Race and the Art of Empire

Catalog description

This seminar considers the role of art and visual culture in constructing. reifying, representing and, in some cases. challenging ideas of race and national identity in relationship to the joint enterprises of colonialism and Empire. Concentrating primarily on the 18th and 191h centuries (but with some temporal projection in both directions to consider both precursors and postcolonial reverberations) and exploring examples from the British. Spanish. and French empires. we _will consider a diverse array of material­ drawings, paintings, prints. sculpture, decorative arts. fashion, museum display, private collections, photography and film-in order to think about the ways that visual and material culture informed colonial identities and supported imperial enterprise and also could be used to resist them. Students are encouraged to offer perspectives and bring in supplemental material that expands the scope of the course dialogue and to pursue their own particular interests related to the concerns of the course in their final papers/projects (included exploring different time periods or colonial empires). Finally, while race will be the primary vector of identity explored. its inevitable intersections with gender, class, and sexuality will necessarily receive attention.