- To be able to describe a work of visual art clearly, concisely, and sufficiently thoroughly for reader to be able to form an image of the work in question.

- To be able to analyze for both form and content (the what? and the how?) a work of visual art, using proper terms appropriately.

- To be able to compare two or more works of visual art thoroughly, concisely, and clearly and to draw some basic inferences from the comparison.

- To be able to read a plan and relate it to other architectural conventions (types of elevation, axionometric views) as well as to be able to explain how it represents basic features of the built work.

- To be able to relate forms of visual expression to relevant historical and cultural data and to propose some explanation of the significance of those connections.

- To be able to identify and use appropriately primary sources, distinguishing them from secondary sources, and demonstrate awareness of their strengths and limitations by using them in research.

- To be able to explain the reasons for which we have lost significant amounts of visual evidence from the periods studied and to nonetheless use indirect evidence to think about lost works, practices, ideas and attitudes. To be able to explain how various kinds of evidence can be used together to reconstruct works, events, and ideas from the past.

- To be able to connect various types of written texts to works of art in productive manner that is justified by both text and art work.

- To be able to identify and use the basic bibliographic and other types of research sources (including but not limited to electronic resources) essential to this period of art history synthetically and critically for problem-solving and to present such sources as usable evidentiary apparatus (support documentation). To be able to use contrasting or contradictory interpretations productively.

- To be able to express clearly your findings, interpretations, and conclusions and to use evidence competently.

- To be able to use terms correctly and appropriately.

- To be able to summarize the basic shape of Byzantine art history, including periodization, important events and facts, and major features, as well as its relation to other (perhaps better known) cultures in the medieval East and West, and earlier and later historical periods (Roman antiquity, the Renaissance, and Eastern Orthodoxy).

- To be able to explain how the decoration of Byzantine churches expresses meaning (early and Middle Byzantine systems) and how major variations on these systems both connect and diverge from the "standards".

- To become familiar with the features of Early Christian and Byzantine book illumination, including types of books (Biblical, religious, and secular), features of decoration, including the use of convention, conservative copying traditions, and reference to antiquity and authority.

- To be able to explain the major developments in the portrait icon from Late Antiquity through the Middle Byzantine period and to relate some of these features to the main elements in Byzantine hagiography.

- To be able to exemplify and explain naturalism and abstraction as two poles between which Byzantine art varies and to be able to identify and explain the motives for it at key points in the history of Byzantium, as well as to be able to explain why "progress" does not necessarily always go from less to greater naturalism, providing examples to support.

- To be able to cite and explain the significance of some of the most important cases of Imperial patronage of Byzantine art and provide explanation for the types of works sponsored, conventions, innovations, and functions, including in relation to specifics of historical context.

- To be able to summarize the main arguments on both sides of the Iconoclastic Controversy, that is, over the legitimacy of religious imagery in Byzantium, as well as how we think these originated and how these opposing views were expressed during Iconoclasm and afterwards.

- To be able to recognize, explain and provide examples of some basic techniques used in Byzantine art, including fresco, mosaic, manuscript illumination, panel painting, enamel and other metal work, ivory carving, and textiles, as well as to understand some of the advantages and limitations of each, as well as to point out characteristics of each.

- To be able to exemplify and explain the impact of Byzantine art and culture on that of medieval Russia (Rus), Norman Sicily, and Venice, as well as to post-Byzantine Orthodox society.