UC | Bridging Disciplines Program

Museum Studies

Bridging Disciplines Programs allow you to earn an interdisciplinary certificate that integrates area requirements, electives, courses for your major, internships, and research experiences.

The Museum Studies BDP offers you the opportunity to develop an understanding of how museums, archives, libraries, galleries, and related institutions function as sites of collecting, education, and research. Course offerings spanning a wide range of disciplines allow you to learn about contemporary museum practices and their historical development, and to acquire skills and knowledge relevant to your own specific areas of interest within Museum Studies. Some courses focus on objects, collections, and their preservation or conservation; others will help you to think about how museums serve their audiences and publics and how they preserve and shape the histories, heritage, and identity of cultures and societies. Through the Connecting Experiences component of the BDP, you can gain first-hand experience working directly with professionals in the field at a variety of different institutions, both on and off the UT campus.

Visual and Material Culture of Colonial Latin America Emphasis: Students in Museum Studies may earn their certificate with an emphasis on Visual and Material Culture of Colonial Latin America. Students who wish to receive this recognition must complete at least 6 hours of certificate coursework from an approved list. They must also complete at least 3 hours of approved Connecting Experience relevant to the emphasis. The emphasis will be recognized on students’ paper BDP certificates and may be listed on their resumes. Contact a BDP advisor for more information.

Upon completion of 19 credit hours from the options listed below, you will earn a certificate in Museum Studies.

Note: Course descriptions available below are from a recent offering of the course, and they may not reflect the description for the next offering of the course.

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Forum Seminar Courses (1 credit hours)

All students in the Museum Studies BDP are required to take the Forum Seminar.

MUSE Forum

BDP 101 Introduction to Museum Studies

This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary study of museums, archives, galleries, and other institutional sites of collection, preservation, research, education, and performance. Students will be introduced to how museum professionals select and curate objects, define and serve their publics, and preserve and shape the histories, heritage, and identity of cultures and societies. We will also discuss how scholars analyze museum practices of collection and representation, and how practices of curation have spread beyond museum walls. The course serves as the introductory course for the Bridging Disciplines certificate in Museum Studies.

Foundation Courses (3 - 6 credit hours)

Foundation Courses introduce key methodologies and issues related to Museum Studies. Choose one Theory and Practice Course. You may also choose to take an Optional Introductory or Survey Course; if you select this option, you will take only 6 credit hours of Strand Courses. Courses counting for Museum Studies Foundation Courses must be taken in residence at UT Austin.

Theory and Practice Course

BDP 319 MUSEUM STUDIES

This class, one of the foundation courses in the Museum Studies Bridging Disciplines certificate, is designed to introduce students to some of the main issues in museum studies and practices. The course will explore art museums, natural history museums, and house/history museums, and consider their practices of collecting and display. Topics to be considered include issues of cultural heritage, the legalities of collecting, who “owns” specimens and works of art, the legacies of colonialism, and issues of race.

Optional Introductory or Survey Course

If you would like to count one of these courses toward your certificate, it must be in a discipline outside of your major.

AMS 330 Modernism in Amer Design & Arch

This lecture course is intended to provide a broad knowledge of major issues in the history of American design and architecture from about 1880 to the present. The central assumption of the course is that our environments both shape us and reflect what manner of people we are. The word design is understood to include all elements of the built environment ranging from the smallest artifacts and products through buildings (whether vernacular or elite) to the shape of suburban and urban landscapes. Students are encouraged to consider design in the context of social and cultural history. Amongtopics to be considered are methods of cultural analysis of material artifacts; the rise, triumph, and fall of functionalism and the International Style; the emergence of uniquely American varieties of commercial design in a consumer society; the interactions of technology, economics, and design; the impact of the automobile on all levels of design; the rise of postmodern design and deconstructive architecture as counters to the modernist tradition; and design for the information age. Among problems to be considered are tensions between tradition and novelty, between functional and expressive theories of design, between elite ideologies and popular desires, and between European and American design. Although lectures are well illustrated, this is not animage memorization course.

ANT 302 Cultural Anthropology

By studying a range of selected topics and case studies, this online course introduces you to the cultural diversity of human beings and will provide you with tools for thinking critically about the classic concepts, theories and methods of cultural anthropology. Our primary objective will be to understand both the universal way all human beings constitute themselves through culture, and the great diversity of specific cultural expressions that have resulted from these processes. In the past anthropologists have pursued these ends by studying distant and “exotic” peoples, the more different from “us” the better. In this class we will critically examine this “we/they” dichotomy and how it has shaped the discipline. We will also explore what happens when we turn the anthropological lens back on our own societies and experiences.

ARC 308 Architecture and Society

Introduction to the social contexts, potential, and consequences of architecture and interior design.Educational Objectives: 1. To establish a perspective of the role and influence of architecture in society and vis-a-vis other disciplines in the arts and science. 2. To develop an understanding of how architecture is shaped by and reflects cultural values and social organization. 3. To present a broad picture of issues and factors which influence architectural design. 4. To understand how global cultures create environments that both reflect and shape their values.

ARH 301 Introduction to Visual Arts

Art is a language: how do we decode its meaning, its intent, and its extraordinary effect on us, the viewers? In this course, we explore an astonishing array of art and architecture, in both a thematic and chronologic fashion. While we will concentrate on painting, sculpture, and architecture, we will also be looking at manuscripts, textiles, prints, photography, the decorative arts, garden planning, ceramics, earthworks, installation, and more. In typical introductory courses, this vast amount of material is organized into both chronological and geographical groupings. In our class, however, while we will roughly adhere to chronology, we will primarily explore art and architecture thematically. What we aim to do is teach each of you how to look at art. What should you look for? What kind of questions should you ask? What differences and commonalities can we see from region to region, era to era? How have art, artists, and viewers dealt with some of humanity’s greatest joys and challenges, from religion to statecraft to war to our environment? Is the production of art, after all, one of the things that makes us human?

ARH 302 Survey of Ancient through Medieval Art

This course discusses art from prehistoric times to the middle of the second millennium CE in Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia, and the ancient Americas, with emphasis on style and cultural context. The arts--architecture and city planning, sculpture, painting, metalwork, and ceramics--of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Islam, Mesoamerica, India and the European Middle Ages are included. The control of the viewer’s experience, the political and religious use of art, the meaning of style, the functions of art in public and private life, and the role of art in expressing the cultural values will be among the major themes considered. This is also an introduction to the discipline of art history, training students in basic vocabulary and techniques of close looking and analytical thinking about visual material. Your lab instructors and I are thankful for your cooperation and understanding

ARH 303 Surv of Renais Thru Modern Art

Art is a language: how do we decode its meaning, its intent, and its extraordinary effect on us, the viewers? In this course, we explore an astonishing array of Western art and architecture. Our course begins about 1250, in the early Renaissance of Western Europe, and concludes with global artistic trends of the early 21st century. While we will concentrate on the familiar media of painting, sculpture, and architecture, we will also be looking at manuscripts, drawings, prints, photography, the decorative arts, garden planning, ceramics, earthworks, and installation art. 2 This vast amount of material is organized, both in our textbook and in our class, into both chronological and geographical groupings. We begin by looking at the canonical and traditional European art and architecture of the Renaissance and Baroque. By the end, we will be talking about a more international art world that has broken irrevocably with the past. Throughout the course, we see dramatic changes in the status of the artist, and a consequent change in the artist or architect’s relationship with both patrons and audience.

C C 307C Intro to Greek Archaeology

Welcome to Introduction to Greek Archaeology! You made it. Thanks for coming. Our popular vision of the ancient Greeks makes them seem both familiar and irrelevant to the modern world. At times, Greek culture may seem deeply alien to our own, while, at times, surprisingly relevant. On the one hand, ancient Greek society is just as confusing, shocking, and easy to misinterpret as any other culture is for an outside observer—even more so, because we are separated from it not only by space but by time. On the other hand, we often credit the Greeks for much of the way we think today about art, politics, science, and the meaning of life. In this class, we will focus on the ways in which the physical remains, the material culture, of the ancient Greeks help us to understand the development of Greek communities, the rise of the city-state, perceptions of individual and collective identity, and social and cultural change across time. We will look both at the material itself – temples, sculptures, pottery, houses, and all sorts of trash, an archaeologist’s best friend – and at the way modern scholars have used that material to try and make sense of antiquity. In doing so, you will not only learn "what stuff looked like," but you will develop critical skills that will allow you to evaluate what you're told about the material remains of the past and analyze works of art for yourself.

C C 307D Intro to Roman Archaeology

Welcome to Introduction to Roman Archaeology! You made it. Thanks for coming. This course is an introduction to the art, architecture, and archaeology of the ancient Romans from the beginnings of the city of Rome in the early Iron Age to break up of the Roman empire more than a millennium later. Throughout the semester, we will focus on the ways in which the physical remains—the material culture—of the ancient Romans help us to understand the development of Roman culture, the transformation of the city of Rome as it gradually became an imperial capital, perceptions of individual and collective identity, and social and cultural change across time. As archaeologists, we will concern ourselves principally with material objects and artifacts—temples, sculptures, pottery, houses, and all sorts of trash (an archaeologist’s best friend). We will also consider the many ways that modern scholars have used that material to try and make sense of antiquity. In doing so, you will not only learn "what stuff looked like," but you will develop critical skills that will allow you to evaluate what you're told about the material remains of the past and analyze works of art for yourself. Throughout the semester, students can expect to learn about Roman civilization from both an outsider and an insider perspective. Our outside perspective will come from what modern historians have written about the culture as observers—who did what, where, and when? The insider perspective will come from our representations of Roman society and culture from the Romans themselves, writings in their own words, artwork, and archaeological material helping to answer why and how—how the Romans expressed their own various identities. In this way will cover three main avenues of inquiry: (1) the development of a basic knowledge of chronological history, (2) understanding how we know what we know from our sources, and finally, (3) an examination of ways in which the daily struggles, literature, and artistic expressions of the ancient Romans are relevant to our society and identity today.

HIS 310K Latin American Civilization: The Colonial Experience.

"Obedezco pero no cumplo." I obey but I will not comply. In the Spanish American colonies, authorities issued this phrase whenever they disagreed with royal orders. It acted as a miniature rebellion, acknowledging the Crown’s wishes, and then promptly disregarding them. This begs the question, how else did colonial residents defy their rulers on a daily basis? In this course, we will reconsider how much control the Spanish Crown really had over its American colonies. We will examine the history of Latin America from the pre-Columbian era through the wars of independence, focusing on two key geographic areas of the Spanish Empires: Mexico and Peru. Throughout the class, we will concentrate on important themes like discovery, conquest, religion, slavery, race, gender, reform, rebellion, and independence. Although we will be discussing many facets of the colonial experience, lectures and activities will focus on the voices of those oppressed by imperial authorities. Using primary sources, we will evaluate how indigenous communities, enslaved individuals, religious heretics, and those of mixed ethnic backgrounds impacted and shaped colonial society. Our discussions will focus on the traditions, practices, and perspectives of the diverse community that made up the Spanish American colonies. This course has a Global Cultures flag and welcomes students both familiar and unfamiliar with the colonial era in Latin America. It does not require knowledge of the Spanish language.

TXA 301 Clothing the Planet

This course explores the role textiles and apparel play in human lives. Introduction to the textile and apparel industries, and the broad perspective and core skill sets that characterize the field. Subjects include terminology, fibers and fabrics, textile technology, product development through fashion design and retail merchandising, global sourcing and manufacturing, international promotion and marketing, and textile conservation, exhibition, and collection management

Connecting Experiences (6 credit hours)

Your BDP advisor can help you find internships and research opportunities that connect Museum Studies to your major and interests. We call these opportunities “Connecting Experiences” because they play such an important role in integrating your studies. Each Connecting Experience counts for 3 credit hours. You will need to complete two Connecting Experiences.

For more information and for examples of past Connecting Experiences, visit the BDP website and consult your BDP advisor. BDP students must propose Connecting Experiences to the BDP office. Current BDP students should view the BDP Advising Canvas site for Connecting Experience resources and proposal instructions.

Strand Courses (6 - 9 credit hours)

In addition to your Foundation Courses and Connecting Experiences, you must complete 6-9 credit hours of Strand Courses, to bring your total credit hours toward the BDP certificate to 19 hours. You should work with your BDP advisor to choose Strand Courses that will focus your BDP on your specific interests, and that will provide you with an interdisciplinary perspective on your BDP topic. In order to create an interdisciplinary experience, you must choose courses from a variety of disciplines. Choose 6-9 hours of coursework, with at least 3 hours coming from each of the following categories.

Please speak with your BDP advisor about your plan for fulfilling your Strand Course requirements. Note that only one of your Strand Courses may come from your major department(s), or from courses cross-listed with your major department(s).

Cultures, Societies, Audiences

ACC 310F Foundations of Accounting

Foundations of Accounting (ACC 310F) is an introduction to financial and managerial accounting. The course will focus on the content, interpretation and uses of accounting information including financial statements, budgets, performance reports and other accounting information used for planning and control purposes within a business. The objective of the class is to help you develop a better understanding of these concepts and learn how to apply them to your life. To meet those objectives, you will learn: • How to use a company’s financial statements to help make informed decisions from an external perspective • How to use accounting data to set prices as well as manage costs and profits from an internal perspective • How to make financial plans for both short-term and long-term time frames including the use of time value of money

ADV 320 Integrated Comm for Nonprofit Orgs

The course will enable students to explore integrated communication and branding in a variety of nonprofit settings. Students will examine the strategic, integrated use of multiple communication approaches, including advertising, public relations, social media, promotions, sponsorships, and special events. They will also examine branding in the context of nonprofit organizations and nonprofit causes. Branding for nonprofits has been defined as “the platform on which the motivation behind the organization’s work may be articulated and the significance of its work may be appreciated” (Tan 2003).1 More specifically, a nonprofit organization’s “brand” can be viewed as “its mission come alive on an artistic, humanitarian, intellectual or political basis” (Tan 2003). Among the benefits of successful branding is creating a strong organizational identity that influences the loyalty of the organization’s constituencies.

AFR 315C Intro to East Austin Ethnography

In this course, students will study ethnographic methods including, fieldwork, observant participation, interviewing, and oral histories. Archival research will also be conducted. Students will conduct fieldwork at specific sites in Austin with an emphasis on East Austin communities. This course provides students with skills in critical ethnography by foregrounding the racial politics that shape policy-making and community-building.

AFR 315Q Black Queer Art Worlds

This multi-disciplinary course covers over two decades of work produced by and about queer people of African descent both within and beyond the borders of the United States. While introducing various artists and intellectuals of this Afroqueer Diaspora, this seminar explores what it might mean to think of artistry (film, fiction, photography, painting, poetry) as a form of theorizing. We will spend time in the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. Our aim is to use artistry to highlight the dynamic relationship between African Diaspora Studies and Queer Studies.

AFR 370 BLACKNESS IN CONT ART MUSEUM

AHC 310 MEDIEVAL MATERIAL CULTURE

This course focuses on the history of medieval Europe, primarily through the lens of material culture. In addition to manuscripts, we will explore the significance of several categories of material artifacts. We will discuss what we can discover about the production, circulation, reception, historic and geographic context, and the meaning attributed to the materials from which these objects were created. This class explores what these objects reveal about the religious, political, economic, cultural, and intellectual history of medieval Europe, beyond what we can learn from medieval texts and how these objects may have been experienced in a pre-modern world.

AMS 311S ARCHIVES AND ACTIVISM IN TX

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AMS 315 When Topic Is Appropriate

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AMS 370 LATINIDADES: ART & PERFORMANCE

How have Latinas/Latinos/Latinxs turned to art as a form of creative expression? And how have they used art to demand social change? This class will contextualize and analyze diverse forms of Latina/o/x artistic expression, including visual art, music, dance, theatre, and film, or what this class will call, “Latinidades.” Moving from the mid-twentieth century into the twenty-first century, students will study these diverse constructions of Latinidad alongside the politics of community organizing amongst various communities, and in conversation with the histories of Chicana/o/x, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Salvadoran populations. Topics will include representations of citizenship and immigration; borders and surveillance; community formation, displacement, and segregation; access to and content of education; and the construction and criteria of art history. Students also will engage with how citizenship, nation, race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability have complicated these artistic representations. As students develop an understanding of the range and diversity of artistic expressions (graphics, cartoons, paintings, murals, photographs, films, installations, performance art, dances, songs, poems, plays, and comedy), they also will develop an understanding of the complexity of Latino communities, and the coalitions and conflicts bridging and dividing larger social movements

AMS 370 Vienna-Memory & The City-AUT

This international learning seminar is a one credit-hour class designed for students registered in the Maymester Abroad course in Vienna, Austria; our primary goal is to find out “what’s there” in Vienna and why that’s worth knowing. More broadly, the seminar introduces students to the academic, cultural, and personal aspects of studying abroad, with special emphasis on the historical and multicultural environment of the Austrian capital. We will address such topics as the study abroad context, travel as educational experience, descriptive travel writing, as well as the central theoretical concerns of the Maymester course itself: historical memory, urban studies, museum and memorial design, and popular culture.

ANT 305 Expressive Culture

This course introduces and explores the forms and functions of expressive culture—visual media, sports, theater, food, and architecture, among others—to include the practices, emotions, and ideas found within the social production of aesthetic forms and performances in everyday life. We will consider expressive culture in a variety of places and at different historical moments. Through reading, discussion, and writing, we will locate the study of expressive culture within wider anthropological conversations about representation, colonialism and imperial power, race and ethnicity, gender identity, pleasure, politics, and the everyday.

ANT 310L Mex Amer/Lat Folk Across US

This is an introductory course to the field of Folklore and ethnography among U.S. Latina/o communities. Folklore is the study of artistic communication in everyday life and gaining meaning through its connections the contemporary and historical contexts of its artists' communities. This course will introduce students to the form and function of basic genres of folklore study that take the form of verbal and material artistry. These genres include, but are not limited to: Folk Speech, Jokes, Riddles, Narratives, Festivals, Food Culture, Religion and Spirituality, Body Art and Material Culture. This course examines the use of everyday artistry amongst regional U.S. Latino communities. As a group, students will be asked to discuss the similarities and variations of Latino cultural communities across the United States through their expressive traditions. These will include discussions of such communities as Mexican Americans across the Southwest, Dominican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, Midwestern Latinos and transnational Latino migrants in the New South. The examination of everyday artistry will illustrate the process by which U.S. Latina/o communities express their Latino identities differently based on experiences of race, class, region and migration experiences. It will further shed light on larger national (mis)understandings of U.S. Latina/a communities as socially unified, but not culturally homogenous communities of exiles, migrants, nationals, citizens and refugee Americans.

ANT 310L Aztecs And Spaniards

The Aztec and the Spanish empires have attracted the attention of scholars and the public for a long time with stories of gold, human sacrifice, warfare, and the meeting of two different civilizations. In this class we will study both empires, taking advantage of the varied lines of evidence available for their study, especially historical and archaeological evidence, as well as monuments and works of art. The focus of the class will be on how imperial expansion affected the daily life of people in the Aztec empire and after the Spanish conquest. In addition to studying the daily life of different people in these empires, we will examine some of the themes that have fascinated both scholars and the general public, including human sacrifice, conquest warfare, and religion. The goal of the class is to examine social and cultural heterogeneity in both of these empires, to familiarize students with the diverse lines of evidence we have to study these empires, and to understand processes of historical change in these two empires.

ANT 324L ORAL HISTORY OF NATIVE TEX-WB

Mapping Indigenous Texas is a uniquely interdisciplinary project, wedding social science research methodology, rich media production, and the digital humanities. Housed in both Anthropology and Native American and Indigenous Studies, we offer two class streams within the same overarching digital humanities course: Mapping Indigenous Austin (32420) and Oral Histories of Indigenous Texas (32425). Held simultaneously with students interacting on a weekly basis, these team-taught seminars combine Indigenous history, settler colonial theory, social science research methodologies, and the digital humanities in order to highlight the historical and ongoing presence of Indigenous people in Texas. Students in each class will be using different methods to engage in researching Indigenous Texas. Mapping Indigenous Austin focuses on unearthing archival materials held in local repositories, whereas Oral Histories of Indigenous Texas requires students to engage with oral historical methods with Indigenous individuals and communities. The courses are held at the same time, so that students in both streams can meet collectively for an hour or more each week, whether that be in the classroom or a designated research site off-campus. Course readings will support an ethical and decolonial practice of Public Anthropology, in which we will think through the politics of what constitutes publics, legibility, accessibility, and translation; these readings will complement the hands-on research and production of digital media content.

ANT 324L MAPPING INDIGENOUS AUSTIN

ANT 325F Cultural Heritage On Display

This course is designed to take you behind the scenes in the museum world to examine some of the issues and challenges facing museum exhibit curators, sponsors, donors, and visitors in representing global cultures anc communities in the 21st century. We will examine the changing roles of cultural and history exhibits and museums in today’s world, and the different jobs they are asked to do—from collecting and preserving things—and sometimes people!—to teaching and entertaining their audiences. Through discussions, readings, films, slides, and field trips, we will explore the question, “What does it mean to show?” To answer this question, we will look at how cultural exhibits of today compare and contrast to other American settings for the display of culture such as city festivals, commercial movies, cartoons, entertainment centers; virtual sites, shopping malls, and other tourist attractions. The class format will be structured around discussions and in-class activities, as well as lectures, field trips, and student research-based presentations. Sixty percent of the grade will be based on three short projects based on readings, in-class materials, and student-initiated research. A research paper, film, exhibit or other fieldwork-based project will count for 30% of the grade; the final 10% of the grade is based on class participation

ANT 325L Practices of Looking

This class will introduce you to the history of Visual Anthropology which has a bifurcated set of fascinations: the study of visual culture and the use of visual images in the production of anthropological knowledge. In this class, you will develop sensibilities and skills for the examination of vision as a cultural practice. The methodological and analytical tools associated with Visual Anthropology will help you understand broadly how the visual has been constituted as a category and specifically how it relates to the study of culture and society in anthropology. This course will explore the history of the visual in anthropology as seen in the production of photographs, films, and videos. We will explore themes of media, mediation, everyday life, “the gaze,” documentary forms, materiality, technology, realism and representation, as well as ethics. This course will introduce participants to critical approaches and analytic methods that broaden their toolkit for describing the world and the ways in which it is culturally and historically mediated. This course is ideally taken prior to “The Photographic Image: Visual Anthropology II.”

ANT 325O American Jewish Material Culture

This course is designed to take you behind the scenes in the public construction, negotiation, and display of “traditional American culture” by focusing on a number of cultural heritage sites in the public sphere. In particular, the course will examine the political economy of fairs, festivals, theme parks, heritage sites, and museum exhibitions as contested sites of heritage production in American history—focusing especially on those moments when an almost crusade-like obsession with defining and displaying the “true American” becomes an active agent in the process of nation building and ideological construction. We will focus closely on the histories and agencies of specific “exhibitionary complexes,” paying close attention to the problematic relationship of their objects to the instruments of their display. Each student will have the opportunity to participate directly in creating and/or critiquing the process of cultural heritage production, documentation, and display—including conducting original field research, planning and designing a specific mode of display, or providing a critical analysis of an historic example of cultural heritage production.

ANT 340C Ethnographic Research Methods

Understanding human behavior is immensely challenging. Fortunately, there are tools to help us make sense of social, cultural and political complexity. This course offers an introduction to the various methods and techniques used in conducting ethnographic research such as participant observation, interviewing, collecting life histories and genealogies, archival research, working with material culture, social media-based research, and visual ethnography. Our primary objectives will be to explore research design, what constitutes evidence, how to analyze data, and strategies for writing up and presenting results. We will pay particular attention to the ethical considerations entailed in anthropological research, including questions of knowledge production, power, location, experience, translation and representation. The course is run largely as a “hands–on” workshop, in which students practice a variety of ethnographic methods (both inside and outside of class), engage in ethnographic writing exercises, and actively guide one another’s work. Students will apply what they learn during the course to designing their own ethnographic research project, conducting independent field research, and presenting their findings to the class. By the end of the semester, they will have a firm grounding in ethnographic research methods and be better prepared for more advanced work.

ARC 342K Representing Landscape Architecture 1500-2015

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ARH 326J PARTHENON THROUGH THE AGES

Admit it! You have known about the Parthenon since your early years in elementary school. You probably take for granted its coveted role as the iconic monument of western civilization. You may also be aware that the monument is at the center of a cultural controversy evolving around the fate of its architectural marbles at the British museum. This class will center on the Parthenon in order to unravel its mystique, its history, its contemporary relevance and the implications of the various debates around it. Our working premise will be that no understanding of the value of the Parthenon is possible unless one is aware of the various functions the monument embodied throughout its history. Moreover, the monument offers itself as a most appropriate portal to the core ideas of western civilization, to classical culture, and its contemporary relevance or lack thereof. Our class will address debates ranging from “Who owns the past?” and “Why does the past matter?” to “What is an honest restoration of a historical monument?” and “What is a just solution to the Elgin Marbles controversy?” even as it introduces disciplines and methodologies for studying the past and creations like the Parthenon. Our inquiry or preparation for debates will take us to various resources around the UT campus whereas discussions in class will center on directed reading and writing assignments. No matter what we all decide about the value of the Parthenon in the contemporary world, or the outcome of the contemporary debates, studying it is fun!

ARH 331J ART EXPERNC CENTRAL ITALY-ITA

In this course, we will explore the notion of pilgrimage in the art and architecture of central Italy, through reading, discussion, site visits, presentations, and post-field trip analyses. Why did people travel in the Middle Ages and Renaissance? How were these journeys reflected in art and architecture, whether as portable objects (small devotional altarpieces, for example), reliquaries (from the small and practical to the large and elaborate), illustrated books and manuscripts, narratives of journeys, pilgrimage churches and hospices (such as the Ospedale of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena), or large scale paintings of experienced or spiritual travel, such as Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Good and Bad Government frescoes in Siena and in Benozzo Gozzoli’s Journey of the Magi frescoes in the Medici Palace? And how different was the medieval pilgrim, collecting her religious tokens along a pilgrimage route, from today’s cultural “pilgrim”, who might collect T-shirts, post-cards, or even countries themselves? Italy has long been a destination for travelers of every ilk: foreign merchants, religious pilgrims, travelers in seek of adventure, and cultural enthusiasts. In the middle ages and Renaissance, the economies of Siena, Florence, Rome and Venice were greatly enriched by both religious pilgrims and lay travelers, resulting in the spectacular development of art and architecture that we know today. We will use the issue of travel and pilgrimage as a prism with which we can focus our explorations of Italian art, both famous and obscure.

ARH 331S Art/Geology/Place in Italy

The casual visitor to Italy immediately notices the tremendous diversity of “place” within the Italian peninsula: the hills of Rome, of Venice, the hilltop cities of Siena and Orvieto, the flat expanses of the Po valley, and the dramatic and urgent volcanism of Naples and the island of Sicily. In this course, we'll explore the unique intersection of art, geology, and the geographic "place" in Italy with a thematic rather than chronologic approach. While historical events and politics have unequivocally altered art and architecture of the various and highly distinct regions of Italy, geological, geographic, and climatic elements have profoundly shaped both the landscape and the architecture, which in turn is manifested in the art. Project topics include: 1. An introduction to art historical methodology 2. An introduction to geological methodology 3. Geology as destiny: Italy, volcanoes, and tectonic activity 4. Geology, landscape and urbanism (Orvieto, Venice, Siena) 5. Italy and water: maritime republics (Venice, Pisa, Amalfi); riparian cities (Florence, Rome, Mantua); cities dependent on aqueducts and cisterns (Siena, Orvieto). 6. Geology, local building materials, and urbanism (for example, the brickwork of Siena vs. the sandstone revetment of Florence) 7. Strategic resources and geopolitical changes in Italy: mining (metals), pozzolana, building and carving stone (for example, the marble of Carrara). 8. The increased understanding of geological and geomorphological features in Renaissance and later painting; for this topic, we’ll visit the Blanton Museum of Art and consider the drawings and paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. 9. Climate change in Italy during the “Little Ice Age” of the 14th through 19th centuries and how it affected art and cities.

ARH 347M MAYA ART ARCHITECTURE-GUA

Ancient Maya civilization emerged some 3000 years ago within a larger cultural region called “Mesoamerica,” or what is today southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. Over the course of more than two thousand years, the Maya developed one of the great civilizations of the ancient world, well-known for its impressive ruins, temple pyramids and palaces, stone sculptures, and elaborate hieroglyphic writing system. The city-states of Palenque, Tikal, Calakmul, and Copan (among a great many others), were political and cultural centers where artistic space dominated the scenery, often conveying important messages about kings, noble status, and their connection to gods and the greater cosmos. Great changes came with the “collapse” of the Classic period around 800-900 AD, when a great many old cities were abandoned and new ones rose, seemingly based on very different ideologies and visual cultures. The arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century then brought near-destruction to the indigenous world, but the Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples emerged resilient in the wake of conquest; today six-million strong, the modern Maya continue to express their cultural identity in the art and politics of modern Mexico and Guatemala.

ARH 348P Art in the Himalayas

In the last fifty years the field of Himalayan art has exploded with much ground- breaking scholarship, significant new collections and many exhibitions. Despite this prodigious amount of study and attention, much confusion remains, a situation exacerbated by the tense Chinese control of Tibet since 1959. Central questions of this course engage with the very definition of Tibetan art. What fueled the stunning developments that included diverse terrifying forms and sexual imagery in addition to more commonly encountered Buddhist subjects? How do these visual works reflect Buddhist practices in the Himalayas, the area designated by the impressive mountain range dividing the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan plateau? And how do political factors –such as Chinese patronage impact developments?

CMS 348K Visual Media and Interaction

While Communication Studies is a discipline mainly concerned with verbal communication, this course is about the visual components of human interaction. It covers both what is traditionally called “nonverbal” communication— communication that we produce with our eyes, faces, hands, and so on—and communication by visual artifacts, including pictures, computer screens, and everyday objects. One objective of the class is to understand how these various visual media function, what impact they may have on society and the individual mind, and to increase your competence as a visual communicator and future communication professional. You can also think of this class as a course on visual persuasion or visual rhetoric. The course is designed to engage you in the critical analysis of visual behaviors and artifacts, to instigate your curiosity how visual media function and how they enable communication, problem solving, thought, and imagination, and thereby to enhance your ability to assess the quality of visual information. You will investigate how visual behaviors and pictures influence, even manipulate us, in subtle ways.

E 310D INTRO TO DGTL HUMANITIES

In recent years, the amount and availability of humanities data have increased exponentially. As data have become more abundant and complex, new analytical tools and new approaches to data analysis are required. At the same time, as humanities data have become increasingly digitized and available for analysis, it has become critically important to consider the aims and ethics of our analyses and of our visualizations of those analyses. This course has two main purposes. First, students are introduced to the data analysis process—with particular emphasis on tools for analyzing and visualizing humanities data, such as spreadsheets and Python. Students learn where to find sources of humanities data and how to process those data; and, by the end of the course, they will be comfortable using Python to independently analyze data. In this first component of the course, students will be assessed through five lab assignments that demonstrate students’ mastery of the analytical tools and concepts taught in the course. Second, in a series of writing projects, students develop a research paper that demonstrates the analytical skills learned in this course. Throughout the course, students will engage with debates about the ethical use of humanities data and about the ethical presentation of data analyses and visualizations.

F A 308 Arts Integration for Multidisciplinary Connections

This arts-based course is designed to stimulate students’ thinking and expand students’ knowledge of and experience in arts integration. Through readings, videos, in-class activities, discussion, field trips, microteaching, and written reflection, students will develop a practical understanding of the techniques and skills associated with integrating the arts into various contexts. Students will experience each art content area (dance, music, theatre arts, and visual arts), to develop an introductory understanding of each of these disciplines. The remainder of the course will be spent exploring the teaching skills and creative competencies necessary to integrate two of the four arts disciplines –theatre and visual arts or music and dance—into a range of disciplines e.g., arts in education, arts in business, arts in community development, etc.

F A 362 Foundations of Arts Management

This course offers an overview of the external and internal management of contemporary arts organizations with an emphasis on non-profit management. In particular, the course hones in on mission development, programmatic strategies, hosting philosophies, audience development and community engagement, financial management, and funding strategies. Contexts are provided by academic writing, professional models and examples, and guest speakers.

F A 364 DEVLPG REACHG AUDIENCES

With an emphasis on entrepreneurship and nonprofit management, this course introduces practical application of arts training to community service. Students will develop organizational portfolios including Mission, Vision, Programming, Budgeting, Fundraising, and Marketing elements while learning from active arts community servants.

F A 365 Fundraising in the Arts

This course is for students interested in understanding and developing resources and techniques for obtaining contributed support for non-profit arts organizations. It will also focus on the unique climate in arts organizations where earned and contributed income is garnered from the same constituent. Most arts organizations in the United States must raise over 50% of their annual budget from philanthropic sources resulting in a growing demand for arts managers with that specialized skill set. This course will survey the strategies, tools and techniques involved in generating contributed income for arts organizations from private individuals, foundations, corporations, businesses and government agencies and how the process is related to marketing tickets to the same patron. Central issues addressed include the underlying psychological and practical bases of fundraising in the arts, exposure to the research methods involved in developing donor prospects and the relationship between fundraising and marketing. Students will learn a variety of techniques used for soliciting contributions, including direct mail, telemarketing, grant writing, personal appeals, major gift solicitation, special events, capital campaigns, endowment campaigns, sponsorships and planned giving.

F A 371 Producing Art for Social Change

The course offers a hands-on approach to community and participatory art, traditional public art, and collaborative cultural projects that promote social change. Lessons combine the study of social change art taking place internationally, with skill-building exercises to support students’ capacities to conceptualize, design, produce and exhibit their own projects locally. As part of the class, students will learn to create and produce works for UT/Austin communities and to consider how they might make these projects relevant to communities beyond. In general, class meetings offer a combination of lectures; group discussions devoted to readings, video screenings, practical exercises, and student presentations. While case studies are drawn from a wide swath of artistic projects currently being produced internationally, a majority of these efforts emerge from the Americas and Europe.

F A 371 ARTS IN A GLOBAL WORLD

This course combines the critical study of community and socially engaged art, large-scale installations, mixed media arts forms, activism, and biogenetics with skill-building exercises to prepare arts professionals to operate ethically in internationally diverse political, social, and cultural contexts. With equal emphasis on studying work and training students to work internationally, this course incorporates scholarly knowledge and real- world skills for working broadly in global contexts.

HIS 306N MEDIEVAL MATERIAL CULTURE

This course focuses on the history of medieval Europe, primarily through the lens of material culture. In addition to manuscripts, we will explore the significance of several categories of material artifacts. We will discuss what we can discover about the production, circulation, reception, historic and geographic context, and the meaning attributed to the materials from which these objects were created. This class explores what these objects reveal about the religious, political, economic, cultural, and intellectual history of medieval Europe (beyond what we can learn from medieval texts) and how these objects may have been experienced in a pre-modern world.

HIS 346K Colonial Latin America

This course examines the history of early modern Latin America, a period in which this region was at the vanguard of global history. It will cover from the late fifteenth century, including pre-conquest Indigenous civilizations and the European expansion toward the Atlantic, to the early nineteenth century and the first republican experiments. We will frame these processes within the larger history of early modern empires and the networks that relocated peoples, plants, animals, pathogens, ideas, and things throughout the globe. We will consider the intersecting history of peoples of Indigenous, African, and European origin, and the ways in which their interactions created enduring social and cultural forms, as well as how they engaged with—and often rebelled against—imperial politics.

HIS 350L Rethinking the Conquest of Mexico

This course explores the “conquest” of Mexico and the social, cultural, political, and economic processes which were set in motion by the Spanish invasion of Mexico. We will examine recent scholarship and primary accounts of conquest to develop understanding of the complexities of conquest and conquest society. How do we account for the Spanish military victory and for the consolidation of Spanish power in Mexico? What roles do the Catholic Church, Spanish settlers, and indigenous communities play in the consolidation of conquest society? In what ways is indigenous society (political structures and power relationships, gender relations, economic organization, religious practices and beliefs, etc.) affected by conquest? Conversely, how does indigenous society affect Spanish colonial policies and practices? The conquest of Mexico had global repercussions, not only in economic terms but also in cultural and intellectual terms. How did Spanish discovery of unknown peoples and places affect thinking about humanity and the world? We will examine these questions and many others through selected readings and interpretations of primary sources, visual sources, film, and assigned texts.

HIS 365G MUSEUMS:PAST PRESENT FUTURE-WB

For museums, these are the best of times and the worst of times. Prior to the pandemic, we were in the midst of an unprecedented museum boom. More people attended more museums than ever before. Today, there are more than 17,500 museums in the United States touching upon virtually every subject imaginable, from art to ice cream, from natural history to sex. But museums also face serious challenges from without and within. There is a financial challenge, as the cost of maintaining museums climbs, but revenue stagnates. There is an audience challenge: How to attract a much more diverse audience to museums better representative of the communities they serve. Then there is a political challenge. The left sometimes sees museums as bastions of elitism and Eurocentrism. The right sees museums as perpetrating attacks on traditional values. But perhaps the most serious challenge is the lack of clarity about what museums are supposed to do. Our class will explore how museums have changed over time and how museums should display their objects and educate their visitors, as well as how museums should address tough questions, like slavery and its legacies. Among the issues we will discuss are whether museums be required to return artifacts taken through war, colonial conquest, or duress or whether museums should turn down offers of money that some consider tainted. The key question we will ask is how can museums live up to their high responsibilities: to enlighten, engage, provoke, stimulate, and elevate people above the mundane?

HIS 366N TRASH TREAS EUR 1400-1800

Which commodities matter and why? What can we learn about the past by studying things? This course examines Europe in the period that witnessed that the “birth” of a consumer society, the transition to fossil fuel as an energy source during the Little Ice Age, the Protestant Reformation that trashed formerly treasured relics, the rise of imperial networks of global trade, and much more. How did the meaning of things and people’s relationships to them change over these centuries? From 1400 to 1800, Europeans reevaluated what was trash and what was treasure – and how to get rid of as well as obtain different resources. A variety of objects—coal, cotton textiles, the printed book, saints’ relics, teapots, sewage, and sugar, to name a few—will guide our exploration of early modern Europe in an increasingly interconnected world. Bringing together exciting new scholarly work on material culture, environmental history, and economic history, we will trace the circulation, use, and consumption of things from the Renaissance to the consumer revolution. The class will work with early modern European objects in collections on UT’s campus, in particular the Harry Ransom Center and Blanton Museum, in order to write our own material histories.

HIS 366N World Catholicism, 1400 – 1800

The Catholic Church today has over a billion members globally, making it the largest religious denomination worldwide. This course examines the global reach of the Catholic Church before modernity. How and why did early modern people adopt this religion in different places? From 1400 to 1800, both church officials and ordinary Catholics confronted a variety of ideological challenges, including the Protestant Reformation and increasing secularization. The Church also rapidly expanded, even as it lost a foothold in Europe. The early modern period witnessed the rise of imperialism and colonization; we will investigate the ways in which the spread of Catholicism was tied to these. The history of the Catholic Church in this period has often been told from the perspectives of missionaries and popes, centered on Rome. This course will examine early modern Catholic communities from Goa to Lima, highlighting the role of men and women whose participation in Catholicism made the church global. Our primary focus will be on encounter, devotion, and power. How did Catholics and non-Catholics interact? How did popular religious practices develop and spread? What were the political dynamics of the early modern church—for example, how did women, Indigenous people, or non-Catholics influence Catholic worship and legislation? Throughout, we will examine the tension between the local and the “universal” church, that is, how encounter, religious devotion, and political power were shaped by local circumstances as well as global connections. In addition to reading recent scholarship, we will examine texts, artwork, and objects made by early modern people who shaped Catholicism in this period. The final project for the course will add to the growing body of new work on early modern global Catholicism by bringing together materials from UT Austin collections into a collaborative online exhibit. A bit more info about the course & its relevance to your program: Material and visual culture as well as rare books will be integral to the course, and we'll work with items in the Blanton Museum, Benson, and Ransom Center collections. Among the various topics and concepts we'll explore will be: religious belief and political power, race and indigeneity, gender and sexuality, censorship and inquisition, & much more. The readings will pair new scholarship with early modern texts, artwork, & objects.

I 310C INTRO CULTRL HERITAGE INFRMTCS

Examine the fundamentals of managing, describing, organizing, preserving, and providing access to data and information in a wide range of technological forms.

LAH 350 ARCHIV ADVACY:EXPER LEARN

*Restricted to Liberal Arts Honors.

In this seminar, students will use digital archiving and exhibit-building techniques to amplify voices that actively promote social justice, cultural awareness, and service, and to test the ethical positions about impartiality and advocacy in archival and exhibit practices. Through a client-based service-project, students will work with an institutional or organizational stakeholder in the community that has materials or records that could provide a good subject for archival inquiry, preservation, and advocacy. Students will work closely with each other, their instructor, and the community stakeholders to access materials and records from the institution’s history, to learn the stakeholders’ goals and priorities for their project, to digitize and describe collections of their items, to produce public digital exhibits on selections from this collection in the platform Omeka, to promote the Omeka site on behalf of the organization, and to develop a longevity plan for this archive. Exhibits are intended to help situate the collection of digital materials in the context of both the stakeholding organization’s own history and a broader history of the community in which the organization is situated.

MES 343 12-MDRN MID E HIST 100 OBJECTS

Objects, “things” – whether mundane, everyday household items or great works of art and architecture patronized by merchants, religious leaders, or rulers – have had a profound impact on the course of history. Indeed, recently historians have begun to speak of a “material turn” within the field – a movement away from a purely text-based model of understanding the past. This model acknowledges that things can often reveal a more nuanced and rich picture of past lives, in particular, allowing us to understand how ordinary people lived. And yet, history is often still taught as though our only source of knowledge about the past comes through texts. This course will be a survey of the history of the modern Middle East, from 1500-present, looking in particular at the art of the three great “Gunpowder Empires:” the Ottomans in Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean, the Safavids in modern Iraq and Iran, and the Mughals in the Indian subcontinent, taught by a close examination of the meaning and significance of 100 objects. Together, these sometimes-allied/sometimes-warring empires ruled over a third of the earth in their day. We’ll also take our inquiry forward in time to examine modern and contemporary art and objects from the Middle East. The objects will range from buildings to manuscripts to weapons and will come from diverse contexts, including archaeological investigations, museum collections, and everyday life. Yet all of them will tell a vivid story about the people of their time. Students will learn basic skills of visual analysis and object analysis, and will gain an introduction to theories of seeing and interpreting works of art and architecture – essential skills in today’s increasingly visually-based information economy. At the end of the course, students will not only have a clear sense of the histories of the great early modern Islamic dynasties and modern nation states and their various Muslim, Christian, and Jewish subjects, but will also be able to use works of art and architecture, as well as everyday objects, as an effective tool of analysis.

P R 320 Integrated Comm for Nonprofit Orgs

RHE 309J When Topic is Appropriate

For topics courses labeled as “When Topic is Appropriate” on a BDP curriculum sheet, please note that all topics for this course number are not automatically approved to count toward your BDP. In advance of registration for a particular semester (and as part of the BDP seat request process), the BDP office will inform current BDP students of the topics for the course number that are approved for their BDP.

RHE 315 Intro to Visual Rhetoric

Over the last two years, we have been flooded with information about our health and wellness. Oftentimes, this information has come in a visual form. From graphs and charts depicting COVID trends, to images of overflowing hospital rooms, the early 2020s have been marked by its focus on health, illness, and how we choose to accept or reject information relating to the two. Visual rhetoric--images, videos, photographs, websites, and more--is a powerful tool to communicate, persuade, and make meaning of complex and confusing information. Over the course of the class, we will use principles of visual rhetoric in order to investigate how visual communications in health and medicine argue and persuade. What does it mean to visualize? How do visuals persuade us, what arguments can visuals make? How can we use visual rhetoric in our lives? We will consider these questions and more. In this course, we will discuss various aspects of the rhetoric of health and medicine as it relates to visual rhetoric--from the visual culture of breast cancer, to the design of health information posters and brochures, to the weekly emails with infographics and videos the UT administration sent about COVID-19--and how they help us make meaning. In addition to discussion, we will also write about and create our own visual projects that relate to health and medicine. We will use principles of visual rhetoric to communicate complex information as well as tell stories about health and medicine. This class will also be based on access, and we will endeavor to create visual products that are accessible by discussing closed captioning, alt tags, and color combinations

RHE 328 Writing for Nonprofits

This course equips students with the intellectual, analytical, and persuasive skills necessary for writing in nonprofit organizations. We’ll dedicate much time toward analyzing, understanding, and building communication strategies in nonprofit contexts by researching and examining the rhetorical practices made by different organizations across a variety of texts (e.g. from mission statements to newsletters to grants). First, we’ll assess our knowledge regarding how these genres work, for whom and why. Second, we’ll consider methods for learning about the capacities and needs of organizations. Throughout the semester, we’ll use what we learn from different organizations in order to produce the genres associated with nonprofits. This will entail writing proposals, telling stories, working across different media, and developing the assessment measures that are necessary for gauging the success of our communication work. By the end of the semester, you should have a greater awareness of how writing happens in these settings and even leave with a greater level of confidence in pursuing a career in non-profit work.

RHE 330C Museums in The Digital Age

None

SPN 328C Intro to Iberian And Latin American Literature and Cultures

This course is an introduction to the cultural texts produced in the complex social, cultural, historical, geographical, and political contexts of Iberian and Latin America. We will use a multidisciplinary approach utilizing concepts crucial to understanding Iberian and Latin American literary/cultural phenomena. These concepts include mapping and representation; the politics and legacy of encounters; social identities; coercion and subversion; discourses of the modern nation; inclusions and exclusions; and movements and migrations. Throughout the semester you will acquire and practice the skills necessary to analyze a variety of written, visual, oral, and embodied texts, ending in an original and independent research project related to the course topic(s). This class will be taught in Spanish.

T D 351T Teach Artists in Schls & Comms

Do you want to explore the range of educational work currently happening in schools, museums and community settings? Do you want to understand more about how to teach in and through the arts?Do you want to consider the power and potential of the arts to make change in education and society?Then, come learn about how to be a teaching artist in the Teaching Artists in Schools and Communities this spring--a dynamic course offered by the Theatre and Dance Dept. in the College of Fine Arts. This practical, interdisciplinary course will explore how to use the arts to educate in arts and non-arts settings (professional arts organizations, after-school programs, schools, museums, and community sites). We will examine the historical role of artists applying their knowledge and skills outside of their traditional environment, and the current move towards aligning artistry with standards and project objectives. As teaching artists, we will consider the role of intentionality, artistic perspective, quality, assessment, and praxis (the relationship of action/reflection) in our work. We will engage with a variety of local arts organizations that hire and train teaching artists including dancers, visual artists, and theatre professionals. Our discussions will be framed by a practical residency experience in a school or community location and the creation of a teaching artist portfolio. No experience in the arts or education is required.

T D 351T Drama/Theatre Applications in Museum Settings

T D 354T Lighting Installed, Exhibit & Museum Design

Lighting and design fundamentals of static and kinetic lighting and other atmospheric/sensory contributors to spatial/experiential design. Students develop a foundation for professional collaboration with related specialists.

T D 357T US Popular Performance and Public History

Before there was YouTube, there was Vaudeville. Before Taylor Swift there was Jenny Lind. Before Michael Jackson there were the Nicholas Brothers. Before Cate Blanchett there was Sarah Bernhardt. Before Pen & Teller, there was Houdini. Before Cat Videos there were flea circuses. Before stand-up comedy there was burlesque. Before the circus there was, well, the circus. This class explores the popular entertainments of the 19th century United States through the extensive performance holdings of the Harry Ransom Center in order to talk about popular entertainment of the 21st century.The class will focus on a range of topics: from blackface minstrelsy to music halls, from burlesque to the circus, from the Cakewalk to tap dance, from we consider the ways aspects of these entertainments remain part of popular culture today. We will use the objects in the Ransom Center holdings so that students can develop strategies for creatively and critically sharing these histories with the general public. This will include both digital and physical exhibitions. Student will be encouraged to develop projects that connect with work they are currently doing. The class assumes no expertise with either performance history, archival work, or exhibitions. It only assumes that you want to use the past to have conversations about the things you care about today.

VAS 361C Criticism/Conversation Art

This course is about the construction and interpretation of meaning in art as well as transforming preK-12 art classrooms into engaging communities of inquiry. Concurrent with delving into art theory and criticism, students will reflect upon and practice teaching methods that involve a diverse student body in conversations about art that could take place in the classroom, the museum, or digitally.

Objects, Collections, Preservation

AMS 311S When Topic Is Appropriate

(past topics: American Places of Leisure; Dancing in America)Writing, reading, and discussion on an American studies topic, with emphasis on the evaluation of information, analytical reading, and critical writing.Past Topic - American Places of Leisure - As the 19th century drew to a close, American cities began to give birth to a vibrant new mass culture. Much of this culture manifested itself in new entertainment venues, including amusement parks, zoos, and cinemas. As the century wore on, these entertainment spaces increased in number and complexity, becoming a familiar part of life in America – and in many other countries as well. In this course we will explore the history of these spaces, using them as a lens through which to explore larger currents of cultural change. This course will be divided into three sections. The first will explore the early days of amusement spaces as they arose alongside mass culture in American cities. In the second section of the course we will deal with the new age of amusements that began with the opening of Disneyland in 1955. The final section of the course will deal with the modern era of amusement spaces, an era defined by the globalization of mass amusements. The locations we will be discussing in this class – amusement parks, malls, zoos, and so on – are fun places often understood as frivolous and bereft of meaning. We will be working to peer beneath the surface of these entertaining spaces, uncovering the extremely rich cultural forces that define and drive them and coming to grips with the way they influence American culture. We will touch on a wide range of topics, including race, class, and gender roles, shifting understandings of public and private and man and nature, the rise of globalization, and the emergence of a corporately-driven “convergence culture.” Our ultimate goal is to come to a better understanding of the profound effect seemingly meaningless amusement spaces have on American culture.

AMS 315 When Topic Is Appropriate

None

ANT 304 Intro Archaeol Studies: Prehist

An introduction to archaeology as a discipline. Three major themes that deal with issues of the past will be covered: 1. A brief history of the discipline, changing theories about various aspects of the past, and the role that the reconstructions of the past play in national and/or group identities. 2. A survey of the development of human culture from its beginnings to the rise of civilizations and proto-historical cultures in most areas of the world. Prehistoric cultures, archaeological sites, and areas of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe , and the Pacific will be covered. 3. Archaeological methods of recovery of information about the past. Scientific procedures involved in excavation, dating, and preservation of the material record.

ANT 304T Intro to Texas Archaeology

People have been in Texas since about 12,000 years ago and the evidence of their presence throughout time is fascinating. Ever wondered how we know and can prove that? This course introduces students to Texas archaeology through lectures, interactive virtual labs and hands-on laboratory sections that emphasize experimentation. Texas geographic and environmental diversity provided prehistoric and historic peoples with unique resources and possibilities, and people used that diversity to make choices and develop specific cultural characteristics while interacting with other peoples from the surrounding regions. Doing archaeology requires teamwork, critical thinking and multidisciplinary approaches. In archaeology, it is often more important to ask relevant questions than provide ready answers. The lectures and labs in this course aim to emphasize these requirements as well as how archaeology relates to other sciences. This course may be used to fulfill the natural science and technology (Part II) component of the common core curriculum and addresses the following four core objectives established by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board: communication skills, critical thinking skills, teamwork, and empirical and quantitative skills.People have been in Texas since about 12,000 years ago and the evidence of their presence throughout time is fascinating. Ever wondered how we know and can prove that? This course introduces students to Texas archaeology through lectures, interactive virtual labs and hands-on laboratory sections that emphasize experimentation. Texas geographic and environmental diversity provided prehistoric and historic peoples with unique resources and possibilities, and people used that diversity to make choices and develop specific cultural characteristics while interacting with other peoples from the surrounding regions. Doing archaeology requires teamwork, critical thinking and multidisciplinary approaches. In archaeology, it is often more important to ask relevant questions than provide ready answers. The lectures and labs in this course aim to emphasize these requirements as well as how archaeology relates to other sciences. This course may be used to fulfill the natural science and technology (Part II) component of the common core curriculum and addresses the following four core objectives established by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board: communication skills, critical thinking skills, teamwork, and empirical and quantitative skills.

ANT 324L Who Owns the Past?

This course explores the ethical, legal, and political dilemmas surrounding the use, appropriation, and ownership of the past. Topics of contemporary relevance include preserving cultural property during times of war and political instability, the controversial relationship between collecting, looting, and the international art market, the use and misuse of the past for economic and political ends, and the question, should local populations have ultimate control over ‘their’ cultural patrimony? Members of this class will dive into the fast and furious world of cultural property, exploring issues of ownership and stewardship of the past, amidst key players including archaeologists, private collectors, museums, looters, auction houses, journalists, politicians, and military forces. Students will engage with topical questions and case studies, including: Do artifacts always, in the immortal words of Indiana Jones, “belong in a museum?” Are elements of the past allowed to be used or appropriated for political, social, or economic ends? Can culture and capitalism get along? Is the past shared or do some have greater claims on it than others? How can we boldly move forward in this new millennium without sacrificing the past?

ANT 324L CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

This course is designed to provide a thorough overview of Cultural Resource Management (CRM), primarily for students who are interested in pursuing a career in archaeology. Projects funded or permitted by government agencies must comply with various state and federal laws that mandate the identification and investigation of archaeological sites that may be impacted by the project; as a result, the vast majority of the archaeology conducted in the United States is done for compliance purposes. This course will cover the development of CRM archaeology into a professional discipline, the legal and regulatory environment in which CRM operates, the common methods (and jargon) utilized and, importantly, employment prospects and how to go about gaining employment in CRM.

ANT 324L ARCHAEOL CURATN: THRY PRCTCE

Anytime we ask questions about or explain what happened in the past, or decide on something as “basic” as where we’re going to dig, we use theory. There are theories on big questions like “how and why did farming become a thing?” but this class is mainly about broader schools of thought and ways of interpreting/explaining human societies & cultures in the past that have had major impacts in archaeology. Like, how have evolutionary theory and feminist activism influenced archaeological practice? We’ll study the growing pains of anthropological archaeology over time, and survey the discipline’s diversity in terms of theoretical orientations and research emphases. We’ll also learn about the ethics and politics of archaeology: its role in the present, and why public and community-based archaeologies are so important. You’ll be introduced to different viewpoints on past human behavior & lifeways via a variety of archaeological sites and evidence. By the end, you’ll be knowledgable of archaeology’s key trends, debates, & theoretical approaches.

ANT 325J The Photographic Image

"The Photographic Image" applies concepts and practices from visual ethnography to the study of culture and everyday life. The course aims at developing approaches to practices of looking and techniques of representation within an ethical and historical framework. Whereas photographs are often taken to be archival and documentary technologies, we will invert this idea and explore how images are also transient and ephemeral by focusing on sites of encounter and codes of engagement. In our critical approach we consider both the production and reception of photographs. The class is planned around a series of photo-based projects that foregrounds experiential learning. You will be required to read for these projects and undertake original photography assignments. At all points in the course you will be drawn into the use of image-making as an interpretive and critical engagement with course readings. Writing is an essential element in visual ethnography; sometimes it is foregrounded, sometimes it is subordinated to the photographs. Regardless, you will have an opportunity to fine-tune your writing in relation to your photographic practice. We will begin with techniques of visual inquiry established by visual anthropologists and documentarians as well as artists working within or on the margins of documentary traditions. You are expected to engage fully in both individual and group activities.

ANT 326F Great Discoveries in Archaeology

Archaeology shapes the way we understand the human past, and the history of archaeology was shaped by the great discoveries in archaeology and the people who made them. This course surveys the stories and myths behind some of those discoveries as well as the background of the discoverers. In the process we will discuss how they acquired knowledge, formulated hypotheses, and the impact their early discoveries had on the ways we know the world, think about ourselves, and on how archaeology is practiced today. For instance, things that today we take for granted, such as travel agencies and postcards, or how we understand the politics of modern archaeology and our role in them, or the claims of countries for the return of art objects are all connected to the history of archeology and its discoverers.

ANT 326N CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

ARC 342C Mexican Architecture and Urbanism: From Pre-Columbian to Contemporary

A survey of Mexican architecture and urbanism from its origins in pre-Columbian times to the 21st century. Architecture will be understood as a cultural expression intricately connected to its historical context and the landscape that supports it. This course is for upper-division undergraduate and graduate students.

ARC 342D Frank Lloyd Wright: Design, Method, Theory

A comprehensive study of Frank Lloyd Wright's life and work with emphasis on the analyses of his design methods and theories. Must have an upper-division standing.

ARC 385T Materials Conservation: Laboratory Methods

*Instructor Approval Required

*Graduate course; instructor permission required.

This course provides an introduction to architectural materials conservation and its applicability in the field of historic preservation. Students will learn about the composition and treatment of historic building materials, how to undertake basic laboratory analysis and evaluation of historic materials and treatments, and how prepare a conservation report. Each course topic will have a lecture and laboratory component. Lectures will cover the physical and chemical properties of masonry, concrete, metals, mortars, wood, paints and coatings, and other materials found in historic buildings. Laboratory exercises will include: water absorption testing, mortar analysis by acid digestion, historic paint analysis, wood identification, and treatment testing. Students will participate in a conservation workshop at Guadalupe Mountains National Park and undertake historic material analysis at the historic Hays County Jail in San Marcos, Texas. An open-book, take-home midterm; lab reports; treatment reports; and additional site visits during class time will accompany this course.

ARC 385T Materials Conservation: Field Methods

*Graduate course; instructor permission required.

This course provides an introduction to architectural materials conservation and its applicability in the field of historic preservation. Students will learn how to collect samples, conduct basic materials analysis of historic building materials, and prepare a conservation report. Each course topic will have a lecture and laboratory component. Lectures will cover the physical and chemical properties of masonry, concrete, metals, mortars, wood, paints and coatings, and other materials found in historic buildings. Laboratory exercises will include: water absorption testing, mortar analysis by acid digestion, historic paint analysis, and wood identification. Students will conduct fieldwork at two historic sites and analyze historic materials as part of a midterm and final independent research project.

ARH 322 Iss Exhbt/Collectn Vis Arts

Topics vary.

ARH 328L Modern Middle East History in One Hundred Objects.

ARH 347K ART ARCHAEOL OF ANC PERU

This course is intended to provide a comprehensive survey of the cultures that occupied the Andean coast and highlands prior to and immediately following the Spanish Conquest in the 16th century. Given the lack of written history prior to the Spanish arrival, investigations of the ancient Andean visual arts – the elaborate textiles, fine ceramic vessels, carved stone sculptures, and monumental architecture – have advanced through multidisciplinary approaches. We will thus examine various culture groups by engaging both the iconography and archaeology of the regional traditions. In this course, we will address pertinent environmental and ecological factors, evidence of ritual practices, such as human sacrifice and water management, techniques and materials of manufacture of art and architecture, and issues in looting and collecting antiquities, as well as preserving and presenting collections. Additionally, we will work with primary materials comprising the ceramic objects in the Art and Art History Collection (AAHC) to create digital humanities projects focused on these artworks. To that end we will work weekly in a digital humanities lab workspace focusing on group- work and collaborative projects in digital curation to create online exhibits for a virtual museum.

BIO 351 Economic Botany

Economic Botany provides an analysis of the origin of domesticated plant species, the role and nature of plant products, and the ways natural products have been altered through artificial selection. Economic Botany is an exciting interdisciplinary field that explores the rich relationships between people and plants, describes the cultural use of plants in past and present, explains the origins of useful plants, and develops strategies for the sustainable use of plant resources in the future. The aim of this course is to discuss specific plants used for food, medicine, fiber, oil, fuel, and recreational purposes, while giving the students a thorough understanding of plant morphology, anatomy, physiology, evolution and classification. Prerequisite: Biology 325 or 325H with a grade of at least C-.

BIO 369F FIELD HERPETOLOGY

There will be at least 8 in-class field trips, on some of which you can expect to get wet and two of which will be conducted at night. You will be given more detailed instructions on how to prepare for each field trip in advance. If you have a health condition that prevents or restricts you from participating on field trips you must let us know well in advance. We will be handling and/or collecting reptiles and amphibians on field trips. I possess a permit issued by Texas Parks and Wildlife that allows you to collect and handle non-game vertebrates when under the direct supervision of myself. If you wish to handle or collect animals at other times, you will need a Texas fishing or (non-game) hunting license or a combination fishing/hunting license. You are responsible for knowing the appropriate laws regarding the handling/collecting of vertebrates when not with the class. Note that game animals cannot be handled at any time. Threatened and endangered species are also protected by federal law and cannot be handled or harassed (this also includes dead ones). For safety reasons, handling of venomous or dangerous animals will result in a severe academic penalty. You will be given more information on the handling and collection of vertebrates when we go on field trips.

BIO 455L VERTEBRATE NATURAL HISTORY

Course objectives include: - To develop skills of observation and communication - To learn to identify common orders and families of Texas vertebrates - To gain skills in common sampling techniques for vertebrates - To understand and apply tools and protocols for collecting site data. There will be at least six in-class field trips, on some of which you can expect to get wet. You will be given more detailed instructions on how to prepare for each field trip in advance. If you have a health condition that prevents or restricts you from participating on field trips you must let us know well in advance. We will be handling and/or collecting vertebrates on field trips. I possess a permit issued by Texas Parks and Wildlife that allows you to collect and handle non-game vertebrates when under the direct supervision of Robby or myself. If you wish to handle or collect vertebrates at other times, you will need a Texas fishing or (non-game) hunting license or a combination fishing/hunting license. You are responsible for knowing the appropriate laws regarding the handling/collecting of vertebrates when not with the class. Note that game animals cannot be handled at any time. In addition, almost all birds are protected by federal law and cannot be handled (this includes dead ones). Threatened and endangered species are also protected by federal law and cannot be handled or harassed (this also includes dead ones). For safety reasons, handling of poisonous, venomous, or dangerous animals will result in a severe academic penalty. You will be given more information on the handling and collection of vertebrates when we go on field trips.

BIO 463L PLANT SYSTEMATICS

Principles of plant classification, phylogeny and diversity as exemplified by families and species of flowering plants found seasonally in Texas with an emphasis on the local flora. Includes field trips to UT-Austin’s Brackenridge Field Lab (BFL) and elsewhere, collection and identification of plants from central Texas, an overview of flowering plant diversity, evolutionary relationships and classification, and access to UT-Austin’s plant collections in the Plant Resources Center.

C C 340 Food/Hlth/Cul Anct Mediterr

Until recently, ancient food has tended to be discussed mainly by modern scholars or scientists who may have only a superficial knowledge of ancient cultures. Classicists and ancient historians of previous generations tended to neglect the subject, which was considered much less important than the life of the mind. In their eyes, attention to food and food preparation was more characteristic of the trades than it was of scholarship, and was at best a hobby. The great human dramas of antiquity, after all, center not on the body but on the soul and its limits. These sentiments have a long pedigree: we can thank Plato, writing roughly 2400 years ago, for their clearest expression. The past thirty years, however, have seen a resurgence of interest in the foodways of the ancient Mediterranean, and this is now a subject that we can address in detail and from many different angles. In fact, the ancient Mediterranean arguably provides us with one of the best laboratories for the analysis of the interrelations between food, health, and culture: not only do these cultures offer a full range of artistic and archaeological evidence for food and foodways, but both also produced a self-conscious and extensive literary corpus related to eating and drinking. Furthermore, the societies around the Mediterranean sea were like us (urban, literate, sophisticated, even globalized), yet different enough that we can see their food choices in a more objective light. By looking at such choices, we can gain a better understanding of the broader social contexts in which they were embedded. Interdisciplinary investigation is crucial in this attempt, both because the subject is so fundamentally physical and because textual sources are often ambiguous, misleading, or silent on the topic.

E 370W Queer Archives

This course will explore the role of archives in documenting and transforming LGBTQ histories and histories of intimacy and sexuality. We will consider the history of grassroots archives, such as the Lesbian Herstory Archives, as well as new LGBTQ collections in universities and public libraries. The course will also foreground the creative use of archives by writers, filmmakers, and visual artists seeking to address historical absences and invent new forms of history and documentation. The course will make use of resources in the UT Libraries, such as the Gloria Anzaldua collections in the Benson library and the diverse LGBTQ holdings of the Harry Ransom Center, as well as LGBTQ archives elsewhere that can accessed online or by other means. Moving between archival collections and literature, film, video, and visual art, the course will take up queer theory and research methods as it explores activist approaches to archiving, knowledge production, and art-making.The course is designed to meet the needs of students who already have some background in gender and sexuality studies (such as WGS 303 Intro to LGBTQ Studies) and are looking for more advanced coursework, but it is open to all who are interested and committed.

E 379R Hollywood Films in Archive

This course introduces the craft of research through the archival film holdings at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRC). Throughout the semester, we will explore the cinema's past and present, generating original research questions as we do so. Various class meetings will take place at the HRC to acquaint students with its film holdings and the procedures of archival research. Students will be expected to devote significant time to on-site research into archival materials, with the production of a research essay on an original topic at semester's end.

HIS 322G History of the Modern Life Sciences

The History of the Modern Life Sciences traces the study of living things from the seventeenth century to the present. We will examine how naturalists and biologists have searched for order in nature––from cabinets of curiosity to maps of biodiversity, and from the theory of cells to the structure of DNA. In this course, students will examine the development of changing practices and approaches to investigating life in the field, the museum, and the laboratory. Students will confront critical problems in the history of biology and society, including those related to exploration and empire; race, gender, and classification; theories of evolution; genetics and eugenics; ecology and conservation; molecular biology; and biotechnology. How has the meaning of “life” changed through history? How have ideas about social order and natural order mirrored each other? To explore these questions, we will analyze historians’ interpretations, historical actors’ own accounts of their work and ideas, as well as historical images and objects.

HIS 346J Colonial Latin America Through Objects

This course explores the material cultures of colonialism in Latin America from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. We’ll inquire about the relationships between material objects, the cultural practices that gave them meaning, and the larger social divisions and interactions sustaining colonialism. Our focus will be on objects that reveal the dynamics of cultural interaction between Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans, and their changes over time. We’ll consider the things people wrote, wore, where people lived, and what they used to exchange with one another, as a way to understand their standing in society and the larger power and economic structures that shaped their experience and sensibilites under a colonial order.

HIS 350L Visual and Material Culture in Colonial Latin America

In this seminar we will focus on the visual and material culture of colonial Latin America. We will explore ways in which particular images and objects came into being and how they provide insights into the social, political, economic, religious, and intellectual histories and expressions of colonial Latin America. We will explore and analyze a wide range of materials - paintings, sculptures, architecture, maps, textiles, prints, etc. Emphasis will be placed on understanding the connections between visual and material culture and the formation of the Ibero-American empires as well as local and regional identities. Emphasis will also be placed on the deep contextualization of specific images and artifacts to understand how they came into being-who produced them, who wanted them and why, and what we can discover about their circulation, reception, and transformation. We will also consider how images and artifacts function as historical evidence to be interrogated in the same way that we critically assess written sources.

HIS 350R Mexican Amers in Texas History

This seminar will introduce students to the historical experience of Mexican-origin persons in Texas, with reading and research assignments involving basic texts, as well as archival materials at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, and the EBSCO-Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection (Digitized Series 1 and 2) at the University of Texas at Austin. Our major concern will be to explain how, under what circumstances, and with what consequences Mexican-origin persons and communities from Texas were incorporated into the socio-economy of the United States. The first half of the course will be dedicated to readings and class discussions that will allow the students to explore important themes, including immigration, diplomatic and ethnic relations, organized labor, and equal rights movements. The approach to the readings will be comparative, trans-regional, and transnational, that is, the course will focus on Mexicans in Texas but will cast a wide net to include the larger Latino community and African Americans, as well as trans-border relations between Mexican and Indigenous communities. The second half of the course will learn about the rich archival materials on Mexican American history and the analytical frameworks and research methodologies that the authors of our texts have used in selecting and interpreting the records. This will involve visits to the archives, presentations by the University of Texas library staff on the archival materials, the selection of at least five records utilized by one of authors, and the preparation of a paper that provides a history of the books and a critical evaluation of the use of archival records by the authors. The students will be closely supervised in the examination of the records and the preparation of an oral presentation and a research paper.

HIS 350R Arts/Artifacts in the Americas

This course will survey the changing material culture of the western hemisphere from pre-Columbian times to the beginning of the industrial revolution, with occasional forays into later periods where appropriate. We will view artifacts from an Atlantic perspective on all levels of society while sampling a cross-section of written work from a number of disciplines and geographies in the Americas. We will keep a keen eye on our central problem of telling the connected stories of artisans, consumers and their societies within specific historical contexts that are simultaneously local, regional and global. We will also think about the history of beauty.

HMN 350 Treasure Hunt in Campus Archives

Have you ever wondered how letters, pictures, records, and other texts recovered from the past can change the telling of history? Have you ever wondered how a book, poem, play or film might have turned out differently? Have you ever wondered who or what gets left out of the stories we learn about the past? These are questions that humanities researchers can address by studying the materials preserved in archives and special collections around the world and that scholars from around the world come to study at the renowned archives at the University of Texas at Austin. As Prof. Tom Staley, former director of the Harry Ransom Center, wrote in an exhibit introduction in 2000, the mission of archives is to “attempt to create some order among the random remnants of history - the poetic fragment, the unfinished drawing, the unpublished novel, even the masterpiece; it is an attempt to bring the pieces of our human story together.” In this course, students will discover, explore, and promote stories that emerge from the vast cultural and historical collections at archives on the UT-Austin campus including the Ransom Center, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, and the LLILAS Benson Latin American Collection. In the process, students will learn essential skills for pursuing original research projects in humanities disciplines and learn how to bring public attention to hidden histories and marginalized voices in our culture. Students will also learn how to engage with, renew, manage, update, and expand digital cultural resources so that they remain relevant and significant over time.

I 301 Intro to Informatics

This course will introduce students to informatics. Students will explore the foundations of the field, the core values and the concentration areas offered by the UT iSchool Informatics program. Overview of the information field as it relates to the technology-based world culture. Topics may include the idea of information, information in relation to technology and culture, information technology in education, information literacy and the "digital divide," information and communication technology, information and gender, public information policy, and information organization and preservation.

I 320C PRESRVATN OF DIFFICULT HIST

Memory institutions, like archives, libraries, and museums, share a common goal of preserving the cultural record. Through their professional codes of ethics, practitioners in these allied fields establish ideals and standards of practice in creating and maintaining collections. But history is not static; it is subject to periodic reevaluations of the people, stories, and interpretations it includes. How do collecting and preservation ethics accommodate these changes? Students in this course will first examine established ethics, and then engage with current debates in collections management, preservation, and conservation. Case studies highlight how ethical tenets inform practices like post-custodial archiving, repatriation, and human-centered conservation. Special emphasis will be placed on physical materials, ideal states, and the management of change over time. Structured dialogue exercises will be used throughout the course to provide rules-based platforms for practicing critical thought, close listening, and respectful dialogue.

INF 350G Historical Museums: Context/Practice

*Instructor Approval Required

The process of exhibit creation in historical museums, from planning through development to opening and maintenance, as a negotiation among stakeholders for influence on the story that is told. Students visit local historical museums and examine how presentations are influenced by the institutional position of the museum, including its history and resources; the concerns of museum employees; the influence of the audience and of those who are directly affected or represented by an exhibit; and the role of contractual professionals.

INF 392G Management of Preservation Programs

*Instructor Approval Required

*Graduate course; instructor permission required.

Management of specific preservation strategies for cultural record; preservation policy; the selection process for preservation; minor mending and repair operations; library binding and conservation treatment; preservation assessments; emergency preparedness; contracting for services; and budgeting, grant writing, and fund- raising for preservation.

RTF 359C Media Archaeology

Romantic images of the archaeologist have been a component of cinema for over a hundred years. But what if Indiana Jones needed to search for old media – magic lantern slides or nitrate celluloid – instead of golden treasure? This course will cast students as historical explorers, focusing our quest to discover and better understand media as artifacts rather than just as narratives or “texts.” How can understanding radio, television, film and online video as physical objects that decompose (and even explode) over time complicate our understanding of the past? This class will focus upon the materiality of media within specific socio-cultural, economic and technological time periods, each with their own modes of historic, and futuristic, discourse. Topics will include studio preservation policy and national cinemas, the role of the archive and museum, high profile film restorations and even Martin Scorsese.

TXA 352E HIST APPAREL COLL EXHIBIT MGMT

352E (HACEM) is a cross disciplinary course that focuses on the combination of historic research combined with an aesthetic approach to museum studies in a collaborative and experiential environment centered around the Historic Apparel and Textile Collection of the School of Human Ecology. It introduces students to a possible career or volunteerism in the museum sector. It also revitalizes the Historic Apparel and Textile Collection housed in the basement archives of Mary Gearing Hall. The HACEM course will Students will learn the specific techniques in terms of the handling and exhibition of historic costume and dress, the organization of a Collection Care plan for the HTAC archives and a basic understanding of ICOM principles of a safe haven for vintage fashion. Students will also ideate, create, plan, build and install a fashion exhibit with garments and accessories from the HTAC archives.

Integration Essay

A 3-4 page essay in which you reflect on what you learned and accomplished through your BDP experience.

Important Notes on Fulfilling Your BDP Requirements

PREREQUISITES: Some courses may have prerequisites. Please consult your BDP advisor to determine your eligibility for enrolling in specific courses.
CROSS-LISTINGS: Note that many courses on this list may be cross-listed with other departments. You may take these courses under any of the cross-listed numbers. Please consult the course schedule or your BDP advisor for cross-listing information.
GRADES AND GPA REQUIREMENTS: In courses taken for a letter grade, you must obtain a grade of C- or better to meet BDP requirements. The cumulative GPA of all courses counting toward your BDP certificate must be at least 2.0.
PASS/FAIL: Only one BDP course, including connecting experience courses, may be taken pass/fail. Any exceptions will be considered by the faculty panel on an individual basis.
SIGNATURE COURSES: Many of the First-Year Signature Courses (UGS 302 and UGS 303) that include significant content related to Museum Studies may also count toward your certificate; please consult your BDP advisor for more information.
PETITIONS: You may be able to count courses toward your BDP certificate that do not appear on this curriculum sheet, if enough of the course content relates to your BDP topic. Please consult your BDP advisor if you would like to petition for a course to count toward your BDP. See the BDP calendar for fall and spring petition deadlines. Current BDP students can find the petition form on their MyBDP dashboard.

For more information on courses, please consult your BDP advisor (bdp@austin.utexas.edu) or the course schedule.