Art history is a vast discipline, geographically, historically, and intellectually. In its initial centuries, art history dealt with Western art, but the boundaries of the field have since expanded. The canon continues to be redefined as histories of art in regions that had previously been ignored are brought into the mainstream. Traditional emphases on European art have been reduced, as the discipline reaches world-wide dimensions in which connections as much as differences have increasingly come into focus. Originating as a study much informed by ancient art, and then by the art of the Renaissance, the historical dimension of the discipline has also continuously advanced with time. More and more works and types of objects are made throughout the world, and art historians’ interests have increasingly shifted to more recent art. In the past half century art historians have also engaged more and more with questions of theory, method, and the history of the discipline. New approaches, often borrowed from other fields, have proliferated.... Oxford Bibliographies in Art History ... offers a trustworthy pathway through the thicket of information overload (Oxford University Press).
The field of Medieval Studies explores European and Mediterranean civilization from the 4th to the 15th centuries. This period, which has a critical importance for the understanding of Western culture, can best be approached through a combination of several disciplines, from history to literature, from art to archaeology, from religion to gender studies. As such, it is constantly responding to the emergence of new interpretations and ideas for scholars to consider... Managing the ever-expanding universe of scholarly information in this field of study has proved to be a monumental if not near impossible task. Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies provides students and scholars with a reliable and authoritative solution to the problem of information overload (Oxford University Press).