courses: All courses

Course categories:

ARTH 383/A (Fall, 2020): ART AND PHILOSOPHY

Teacher: KATHRYN SIMPSON

ARTH 392 AA 2202

ARTH 392/AA (Fall, 2020): GENDER ISSUES IN ART & ARTH

Teacher: KATHRYN SIMPSON

ARTH 283 CA 2201

ARTH 283/CA (Summer, 2020): THE LIFE AND WORK OF FRIDA KAHLO

Teacher: KATHRYN SIMPSON
Teaching Assistant: Ashley Raghubir
Teaching Assistant: ASHLEY RAGHUBIR

ARTH 398/CA (Summer, 2020) - SPEC.TOPICS IN ART & SOCIETY

Topic: Art and Society in Colonial Latin America

In recent decades, following the so-called global turn in art history, scholars have demonstrated an increasing interest in the artistic production of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas, a period spanning from Christopher Columbus’ arrival to the continent in 1492 to the wars of independence in the mid-nineteenth century. This course, designed as a thematic survey, introduces students to key aspects of art and architecture in the Iberian Americas, particularly in New Spain (a territory known today as Mexico). Acknowledging the fact that invasion is a structure—both historical and ongoing—and not an event [1], we will examine the complex relationships between artistic production and settler colonialism in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Latin America. Moving beyond the misguided assumption that the arts of the so-called ‘New’ World represent little more than an imitation of European ‘originals,’ we will think about the cross-pollination between artistic practices and objects on both sides of the Atlantic.

We begin our journey with some theoretical and historiographic considerations, followed by an overview of Indigenous arts, including amantecayotl (Nahua feather mosaics) and the work of tlacuiloli (Indigenous painter-scribes), before and after the Fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521. We will then examine selected aspects of art and architecture in colonial Latin America, including issues of religion and conversion, gender and sexuality, the representation of race, miraculous images, and the presence of American objects in European collections. Towards the end of the semester, we will briefly examine contemporary engagements with the aesthetics and legacies of settler colonialism in Latin America and beyond.

[1] Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8:4 (2006): 388.

Teacher: DANIEL SANTIAGO SAENZ

ARTH 359 A 2194

ARTH 359/A (Winter, 2020): STUDIES CONT. PHOTOGR. ART

Teacher: GEORGIA PHILLIPS-AMOS
Teaching Assistant: Sepideh Eghtedari

ARTH 366 A 2194

ARTH 366/A (Winter, 2020): STUDIES 19C ART/ARCHITECTURE

Teacher: PAULA ALASZKIEWICZ

ARTH 643 A 2194

ARTH 643/A (Winter, 2020): TOPICS IN ART & GLOBALIZATION

Teacher: JOHANNE SLOAN

ARTH 641 A 2194

ARTH 641/A (Winter, 2020): VISUAL AND MATERIAL CULTURE

Teacher: JOHN POTVIN

ARTH 610 A 2194

ARTH 610/A (Winter, 2020): NORTH AM. ART/ARCH. HISTORY

Teacher: MAY CHEW

ARTH 398 A 2194

ARTH 398/A (Winter, 2020): SPEC.TOPICS IN ART & SOCIETY

Teacher: NURIA CARTON DE GRAMMONT LARA

ARTH 392 AA 2194

ARTH 392/AA (Winter, 2020): GENDER ISSUES IN ART & ARTH

Representations of Queerness in Weimar Berlin: Expanded Course Description

This interdisciplinary course will examine the orgiastic Weimar era of “wicked Berlin” in pre-Hitler Germany, with an eye to its many representations of queerness. Weimar Berlin, which critics called “a new hell on earth,” is also known as history’s erotic metropolis; it was the international sex-tourist mecca of the twenties and early thirties, a place where even the air itself ostensibly produced perversions. Berliner Luft (Berlin air) “was said to contain a toxic ether that attacked the nervous system, stimulating long-suppressed passions as it animated all the external tics of sexual perversity.” Much of this so-called “perversity” had to do with various forms of behaviour and identity that could be considered “queer,” either then and/or now: bisexuality; cross-dressing and drag; homosexuality; non-monogamy and other non-normative lifestyle choices; pansexuality; sex acts considered “degenerate”; as well as trans* identifications and more. Throughout the course we will compare and contrast different representations of queerness in Weimar Berlin, not only in visual art (e.g., the oeuvres of Otto Dix, George Grosz, Jeanne Mammen, and Hannah Höch) but also in visual culture (e.g., ephemera such as the pervasively popular Berlin sex guidebooks), and not only during the Weimar era (1918–1933) but also in subsequent representations of the culture and society of Weimar Berlin. Moreover we will consider and debate the links between the aesthetics and ideology of Weimar Berlin, on the one hand, and those of contemporary culture on the other.