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This course investigates the creation, display, and
reception of art and material culture in the United
States from roughly 1650 to 1900, grappling with the
question of what is “American” about American art.
Artists, architects, and designers in the United States
mobilized diverse European, African, Asian, and Native
American traditions in their work and different groups
of Americans used art and artifacts to express who they
were and what they wanted America to be. How did such
art help to define conceptions of personhood,
nationhood, democracy, and citizenship, and also promote
colonization, Manifest Destiny, racial and gender
disenfranchisement, and attempted cultural genocide? How
did paintings, sculptures, buildings, and artifacts of
various media represent and shape notions of “America”
and American identities?
COURSE CONTENT
- Twelve lectures
-
Primary source readings to complement the lectures
-
A certificate of completion for 15 hours of
professional development credit
Readings: The suggested readings for
each session will be listed in the “Resources” link on
the course site. You are not required to read or
purchase any print materials. The quizzes are based on
the lectures.
Course Access: After your purchase, you
may access your course by signing into the Gilder
Lehrman website and clicking on the My Courses link,
which can be found under My Account in the navigation
menu.
Questions? Please view our
FAQs page
or email
selfpacedcourses@gilderlehrman.org.
LEAD SCHOLAR: Jennifer Van Horn
Jennifer Van Horn is an associate professor with a joint
appointment in the departments of art history and
history at the University of Delaware. She is a
specialist in the art of the United States and has
published about objects of many sorts, including
dressing tables, dentures, portraits, city views,
gravestones, and embroidered samplers. Several of these
appear in her first book,
The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British
America, which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize.
Her second book,
Portraits of Resistance, Activating Art During
Slavery, locates enslaved Africans and African Americans on
both sides of the painted canvas, as producers and
viewers of portraits and as destroyers and preservers of
depictions. Before returning to teach at her alma mater,
the University of Delaware, Van Horn worked as an
assistant curator at George Washington’s Mount Vernon
and taught at George Mason University as well as for the
Smithsonian MA Program in the History of Decorative
Arts.