SPN 320-01 - Cultures of the Spanish-Speaking World

4 credits (Fall)

Visual Culture in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the vast production of visual images in Early Modern Spain and its colonies. It is a course about images in cultural context, about the social and political uses to which they were put, the various ways they were thought of, and the kinds of responses they elicited. Students will become familiar with the works of El Greco, Velázquez, Zurbarán, Ribera and Murillo as well as painters active in the Viceroyalty of New Spain and Peru. Some of the key topics we will address are: the role of portraiture in the construction and reproduction of the Spanish Habsburg monarchy, the nature and uses of religious imagery, the intersections between painting and material culture, and the relationships of gender implicated in visual practice.

Prerequisite: SPN 285.
Instructor: Pérez