Art History 207 - Translating New Worlds

In this class we ask how travel to and through the New World was imagined, described and lived—by Indigenous residents as well as those who came to the Americas from across the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Our focus rests upon the ways in which geographies, anthropologies, material objects, and pictorial and written records shaped colonial ambitions and experiences. Among the objects we will consider: books and painted images, dyes and metals, feathers, and urban buildings. Case studies will be drawn from across the Americas, including Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, Haiti, and the United States. We will also discuss contemporary cultural practices that seek to explain, interpret, and redress colonial encounters and settlements in the Americas. [Group A, ARU]