This course will explore the history of sacred architecture through new decolonial and diachronic ways.  We will start in the SASWANA region (South Asia, Southwest Asia, & North Africa), focusing on temple architecture in what was once known as the Near East and is more recently referred to as West Asia. We will examine the period when Egypt and Anatolia met in the Eastern Mediterranean with the birth of monotheism. We will consider the beginnings of agrarian settlements along the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile rivers to understand the relationship between ecology, ritual, architecture, and liturgy (in that order). Next, we will discuss the first and second temples in Jerusalem—their construction, destruction, rebuilding, and the subsequent exiles and diaspora of the Jewish people throughout the Mediterranean from the perspective of those in exile rather than their Roman colonizers. From there, we will shift our focus to the origins of sacred architecture in India (including Jain, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish) and the resulting figural representation of deities in South, Southeast, and Central Asia to think about the roles of syncretism, migration, and indigeneity, as the material traces of icons, manuscripts, caves, and translations will guide us from the gender transformation of Avalokitesvara in Nepal and Tibet to the Tang Dynasty's international style in China, Korea, and Japan. An emphasis on multi-sectarian sites will provide case studies in locations such as Djerba, Tunisia; Cordoba, Spain; Kathmandu, Nepal; and Borobudur, Indonesia, while funerary architecture will enable us to examine the conception of afterlife architecture by patrons such as Shah Jahan in the Taj Mahal and Lady Dai in Han Dynasty China. We will primarily focus on premodern indigenous sites and their modern diasporic iterations. Discussions about space, symbolism, and community will illuminate ephemera and materials as we diachronically explore whether architecture is inherently a built environment or merely the evocation of a shared ritual space—a dinner table, a wall, a tree, a direction, a memory, a revival, a reinvention, a hope, or a distant vestigial experience through any of the five senses. Students will have the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue with their biological or chosen ancestors. The course emphasizes kinesthetic and somatic approaches to understanding the built environment for a diverse range of users, particularly considering gender, disability, and ethnoreligious/Indigenous examples that have historically been marginalized by the canon of art history.HAAVC 3000 seminars continue developing students' visual analysis and research skills while providing students the opportunity for in-depth study of the visual/structural artifacts associated with a particular topic, region, or movement. Students will also engage with the relevant primary/secondary literature for the specific topic/theme. Courses will pay particular attention to the larger cultural, historical, and theoretical/ideological contexts in which the visual artifacts and structures under consideration were created. This course cannot fulfill the HAAVC 2000 requirement.

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