Majors & Minors

Art History

Art History unites visual thinking with verbal thinking, crosses cultural boundaries, and prepares you for a truly international experience. At Southwestern, Art History majors are exposed to many different cultures by our renowned staff, which includes international scholars and experts in their respective fields.

Contact

Allison Miller

Allison Miller

Associate Professor of Art History & Chair

Allison Miller

Allison Miller

Associate Professor of Art History & Chair

Art history is a gateway to other cultures and encompasses almost all human activity. The study is highly interdisciplinary, engaging with topics from politics, economics, and social structures to religion, history, and philosophy.

Southwestern University’s Art History Department is defined by four teacher–scholars who are immersed and actively pursuing research in international environments. Collaborating with faculty whose expertise lies in the art, archaeology, and architecture of the classical Mediterranean, East Asia, pre-modern Latin America, and modern Europe and America, you will become adept at synthesizing a wide range of worldviews. You’ll learn how to think visually, exploring how form, shape, and color can influence or even manipulate one’s thoughts and emotions. You’ll also think verbally, developing well-honed arguments about the design and effects of art in various contexts. Because art history requires both visual and verbal thinking, you’ll acquire superior communication skills and the ability to think about familiar things in innovative ways.  

To compete in a 21st-century economy, you must be equipped to make connections within international circles. So SU art history majors are strongly encouraged to learn foreign languages and seek out opportunities to travel abroad. These experiences often contribute directly to giving the research in seniors’ capstone seminars a depth similar to that expected in master’s- and doctoral-level study at a competitive graduate school.

Fulfilling Southwestern’s commitment to promoting lifelong learning while preparing students for the careers of tomorrow, art history teaches you how to think outside the box in a surprising number of professions. Art history’s emphasis on both visual analysis and written communication prepares students to design their own careers as well, from fine-arts consulting and costume design to art therapy and sustainable design.



AFTER SOUTHWESTERN

Featured Alumni Stories

Navigating the Intersection of Art, History, and Preservation

An alumna’s journey from student to architectural conservator and historian.

Read Full Story
Stopped for a photo on one of the many high passes the trail climbs up.

Life in 491 Miles and 107 Square Feet

Christina Hadly ’13, an art history and business double major, has traded in a conventional corporate career for a life of adventure and independence.

Read Full Story

EXPLORE SOUTHWESTERN

Art History News

Gabriella Gonzalez Biziou ’12

Big Screen Dreams: Alumna Shines in Film Festivals from Coast to Coast

Foolhardy Love, a short film starring and associate produced by Gabriella Gonzalez Biziou ’12 has been earning rave reviews at film festivals across the country.

READ FULL STORY
Natalie Davis

Southwestern Student Earns National Recognition for Art History Research

Natalie Davis ’26 awarded with runner-up honors in ASIANetwork’s nationwide essay contest.

READ FULL STORY
Allison Miller

Associate Professor Allison Miller Discusses Theft of Ancient Terracotta Army Statue

Associate Professor of Art History Allison Miller speaks with CGTN America on the theft of part of an ancient terracotta army statue worth millions.

READ FULL STORY

EXPLORE SOUTHWESTERN

Art History Events

Frederic Edwin Church, Tree Fern, Jamaica, 1865, brush and oil paint, graphite on cream paperboard (Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum)

“Picturing Botanical Imperialism in the Americas”, Maggie Coe

Picturing Botanical Imperialism in the Americas

Maggie Cao
Associate Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina

Lecture and Q&A sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History

Summary: The circulation of plants has long been tied to considerations of climate. Today climate change endangers many native species while exacerbating the negative impact of invasives. This talk explores artists’ engagements with plants in the context of imperialism past and present. The most famous landscape painter of the nineteenth-century US, Frederic Edwin Church, was a master of painting the flora of the American tropics. This talk will explore his paintings of Jamaica and the ways they engaged with botanical understandings of colonialism and emancipation. The legacy of Church’s nineteenth-century botanical imagery will be examined through contemporary artist Maria Thereza Alves’s ongoing Seeds of Changeproject, in which unearthed seeds from historic ballast sites are used to grow gardens. These gardens generated from waste—the dumped rocks, earth, and sand that once balanced merchant vessels—invert the history of colonialism told by the hothouse displays and herbarium collections of the past.

FIND OUT MORE