Art history became established as an academic discipline in the USA between 1865 and 1895, when courses were introduced not only at Yale, Princeton and Harvard, but also at Vassar, Syracuse, Wellesley, Rockford Female Seminary, Radcliffe and Bryn Mawr. The prominent early role of the women's colleges and smaller universities is just one of the areas investigated in this volume on the genesis and early development of art history in the USA. Other essays focus on single departments of art history, examining the early subjects and methods of American art history and the way in which its practitioners responded to and assimilated contemporary developments in other fields, particularly history, the sciences, and philosophy. A final section examines some of the great scholarly personalities that dominated the field in the early years of this century. The volume includes a complete reprint of E. Baldwin Smith's 1912 survey "The Study of the History of Art in the Colleges and Universities of the United States".