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Dec 11, 2024
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College Bulletin 2014-2015 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
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ARTH 001P. First-Year Seminar: Objects of Empire: Artworks in the Early Modern Atlantic World
For much of the early-modern period, the Spanish Viceroyalties anchored a system of maritime exchange that connected the Atlantic world (Europe and Africa) with the profitable and desirable bounty of the Far East. At regular intervals, royal Spanish galleons and European merchants (including pirates) inundated port cities and metropolitan areas, such as Mexico City, with valuable commodities, artworks, and everyday objects en route from one corner of the empire to another. This course seeks to understand what this “stuff” can tell us about the people who made it and the world they lived in. Although grounded in the field of art history, this course capitalizes upon the recent “material turn” in the humanities that has led to a proliferation of object-based inquiries and asks students to consider material culture from a variety of disciplinary perspectives (including art history, history, and anthropology). Students will not only learn to think about the “objects of empire,” but also to think with them, gaining a better understanding of important issues such the role of art in establishing colonial regimes, questions of hybridity and artistic influence, the origins of global exchange, and the politics early-modern collecting practices.
1 credit.
Spring 2015. Burdette.
http://www.swarthmore.edu/art
Art
Access the class schedule to search for sections.
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