The Materiality of Culture in Latin America

3 units

The materiality of culture refers to a heterogeneous array of objects, artifacts, public and museum art and “sites of memory” that allows us to understand the connections between past and present, heritage and current creativity, collective memory, archival work, consumption and symbolic representation, both in popular culture and in institutionalized forms of artistic expression in Latin America. The course is centered on issues related to the construction, materiality, preservation, circulation and consumption of cultural production in Latin America both at the level of popular and “high culture.” In the first place, the corpus of the course will focus (selectively) on the meaning of colonial as well as modern and contemporary icons, fetishes, altars, images, artifacts and other items used in religious and secular rituals. In the second place, it will analyze murals, museums, graffiti and other expressions of “high” or popular art. Other elements of material culture refer to migrants’ paraphernalia or constitute commercial commodities that eloquently refer to a variety of social contexts particularly in Mexico, Peru, and the Caribbean region. The course has been thought to expose students to issues of cultural diversity and to productive processes of intercultural dynamics. The objective of the course is to familiarize students with different registers of cultural production, as well as with the significance of objects related to belief, political positions, and aesthetic styles, in a variety of social contexts. The main notions presented in the course relate to national identities, cultural legacy, cultural heritage, and market relations. This thematic scope will be basis for collective reflections on the formation of collective imaginaries among different racial, ethnic and social communities, as well as for the study of processes of cultural institutionalization, transculturation, hybridization, and the assignment of use & exchange value to material and symbolic commodities in different times and geo-cultural locations. Interdisciplinary readings will introduce students to concepts and methods used in the fields of museum studies, cultural sociology, anthropology, archeology, and cultural studies. Particular attention will be paid to “travelling objects” as studied by Sylvia Spitta and to the analysis of cultural markets advanced by Nestor Garcia Canclini and George Yudice. Concurrently, the critique of historiographical approaches to the organization of cultural legacies and to the consumption, archival arranging, technological/digital processing, and political resignification of cultural production will nurture the collective discussion. Students will work individually and in small groups for the development of specific projects. The course has no prerequisites and will be conducted in English.