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

4 credits (Fall)

Power and Negotiation in the Visual Culture of Spain and the Spanish-American Colonies (15-17th Century). This course provides an interdisciplinary and transatlantic approach in the analysis of the vast production of images in Spain and its colonies from the 15th to the 17th century. It is a course on images in their cultural context, their uses to increase the power and influence of social and political institutions, the various ways in which they were thought, and the kinds of responses that they raised in their society. Students will become acquainted with the works of El Greco, Velázquez, Zurbarán, Ribera and Murillo, as well as painters working actively in the Viceroyalty of New Spain and Peru. Special attention will be paid to the colonial pictorial manuscripts produced by native Mesoamerican artists. Some of the key issues we are going to address are: the role of portraiture in the construction and reproduction of the power of the Spanish monarchy of the Habsburgs, the nature and uses of religious imagery, the intersections between painting and material culture, the image as text in indigenous codices, and gender relations involved in visual practice.

Prerequisite: SPN 285.
Instructor: M. Pérez