College of Fine Arts
Please direct all questions about the flag proposal process to the Center for the Skills & Experience Flags.
UGS 302 New World/Old World Encounters: Visualizing Power and Glory
To satisfy the Global Cultures flag, at least one-third of course grade must be based on content dealing with non-U.S communities, countries, or coherent regional groupings of countries, past or present. Please describe which non-U.S. communities will be studied in this course, and how one-third of the course grade is based on study of the group(s).
We will explore and contrast the art, architecture, and visual culture of the Old and New Worlds, in the period roughly equivalent to the Renaissance in the Old World and the Aztec Empire in the New World. For the first paper, worth 30% of the final grade, students will select one of several works relating to the Renaissance in Rome that are contained with the Blanton Art Museum. The 2nd paper, also worth 30% of the final grade, will be a group research project focused on the Aztec empire.
The Global Cultures flag requires that an in-depth examination of the broader cultural context and perspectives of these non-U.S. communities. Please describe readings, assignments, and activities that allow students to engage in depth with these non-U.S. communities.
We will emphasize how, on both sides of the Atlantic, in Rome and in Tenochtitlan, the different cultures shared fundamental concerns with the expression of political authority (power), supernatural sanction and awe (glory), and how these ideas manifest through elaborate programs of architecture, sculpture, and magnificent alterations of the natural environment. While we will begin with these points of commonality, we will also use them as points of departure, analyzing the ways in which these concepts were uniquely developed on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Students will gain perspective on today’s complex geopolitical dynamics through a closer study and direct contact (visits to the Benson, the Blanton Collections, and the Harry Ransom Center) with the material culture of the Americas and Europe. Class discussion, centered around readings, accounts for the class participation portion of the final grade. Readings span both sides of the Atlantic and include: Loren Partridge, “Urbanism: Rotting Cadavers and the New Jerusalem”. In The Art of Renaissance Rome, 1400-1600, pp. 19-41. New York: Abrams, 1996. Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life 1521-1821, eds. Donna Pierce, Rogelio Ruiz Gomar, and Clara Bargellini, pp. 113-118. Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2004. The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of the Baroque City, pp. 11-37. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010. Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, “Aztec Myth and the Great Temple.” In The Great Temple of the Aztecs: Treasures of Tenochtitlan, pp. 123-145. London: Thames and Hudson, 1988.
The Global Cultures flag indicates that, ideally, a course will challenge students to explore the beliefs and practices of non-U.S. cultural communities in relation to their own cultural experiences so that they engage in an active process of self-reflection. Please describe some assignments or activities that give students an opportunity for this kind of reflection.
Discussion, which accounts for 20% of the final grade, will involve students’ responses to a lengthy series of readings that involve both Rome and Tenochtitlan, and that invite them to consider the ways in which religious ideas (sacrifice, for example, or pilgrimage) and political ideas were constructed. Their opinions and ideas will be shared and discussed in class. We will also ask them to reflect on the ways in which studies of the distant past affects today’s culture. How does the legacy of sacred architecture c. 1500 still resonate in the Americas today? We will explore how political and religious authority were inextricably intertwined in both worlds, and we will use this study of the past as a springboard for discussion of our current world, and the ways in which religious imagery and ideology are linked to political rhetoric and positioning. In addition, students will submit reading responses (worth 20% of the final grade), which address specific readings and will necessitate self-reflection.