Art History 791A - S- Afro-Latin American Art

This seminar investigates Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx art from the colonial period to the present. Despite the growing fame in mainstream popular culture of Afro-Latinx artists like Cardi B, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Amara La Negra, the misconception that Latin Americans and US Latinxs are all brown mestizos (people of mixed Spanish and Indigenous ancestry) persists. In this course we will analyze the critical role that art and visual culture has played in (mis)shaping of Afro-Latinidad. Each week, we will take images produced by, for, and about Afro-Latin Americans, as the starting point for the discussion of major themes, including the visual codification of race, Anti-Blackness, colonialism, slavery and abolition, Afro-Latin religiosity, and art activism. In addition, we will unpack the historiographic traditions of the discipline of art history that have led to the erasure and marginalization of Black artists and subjects.