Faculty Profile
Ty Vanover
(he/him/his)Adjunct Faculty in Art & Art History (2023)
Contact Information
717-245-1474
Bio
Professor Vanover teaches courses in modern and contemporary European art. He is a specialist in German and Austrian art and visual culture, the history of sexuality, and histories of science and medicine. He primarily focuses on prints and drawings and is currently preparing his first book manuscript, titled “Graphic Impulses: Drawing, Sexuality, and Science in Germany, 1870-1933.” Other works in progress include a co-edited volume on modern German erotica and several essays on topics ranging from queer sexuality and Symbolist art to 19th-century crime scene sketches. His research has been supported by the Institute for Art History at the University of Vienna, the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and the Mabelle McLeod Lewis Fund.
Education
- B.A., The University of Virginia, 2016
- M.A., The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2017
- Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2023
2024-2025 Academic Year
Fall 2024
ARTH 102 Introduction History of Art
This course surveys art of the European renaissance through the contemporary period. Art will be examined within the historical context in which it was produced, with attention to contemporary social, political, religious, and intellectual movements. Students will examine the meaning and function of art within the different historical periods. In addition, students will learn to analyze and identify different artistic styles.
WGSS 201 Gender & Sex/Mod Europ Am Art
Cross-listed with ARTH 205-01. This course offers an introduction to modern European art from roughly 1800 to 1945 with a marked focus on the ways that art pictured, responded to, and subverted gender roles and conceptions of sexuality. In particular, we will examine how widespread social changes (urbanization, class formation), political developments (nationalism, socialism, fascism), and scientific developments (sexual science, psychoanalysis) incited shifts in how European artists conceived of their identities and positionalities. We will supplement canonical texts in feminist and gender theory with recent interventions in queer, trans, and post-colonial theory to arrive at a historically grounded understanding of gender and sex in modern art. Together, we will consider depictions of sex work in post-Impressionist art, sexual "primitivism" and the Black model, masculinity in Expressionist art, and trans approaches to modern art, among other topics, in order to rethink traditional art historical approaches to the modern canon. No prior experience in Art History or Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies is required.
ARTH 205 Gender & Sex/Mod Europ Am Art
Cross-listed with WGSS 201-02. This course offers an introduction to modern European art from roughly 1800 to 1945 with a marked focus on the ways that art pictured, responded to, and subverted gender roles and conceptions of sexuality. In particular, we will examine how widespread social changes (urbanization, class formation), political developments (nationalism, socialism, fascism), and scientific developments (sexual science, psychoanalysis) incited shifts in how European artists conceived of their identities and positionalities. We will supplement canonical texts in feminist and gender theory with recent interventions in queer, trans, and post-colonial theory to arrive at a historically grounded understanding of gender and sex in modern art. Together, we will consider depictions of sex work in post-Impressionist art, sexual "primitivism" and the Black model, masculinity in Expressionist art, and trans approaches to modern art, among other topics, in order to rethink traditional art historical approaches to the modern canon. No prior experience in Art History or Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies is required.
Spring 2025
ARTH 205 Creativity, Innov, Discovery
Why did astronomers draw the stars? Why did art students dissect cadavers? Is "art" made by AI really art? This course will consider these questions and others as we investigate the relationship between the visual arts and the sciences in Europe and North America from the 17th century to the present. We will examine how paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and photographs facilitated and/or responded to innovations in the fields of astronomy, biology, chemistry, anthropology, criminology, engineering, and medicine. We will also pay significant attention to art's role in the development of racist and queerphobic pseudo-sciences. Together, we will come to understand how artists and scientists worked together to create our modern world. Science majors welcome.
ARTH 391 Global Avant-Gardes
In this course, we will seek to critically examine and decenter the European avant-garde by locating its attendant movements within a global context. We will begin by developing a theoretical grounding for our conception of the avant-garde: what do we mean when we use the term "avant-garde," and what associations do we attach to it? We will then explore a series of key movements traditionally associated with the European avant-garde and situate them in relation to contemporary global correlates. Topics will include the reception of Symbolism and Surrealism in the Middle East; Cubism in Mexico; Dada and the Japanese Mavo movement; the development Bauhaus ideologies in Germany and India; Constructivism between Russia and Latin America; and Socialist Realism in the USSR and its "Third World" periphery. Drawing on canonical texts and recent interventions in postcolonial theory, we will tend to these nodes of mutual artistic and ideological exchange and identify points of dissonance between these movements to arrive at a deconstructed image of avant-garde movements from the mid-nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth century.