Visual Cultures of California

4 credits · Undergraduate

This class introduces the diverse visual cultures of the geographic area now known as California. It considers how space and race are culturally represented and reproduced over a broad span of time and across California’s shifting political designations, including its Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and United States periods. The long history of California includes encounter, domination, solidarity, coexistence, and revolution. Through consistent historical examination, the course will explore visual and material culture as a site in which many of these ways of managing life together occurred, were facilitated, or are preserved. Course sessions will be organized around chronological case studies of diverse subjects made in varied media.