The Repeating Island: Visual Cultures of the Early Modern Caribbean

Catalog description

Considered in many ways the birthplace of the modern world, the Caribbean has long been central to the study of capitalism, slavery, world economic systems, race, class, gender, and environmental transformation. This course explores the visual and material cultures of the Greater Caribbean through close study of objects, texts, and images. Topics include Indigenous art, colonial architecture and cartography, the plantation landscape, slavery and its representations, Afro-Caribbean religions, urban cultures, natural history, and the visual legacies of the Haitian Revolution. Emphasizing close looking and archival engagement, the course draws on local collections—including the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston—while asking how the Caribbean’s visual culture, often difficult to see or categorize, can be recovered within art history.