LACS 20.10 Mexicanidad: Race/Raza, (trans)Nation, and Mexican(o/a/x) Cultural Identity
Since the Mexican Revolution (1910-17), artists, intellectuals, and state-actors have endeavored to define and re-define Mexican national identity, or what is known as Mexicanidad. From the 1920s and 30s, when an emphasis was placed on Mexico’s rural and indigenous populations to the 1940s and 50s, when greater attention was given to Mexican modernization, through the years after 1968, when artists and intellectuals endeavored to reveal the repressive nature of Mexicanidad and its role in propagandizing an authoritarian state and ruling party, to the 1990s when any consensus about the nation dissolved under the pressures of neoliberalism, state and narco-violence, free trade and labor migrations, and the rise of new social movements from Zapatismo, queer, feminist, and environmental activism. In this course we will place artists like Jose Clemente Orozco and Frida Kahlo within a broader visual cultural context that includes not only mural art and painting, but also sculpture, architecture, printmaking, photography, installation, film, and performance. We will cover art produced in Mexico and “Greater Mexico” from the turn of the 20th century through the “boom” years of the 1990s, with a focus on issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality throughout. The course is organized around themes that brings the past into conversation with contemporary events. Students will learn about the history of Mexican art and develop an understanding of how visual culture participates in the construction of national identity and racial formation as well as how art can critique and queer those constructions. Through weekly discussions, activities and group work, they will enhance skills in the visual analysis of modern and contemporary art and refine their ability to write effectively. This course has no pre-requisites and requires no prior knowledge of Art History or Mexican art and history. Not open to students who have received credit for LACS 30.09
Instructor
M. Coffey
Cross Listed Courses
ARTH 40.04