James M. Córdova’s research focuses on visual studies, cross-culture visual practices, identity formation, image/text relations, the agency of objects/images, and the production, consumption, and evaluation of visual culture in colonial Latin America.
keywords
Colonial Latin America, colonial visual culture, Precolumbian studies, Mesoamerican studies, Inquisition studies, ethnohistory, gender, visual studies, visual culture, colonial semiosis, decoloniality, postcolonial, New Spain, New Mexico, portraiture, religious painting, Mexican manuscripts,
ARTH 1600 - U.S. Art Across Cultures
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Spring 2022 / Spring 2024
Examines historical and contemporary issues in American arts and visual culture, emphasizing issues of race, gender, class, cross-cultural interactions, diversity of artistic traditions, and the global position of the United States in the modern world. We will focus on key monuments, objects, artists, and concepts relevant to the American context and impactful across geopolitical borders, ethnic groups, and genders.
ARTH 3729 - Foundations in Latin American Art
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2020 / Spring 2021 / Fall 2023
Examines Latin America's cultural pluralism and visual production beginning in Pre-Colombian times and following through to the present day. Considers the various functions of art as well as the relationship between objects, artists, and the cultures from which they come. Focuses on how visual objects and images communicate across cultures including in times of political and social conflict. Provides students with a broad frame of reference for many historical periods, cultural/ethnic groups, and equips students to evaluate images and objects and their proper cultural contexts. Recommended prerequisites: ARTH 1500 and/or ARTH 1600.
ARTH 4419 - The Arts of Colonial Mexico and Peru
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2020 / Fall 2021
Examines important works, artists, and themes that comprise the artistic production of colonial Mexico and Peru. Focuses on the intermingling, convergence, and conflict of European, Amerindian, Creole, mestizo, and African groups, which established the foundation of Latin America's cultural pluralism. Recommended prerequisites: ARTH 1500, ARTH 1600, ARTH 3729.
ARTH 4459 - Precolumbian Art of Mesoamerica
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2021
Introduces students to the art, architecture, and cultures of Mesoamerica, a region that encompasses modern-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of El Salvador, and Honduras. Focuses on major Pre-Columbian art objects and monuments to learn about the societies and cultures from which they came. Also considers the various roles that the visual arts and architecture played in these societies. Covers Olmec through Aztec civilizations. Recommended prerequisite: ARTH 3729.
ARTH 4919 - Capstone Seminar: Topics in Art History
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2019 / Fall 2024
Seminar course dealing with selected areas or problems within the history of art. Consult current online Schedule Planner for seminar topic. May be repeated up to 7 total credit hours.
ARTH 6559 - Power & Visuality After the Conquest
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2024
Examines how artistic production was informed by, and participated in, Latin America�s colonial experience (16th to 19th centuries). With a critical eye and decolonial approach, students examine the complex strategies and objectives of visual culture in an ethnically/racially diverse colonial setting. Focus on historiography, visual culture, artists, patrons, hybridity, extinction, conquest, conversion, materiality, literacy, and global networks. Emphasis on colonial Mexico and Peru and their Indigenous populations. Previously offered as a special topics course.
ARTH 6779 - Visualizing Gender Before and After the Conquest
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2022
Examines issues of gender and power in Pre-Columbian and Colonial Latin American visual culture. Special focus on women�s social roles and the nature and function of their images in pre-Hispanic and colonial times. Course readings and discussions draw from a variety of art-historical, ethnohistorical, literary, and anthropological sources. The interdisciplinary scope provides an intellectually diverse framework that accounts for historical and contemporary assumptions about art, representation, race/ethnicity, and gender.
ARTH 6929 - Seminar: Methods/Theories of Art History
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2019 / Fall 2021 / Fall 2024
Provides a systematic critical overview of the development of art history as a discipline beginning with 18th century theories of aesthetics and ending with current interdisciplinary models of critical interpretation. Weekly readings, discussions, reports, and written papers constitute the format of this seminar in methodology. Topics vary from semester to semester. May be repeated up to 6 total credit hours within a term. Required for MA (art history) students.
