the workshops series fosters community among students and introduces us all to longstanding models of collaboration among art and culture workers. Students will propose and execute a series of socially engaged art projects. Engaged Teaching Course. Arts and Humanities. 0.5
