This guide provides recommended research tools and skills for your ARTH 226 research assignment.
John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778, via Digital Image Database
American Encounters by
American Encounters is a long-awaited dynamic new narrative of the history of American art that focuses on historical encounters among diverse cultures, upon broad structural transformations such as the rise of the middle classes and the emergence of consumer and mass culture, and on the fluid exchanges between high art and vernacular expression. The text emphasizes the intersections among cultures and populations, as well as the influences, borrowings, and appropriations that have enriched and vitalized our collective cultural heritage. There was a readily perceived need for an up-to-date survey of American art that addressed the thematic, cultural, and historical concerns of the field in the 21st century. American Encounters offers a new narrative of American art organized around the theme of cross-cultural exchanges. It locates America at the cross-roads of cultural encounters between Asia, Africa, Europe, and the New World, for over five centuries. The authors do not treat traditions separately, rather they explore how peoples and cultures encounter and influence each other and then evolve based on an exchange of ideas, materials etc.
These required books are located at the front desk at Jen Library.
Picturing the Americas by 
The Empire of the Eye by 
The Magisterial Gaze by 
The attached brainstorming worksheet may give you some ideas.
When analyzing a work of art, it's helpful to develop and apply a list of relevant questions. Consider:
Barnet's A Short Guide to Writing About Art provides many useful examples of analytical questions and is a required/recommended text for most Art History courses.
If you would like in-depth help with research, make an appointment with your librarian by completing the online form at the link below:
