Modern Mexican History: Art and Revolution

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course is designed to introduce students to Mexico's modern history and its people. We will pay particular attention to political and artistic movements during the Porfiriato (1876-1910), the Revolution (1910-1938), and the post-revolutionary period (1938-1970s). We will include a detailed discussion of the recent disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, in the State of Guerrero. Students will examine what it meant to be a "militant" in the political world of artistic production and social movements and the different ways in which the Mexican state responded to this militancy. We will explore how and why a broad range of representative leaders of Mexico's most important political and cultural revolutions used paintings, murals, graphic art, cartoons, literature, music, film, and graffiti to (A) lead a social, cultural, and political restructuring of their respective communities; (B) export their unique notions of "Revolution" to the nation and the world; and (C) question the contradictions that some artists (at times) faced within their own revolutionary movements.