Crushing and Grinding: The Arts of Global Extraction in Early Modern Europe

1400-1800 credits · Undergraduate credit

This course surveys the production and reception of art objects in early modern Europe by studying the materials from which they were made. By foregrounding the importance of substances that were extracted by skilled practitioners outside the geographic bounds of Western Europe, it demonstrates their foundational role not only within global networks of knowledge and exploitation, but in the lives of art objects long considered central to a Eurocentric art historical canon.