Race Color in Latin America

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

The seminar examines the history of portraiture and casta paintings in Latin America from the late sixteenth through the early nineteenth century. The course primarily focuses on casta paintings—a unique pictorial genre that appropriated as its subject the issue of race and miscegenation. By studying casta paintings and portraits commissioned by the Spanish elite, the seminar analyses the pivotal role that art played in maintaining and exacerbating inequalities based on color, race, gender, and ethnicity. During Viceregal times, concepts of ethnicity, race, and identity were fundamental elements of social stratification based on physical characteristics, sumptuary rules, and statutory and customary laws that decreed the place of an individual in a certain casta based exclusively on the Spanish statute of limpieza de sangre (“purity of blood”). Placing particular emphasis on historical, social, cultural, economic, and political aspects, the course introduces students to major theoretical concepts of belonging, inclusion, and exclusion. Moreover, the seminar aims to understand the construction of racial identity in the viceroyalties and challenge the intersection of art, race, gender, and class in Latin America. For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu This course is not available to audit.