In Romance languages the term “art” finds its origins in the Latin artificium, a word that for the Romans suggested craftsmanship, skill, and inventiveness but also craftiness, trickery, and deception.  In this course students will trace the history of this uniquely human form of creativity from its earliest known prehistoric expressions through the Middle Ages.  Through studying architecture, sculpture, painting, and the decorative arts from a wide variety of cultures, students will explore the human impulse to create art—from the desire for ritual and cultural identity, to the effectiveness with which the visual arts can assert the grandeur of civilizations and the authority of rulers, to the longing to express human emotions such as love, empathy, and fear of death. This course can be used to satisfy University Studies requirements.