This interdisciplinary course introduces the visual culture of Medieval Western Europe from the end of the Period of Migrations through the Gothic Era (7-14th century.) A fundamental social and cultural transformation of Western Europe followed the end of the Roman Empire characterized by the increasing dominance of the Christian Church, the interaction of various cultural and ethnic groups, the development of feudalism, and the eventual renascence of the Western Roman Empire. The intermingling of the Germanic, Greco-Roman, Early Christian, and Byzantine pictorial traditions produced a distinct visual culture that developed separately from the artistic traditions of the Byzantine and Islamic East and South; this course charts the history of this multifaceted visual culture in Western Europe.
The study of medieval visual culture is not contained within the boundaries of the methodology of art history, but is informed by a range of different disciplinary approaches, such as history, archaeology, numismatics, gender studies, critical race theory, and more. In this course, you will engage with multiple disciplinary approaches to explore Western Medieval visual culture, will examine different methodological tools of varied disciplines and the types of conclusions they lead to, will participate in cross-disciplinary dialogue, and will integrate various approaches to facilitate your understanding.