This course centers artistic traditions marginalized in Western academia such as pre-historic paintings, Byzantine mosaics, mosques and palaces of the Islamicate world, pre-contact art and architecture of the Americas, ancient ziggurats in modern Iraq, Egyptian pyramids and temples, and Native American art. We engage with these traditions through phenomenology, exploring the multi-sensorial modes coded in the cultural experience of these structures and objects. We also engage with the art of Greece and Rome but we de-center their position and uncover the principles that govern their sensorial experience. Experiencing Early Global Art uncovers shared themes that underscore the premodern artistic production. These themes include bodies and performance; archive and memory; sustainability and repurposing; fluidity and permanence; conversion and mobility. "Early" relates to time conceptualized from a non-western-centric perspective and avoids the pejorative associations with backwardness of the term "premodern." The adoption of the term "Early Global" here is inspired by the recent conceptual work done by UCLA in renaming their research center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies into Center for Early Global Studies.
5 units · Letter (ABCD/NP) · GER: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
This course centers artistic traditions marginalized in Western academia such as pre-historic paintings, Byzantine mosaics, mosques and palaces of the Islamicate world, pre-contact art and architecture of the Americas, ancient ziggurats in modern Iraq, Egyptian pyramids and temples, and Native American art. We engage with these traditions through phenomenology, exploring the multi-sensorial modes coded in the cultural experience of these structures and objects. We also engage with the art of Greece and Rome but we de-center their position and uncover the principles that govern their sensorial experience. Experiencing Early Global Art uncovers shared themes that underscore the premodern artistic production. These themes include bodies and performance; archive and memory; sustainability and repurposing; fluidity and permanence; conversion and mobility. "Early" relates to time conceptualized from a non-western-centric perspective and avoids the pejorative associations with backwardness of the term "premodern." The adoption of the term "Early Global" here is inspired by the recent conceptual work done by UCLA in renaming their research center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies into Center for Early Global Studies.
Offered in Winter 2026 at Stanford University.