Undergraduate
HAA Major
The visual image has been an important vehicle for communication in many
societies, and in today's
culture it increasingly displaces words and texts. In the department of HAA, students receive training in the critical analysis of images and monuments that have come to be defined as the monumental arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, and of those objects and monuments which have conventionally fallen outside
this monumental arts tradition, e.g. photography, mass media, popular culture, and their equivalents in non-western and pre-modern cultures and eras.
As students learn to look, read, and write critically, they are also introduced to the ways in which the arts and images of the past and present shape an individual sense of self and cultural identity. The history of image and monument making is a history of cultural "interconnectedness" between
sacred and secular,
elite and popular, dominant and marginal.
The standard major will provide students with knowledge of the major periods of the history of art and with critical skills appropriate to an undergraduate major in HAA. Students who are only majoring in HAA must complete the standard major. Students who are double majoring (those who wish to combine a major in HAA with a major in another academic department) may elect to complete the standard major or the secondary major option.