Learning Outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this module, students will be able to:
• Think critically about the ways in which early modern Spanish architects and visual artists craft and present built spaces in the service of specific political objectives
• Analyze the spatial and visual strategies used in buildings, maps, engravings, and other media to delineate the relationship between space, knowledge, and power in Spain and the Americas
• Understand how architecture and visual media serve to reinforce or contest political, social, and gender hierarchies in the early modern Spanish empire
• Consider how indigenous American artists assert and preserve their own cosmovisions and aesthetic practices through their depiction of both pre-Columbian architectures and Spanish-American cities in codices and maps
• Conduct effective research in cultural and image studies and refine writing and presentational skills
Indicative Module Content:
Topics to be explored in this module include:
* Mudéjar architecture and narratives of medieval “convivencia”
* Monarchical power and the architecture of Habsburg Madrid
* Archives and the construction of knowledge in Spain
* Urban planning, architecture, and the imposition of Spanish rule in the Americas
* Indigenous architectures and urban ideologies in New Spain
* The Andean Baroque
* Women and architecture (cloisters, convents, domestic spaces)
* Ephemeral architecture, festival culture, and viceregal ceremonies in the Spanish colonies
* The poetics of ruins: Architecture, time, and history