Students may take courses at our consortium partner institutions which include Columbia University GSAS (COL), Cooper Hewitt, Parsons School of Design (CH), the City University …

Doctoral Students preparing for their exams register for these three directed readings in the spring semester. 3 credits.

Independent study offers students the opportunity to pursue research in areas beyond the range of the standard curriculum. Through independent study, students further their knowledge …

Full-time MA students register for the required internship with their spring courses in their first year. The internship is generally completed in the summer between …

This course will be a broad introduction to various historical developments in art and the role of iconography in primarily ancient and medieval contexts in …

Long regarded as the “capital of fashion,” Paris has played an indisputably central role in leading fashion forward. Surveying the period of 350 years from Louis …

The critical framework of “intersectional feminism” was first theorized Black scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s to highlight the ways in which social identities, …

What is a doll? This course offers students an extended opportunity to explore this deceptively simple question, as they collaborate with the instructor—and with …

In 1872, French art critic Philippe Burty (1830-1890) coined the term Japonisme to describe contemporary European fascinations with Japan. A major focus of this course will …

How does dress shape the American experience? In which ways have dress conventions been used to make bodies “decent” and “acceptable” in American society? And …

Eighteenth-century France has long been celebrated for spaces and objects marked by luxury, fine craftsmanship, and aesthetic coordination. It has also been recognized as an “…

This two-semester, team-taught course introduces incoming students to major historical developments in decorative arts, design, and material culture from antiquity to the present. Monday evening …

All students are encouraged to attend the rich program of lectures, symposia, seminars, performances, lunches, and talks organized by Bard Graduate Center’s Public Humanities + …

This seminar explores the evolution of ceramic techniques and materials within the wider contexts of economic, social, and cultural life. We will study the role …

Over the past two centuries, the museum has emerged as one of the primary institutional venues for intercultural encounter mediated by objects. Practices of both …

This seminar explores the history, theory, and practice of collecting in the United States from the turn of the nineteenth century to the present. Both …

Miracle, magic, apotropia, and efficacy are just a few of the terms that embedded the Middle Ages with supernatural activity. This seminar explores the place …

Second-year MA students who will graduate in May must register for this final paper in the spring semester. 3 credits.

Notions of purity and cleanliness are deeply entwined with the creation, maintenance, and afterlife of arts and material culture in Early Modern Europe. From the …

This course will introduce the art and material culture of the inhabitants of one third of the surface of the Earth—Oceania— focusing on their …

This hands-on seminar will introduce students to the methods archaeologists use to analyze, catalogue, document, and store archaeological artifacts and will enable students to directly …

Although Peter Paul Rubens was one of the most prominent painters of the seventeenth century, he was much else besides. An antiquarian scholar, a designer …