AAH 370: The Arts of Ancient Mesoamerica

Final grades result from a combination of the following:

• Class participation (10% of total)
• Brief, in-class quizzes (25% of total) based on a combination of the:
  • Previous week's lecture; and
  • Current week's reading(s)
• Information literacy (IL) assignments (45% of total):
  • Initial reference list (5%)
    • Prompt available January 31
    • Due date: February 13
  • Midway reference list (5%)
    • Prompt available February 14
    • Email me your proposed topic for the final research paper before class on February 20
    • Due date: February 27
  • Annotated reference list (10%; consult the assessment rubric)
    • Prompt available February 28
    • Due date: March 27
  • Research paper of five (5) pages (25%; consult the final assessment rubric)
    • Prompt available March 28
    • Due date: May 16
• Formal analysis of a Mesoamerican artwork in two parts (20% of total):
  • Written (10%)
    • Prompt available March 28
    • Due date: April 24
  • Presentation (10%)
    • Prompt available March 28
    • Online signup sheet available March 28
    • Presentation dates: May 1 or May 8 (depending on when you signed up)

"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).

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, even as we acknowledge our own subjectivity, from performing art historical analysis. But we should strive to advance our claims and arguments based on solid evidence and sound reasoning rather than assumption or claims of universality.