72412 - Native American Art and Culture (1)

Academic Year 2019/2020

Learning outcomes

The course is aimed at providing the student with a general knowledge of pre-columbian art history in one or more areas of the American continent. It will also explore the potential and limits of applying the “art” category to pre-colonial indigenous productions. The student should thus acquire historical and anthropological competencies useful top overcome a mere formal-aesthetic reading of the work of art in order to explore its full potential as an anthropological source. The competencies acquired on indigenous “art-making” must also be apt at a conscious analysis of the many contemporary “revitalizations” of traditional indigenous art.

Course contents

Indigenous arts between aesthetics, religion and politics

The course, beside providing the students with the fundamental elements of the current debate on the anthropology of art, is aimed at analyzing the artistic productions of Mesoamerican pre-colonial indigenous peoples in order to explore their multiple aesthetic, religious and political functions; it wil be showed how such products were perceived, collected, and exhibited in museums in modern times, focusing our attention on the objects' materiality and agency, here perceived as their ability to continuously arouse new questions and discourses. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century anthropology museums became places of encounter with other, "ethnographic" amerindian artifacts , discusse din the second part of the course. The last lessons will be devoted to the analysis of contemporary indigenous artistic productions, finding their way through traditional practices, heritage politics and the matket of contemporary art.  

Lessons schedule:

1. Art and anthropology

2-6. Artistic practices in ancient Mesoamerica (Olmecs, Maya, Teotihuacan, Aztecs).

7-8. Indigenous American artefacts in early modern European collections.

9-11. Birth and transfornation of the Ethnographic museum, with specific focus on the musealization of Haida artefcts.

12-15. Contemporary indigenous art and politics of display.

 

Class Hours and rooms:

Wednesday, h. 13-15, Aula V, via Zamboni 38

Thursday, h. 13-15, Aula VI, via Zamboni 38

Friday, h. 13-15, Aula VI, via Zamboni 38

Lessons starting on November 20th, 2019

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS DATE IS ALSO VALID FOR STUDENTS OF HISTORY (who, for purely technical reasons, see a different, wrong date online).


Lessons starting on November 14th, 2018
Lessons starting on November 14th, 2018

Readings/Bibliography

For the final exam, students must read the following volume:

Caoci, Alberto, Antropologia, estetica e arte. Antologia di scritti, Franco Angeli, Milano 2008.

 

In addition, they will have to choose two volumes from the following list: 

Domenici, Davide, Il senso delle cose. Materialità ed estetica nell'arte mesoamericana, Bononia University Press, 2017 (available from the beginning of December).

Price, Sally, I primitivi traditi. L'arte dei "selvaggi" e la presunzione occidentale, Einaudi, Torino, 1992.

Severi, Carlo, Il percorso e la voce. Un'antropologia della memoria, Einaudi, Torino, 2004. 

Tiberini, Elvira Stefania, La vita nelle mani. Arte e società in Haida Gwaii, CISU, Roma, 2003.

N.B. There is no difference of readings for students that didn't participated in classwork. Anyway, the participation in classwork is strongly encouraged. 

Teaching methods

The frontal lessons, in which discussion of new findings and publication will be stimulated, will be integrated by discussion sessions and speeches aimed to inform the students about the ongoing field researches.

Assessment methods

The final exam will be an oral one, with questions aimed to verify the student's knowledge of the themes discussed during frontal lessons (only for students that participated in classwork) as well as those treated in the program's texts. The questions will deal with general themes, and in his answer the student should show his capacity to go into specific details. Among the elements that concur in the final evaluation there are: detailed knowledge of the book's content, property of language, and especially the capacity of organizing the information – also deriving from different sources – into complex answers showing expositive and critical skills.  

Proper language and the ability to critically speak about the books' content will lead to a good/excellent final grade

Acceptable language and the ability to resume the books' content will lead to a sufficient/fair grade.

Insufficient linguistic proficiency and fragmentary knowledge of the books' content will lead to a failure in passing the exam.

To sign up for the exam, please use the Almaesami website.

 

Teaching tools

The frontal lessons will be supported by Power Point presentations in order to visualize elements that, due to their "exotic" character, are scarcely known to the students. The Power Point presentation will be uploaded in the “Teaching materials” section of this website.

Office hours

See the website of Davide Domenici