History of Art 270: Cultural Transfer: Problems and Methods in the Study of Renaissance and Early Modern Visual Cultures (Colonial Latin America and the Trans-Atlantic World)

This seminar will examine art historical theories and critical tools concerning the transmission, circulation and translation of images, artifacts, performances and visual technologies. The seminar’s readings and studies will focus on the special case of colonial Latin American, Spanish Empire, and the trans-Atlantic world. In addition to reading the recent literature in this temporal and geographic field (Cummins, Leibsohn, Mundy, Seed among others), the seminar will consider the latent potential of modes of art historical explanation that have addressed the persistence of images and the role of materiality in representation (Semper, Riegl, Warburg, Kubler). Emphasis will be placed on developing transposable models by studying transcultural historical phenomena that have been structured by a variety of legacies including Greco-Roman antiquity, Arabic epistemologies, the representation of Islam (Reconquista), indigenous pictorial survivals, cross-cultural scribal practices and biological metaphor (mestizaje) by different early modern (imperial) constituencies.