Visiting Associate Professor of Art History
James Bloom
Jame Bloom's interests include the cultural anthropology of images, economic histories of the arts, and the history of art history.
Art History
As part of your studies you may work as a docent or help with an exhibit at the College’s Wellin Museum of Art, an acclaimed facility. With guidance from your professors, you may secure an internship at the nearby Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, home to an important American art collection, or in a great art city such as New York or Boston.
About the Major
Art history at Hamilton focuses on understanding the rich cultural and historical contexts in which art is created and experienced. Coursework covers a range of periods, cultures and critical approaches. The department’s links to Hamilton programs in history and culture will encourage students to make connections to other fields of critical inquiry.
Hamilton is just one of those places that is really special. Everyone there is just so motivated and into their own thing, and they get you excited about it as well.
Teddy Altman ’15 — art history major
Students may choose to explore not only the European-American tradition, but Chinese and Japanese art and the arts of the Islamic and Buddhist traditions. Other courses, such as museum studies, women in art and contemporary critical theory, are organized around a particular theme.
Careers After Hamilton
- Account Manager, Sotheby’s
- Vice President and Real Estate Counsel, Lehman Brothers
- Cataloguer, Lang Antiques
- President, McGraw-Hill Professional
- Sales Manager, NBC News
- Senior Vice President, William Doyle Galleries
- Tour Coordinator, Academic Arrangements Abroad
- Presidential Innovation Fellow, The White House
- President, Nye & Co. Auctioneers
Meet Our Faculty
Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History
Brigit Ferguson
Brigit Ferguson focuses on the history of art and architecture, and medieval art and architecture.
Associate Professor of Art History
Steve Goldberg
Steve Goldberg, who earned a doctorate from the University of Michigan, specializes in the history of Chinese art.
Associate Professor of Art History
Susan Jarosi
Susan Jarosi specializes in art and visual culture since 1950.
Chair, Cinema and Media Studies, Professor of Art History
Scott MacDonald
Named an Academy Scholar by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Scott MacDonald is the author of 17 books.
the John and Anne Fischer Professor of Fine Arts
John McEnroe
John McEnroe teaches courses in classical art, Renaissance art, medieval art and critical theory.
Chair, Associate Professor of Art History
Deborah Pokinski
Deborah Pokinski is working on a study of the images of women in the work of American artist William McGregor Paxton.
Professor of Art History Emeritus (retired)
Rand Carter
Rand Carter wrote a book about Karl Friedrich Schinkel and has written three guidebooks in the Landmarks Society of Greater Utica series.
A Sampling of Courses
Differencing the Visible: Perspectives on African-American Art and the Black Historical Experience 145F
Traces the cultural achievements and struggles of African-American artists, both men and women, to make a people and a world they had known visible, and to be true to those who were misrepresented or erased entirely from the visibility of American history. The goals of the course are to foster an historical memory, intuitive empathy, and responsive understanding of the works of African-American artists, in the context of the societal and historical circumstances in which they were produced. Proseminar.
View All CoursesCopies, Forgeries, and Fakes 155F
The class examines our obsession with originality by focusing upon what may be understood as its opposite: the copy. Copies play a pivotal part in the history of art, from Roman copies of Greek sculptures to the role of copying in artists’ training to reproductive art forms such as prints and photographs that are, in effect, “copies.” Closely related to the concept of the copy are forgeries and fakes, which present themselves as “originals” yet destabilize the very foundations of the term. Ultimately, the class addresses how we establish notions of artistic value by looking at the overlooked. Proseminar.
View All CoursesThe Portrait from Pharaoh to Facebook 230S
The course is both a chronological study of portraiture and an exploration of the complex strategies by which individuals and groups have deployed visual forms to construct representations of their identities. We will explore the myriad purposes to which such representations have been put, including tomb effigies and commemoration, state-certified identification, mug shots, and the digital construction of self. Ultimately, we will try to better understand the power and persistence of the portrait genre, from self-portraits to wax seals, from selfies to statues, and from pharaoh to Facebook.
View All CoursesThe World of Spanish Art: From the Alhambra to Guernica 257
Intensive study of the artistic production of Spain, as reflected in the most significant expressions of architecture, painting and sculpture, along with the cultural and historical context in which these works were created. To be included, among others: Moorish, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassic and Modernist styles (in architecture); El Greco, Velázquez, Zurbarán, Ribera, Murillo, Goya, Sorolla, Picasso and Dalí (in painting); and Vasco de la Zarza, Bigarny, Diego de Siloé, Juni, Montanás, Cano, Mena, Berruguete (in sculpture).
View All CoursesGlobal Renaissance 283S
Whose Renaissance? An introduction to visual and material cultures in the early era of global expansion and colonization (1450-1600). The course focuses on European relations with Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. In addition to painting, sculpture, and architecture, it includes ceramics, textiles, and maps. A series of transcultural case studies will interrogate approaches to global networks of exchange, confrontation, and conflict. Themes include: immigration, commerce, religion, and science; also definitions of center/periphery, native/foreign, and self/other. Writing-intensive.
View All CoursesThe Gothic Cathedral: Architecture, Art, and Christian Practice in Europe, c. 1140-1300 371S
Gothic cathedrals are among the most striking buildings in cities across Europe. We will consider these cathedrals in their political, social, economic, and religious contexts, including their beginnings within the political setting of Capetian France; their spread through Europe; how they were funded and constructed; the political functions they had; how people used and thought about them; what types of objects filled them; and what cathedrals and the artworks that decorate(d) them tell us about how later medieval Christians thought about themselves and about religious outsiders.
View All CoursesToday and Tomorrow
Student Internships
Wellin Docent Program Leads to Major Museum Internships
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