Picturing Race in Early Modern Europe

3 units

How did early modern European images participate in and help to form a visual culture of race? Deep social and cultural roots of modern Western European and American conceptions of race and ethnicity lie in the early modern era, when enslavement was integrally linked with Blackness and when conceptions--and representations--of power relied on a hierarchical politics of racialization and othering. Through close analysis of paintings, sculptures, decorative and graphic arts, and with frequent reference to chronicles and literature of the time, this course traces visual representations of racialized difference throughout the early modern (European) world and to the present. Drawings, paintings, and prints by artists Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair, Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, and others feature prominently. We will also consider ethnographic imagery, maps, and other forms of representation--as well as responses by 20th- and 21st-century artists Betye Saar, Romare Bearden, Kerry James Marshall, Simone Leigh, Titus Kaphar, Kara Walker, and others to earlier conventions of race-crafting. Geographically, the materials we study issue from western Europe and focus on encounters with Western Africa, but we also consider European engagement in the American colonies, Melanesia/Indonesia, the Atlantic and Brazil--and with the Islamic world. No prereqs, though an intro to art history course is recommended.