Instructor/Guide Author
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5787-2609Room 216
Course Introduction
Textbook (required):
The Art of Mesoamerica: From Olmec to Aztec by Call Number: F1219.3.A7 M55 2019ISBN: 9780500204504Publication Date: 2019-06-11We will read the entire book. Obtain a code from the campus bookstore ($31.52). Use that code to acquire the e-book in Perusall. You can also use a credit card to buy the e-book in Perusall. Do not access weekly Perusall readings directly from the Perusall website. Instead, login to our Canvas course site and then navigate to Perusall from the links in Assignments and/or Modules. Why? You will not receive credit for a given week's reading unless you access it from the appropriate link in Canvas. One physical copy is also on Reserve at the Circulation Desk, Gitenstein Library, but again you must purchase the Perusall e-book.
Additional readings (required):
Aztec Art by Call Number: F1219.76.A78 P37 1983ISBN: 0810906872Publication Date: 1993-03-01The only chapter we will read (for Week 12), "The Major Monuments of Tenochtitlan" (139-78), is available at no cost in Canvas.
Cities of Ancient Mexico: Reconstructing a Lost World by Call Number: F1219.7 .S33 1989ISBN: 0500050538Publication Date: 1989-04-01Find PDFs of brief, 2-page excerpts from Chapters 2 through 8 in Canvas, either under Files or Modules. One physical copy of this book is also available on Reserve at the Circulation Desk, Gitenstein Library.
Look! Art History Fundamentals by Call Number: N345 .D26 2020ISBN: 1786276364Publication Date: 2020-02-04Purchase the printed book from the campus bookstore (as low as $44 if used) to read Chapters 2 and 4 (for Week 2). One physical copy is also available on Reserve at the Circulation Desk, Gitenstein Library.
- Mesoamerica: An Introduction by David C. Murray (2022)This is a brief, 2-page handout. Please read it for Week 1.
Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire by Call Number: F1219.1.T27 T435 2017ISBN: 9780520296558Publication Date: 2017-09-26The only chapter we will read (for Week 4) is available at no cost in Perusall: Sugiyama's "Teotihuacan: Planned City with Cosmic Pyramids" (28-37).
Final grades result from a combination of the following:
- Class participation (10%)
- Perusall readings and comments (25%)
- Information literacy (IL) assignments (45% of total):
- Initial reference list (5%)
- Prompt available September 1
- Due X
- Midway reference list (5%)
- Prompt available September 16
- Email me your proposed topic for the final research paper by X
- Midway reference list due X
- Annotated reference list (10%; note assessment rubric)
- Prompt available September 30
- Due X
- Research paper of 5 pages (25%; note "final assessment" rubric)
- Prompt available October 21
- Due X
- Initial reference list (5%)
- Formal analysis of a Mesoamerican artwork in two parts:
- Written (10%)
- Prompt available October 21
- Due X
- Presentation (10%)
- Prompt available October 21
- Online signup sheet available November 1
- Due X
- Written (10%)
"There is a long and painful distance between the lived Mexica [Aztec] world and the small clutter of carved stones and painted paper, the remembered images and words, from which we seek to make that world again. Historians of remote places and peoples are the romantics of the human sciences, Ahabs pursuing our great white whale, dimly aware that the whole business is, if coolly considered, rather less than reasonable. We will never catch him, and don't much want to; it is our own limitations of thought, of understandings, or imagination we test as we quarter those strange waters. And then we think we see a darkening in the deeper water, a sudden surge, the roll of a fluke—and then the heart-lifting glimpse of the great white shape, its whiteness throwing back its own particular light, there, on the glimmering horizon" (Clendinnen 1995, 275).
Aztecs: An Interpretation by Call Number: F1219.76.S64 C44 1995ISBN: 0521485851Publication Date: 1995-02-24
Complementary of this admonition is D'Alleva's warning about "confronting your assumptions" (61). Drawing snap judgments about artists' motivations or cultural practices is a fraught exercise, even more so when studying the arts of non-Western peoples. Art historians do not (or should not) claim universal knowledge or position themselves as detached observers. Rather, as with everyone else, scholars bring their own cultural contexts and experiences to their work. This phenomenon does not preclude scholars from performing art historical analyses, of course, but we should acknowledge our individual subjectivity. Scholars, then, advance arguments based on solid evidence and sound reasoning rather than assumption or claims of universality.
Albrecht Dürer on Mesoamerican Art
"All the days of my life," wrote the great German artist, Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), "I have seen nothing that rejoiced my heart so much as these things, for I saw amongst them wonderful works of art, and I marveled at the subtle ingenuity of men of foreign lands" (147).
Shown: Zapotec Anthropomorphic Urn — Post-Classic Period (900-1300 CE)